The Pluralsight Podcast

The Pluralsight Podcast is a storytelling platform exploring the rapidly evolving world of technology and learning. Each episode features authentic, human-centered conversations with leaders, luminaries, and changemakers who are shaping the future of tech, guiding organizational transformation, and advancing their own skills and careers.

The Pluralsight Podcast is a business podcast hosted by Josh Burkhead, with 19 episodes on record and a Required Pod Score of 80.

Josh Burkhead hosts The Pluralsight Podcast, a business show with 19 episodes published.

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  The Pluralsight Podcast

  L&D Doesn't Drive Learning. Leaders Do | Alice Meredith

  Sep 15, 202652 min

  Why do learning programs stall even after the licenses are bought, the announcement is made, and people start completing courses? In this episode, Josh sits down with Alice Meredith, culture strategist, Pluralsight author, and certified change management instructor, to answer a question every L&D leader eventually faces: we have the platform, so why isn't it working? Alice's answer is direct. The platform is infrastructure. What's missing is the humanness behind it, and the single biggest factor is the direct leader. In her words: a leader drives learning, period. L&D does not drive those KPIs. The conversation is packed with usable ideas. Why every learning rollout is really a change management project, and what change exhaustion demands of leaders when pulling back isn't an option. LQ, the learning quotient, and why Alice argues it now matters more than IQ or EQ. Her GAS framework for low engagement numbers: give grace, assume positive intent, seek to understand. And a reality-sorting exercise that separates facts from emotional statements like "no one values training." A must-listen for any L&D leader staring at flat utilization numbers and wondering what to change first. Chapters: 01:02 Why Learning Programs Stall 03:30 "We Need to Better Utilize What We Have" 04:58 Where Change Management Fits In 08:04 Change Exhaustion Is Real (No Excuses) 15:22 LQ: The Learning Quotient 20:21 How to Assess Your Team's LQ 29:08 Culture of Learning: The Spa Metaphor 31:35 Why Mandated Learning Hours Backfire 33:15 Inclusivity, KPIs & the GAS Framework 37:21 Three Factors of a Successful Learning Initiative 40:31 Advice for L&D Teams: Grace & Reality Sorting 48:30 Two Practical Changes to Make This Quarter Connect with Alice Meredith: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alicemeredith/ Pluralsight courses: https://www.pluralsight.com/authors/alice-meredith Stay up to date on everything happening in cloud, AI, and security. Sign up for our weekly newsletter: https://www.pluralsight.com/technews/ Music licensed through Soundstripe. Code: X0JKGEVCYRFIALUO

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  GitHub Unleashed: LLMs on Guard | Tim Warner

  Sep 1, 20261h 5m

  What happens when you don't just ask one LLM to check your work, but three, and then make them vote? In this episode of The Pluralsight Podcast, we sit down with Tim Warner, Principal Pluralsight Author, Microsoft MVP, and author of more than 200 Pluralsight courses, to talk about what it takes to stay current through three decades of tech disruption, and why gen AI is just the latest wave to ride rather than fear. Tim breaks down what technology and L&D leaders get wrong in the AI gold rush, why shadow AI is the new shadow IT, and how to pair training with guardrails and sandboxes your teams will actually use. Then Tim takes us inside GitHub for a live demo: a GitHub Actions workflow that hands agent and skill definitions to three different LLMs, which scan for prompt injection and other vulnerabilities, then vote on a verdict through a simple quorum mechanism. It's a practical look at defense in depth for AI-assisted development, explained in plain language. Chapters: 01:42 Eternally curious: 30 years in IT 05:07 Know yourself, do your best 07:11 The eternal student persona 09:04 Learning in public 10:57 Underestimated fundamentals and agentic AI risk 13:00 AI councils, not fear-based reactivity 15:24 Shadow AI is the new shadow IT 17:09 Closing the upskilling gap 19:41 The skills leaders underestimate 21:05 Prompt vs. context engineering 22:29 What GitHub actually is 26:17 GitHub Actions explained 29:32 Tim's multi-LLM research workflow 32:53 When LLMs disagree 35:15 Multi-model on a budget 38:30 Is on-prem AI coming back? 39:52 Getting started responsibly 43:38 Demo: LLM quorum security scanning in GitHub 53:29 Security risks and data handling 56:14 Enterprise guardrails and orchestration 59:47 Advice: curiosity over fear 1:02:06 Where to find Tim Connect with Tim Warner: TechTrainerTim LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/timothywarner/ Website: https://techtrainertim.com Pluralsight courses: https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/tim-warner Stay up to date on everything happening in cloud, AI, and security. Sign up for our weekly newsletter: https://www.pluralsight.com/technews/

