619: Inside Modern Software Engineering with Homebrew’s Mike McQuaid

Sami is back this week with Mike McQuaid, CTPO and Homebrew Project Leader, as they take a deep dive into the importance of open source maintainers in modern software engineering. With 18 years of experience reducing developer friction and scaling open source software, Mike discusses the commonalities and differences between open source and proprietary software audiences, impact of large data centres on both the environment and women in the workplace, revealing what drove him to create Homebrew and where they are now, before taking Sami through burnout and why it’s important to not be rude to your open source maintainers - you’ll be surprised which national entities would fall apart if it weren’t for their hard work and time. — Our guest for this episode has been Mike McQuaid. If you'd like to get in touch with Mike, or to keep up to date with his work, you can do so through his website. Also mentioned in today’s episode: ‘Open Source Maintainers Owe You Nothing’ blog post. Your host for this episode has been Sami Birnbaum. Sami can be found through his website or via LinkedIn. If you would like to support the show, head over to our GitHub page, or check out our website. Got a question or comment about the show? Why not write to our hosts: [email protected] This has been a thoughtbot podcast. Stay up to date by following us on social media - LinkedIn - Mastodon - YouTube - Bluesky © 2026 Giant Robots Smashing Into Other Giant Robots Podcast