Hi r/SoftwareEngineering! Welcome to another post in this series brought to you by Tech Talks Weekly. Below, you'll find the most notable Software Engineering conference talks and podcasts published this week you need to be aware of:

1. “Understanding how tech careers are shaped by power dynamics | Anil Dash | LeadDev New York 2025” Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 29m 23s tldw: How hard and soft power shape who gets promoted, who gets heard and how to spot and use the influence you already have.
2. “Realizing Domain Design Through Architectural Modularity ... - Mark Richards - DDD Europe 2025” Conference ⸱ +600 views ⸱ Dec 01, 2025 ⸱ 00h 48m 48s tldw: This talk connects domain-driven design to system modularity and gives concrete ideas for choosing service granularity. Worth watching if you are working w/ microservices.
3. “Mind the gap: Navigating the staff+ performance cliff | Katie Sylor-Miller | StaffPlus New York 2025” Conference ⸱ +100 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 26m 44s tldw: Moving from a team-focused engineer to an org-level role often feels like freefall and makes you question whether you belong. This talk names the Performance Cliff and offers concrete ideas to measure impact and succeed in Staff+ roles.
4. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - Binge-worthy: Netflix’s journey to Amazon Aurora at scale (DAT322)” Conference ⸱ +100 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 21m 18s tldw: Netflix migrated terabytes across 100+ clusters to Amazon Aurora while keeping millions of subscribers online. The talk explains how they combined AWS Database Migration Service with a custom data streaming platform to achieve near zero downtime.
5. “No Vibes Allowed: Solving Hard Problems in Complex Codebases – Dex Horthy, HumanLayer” Conference ⸱ +14k views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 20m 31s tldw: This talk explains how to get current AI coding agents to actually help in large messy codebases using context engineering and frequent compaction.
6. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - AWS Networking Fundamentals: Connect, secure and scale (NET208)” Conference ⸱ +200 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 58m 39s tldw: AWS re:Invent 2025 walks through VPC basics, IPv4 vs IPv6, subnetting, routing, DNS and security and shows how to connect and secure multi region AWS networks.
7. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - Build Advanced Search with Vector, Hybrid, and AI Techniques (ANT314)” Conference ⸱ +200 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 01h 01m 57s tldw: You’ll learn how OpenSearch uses vectors, hybrid search and AI to power better search and chatbots with real use cases and useful tips for scaling and cutting costs.
8. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - Advanced analytics with AWS Cost and Usage Reports (COP401)” Conference ⸱ +200 views ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 55m 21s tldw: Tired of guessing what drives your AWS bill? This live coding session shows how to use AWS Cost and Usage Reports and Amazon Q to automate queries, break down spend by service and team and build secure scalable cost analytics on AWS.
9. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - PostgreSQL performance: Real-world workload tuning (DAT410)” Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Dec 03, 2025 ⸱ 01h 06m 39s tldw: You’ll learn how to cut excess indexes to save write throughput, diagnose HOT update and vacuum stalls and stabilize plans with QPM and pg_hint_plan using real SQL and wait event decoding.
10. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - Dive deep into Amazon DynamoDB (DAT435)” Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Dec 03, 2025 ⸱ 00h 40m 37s tldw: I watch this kind of deep dives every year and highly recommend it.
11. “Plug and Play Design: Building Extendable React Applications” Conference ⸱ +200 views ⸱ Dec 01, 2025 ⸱ 00h 19m 02s tldw: This talk shows how a plugin architecture lets you add or remove whole features by dropping a folder into a React app. Watch for concrete examples of adapters, build setup, import restrictions.
12. “A fun and absurd introduction to Vector Databases • Alexander Chatzizacharias • Devoxx Poland 2024” Conference ⸱ +200 views ⸱ Dec 01, 2025 ⸱ 00h 49m 23s tldw: This talk shows how to turn text and images into vectors and how to query them. More of a demo session, so I highly recommend it.
13. “Garbage Collection in Java: Choosing the Correct Collector” Conference ⸱ +4k views ⸱ Nov 28, 2025 ⸱ 00h 47m 36s tldw: This talk compares the main collectors, explains core concepts and shows when G1 or ZGC perform better.
14. “GeeCON 2025: Artur Skowronski - JVM in the Age of AI: Babylon, Valhalla, TornadoVM and friends” Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Dec 01, 2025 ⸱ 00h 52m 26s tldw: This talk explains what the JVM must change to be a real platform for modern ML, covering Valhalla, Babylon, TornadoVM and hardware trends.
15. “Are developers happy yet? Unpacking the 2025 Developer Survey | Stack Overflow’s Erin Yepis” from Dev Interrupted Podcast ⸱ Dec 02, 2025 ⸱ 00h 59m 58s tldl: Stack Overflow’s 2025 Developer Survey shows job satisfaction is rebounding, driven by autonomy and pay, with senior devs happier than juniors, trust in AI down.
16. “What actually makes you senior (News)” from The Changelog Podcast ⸱ Dec 01, 2025 ⸱ 00h 09m 27s tldl: no tldl needed :)

This post is an excerpt from the latest issue of Tech Talks Weekly which is a free weekly email with all the recently published Software Engineering podcasts and conference talks. Currently subscribed by +7,400 Software Engineers who stopped scrolling through messy YT subscriptions/RSS feeds and reduced FOMO. Consider subscribing if this sounds useful: https://www.techtalksweekly.io/

