In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
All content for Frontmatter is the property of Leanpub and is served directly from their servers
with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.
In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
Matthew Hawthorne, Author of Push to Prod or Die Trying
Frontmatter
47 minutes 16 seconds
1 month ago
Matthew Hawthorne, Author of Push to Prod or Die Trying
In this episode of the Leanpub Podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews software engineer and consultant Matthew Hawthorne, author of Push to Prod or Die Trying. They discuss Matthew’s journey through high-scale systems, life inside big tech, and why production incidents are the greatest teachers in engineering. Matthew explains the realities of outages, human error, systems design, and navigating organizational chaos. The conversation also explores writing candidly about tech culture, balancing transparency with discretion, and helping engineers grow through real-world failure.
This interview was recorded on November 13, 2025.
The full audio for the interview is here: [episode-audio-url]. The Frontmatter podcast is available on our YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/leanpub, in Apple Podcasts here https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/frontmatter/id517117137, and almost everywhere else people listen to podcasts.
Frontmatter
In the Frontmatter podcast, Leanpub co-founder Len Epp interviews authors and special guests about their areas of expertise, from data science to founding startups, and talks with them about their careers, their books, and their experiences as writers.
