GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
The GOTO podcast seeks out the brightest and boldest ideas from language creators and the world's leading experts in software development in the form of interviews and conference talks. Tune in to get the inspiration you need to bring in new technologies or gain extra evidence to support your software development plan.
GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech
The Platform Engineer’s Handbook • Ajay Chankramath & Kaspar von Grünberg
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This interview was recorded for the GOTO Book Club.
http://gotopia.tech/bookclub
Check out more here:
https://gotopia.tech/episodes/451
Ajay Chankramath - Founder & CEO at Platformetrics & Co-Author of "The Platform Engineer’s Handbook"
Kaspar von Grünberg - Founder & CEO at Stealth & Author of "Thinking in Platforms"
RESOURCES
Ajay
https://www.linkedin.com/in/chankramath
https://github.com/achankra
https://x.com/ajchantw
https://chankramath.com
https://platformetrics.com
Kaspar
https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvgruenberg
https://github.com/Kasparvongruenberg
https://kasparvongruenberg.com
Links
https://peh-packt.platformetrics.com
DESCRIPTION
Ajay Chankramath — author of The Platform Engineer’s Handbook — joins Kaspar von Grünberg to unpack why he wrote a 14-chapter, code-first practitioner's guide instead of another theory-heavy platform book. The conversation's core thesis: the reason developers don't adopt platforms isn't a technology gap, it's a product discipline gap — a failure to treat developer experience as a first-class outcome with a real feedback loop. Ajay walks through the book's arc, from Kubernetes and service-mesh foundations through self-service portals to enterprise-grade concerns like policy-as-code and FinOps, and makes a pointed case for building on 100% open-source, vendor-agnostic tooling as a hedge against geopolitical and licensing whiplash.
The most relevant thread for engineers building with AI today: citing a McKinsey finding that only 6% of AI initiatives show real productivity gains, Ajay argues that agentic AI doesn't reduce the need for platform engineering — it raises the stakes. As coding agents become genuine actors in the SDLC rather than tools, IDPs need a new layer for agent context, memory, tool registries, and guardrails, and that layer "must be built, owned, and operated by you," not bought off the shelf.
His conclusion: the differentiator in the AI era isn't which frontier model you use — it's whether your platform foundations are solid enough to make agents safe and productive at all.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Ajay Chankramath • The Platform Engineer's Handbook • https://amzn.to/4eCSibM
Ajay Chankramath & Eamonn Ryan • Domain-Driven Platform Engineering • https://amzn.to/3TdiC3J
Chankramath, Cheneweth, Oliver & Alvarez • Effective Platform Engineering • https://amzn.to/3OnxN8i
Kaspar von Grünberg & Luca Galante • Thinking in Platforms • https://weaveintelligence.io/thinking-in-platforms-book
Gregor Hohpe • Platform Strategy • https://amzn.to/4cxfYdb
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