Ganesh Datta
HostCTO & Co-founder of Cortex
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect at Cortex
January 29, 2026
In This Episode
Cortex co-founder and CTO Ganesh Datta sits down with Jeff Schnitter, a Solution Architect at Cortex. Jeff shares insights from his time as a Senior Principal Engineer at Workday, where he led developer experience and release engineering, to explore how organizations can successfully shift their internal culture.
The discussion covers the transition from a "Stockholm Syndrome" mindset where teams accept broken processes to a culture of reliability and security. Ganesh and Jeff also dive into the importance of incentives, the role of leadership in empowering teams, and why the most effective transformations start with identifying individual pain points rather than issuing top-down mandates.
You’ll learn
Cultural change is more effective when it begins by asking developers what sucks about their daily workflows. When people can articulate their specific friction points, they are more motivated to adopt the solutions that fix them.
New hires provide a unique advantage because they have not yet developed an acceptance of inefficient rituals. Leaders should encourage new team members to question existing processes before they become accustomed to the status quo.
Teams are more likely to prioritize reliability when they own a service from design through deployment. This shift prevents the "throw it over the wall" mentality and ensures that developers are personally invested in the success of the software in production.
Attempting massive three-month pauses for technical debt often results in lost momentum or incomplete projects. Engineering leaders should focus on incremental wins that build trust and faith within the organization.
A leader's role is to sell the vision and then get out of the way. Great engineering leaders define the goals and then trust their teams to execute the rituals, much like a coach who prepares players during practice but stays on the sidelines during the game.
Quotes
"Culture is about the attitude that the organization has toward addressing problems. Are people aligned to solve the same types of problems in the same types of ways?"
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect at Cortex
"I learned the hard way that you should not tell people how to run their business or what tools they should use. The outcome should be the key metric."
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect at Cortex
"I always want to start with the pain. People understand the pain they have, and when they articulate it, you can identify what is preventing them from accomplishing their goals."
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect at Cortex
"Software development is more of a faith-based business than a tech business. You have to prove yourself to your engineers so they believe in you, the organization, and the processes."
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect at Cortex
Timestamps
01:44
Defining culture as an organization's attitude toward solving problems.
02:36
How organizational motivations like security or speed shape internal rituals.
07:51
Using the outsider lens to identify friction points that long-time employees overlook.
09:26
Why effective cultural change relies on the carrot rather than the stick.
10:26
Moving from a "throw it over the wall" mentality to end-to-end service ownership.
15:18
Why small, incremental wins are more effective for building trust than massive pivots.
16:36
Celebrating substantive value rather than just checking boxes or completing sprints.
17:46
The role of the engineering leader in setting goals and getting out of the way.
22:20
Applying the 80/20 rule to automate the easiest parts of production readiness.
26:10
Adopting a proactive mindset to anticipate ecosystem challenges six months in advance.
Other episodes
Why production readiness at Xero starts with the customer, not the checklist
Cortex co-founder and CTO Ganesh Datta sits down with Fred Mare, Principal Engineer at Xero in Melbourne, Australia. They explore what production readiness really means, why it should be framed around customer impact rather than internal processes, and how to build a sustainable program without overwhelming your engineering teams.
Fred also shares how Xero thinks about confidence scores for changes, why production readiness is a continuous journey rather than a one-time gate, and the importance of automating as much as possible to keep engineers focused on what matters most. The conversation also covers how AI coding assistance fits into production readiness, why security can't be separated from operational excellence, and Fred's best advice for engineering leaders just starting to build a production readiness program.
January 15, 2026
Fred Mare
Principal Engineer at Xero
Why the "artisanal" approach to coding is holding engineering teams back
Cortex co-founder and CTO Ganesh Datta discusses the evolution of platform engineering with Kaspar von Grünberg, CEO and co-founder of Humanitec. Kaspar draws a sharp contrast between the "artisanal" method of software development and the industrialized approach required for modern enterprises. He argues that relying on individual heroes to "YOLO" their way through deployments is unsustainable, and that true scale demands standardized, reliable systems.
Ganesh and Kaspar unpack why standardization doesn't kill creativity, the critical difference between "rigid paths" and "Golden Paths," and why treating your platform as a product is non-negotiable. They also discuss the emerging role of AI, arguing that AI agents are effectively a new class of "junior engineer" that makes robust platforms more essential than ever.
December 18, 2025
Kaspar von Grünberg
CEO and Co-founder
How Google Cloud's DORA is helping teams balance AI acceleration with engineering fundamentals
Cortex co-founder and CTO Ganesh Datta sits down with Nathen Harvey, who leads the DORA research program at Google Cloud. They dig into what really drives engineering excellence in the age of AI, why software delivery fundamentals matter more than ever, and why the best teams focus on improvement rather than benchmarks.
Ganesh and Nathen also discuss DORA's latest research into AI adoption, which found that AI acts as an amplifier, accelerates organizations with strong practices, and exposes dysfunction in those without. Nathen shares a few hard-won lessons from value stream mapping exercises that uncover invisible waste, explains why 30% distrust in AI might actually be healthy, and makes a compelling case for using this moment to finally drive the cultural changes teams have always wanted. Ganesh and Nathen also wrestle with the thorny question of what to actually measure when adopting AI tools and why lines of code is the wrong answer.
December 4, 2025
Nathen Harvey
DORA Lead & Developer Advocate