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  Customer Spotlight | SEB

  Aug 18, 20261h 12m

  One leads technology. One leads learning. Same bank, same transformation. In this episode of The Pluralsight Podcast, Josh sits down with Kimberly Lejonö, technology leader inside SEB's corporate credit process, and Gabriela Almonacid, L&D Partner for Global Business Services, to trace how two functions inside one of the largest banks in the Nordics are shaping the same AI transformation from entirely different vantage points. What surfaces is a series of connections neither had fully drawn before: where their work already overlaps, where old assumptions don't hold up, and where the real opportunity sits waiting between tech and L&D. We explore: Why 80 to 90 percent of an AI transformation is people work, not tech work, and what that demands from leaders on both sides of the business The calendar move that put a weekly learning hour in front of 3,500 employees at once, and why it had to clear four boards to happen SEB's step-by-step path to AI fluency for non-technical roles: Tech Foundations, hands-on workshops, ideation labs, and a role-based AI Academy How a developer with zero agent experience shipped to production in one month, and why your first use case should be finishable, not flashy Why manager engagement in learning nearly tripled in three years (hint: people don't listen to HR, they listen to their manager) What tech leaders and L&D leaders consistently miss, and why consensus culture pays back ten times at the end Connect with Kimberly Lejonö: https://www.autogram.id/kimberly Connect with Gabriela Almonacid: https://www.autogram.id/gabriela?card=open Chapters: 02:02 Meet Kimberly and Gabriela of SEB 05:32 Two roles, one goal: democratizing technology 09:17 The hardest part of scaling AI is people 12:31 Automating the credit process 14:18 A learning hour in 3,500 calendars 19:21 From proof of concept to production 21:39 Skills planning for 20,000 employees 24:04 Ideation labs and the first agents shipped 27:06 Building AI fluency step by step 28:56 What we wish we'd known about AI adoption 34:00 The future workforce 36:13 Will we lose the basic skills? 40:23 Logged hours vs. real learning 42:52 Why manager engagement nearly tripled 44:59 Risk, experimentation, and intentional mistakes 49:05 The Tech Foundations story 52:32 Consensus culture and the mirror exercise 56:20 Leading distributed teams through change 1:00:55 What tech and L&D misunderstand about each other 1:04:47 Measuring what matters 1:07:29 What winning looks like Stay up to date on everything from AI and cloud to cybersecurity with our weekly newsletter: https://www.pluralsight.com/technews/ #PluralsightPodcast #Pluralsight #AI #Upskilling #LearningAndDevelopment

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  Certified Doesn't Mean Qualified | Andru Estes

