DevOps Sauna podcast: The top six episodes of all time

Getting to know us

It’s no secret that Eficode has had a podcast for some time and a blog for quite a bit longer. I’m not sure why the two haven’t collided until this point, but as a collaborator of both, I decided to take the opportunity to cross the streams. In the coming weeks, I’ll release a couple of blogs to discuss our best-performing episodes and my favorites.

We’ve been releasing our thoughts weekly on hot topics within the wonderful world of DevOps, from Atlassian to GitHub and Gitlab to Jenkins. This leaves quite a bit of the alphabet undiscovered, but we’ll work on that just as soon as someone comes up with a framework that starts with Q and a pipeline that starts with Z.

I’m the fourth of five regular hosts of the DevOps Sauna, which has starred our former colleagues, Andy Allred and Marc Dillon, as well as our current CMO, Lauri “Lapa” Palokangas, and our newest host, Pinja Kujala. We aim to discuss, delve deep, and discover—all to bring you insights that aren’t just interesting but actionable. In case you have missed us, here’s a round-up of the top 6 episodes.

#1 GitLab Duo and the future of AI in DevOps

Dan Plumbley, Eficode's first GitLab Champion, joined us to discuss GitLab in what is a surprising achievement of our most popular podcast ever, though whether you think it’s because GitLab or Dan is more likeable is really down to you.

In this episode, Dan covers integrating open-source tools that provide a seamless user experience with minimal context switching. The introduction of GitLab's AI offering, Duo, is also explored, showcasing its capabilities in code suggestions, security assessments, and refactoring, which enhance code quality and maintainability.

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/gitlab-duo-and-the-future-of-ai-in-devops

#2 Decoding Deepseek

AI modules are confusing and convoluted, and, whether we like them or not, they’re here to stay. The world was caught off guard when a relatively low-funded Chinese company put out models that claimed to be on par with the industry standards offered by OpenAI. This led to a slew of security and privacy concerns, as well as people starting to finally ask the questions of what AI is, what’s going into it, and how to use LLMs safely.

Between myself, a security expert, and Henri Terho, one of our AI masterminds, we came up with some answers to these questions while diving into the dark work of distillation learning. All of this is broken down for easy consumption, and it uses less alliteration than this paragraph. 

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/decoding-deepseek

#3 The largest DevOps transformation on record

Back in 2023, David Keane shared insight with Marc and Andy into the challenges of implementing DevOps at Scale in HSCB, a British banking giant.

Learn about the positive impact of DevOps on cost control and security for gaining buy-in, along with the importance of breaking down silos, promoting collaboration, and fostering a culture of accountability.

David also tells of the lever of change following a 48-hour system outage that prompted improved collaboration between IT and business teams.

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/the-largest-devops-transformation-on-record

#4 A product-driven approach to platform engineering

In this episode, Dan Grøndahl and Emma Dahl-Jeppesen from VELUX joined us in the run-up to The DEVOPS Conference in Copenhagen and Stockholm in 2024.

Emma and Dan advocate for a product-driven approach to platform engineering, with clear boundaries and purpose to prevent team burnout—a shift from traditional, sometimes ambiguous DevOps roles. If your abstractions are leaking, or if you have no idea what that actually means, this is the episode for you.

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/a-product-driven-approach-to-platform-engineering

#5 Managing change resistance

Change is inevitable, and yet one of the most difficult things we deal with in our world of DevOps is reacting to this constant change. This is why, every so often, we come across Jenkins or GitLab installed on a machine under someone’s desk, invisible but a critical part of a company’s infrastructure.

Dealing with the most taxing element, the humans involved in the changes, can be one of the more challenging parts of the job. As I’ve always thought, computers are simple; people are complicated.

In this episode, Marc and I looked into managing the resistance to these changes, how to handle people flexibly and with caution against tooling biases, as well as getting management buy-in for effective change management.

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/managing-change-resistance

#6 DevOps news: Innovations and cybersecurity insights

Finally, as a security nerd, it pleases me to see that our 6th most popular episode (and if you were wondering why it was six episodes instead of five, this should be a big clue) is one where we’re talking about security.

In this one, we delved into DevOps and security updates, focusing on GitHub's potential new standard for SBOMs and its collaboration with JFrog. We also discussed a dozen other security topics that might be right up your street if you’re a practitioner or just someone aware of the topic—like I hope everyone is.

Listen to the episode below:
https://www.eficode.com/devops-podcast/devops-news-innovations-and-cybersecurity-insights

Closing thoughts

Having been part of this podcast for about 18 months at this point, I’m always surprised by the directions we end up taking, and often the best-performing podcasts are ones that take me by surprise. I wouldn’t have expected our discussion in GitLab Duo to perform as well as it did, but it shows an interest in tooling (not to mention Dan Plumbley’s achievements) which I’d personally not considered. Others, like our large-scale transformation and decoding DeepSeek, I fully expected to be right where they are.

These are the podcasts you thought were the best. And you’re probably right, but as I like to wield the power I’ve been given, in my next post, I’ll recommend the episodes that I think are the best.