Tech Council
Are you a tech leader, architect, or engineer navigating the intricacies of building within the enterprise? Tech Council delivers the strategies and insights you need to succeed. Hosted by Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke, experienced leaders from the startup and banking tech arenas, this podcast dives deep into technology strategy and enterprise dynamics. Learn how to drive innovation, understand the bigger picture, and build impactful solutions from the ground up. Subscribe to Tech Council and gain the knowledge to shape the future of your enterprise, no matter your role.
Episodes
31 episodes
A Practical Guide to Observability in Enterprise Systems | Episode 30
When engineering teams talk about observability, they often picture dashboards, alerts, and vendor slides. But inside real enterprise systems, observability is a story about people. It’s about how they communicate, how they respond under pressu...
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Episode 30
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45:07
Is AI the Developer’s New Co-Pilot or Competitor? | Episode 29
Viewed through the lens of systems thinking, AI introduces both leverage and fragility into the development lifecycle. In this episode, Duncan Mapes, Jason Ehmke, and returning guest, Chris Boyd break down how AI affects feedback loops, failure...
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Episode 29
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57:57
Engineering Leaders vs Tech Debt: A Realistic Conversation | Episode 28
Tech debt exists at the intersection of engineering, business incentives, and system architecture. In complex organizations, it becomes a multidimensional problem involving operational risk, system reliability, long-term scalability, and develo...
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Episode 28
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38:57
Platform Engineering Playbook: Autonomy + Standards | Episode 27
Most engineering failures can be traced back to two weak points: unclear standards or excessive autonomy. This episode presents a structured examination of how platform engineering resolves this tension to create resilient systems.Duncan...
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Episode 27
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35:38
How to Build Resilient Systems in Complex Enterprises | Episode 26
When systems fail, it’s rarely because no one saw it coming. It’s because no one planned for it. In this episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke share real-world lessons from years of building and scaling technology across enterprise ...
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Episode 26
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35:09
Stop Wasting Money on Conferences — Do This Instead | Episode 25
Every year, companies spend thousands sending their engineers to conferences. Flights. Hotels. Per diems. All in the hope of “learning” and “networking.” But when they return? The notebooks gather dust, and the insights never leave ...
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Episode 25
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24:41
Top Book Recommendations for Tech Professionals and Engineering Managers | Episode 24
Every great leader has a few books that quietly shaped how they lead.For Duncan and Jason, those books go far beyond tech manuals. They’re the ones that teach you how to think, how to communicate, and how to take responsibility when thin...
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Episode 24
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34:52
Habits That Make or Break Hybrid Teams | Episode 23
The hybrid workplace has become the defining experiment of modern engineering, and most leaders are still figuring it out.In this Tech Council episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke analyze the habits that drive high-performing hybrid tea...
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Episode 23
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47:23
The ONLY Way App Managers Can Balance Velocity and Stability | Episode 22
Let’s be real: app managers are stuck in the middle. On one side, business leaders want features yesterday. On the other, teams struggle under mounting tech debt.Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke break down the complex challenges app managers...
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Episode 22
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33:44
Talent Acquisition in Tech: What Companies Get Wrong | Episode 21
Every great product starts with people. But finding the right people, and keeping them, has become one of the hardest challenges in tech.In this episode, Jason Ehmke and Duncan Mapes unpack the hidden struggles of talent acquisition. Fro...
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Episode 21
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46:37
Six Pillars of a Mature API Practice | Episode 20
APIs are everywhere, but maturity in API practices is rare.Buying a gateway doesn’t mean you have an API strategy. What matters is governance, security, and making life easier for developers who build and consume those APIs. ...
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Episode 20
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31:18
What Is SRE? Site Reliability Engineering Explained | Episode 19
Most companies are doing SRE wrong.Hiring SREs doesn’t make you reliable. Metrics dashboards don’t guarantee accountability. And cultural change doesn’t happen because you wrote it on a slide deck.In this episode, Duncan Mapes and...
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Episode 19
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44:28
Workplace Politics in 2025: How Engineers Can Win Without Playing Games | Episode 18
Engineering teams in 2025 look different.Hybrid work, distributed leadership, and constant change. But one thing hasn’t changed: navigating workplace politics is tricky.In this episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke get real about ...
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Episode 18
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40:39
Blameless Postmortems: The Secret to Better Engineering Teams | Episode 17
A critical incident hits. Systems go down. Deadlines slip. Fingers point. Sound familiar?In this episode, Duncan and Jason break down how high-performing engineering teams recover differently. Instead of assigning blame, they focus on le...
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Episode 17
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32:25
Freedom vs. Centralization: Engineering’s Biggest Dilemma | Episode 16
Every engineering leader has been there.Your team wants the freedom to try new tools, adopt new frameworks, and build in ways that make sense to them. But leadership needs consistency, security, and cost control. So… who’s right?
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Episode 16
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45:56
Surviving Your First Leadership Transition in Technology | Episode 15
Most advice about leadership transitions is sugarcoated: “Trust the process, be patient, focus on people.” While that’s not wrong, it’s not the whole story. In this candid episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke break through the nois...
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Episode 15
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35:06
Metrics in Software Engineering: Friend or Foe? | Episode 14
Metrics aren’t the problem. You are.For years, engineers have hated metrics, but what if the real issue isn’t the numbers… it’s how they’re used?In this episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke dig into why many engineers roll their ...
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Episode 14
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39:34
How AI Is Changing Engineering Management | Episode 13
“Should junior devs still learn the fundamentals if AI can write the code for them?”That’s one of the real questions Duncan and Jason tackle in this episode of Tech Council. They get honest about what AI is actually chang...
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Episode 13
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45:24
Monoliths or Microservices: Making the Right Call for Your Context | Episode 12
Monoliths or microservices?It’s one of the most hotly debated decisions in software engineering, and in this episode of Tech Council, Duncan and Jason lay it all out.They challenge the hype around microservices and explai...
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Episode 12
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34:18
Admin Tax is Killing Your Engineering Team | Episode 11
Every engineering team pays a tax. The question is: how much?In this episode of Tech Council, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke spotlight the unspoken, underestimated cost of audit prep, compliance checklists, and spreadsheet-d...
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Episode 11
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44:56
10x Engineers Are Overrated | Episode 10
“10x engineers? Probably jerks.”Jason and Duncan aren’t mincing words in this episode of Tech Council.They’re calling BS on the myth of the superhuman engineer and making a case for the everyday professionals who care dee...
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Episode 10
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41:39
How to Think Like a Platform Engineer | Episode 09
How do you go from launching apps to leading platforms?This week on Tech Council, Duncan sits down with Chris Boyd—a mobile dev veteran turned platform engineering leader—to talk about what changes when your team grows, your sta...
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Episode 9
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1:04:15
Ditch Chaos; Build Team Charters | Episode 08
When teams struggle with misalignment, vague responsibilities, or clashing priorities, it’s often not a talent issue—it’s a clarity issue. In this episode of Tech Council, Jason Ehmke and Duncan Mapes go deep into one powerful tool tha...
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Episode 8
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50:32
Leading Dev Teams the Correct Way | Episode 07
Ownership and leadership are more than buzzwords—they're the backbone of successful software teams. In this episode, Duncan Mapes and Jason Ehmke examine how to foster responsibility without micromanagement and lead with purpose in tech....
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Season 1
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Episode 7
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59:03
Why Software Projects Fail—And How to Fix Them | Episode 06
Software development is rarely straightforward. Even with experienced teams and the best intentions, projects still miss deadlines, fail to meet expectations, or get abandoned altogether. In this episode of Tech Council, Du...
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Season 1
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Episode 6
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53:46