  Aug 4, 202642 min

  We've seen this movie before. The FOMO, the holdouts, the surprise bills. In this episode of The Pluralsight Podcast, Josh sits down with Andru Estes, Pluralsight author and cloud architect, to unpack why today's AI gold rush looks so much like the early days of cloud adoption, and how to avoid repeating the same expensive mistakes. We explore: Why so many AI projects fail in the planning phase, and the first question every team should ask: do we even need this tool? Where AI and cloud costs spiral unexpectedly (hint: it's all about data), and how a FinOps mindset with real-time visibility keeps experimentation governed instead of gated Why being certified doesn't mean being qualified, and the hands-on habits that actually close the gap The hidden cost of AI coding tools: skill atrophy, senior engineers stuck babysitting, and the vibe coding cleanup Andru sees coming Common AWS design mistakes, from lift-and-shift bill shock to skipping the planning phase entirely The builder's mindset: discipline over motivation, failure as one of the best teachers, and why there's no such thing as a dumb question Connect with Andru Estes: https://www.linkedin.com/in/andru-estes/ Explore Andru's courses on Pluralsight: https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/blog/blog-author/andru-estes Stay up to date on everything from AI and cloud to cybersecurity with our weekly newsletter: https://www.pluralsight.com/technews/ Check out more episodes and subscribe: https://www.pluralsight.com/resources/podcasts/the-pluralsight-podcast Questions or comments? podcast@pluralsight.com Chapters: 1:55 Why the AI wave feels like early cloud adoption 4:13 Repeating old mistakes: do you even need the tool? 6:07 What leaders miss: governance, security, and infrastructure 8:38 Signals you're adopting AI the right way 11:36 Where costs spiral: data, FinOps, and guardrails 14:34 Certified doesn't mean qualified 16:41 Becoming capable, not just credentialed 19:29 Splitting time between certs and stretch projects 20:57 AI coding tools, skill atrophy, and tech debt 24:17 The coming vibe coding cleanup 25:17 Common AWS design mistakes 26:32 What a successful planning phase looks like 29:57 Overengineering vs. smart future-proofing 32:00 Staying current with the KISS approach 33:19 The Kubernetes hot take 34:15 Mindset advice for cloud engineers 35:58 Failing in production: a story 39:32 Connect with Andru

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  Inside the 100% AI Agent Company | Matt Kropp

  Jul 22, 20261h 2m

  What actually happens when you try to run a company with zero humans? Matt Kropp, Senior Partner and Chief AI Officer at BCG X, is finding out firsthand. His experiment, Vessica Labs, is a company where AI agents set the strategy, write the code, design the brand, and run the operations. Matt's role? The agents dubbed him "the governor." We dig into what the experiment has revealed so far, including the moment his sales agent declared its pronouns were "he" because "men are closers," and what that says about bias hiding in the systems enterprises are deploying right now. We also cover the BCG research behind "AI brain fry," why framing AI as an "employee" measurably degrades human performance, and the coaching model that actually gets skeptical teams to adopt AI, when training alone fails. In this episode: The Vessica Labs experiment: what a zero-human company can and can't do Why BCG's research says you should not have "AI employees" Bias in AI systems: how to measure it, baseline it, and monitor it before it scales AI brain fry: the new cognitive risk emerging in agent-heavy workflows Why tool rollouts and training fail without coaching, and what to do instead The "barbell" talent strategy: why some CEOs are doubling down on entry-level hires Minimizing toil and maximizing joy when redesigning work around AI Connect with Matt on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-kropp/ Follow the Vessica Labs experiment on Matt's Substack: https://substack.com/@mattkropp Read Matt's "AI Brain Fry" article on Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2026/03/when-using-ai-leads-to-brain-fry Chapters: 1:45 Who is BCG X, and what does a Chief AI Officer do? 3:06 Do consultants just mean headcount cuts? 4:55 Why LLMs didn't replace consultants 7:52 Vessica Labs: the 100% AI agent experiment 9:02 The 1,000-manager study: why you should not have "AI employees" 11:59 Meet the agents: Apex, Muse, Echo, Nova, and Forge 14:42 What the governor actually does: the taste problem 18:53 "Men are closers": when bias pops right out 21:56 How to measure, baseline, and monitor bias 23:42 Who profits from a 99% AI-run company? 25:20 AI brain fry: the new cognitive overload 29:00 Accountability: a human must own agent decisions 31:33 Avoiding brain fry: build in breaks 32:52 The state of enterprise AI: from 1,000 flowers to big rocks 37:05 Do SMBs have an AI advantage? 38:39 Why tool rollouts fail: the coaching model 42:33 Identity threat and the mindset flip 44:49 Skills that matter next, and the atrophy problem 46:49 Layoffs and AI: correction or cover story? 49:21 The barbell talent strategy 51:22 Gen Z and the messaging problem 53:19 Messaging AI adoption: good and bad examples 55:26 The environmental question 57:38 Advice for leaders: minimize toil, maximize joy 1:00:00 Where to follow Matt + closing thoughts

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