Mike McQuaid's Podcasts

How Homebrew Became Mac’s Package Manager with Mike McQuaid

Podcast: Screaming in the Cloud Mike McQuaid explains how Homebrew grew from a side project into macOS’s de facto package manager and how the project is sustained today.

Getting Shit Done in Institutions

Podcast: Minimum Viable Management David Yee, VP of Engineering at The New York Times and head of its new AI platforms and products mission, joins Mike McQuaid and Neha Batra for a candid, behind-the-scenes conversation about why institutions are built to resist change and what to do about it. They dig into hidden norms, choosing the right battles, translating “how things really work” and creating stability for teams while you deliberately destabilize the system just enough to move it forward.

The Most Important Skills Going Forward with CTO + Homebrew Maintainer Mike McQuaid

Podcast: freeCodeCamp Podcast Mike McQuaid joins Quincy Larson to discuss career lessons and the software engineering skills worth prioritizing next.

Performance Reviews, Done Right

Podcast: Minimum Viable Management Performance reviews have a reputation for being stressful, confusing and often disconnected from reality. Too often they surface feedback that should have been shared months earlier or reduce a year of work into a single rating. In this episode, Mike and Neha unpack why reviews fail and how managers can turn them into a useful summary instead of a shock. They explore what companies expect from performance reviews, what managers struggle with and what employees actually want to hear. The conversation covers documenting early signals, balancing positive and critical feedback, avoiding ruinous empathy and ensuring no one walks into a review surprised by the outcome. They also discuss practical ways to give feedback throughout the life of a project, align on growth goals and handle mismatches between perception and reality. A grounded, experience-based discussion for anyone responsible for giving or receiving feedback.

Politics at Work Without Losing Your Soul

Podcast: Minimum Viable Management In this episode, Mike and Neha are joined by Denise, an engineering leader and former colleague from GitHub and Pivotal, to unpack the reality of workplace politics and why ignoring them is not a neutral choice. Drawing on Denise’s LeadDev talk and hard-earned lessons from management and senior IC roles, the conversation explores political capital, information asymmetry, allyship and the idea of “table flips” as a finite currency. Together they discuss when to spend influence, when to hold it back and how privilege shapes who gets heard. From advocating for promotions to using power responsibly on the way out of an organisation, this is a practical and candid look at how to navigate work under capitalism without burning out or selling yourself short.