Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding with Steve Yegge
Amazon, Google and Vibe Coding with Steve YeggeSteve Yegge shares why Google struggles with platforms, how AI coding is deceptively hard, and why the "AI Fixer" role could be one spreading inside tech companies, in the future.
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— In This EpisodeSteve Yegge is known for his writing and “rants”, including the famous “Google Platforms Rant” and the evergreen “Get that job at Google” post. He spent 7 years at Amazon and 13 at Google, as well as some time at Grab before briefly retiring from tech. Now out of retirement, he’s building AI developer tools at Sourcegraph—drawn back by the excitement of working with LLMs. He’s currently writing the book Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond. In this episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I sat down with Steve in Seattle to talk about why Google consistently failed at building platforms, why AI coding feels easy but is hard to master, and why a new role, the AI Fixer, is emerging. We also dig into why he’s so energized by today’s AI tools, and how they’re changing the way software gets built. We also discuss:
 Interesting quotes from the episodeTwo interesting thoughts from this conversation with Steve: Google would not have hired 60% of its own people
Working with AI tools is hard, and great developers will thrive
The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episodeTimestamps(00:00) Intro (04:55) An explanation of the interview anti-loop at Google and the shortcomings of interviews (07:44) Work trials and why entry-level jobs aren’t posted for big tech companies (09:50) An overview of the difficult process of landing a job as a software engineer (15:48) Steve’s thoughts on Grab and why he loved it (20:22) Insights from the Google platforms rant that was picked up by TechCrunch (27:44) The impact of the Google platforms rant (29:40) What Steve discovered about print ads not working for Google (31:48) What went wrong with Google+ and Wave (35:04) How Amazon has changed and what Google is doing wrong (42:50) Why Steve came out of retirement (45:16) Insights from “the death of the junior developer” and the impact of AI (53:20) The new role Steve predicts will emerge (54:52) Changing business cycles (56:08) Steve’s new book about vibe coding and Gergely’s experience (59:24) Reasons people struggle with AI tools (1:02:36) What will developer productivity look like in the future (1:05:10) The cost of using coding agents (1:07:08) Steve’s advice for vibe coding (1:09:42) How Steve used AI tools to work on his game Wyvern (1:15:00) Why Steve thinks there will actually be more jobs for developers (1:18:29) A comparison between game engines and AI tools (1:21:13) Why you need to learn AI now (1:30:08) Rapid fire round ReferencesWhere to find Steve Yegge: • X: https://x.com/steve_yegge • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/steveyegge/ • Website: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/ • His upcoming book, Vibe Coding https://itrevolution.com/product/vibe-coding-book/ Mentions during the episode: • Get that job at Google: https://steve-yegge.blogspot.com/2008/03/get-that-job-at-google.html • Get that job at Grab: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/get-that-job-at-grab-eea6de1d8421 • Stevey’s Google Platforms Rant • Anthropic: https://www.anthropic.com/ • Coda: https://coda.io/ • OpenAI: https://openai.com/ • Linear: https://linear.app/ • Groupon: https://www.groupon.com/ • Google Wave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Wave • Slack: https://slack.com/ • Digg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digg • React Native: https://reactnative.dev/ • Skype: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skype • Azure: https://azure.microsoft.com • Borg: https://research.google/pubs/large-scale-cluster-management-at-google-with-borg/ • The death of the junior developer: https://sourcegraph.com/blog/the-death-of-the-junior-developer • Collapsing the Talent Stack, Persona-Led Growth & Designing Organizations for the Future:  • Sourcegraph: https://sourcegraph.com/ • Building Windsurf with Varun Mohan: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/building-windsurf-with-varun-mohan • Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond: https://itrevolution.com/product/vibe-coding-book/ • Claude Code: https://www.anthropic.com/claude-code • Andrej Karpathy’s post about vibe coding: https://x.com/karpathy/status/1886192184808149383 • TDD, AI agents and coding with Kent Beck: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/tdd-ai-agents-and-coding-with-kent • Perplexity: https://www.perplexity.ai/ • CodeX: https://openai.com/index/introducing-codex/ • Cline: https://cline.bot/ • Cursor: https://cursor.com/ • AI tools for software engineers, but without the hype – with Simon Willison (co-creator of Django): https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/ai-tools-for-software-engineers-simon-willison • Jason Clinton on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jason-d-clinton/ • Wyvern on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1541710/Wyvern/ • Brendan Hopper on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bhop/ • Doom on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/379720/DOOM/ • Wolfenstein on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/franchise/Wolfenstein • Quake on Steam: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2310/Quake/ • Unity: https://unity.com/ • Unreal: https://www.unrealengine.com • Tommy Wiseau’s advice on X: https://x.com/tommywiseau/status/940455567830556672 • Dario Amodei on X: https://x.com/darioamodei • Moore’s law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moore%27s_law • From Software Engineer to AI Engineer – with Janvi Kalra: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/from-software-engineer-to-ai-engineer • Gene Kim’s website: http://www.realgenekim.me/ • Craft Docs: https://www.craft.do/ • TypeScript: https://www.typescriptlang.org/ • Sourcegraph Amp: https://sourcegraph.com/amp • Operator: https://openai.com/index/introducing-operator/ • Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind: https://www.amazon.com/Sapiens-Humankind-Yuval-Noah-Harari/dp/0062316095 • The Full Circle of Developer Productivity with Steve Yegge: https://steve-yegge.medium.com/get-that-job-at-grab-eea6de1d8421 • Inside Amazon's Engineering Culture: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/amazon • Deepdives: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/s/deepdives — 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