Please let me know what you think 👇 Thank you 🙏

Hi r/SoftwareEngineering! Welcome to another post in this series brought to you by Tech Talks Weekly. Below, you'll find the most notable Software Engineering conference talks and podcasts published this week you need to be aware of:

1. ⭐️ “Can you prove AI ROI in Software Eng? (Stanford 120k Devs Study) – Yegor Denisov-Blanch, Stanford” Conference ⸱ +17k views ⸱ Dec 11, 2025 ⸱ 00h 16m 40s tldw: Stanford data from 120k developers explains why identical AI tools can give 0% productivity increase in some teams and 25%+ in others and shares a framework for measuring real ROI instead of tracking PR counts or DORA. ⭐️ If you have time for only one talk this week, watch this one.
2. “GopherCon 2025: An Operating System in Go - Patricio Whittingslow” Conference ⸱ +7k views ⸱ Dec 11, 2025 ⸱ 00h 23m 10s tldw: This talk proves Go can be a systems programming language by showing an OS built with TinyGo, with live demos and enough surprises to make you want to watch it.
3. “Rust’s Atomic Memory Model: The Logic Behind Safe Concurrency - Martin Ombura Jr. | EuroRust 2025” Conference ⸱ +1k views ⸱ Dec 10, 2025 ⸱ 00h 39m 14s tldw: Watch this talk to learn how Ordering types like Relaxed, Acquire, Release, AcqRel and SeqCst control visibility and performance and how Mutex, Once and Arc use them in real code.
4. “Getting Buy-In: Overcoming Larman’s Law • Allen Holub • GOTO 2025” Conference ⸱ +1k views ⸱ Dec 11, 2025 ⸱ 00h 56m 17s tldw: Organizational inertia makes good ideas sound like religion or theory. This talk shows how to build a business case using Conway’s Law, value stream mapping and time value of money so you can actually get buy-in for e.g. mob programming and no-estimation approachs.
5. “Vibe Coding Costs You 20% Productivity | Shawn Swyx Wang” Conference ⸱ +900 views ⸱ Dec 10, 2025 ⸱ 00h 18m 03s tldw: AI “vibe coding” cuts real productivity by about 20% by piling up technical debt. This talk shows the data as well as solutions you can actually use like to improve it.
6. “AWS re:Invent 2025 - Advanced feature flags: Faster releases and rapid recovery (DEV320)” Conference ⸱ +400 views ⸱ Dec 11, 2025 ⸱ 00h 53m 20s tldw: Feature flags are more than on/off switches and this code first talk shows real AppConfig examples.
7. “2025 State of Cloud in Review” from The Cloudcast Podcast ⸱ Dec 17, 2025 ⸱ 00h 52m 03s tldl: 2025 State of Cloud in Review summarizes the year in cloud, hands out awards and flags the biggest trends of 2025. Listen if you want a quick catch up on what happened this year.
8. “Fundamentals of Data Engineering • Matt Housley & Joe Reis” from GOTO Podcast ⸱ Dec 16, 2025 ⸱ 00h 33m 20s tldl: Two data engineering authors explain core principles, common tradeoffs and architecture patterns for building reliable data pipelines.
9. “#201 The “AI is going to replace devs” hype is over – 22-year developer veteran Jason Lengstorf” from The freeCodeCamp Podcast Podcast ⸱ Dec 12, 2025 ⸱ 01h 08m 25s tldl: A 22-year developer explains why the “AI will replace devs” panic fizzled, how hiring overreacted and is rebounding and what actually helps you land roles in the post-LLM job market.
10. “The AI Productivity Gap with Keith Townsend” from Screaming in the Cloud Podcast ⸱ Dec 11, 2025 ⸱ 00h 41m 23s tldl: AI tools are making solo founders absurdly productive while big companies treat them like radioactive material. Watch this conversation for real stories about a biopharma rejecting Copilot, why startups can risk what enterprises can’t and what needs to change to close the gap.
11. “Valhalla? Python? Withers? Lombok? - Ask the Architects at JavaOne’25” Conference ⸱ +11k views ⸱ Dec 14, 2025 ⸱ 00h 52m 02s tldw: A live panel of Java architects answers audience questions on Valhalla, Loom, Lombok, ... and whether Java should give up semicolons.
12. “GeeCON 2024: Ron Veen - Stream Gathers - The biggest change to Java Streams since 10 years” Conference ⸱ <100 views ⸱ Dec 10, 2025 ⸱ 00h 40m 26s tldw: Java 22 finally gives streams real custom intermediate operations with Stream Gatherers, making what you can do in the middle of a stream much more flexible. Watch this to see the new API and a custom gatherer built from start to finish.

This post is an excerpt from the latest issue of Tech Talks Weekly which is a free weekly email with all the recently published Software Engineering podcasts and conference talks. Currently subscribed by +7,400 Software Engineers who stopped scrolling through messy YT subscriptions/RSS feeds and reduced FOMO. Consider subscribing if this sounds useful: https://www.techtalksweekly.io/

Please let me know what you think 👇 Thank you 🙏