Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Programming Insights

Summary
Dennis Pilarinos has spent nearly two decades building developer tools at Microsoft Azure, AWS, and Buddybuild (acquired by Apple). Now CEO of Unblocked, he's tackling the critical problem holding back agentic AI development: context intelligence. Why do AI coding agents keep guessing? Because they lack the organizational and business context behind the code. In this episode, the Overcommitted hosts dig into how developers and AI agents can truly understand the "why" behind codebases, not just the "what"—and why this matters for code quality, productivity, and shipping reliable tools.

Links
Dennis' email: dennis@getunblocked.com
Unblocked: https://getunblocked.com
Dennis on X: https://x.com/dennispilarinos
Dennis on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dennispi/

Hosts
Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
Bethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28
Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
Erika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyhead

Summary
What does it actually look like to hand 90% of your workday over to an AI agent you built yourself?
Sterling Chin, founding DevRel at Inngest and creator of Marvin, an open-source AI chief of staff with nearly 1,000 GitHub stars, has been doing exactly that for months. In this episode, Sterling joins Brittany to talk through how Marvin works, why he built it, and what he's learned about the real friction points in AI adoption that most people don't talk about.
Sterling came into tech through a coding bootcamp after studying elementary education at BYU, landed at Postman where he led the R&D labs team, went viral on LinkedIn for posts about their AI assistant PostBot, and accidentally became a DevRel engineer because of it. Now at Inngest, he's the founding DevRel hire, and still building in public constantly.

Links
Sterling's Website: https://sterlingchin.com/
Sterling's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sterlingchin/
Sterling on GitHub: https://github.com/SterlingChin
Sterling on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/sterlingchin.bsky.social
Sterling on Twitter: https://x.com/SilverJaw82
Marvin: https://github.com/SterlingChin/marvin-template
Sterling on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@SterlingChin
Sterling on Substack: https://sterlingchin.substack.com/
Web Dev Challenge Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sEoZG8EIw&list=PLz8Iz-Fnk_eTkZvSNWXW_TKZ2UwVirT2M&index=17
Inngest: https://www.inngest.com/
AI Crimes in Production: https://ai-crimes-in-production.com/

Hosts
Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

AI is generating more code than ever, but most engineers aren't verifying it. Sonar Staff AI Researcher Joe Tyler shares breakthrough findings from his LLM Leaderboard research on code quality, the hidden "coding personalities" of different models, and why the real bottleneck in software engineering isn't writing code: it's securing and reviewing it. Discover the gap between developer distrust and actual verification practices, plus how to position yourself for the verification-first future of software development.

Topics: AI code quality, LLM research, software engineering careers, code verification, developer tools

Show links:
Sonar LLM Leaderboard: https://www.sonarsource.com/the-coding-personalities-of-leading-llms/leaderboard/
Sonarqube: https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarqube
Sonarsweep: https://www.sonarsource.com/products/sonarsweep/
Joe's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/joe-tyler-a668051b1/
Latent Space: https://www.latent.space/
Turing Post: https://www.turingpost.com/
Nathan Lambert: https://substack.com/@natolambert
Cameron Wolfe: https://substack.com/@cwolferesearch
Sebastian Raschka: https://substack.com/@rasbt
Andrew Ng: https://www.andrewng.org/

Summary
Software engineering career moves don't have to be a lottery. In this episode, Adam Argyle breaks down why the technical interview process is fundamentally broken, how design engineering skills actually transfer across roles, and the tactical job search playbook that works today. Whether you're navigating a career pivot, re-entering the market, or just frustrated with the hiring gauntlet, this conversation cuts through the noise on what really matters for career growth and staying sane.

Links
Adam’s Website: https://nerdy.dev/ 
Adam’s CascadiaJS 2025 talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QW6GECIzvsw 
10 powerful ways to use CSS variables article: https://nerdy.dev/custom-prop-categories 
Sizzle Rizzle: https://nerdy.dev/sizzle-rizzle

Hosts
Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev
Bethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28
Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
Erika Eggemeyer: https://github.com/eggyhead

Brittany shares her journey building Collective Social - a Goodreads-style app for all kinds of media built entirely on the AT Protocol - and how it led her to create OpenSocial, a service that lets any app on the decentralized web share group functionality like book clubs. The episode covers the challenges of representing groups when the protocol has no native concept of group identity, using conference talk deadlines as motivation to ship side projects, and rating real-world systems on how well they'd work in a decentralized context. Erika also shares her experience building an interpreter in Go.

Show links:
Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com
Collective Social: https://collectivesocial.app
OpenSocial: https://opensocial.community
Collective Social on GitHub: https://github.com/collectivesocial
"Representing groups in ATProto" blog post (Brittany's site)
AtmosphereConf speaker profile: https://news.atmosphereconf.org/3mfpjx5luuc2m
GitHub Blog - Build a Personal Organization Command Center with GitHub Copilot CLI: https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/build-a-personal-organization-command-center-with-github-copilot-cli/
"The art of saying yes" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/say-yes-do-all-the-things/
"Living in the inflection point" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/living-in-the-inflection-point/
Nick Gerakines episode (EP19 - AT Proto, MCP, and Open Source): https://overcommitted.dev/ep-19-at-proto-mcp-and-open-source-with-nick-gerakines
PDX ATProto talk: https://youtu.be/xFdak3HbDmM?si=rZoPfyYYoP2awADJ&t=2302
AtmosphereConf talk: https://youtu.be/GVOywon3X-Q?si=yzKLfFNF8bzNT9-e
The ATProto Store: https://atstore.fyi
pdsls.dev: https://pdsls.dev
Atmosphere Community: https://atmosphere.community
npmx.dev: https://npmx.dev
Tangled: https://tangled.io
This is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222376492-this-is-for-everyone

Topics: AT Protocol, Decentralized Social Media, Side Projects, Open Source, Software Engineering