The Aboard Podcast

Shopify CEO Tobi Lütke recently told his employees that AI use is now mandatory—and on this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich talk about why they think this is a good directive for every worker. After th…

As Trump’s tariffs become reality and global markets plummet, Paul and Rich take stock of the situation and ask: How are the founders of an AI startup thinking about the months ahead, and how can AI …

When Rich asks Paul for a report from the AI-coding trenches, Paul brings news: AI is boring now! And that’s a good thing. As the novelty of the technology wears off and the pace of advancement stabi…

On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich consider the prompt: What it represents within generative AI tools, how they think about it as users, and what it means for Aboard as a product. Is the prompt th…

As AI transforms the way engineers build software, how is it changing the software that’s built for engineers? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich welcome Kurt Schrader, the CEO and co-founder of t…

Some people hate AI and think it’ll destroy everything. Others love it and want to press their feet on the AI gas pedal. What happens if you’re stuck in the middle? On this week’s Reqless, Paul lays …

What should developers be doing right now to adapt to AI? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich get an on-the-ground perspective from longtime software engineer Sara Chipps, who’s been going deep wit…

Is it too late to regulate AI? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich assess what “regulating AI” could even mean, from controlling training data sources to moderating its ability to spread informatio…

How is generative AI transforming the university? On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich sit down with someone on the front lines of AI in higher ed: Clay Shirky, a longtime educator and technologist …

Government by Grok? On this week’s Reqless, Paul opens with a poetry reading (stay with us)  and then he and Rich discuss the poem’s relationship to Elon Musk’s DOGE effort, currently ransacking the …

How is AI transforming the social sector? Flying solo in the Reqless hosting chair, Paul sits down with Perry Hewitt, Chief Marketing and Product Officer for Data.org, to talk about how AI tools are …

As Chinese LLM company DeepSeek makes headlines for wreaking havoc on the stock prices of the American tech sector, Paul and Rich sit down and answer the important questions: What is DeepSeek? Why do…

AI tools are often positioned as agents, assistants, or butlers—but their potential is so much greater than that. On this week’s Reqless, Rich explains to Paul why the “agent” model gets AI all wrong…

Can you actually build an app with AI right now? Fresh off a holiday break where he attempted to do just that (rather than talking to his family), Paul tells Rich what worked and what didn’t work in …

Does the world actually need more software? In the first Reqless of 2025, Paul and Rich skip the “AI predictions for the coming year” and instead look at the tech landscape for smaller organizations.…

Farewell 2024—a boring year in which nothing really happened! On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich reflect on our current moment of widespread instability, from the cultural to the political to the …

Executives are all-in on AI, but many workers are not: A recent survey of white-collar employees conducted by Slack shows workplace AI adoption has slowed, even stalled, in recent months. On this wee…

This week the robots bring the pink slip…for Aboard’s CEO, Rich Ziade! On the latest episode of Reqless, Paul observes that much of Rich’s job at their old agency—listening to the client, reframing t…

On this week’s Reqless, Paul and Rich receive a letter from a different Rich—a UX researcher interested in helping NGOs make the most of new AI tech. What should a UX researcher learn right now so th…

AI is on the verge of utterly transforming the software industry, but how quickly will that change come? While Paul has been betting on a shorter timeline, Rich had thought the pace of institutional …