Episodes
Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski.   Our next guest on “Tech Connects” is Christopher Savoie, who’s the CEO of Zapata AI, which is figuring out how to best integrate artificial intelligence into industrial-scale applications. In other words, he spends all day thinking about how to make the massive systems that underlie our lives, from supply chains to...
Published 11/12/24
Published 11/12/24
Our latest guest on ‘Tech Connects’ is Stefan Weitz, who’s co-founder and CEO of HumanX, which is currently planning a flagship AI conference in Las Vegas in March 2025. HumanX will use an extensive lineup of AI experts and executives to explore how this technology will impact everything from marketing and healthcare to cybersecurity. Seriously, there's going to be a lot of speakers and a lot of tracks.   I first met Stefan more than a decade ago when he was at Microsoft and I was at...
Published 10/22/24
Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski, and today we're going to be talking about the current state of the recruiting and talent acquisition market with Carmen Hudson, an author and recruiting expert. Carmen has led corporate recruiting teams, built recruiting software, co-founded a tech recruiting conference, and trained recruiters. She’s also the author of the...
Published 10/08/24
Hello, and welcome to Tech Connects, Dice's podcast where we dig into the topics on tech hiring, recruiting and careers that matter to you. I'm your host, Nick Kolakowski. Our latest guest has been on the show before: Katrina Collier, a recruiting expert who’s an author, speaker, mentor, and facilitator specializing in the human side of talent acquisition. Her passion is ensuring that recruiters and companies deliver a great candidate experience. Her latest book is titled “Reboot Hiring,” and...
Published 09/25/24
Our next ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Seth Robinson, who’s vice president of industry research at CompTIA, the Computing Technology Industry Association. CompTIA offers education, training, certifications, and monthly research. If you read Dice’s articles and e-books, you know we cite their research pretty constantly, including their monthly analysis of the tech unemployment rate and job trends.   I wanted to talk to Seth because he recently wrote a whitepaper on how organizations are developing...
Published 09/03/24
Our next guest on ‘Tech Connects’ has been on the show a few times before: Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice. It’s always great to talk with him about the evolution of the tech market. Art’s been publishing an article per week on LinkedIn in which he digs deeply in the future of work and how it’ll be impacted by the current revolution in artificial intelligence. Here are some quick takeaways from this discussion with Art: First, embracing AI isn’t really optional. The...
Published 08/20/24
Our next guest on “Tech Connects” is Steve Levy, who’s the principal talent advisor at DHI Group, Dice’s parent company. As you’ll see during our conversation, he’s very dedicated to the idea of hiring talent in the most human-centric way possible, and he also has great insights into how companies can effectively integrate artificial intelligence into their hiring practices. Just as an aside, he also has great recommendations for books and newsletters you can peruse as part of your AI...
Published 08/06/24
Our guest for this chat is Torsten Staab, who’s principal technical fellow at Nightwing, which has probably the coolest company name I’ve ever heard. Nightwing is a spinoff of defense giant Raytheon, and it’s focused on cybersecurity and intelligence solutions for government agencies and private companies. In other words, if you want to get a good idea of the issues surrounding AI and cloud security, as well as the ways companies can prevent data leakage and train employees to identify AI...
Published 07/23/24
Our latest “Tech Connects” guest is Laura Baldwin, who’s the president of O’Reilly Media. If you’ve worked in tech, you’re well aware of O’Reilly’s training offerings, which include a massive online learning platform. I wanted to talk with Laura because of her insight into how companies are upskilling their workers for AI, the ethical implications of AI, and much more. Here are some key takeaways from the discussion: First, if you’re a manager or executive at most companies—by which I mean...
Published 07/09/24
Our next 'Tech Connects' guest is Steve Ramey, who’s CEO of IronGate Cybersecurity, a digital forensics and incident response company. I wanted to talk to Steve because he has some unique insights into the current cybersecurity market, including ways to address the current cybersecurity job gaps and train the next generation of cybersecurity pros. Let’s listen in! I love talking to Steve because of his ability to break down something as complex as the current cybersecurity landscape. Here are...
Published 06/18/24
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is someone we’ve had on the show before: Tigran Sloyan, who’s the co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, a startup that’s trying to improve technical hiring at every stage of the process. CodeSignal’s products aim to present candidates and hiring managers with questions relevant to real-world scenarios, backed by research. During our last discussion, we chatted about the need to apply A.I. to training and education. Since then, generative A.I. has evolved even...
Published 06/04/24
Our next guest is Adam Seligman, who’s VP of developer experience at Amazon Web Services, or AWS. In that role, he’s been relentlessly focused on making software more accessible to everyone, no matter what their level of development experience. I wanted to chat with him for a couple of reasons:   First, AWS is launching a portfolio of A.I.-powered helpers and tools for developers, which could fundamentally change how thousands of people build the software of tomorrow.   Second, there’s a...
