Tech Waka Podcast

We call almost any group of people "a team." But is it? Ammar Sagban has spent his master's research chasing that exact question, and his answer starts with a small shift that changes everything: teaming isn't a noun; it's a verb. Something you do, on purpose.
In this episode, Ammar is just weeks away from defending his thesis, having done something I once did and then ran away from — gone back to academia mid-career. We talk about what that journey gave him, why teaming is a verb, and the question most of us skip in the rush to be efficient: does this decision even need to be made by the team?
In this episode:
- Why going back to study mid-career is worth doing every ten years or so
- Teaming as a verb and the test of whether your "team" is really a team
- The fishbowl: are our coaches, facilitators and buffer roles helping the team, or getting in the way?
- Team decision-making and why "how are we deciding this?" matters more than the technique
- The tool Ammar built from his research, and the conversation he's hoping to start

Resources & links:
- Ammar's decision tool: https://decision-making-influence-reserach.ansense.nz/invitation
- Creating Great Teams: How Self-Selection Lets People Excel by Sandy Mamoli & David Mole
- Connect with Ammar Sagban on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/asagban/

This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed, lifting the standard of software engineering in New Zealand, Australia and beyond.

Looking for an executive role in New Zealand is nothing like looking for a senior one. The market is smaller, the rules are unwritten, and most of what decides outcomes happens in rooms you're not in.
In this solo episode, Jakub shares three big ideas that reframed how he thought about the exec search, the small things that quietly make or break processes, and what to remember when it doesn't go your way.

This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed.

After three years, Joekub is back, and this time they brought a startup, an AI agent that writes project updates in five minutes, and some very uncomfortable questions about your career trajectory.
Jakub and Joe (collectively: Joekub) reunite on Tech Waka for a wide-ranging conversation about what's actually happening at the coalface of AI-powered delivery. Joe left agile coaching to join an AI startup and hasn't looked back. Jakub is steering product and technology through the same wave from the C-suite. Between them, they've got enough delivery scar tissue to know when something is new and different.
They cover why extreme programming turned out to be a prophecy rather than a methodology. Why the spec is more important than the code now. Why your AI agent might be sandbagging its own performance to protect team morale. And the question that no one in a sprint planning meeting wants to answer out loud: if the agent is outperforming the humans, who gets the bonus?
Funny, honest, and grounded in real experience, this is what it sounds like when two people who've been around long enough to have opinions stop being polite about AI and just say what they think.

This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed.

JD Trask has been building global tech companies from Wellington since 2007, first Mindscape, then Raygun, now Autohive. When ChatGPT arrived, he didn't wait to see what happened. He shut down his company for a week, made every employee pass an engineering hiring test using AI, and started rebuilding his entire organisation around agents.
In this episode, JD shares what he actually saw during that week, why he put TVs around the office showing each employee's token usage, and why he thinks the "AI makes mistakes" argument says more about the person making it than about AI. He also shares his AI economic maturity model, his take on headcount as an ego metric, and why the most important thing a CEO can do right now is get their hands dirty.

Autohive: https://www.autohive.com/
Raygun: https://raygun.com/

This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed - helping teams across New Zealand, Australia and beyond untangle software delivery and build systems that truly perform. wiresuncrossed.co.nz

Lauren Peate and her team at Multitudes spent 15 months researching how AI is actually impacting engineering teams, following 500+ developers, surveying hundreds of leaders, and conducting in-depth interviews.
What they found challenges the hype: engineers merged 27% more PRs after AI rollouts, but also did 20% more out-of-hours work. The biggest predictor of success wasn't the tool , but it was leadership.
In this episode, we dig into what separates successful AI rollouts from struggling ones, why peer-to-peer learning matters more than mandates, and what engineering leaders should actually be measuring.
Get access to Lauren's research here: https://www.multitudes.com/research
This episode is sponsored by Wires Uncrossed.