Tech Lead Journal25 Aug 2025

#230 - Technical Coaching in the Age of AI with Samman (Ensemble) - Emily Bache

Struggling with technical debt and code quality? Learn how a technical coach can help your team level up.

In this episode, Emily Bache, a Samman technical coach, shares her proven method for building better engineering teams through structured learning and collaborative coding. We explore ensemble programming, learning hours, and why AI makes fundamental engineering practices more important than ever.

Key topics discussed:

The role of a Technical Coach and the Samman Method explained
How AI amplifies good engineering practices instead of replacing them
How to use ensemble programming to achieve single-piece flow
Running effective ensemble sessions and avoiding common failure modes
Why learning is part of the work, not only a side activity
Why pull requests should not be the primary tool for mentoring junior developers
The dangerous trend of “vibe coding” with AI tools

Timestamps:

(00:00) Trailer & Intro
(02:22) Career Turning Points
(03:23) Being Part of Modern Engineering YouTube Channel
(04:27) The Role of a Technical Coach
(05:42) The Impact of AI on Technical Coaching
(08:20) Sofware Engineering is a Learning Process
(09:55) Optimizing Learning With Samman Method
(11:40) The Samman Method: Ensemble (Mob Programming)
(14:59) The Main Benefit of Ensemble: Single Piece Flow
(17:26) How to Do Ensemble and Avoid Common Failure Modes
(20:27) The Types of Coding to Ensemble On
(22:12) The Importance of Trust, Communication, and Kindness
(23:52) Common Things Development Teams Are Struggling With
(25:37) Prompt Engineering
(27:16) The Samman Method: Learning Hours
(29:08) Learning is Part of the Work
(31:32) The Practice of Learning as a Team
(34:39) The Constraint When Learning from Pull Requests
(36:30) Putting Aside Time for Learning Hours
(39:14) Becoming a Technical Coach
(41:23) How to Measure the Effectiveness of Technical Coaching
(43:52) Danger of AI Assisted Coding
(46:59) The (Still) Important Skills in the AI Era
(49:56) Why We Should Not Refactor Through AI
(52:41) The Samman Method & Technical Coaching Resources
(53:29) 3 Tech Lead Wisdom
(54:56) Finding Mentors for Career Progression

_____

Emily Bache’s Bio
Emily Bache is an independent consultant, YouTuber and Technical Coach. She works with developers, training and coaching effective agile practices like Refactoring and Test-Driven Development.

Emily has worked with software development for 25 years, written two books and teaches courses on platforms including Pluralsight and O’Reilly. A frequent conference speaker, Emily has been invited to keynote at prestigious developer events including EuroPython, Craft and ACCU. Emily founded the Samman Technical Coaching Society in order to promote technical excellence and support coaches everywhere.

Follow Emily:

LinkedIn – linkedin.com/in/emilybache
X – x.com/emilybache
Mastodon – sw-development-is.social/web/@emilybache
GitHub – github.com/emilybache
Website – emilybache.com
Samman Coaching – sammancoaching.org
YouTube – youtube.com/@EmilyBache-tech-coach
Modern Software Engineering – youtube.com/@ModernSoftwareEngineeringYT

Like this episode?
Show notes & transcript: techleadjournal.dev/episodes/230.
Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram.
Buy me a coffee or become a patron.

Denne episoden er hentet fra en åpen RSS-feed og er ikke publisert av Podme. Den kan derfor inneholde annonser.

Episoder(279)

Software Engineering Laws Every Developer Must Know in the AI Era - Milan Milanovic

Does moving faster with AI mean you get to skip the laws that governed every software project before it? Milan Milanovic argues the opposite, the old laws of software engineering now apply twice as ha...

10 Aug 1h 1min

Signals & Levers: Systems Thinking to Navigate Software Delivery Illusions - Elisabeth Hendrickson & Joel Tosi

(04:48) Brought to you by SpeechifyAITired of text-to-speech that sounds robotic or costs too much at scale? SpeechifyAI's new Simba 3.2 model ranks #1 on Artificial Analysis for realness, priced unde...

3 Aug 1h 17min

From Technical Debt to Triple Debt: The Hidden Cost of AI-Generated Code

Is vibe coding quietly draining the thing that makes teams effective: their shared understanding? Margaret breaks down her new “triple debt” model, and why cognitive debt might be the one nobody’s tra...

27 Jul 1h 10min

Ex-Gojek CTO: Why the Age of AI Rewards Builders as Judgment Becomes Expensive

If expertise is becoming almost free, why is judgment becoming the most expensive skill in tech? Ajey Gore, former Gojek CTO, explains why the age of AI agents rewards builders over typists.In this ep...

13 Jul 1h 22min

The AI Productivity Paradox: Why 10X Output Doesn't Mean 10X Business Outcome

What if optimizing for AI output is actually slowing your company down? When code becomes nearly free to produce, the organizations still measuring productivity by output are solving the wrong problem...

29 Jun 1h 5min

The Hidden Stories Sabotaging Your Culture Change

Why do 70% of change efforts fail — even when leadership is fully committed? The answer isn’t strategy or resources; it’s the hidden stories people unknowingly carry that silently block every initiati...

15 Jun 1h 8min

Creator of Meta's Hack: Your AI Will Always Cheat — Here's How to Stop It

What if your AI coding agent is quietly cheating on your tests — and how do you stop it? Julien Verlaguet, who built the type system Meta used to migrate tens of millions of PHP lines, is now building...

8 Jun 1h 18min

Eric Ries: Why Good Tech Companies Go Bad, and How to Stop It

Why do companies with the best intentions end up betraying their customers, employees, and mission? Eric Ries calls it “financial gravity” — an invisible force that pulls even the most principled comp...

1 Jun 1h