Published 05/21/24
We have a very special edition of Tech Connects this time around. Dice’s latest Tech Salary Report just dropped, and we’re talking to Art Zeile, CEO of DHI Group, the parent company of Dice, about the report’s takeaways.  When it comes to tech professionals and salary, we’re in a very interesting moment. Last year’s average tech salary was $111,193, down very slightly from $111,348 in 2022. That’s a significant difference from a few years ago, when the average salary rose 9 percent between...
Published 02/14/24
Data is the lifeblood of organizations everywhere. On the latest episode of ‘Tech Connects,’ we’re speaking with Steven Hillion, SVP of data and A.I. at Astronomer, a company that helps clients manage their data pipelines. Astronomer is a commercial developer of Airflow, an open-source platform originally developed at Airbnb as a way for that tech giant to manage all of its data platforms and data pipelines.   During our chat, Hillion provides some key insights into so many of the data issues...
Published 01/16/24
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Jeanne Cordisco, Chief People Officer of O’Reilly Media, which produces books, tech conferences, and an online learning platform for tech professionals who want to upgrade their skills. As CPO, she’s focused on how HR can tie a company’s “people strategy” to its broader objectives. She’s advocated for HR to participate in the highest-level decision-making to ensure the right people are being hired and retained, because that ultimately determines how well a...
Published 01/02/24
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Tigran Sloyan, who’s the co-founder and CEO of CodeSignal, a startup that’s trying to improve technical hiring at every stage of the process. CodeSignal’s products aim to present candidates with questions relevant to real-world scenarios, and hiring managers with questions supported by research. He also wrote a recent piece for Fast Company about the need to apply A.I. to training and education.  I wanted to talk to Tigran about a number of topics, from...
Published 12/12/23
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Sastry Durvasula, who’s the CIO and Client Services Officer of TIAA, the huge provider of financial services for those in academia, government, medicine, and other fields. It has more than a trillion dollars under management. As you can imagine, the tech infrastructure supporting all of that is quite vast, and Durvasula has an enormous job. In addition, he’s also guiding the organization through a digital transformation that includes generative A.I. and...
Published 11/28/23
Our next 'Tech Connects' guest is Tariq Shaukat, who’s co-CEO of Sonar, a company devoted to enabling developers and other tech professionals to write cleaner code. Previously, he was president of Bumble, and before that, he was President of Google Cloud, where he was responsible for product, engineering, and much more. I wanted to talk to Tariq because the software industry is at an inflection point. The rise of low- and no-code tools, along with code-writing chatbots like ChatGPT, could...
Published 11/07/23
Our next ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Ed Frederici, who’s CTO of Appfire, which is a company that builds apps that boost enterprise collaboration and workflows. He’s focused on ways to enhance the functionality of companies’ software ecosystems, especially if they’re trying to manage projects and services across multiple platforms and tools. That gives him fascinating insights into key issues such as automation, democratizing data, acquisitions, and knocking down internal silos so tech pros can...
Published 10/24/23
Our latest ‘Tech Connects’ guest is Ben Marx, who’s Director of Software at True Anomaly, a startup focused on space-based security and sustainability. Their current projects include Jackal, an autonomous orbital vehicle that can swoop close to other satellites and carry out surveillance imaging, as well as a new manufacturing facility in Colorado. As you’ll hear during our discussion, Ben has deep experience in software, which comes in useful when you’re trying to write code for something...
Published 10/03/23
Our next guest is Jeff Spector, who’s co-founder and president of Karat, a cloud-based platform for technical interviewing. Karat conducts technical interviews on behalf of companies, making sure to align the interview process with the client’s needs. It’s designed to help companies rapidly scale their technical interviewing and, ultimately, their hiring. I wanted to talk to Jeff because Karat recently released its latest hiring trends report, which offers a ton of insight into how tech...
Published 09/19/23
Our latest guest is Lisa Gevelber, who’s Google’s CMO of the Americas and the founder of Grow with Google. If you’re unfamiliar with Grow with Google, it’s an initiative to give tech pros—and aspiring tech pros—the training, tools, and resources they need to grow their tech skills and land great jobs. Grow with Google has produced career certificates in data analytics and other industry specializations, which tech professionals can use to stand out in a crowded field of applicants when...
Published 09/05/23
Our next guest is Dylan Etkin, CEO and co-founder of Sleuth, a company that helps engineering teams measure and improve their efficiency. If you’ve used JIRA, the application that allows teams to manage projects and keep track of bugs and other issues, you’re already familiar with Dylan’s work, as he was the lead developer on JIRA for five years. He was also head of development and operations teams for Bitbucket, which I’m sure many of you are familiar with.   In other words, Dylan is...
Published 08/22/23
Our next guest is Ted Hellmuth, founder and general manager of IQ Clarity, a talent acquisition and sourcing company based in Colorado. Ted has spent fifteen years helping companies throughout the state find solutions to their tech talent needs. Prior to that, he was a talent acquisition consultant for Comcast/NBCUniversal.  Given his current focus and background, I was really in interested in talking with Ted about the current state of the tech hiring market, how he sees the road ahead, and...
Published 08/08/23