A proof of concept is quick to build these days, and that is exactly where the problem starts. Classically around 70 percent of all PoCs got stuck in the PoC stage. With AI, going by the studies Steffen follows, the rate sits beyond 90 percent.
The CEOs of the big AI companies never tire of claiming that AI will wipe out up to 40 percent of all jobs. The headline works. School leavers ask Steffen whether a tech degree is still worth starting, and a German university has gone as far as advising against studying computer science.
When people talk about AI and jobs, they almost always mean developers. The larger part of the working world sits elsewhere, in offices, in HR, in marketing, in administration.
In episode 3 of Prompt & Proper, Steffen Ochsenreither from Swiss Post and I look exactly there. And we quickly land on a point that has nothing to do with technology. The episode is in German, and this post captures the core of the conversation.
On LinkedIn I keep reading that agentic coding makes teams 10x more productive. It is good marketing. It has little to do with what we measure in real projects.
In episode 2 of Prompt & Proper, Steffen Ochsenreither from Swiss Post and I take that number apart. And we talk about the other side of the same coin, the one that gets far less airtime: what tokens actually cost, and how solid the economics behind them really are. The episode is in German, and this post captures the core of the conversation.
Most AI projects do not fail on the technology. They fail earlier, on a thinking error: the hunt for one giant use case, the lighthouse project.
This is the launch of my new podcast Prompt & Proper, which I host together with Steffen Ochsenreither from Swiss Post. Every two weeks, in German, hands-on and without the marketing speak. Episode 1 takes apart what we call the “giant use-case fallacy”: why the management signal “we are doing AI now” so often ends in nothing, and what a good first use case actually needs. The episode is in German, and this post captures the core of the conversation.
I joined Lisa Stähli on the Hello 50:50 World podcast, the show with the mission to make tech more humane, for a conversation about what actually happens when software teams add AI to the way they work. We talked about how AI is reshaping software engineering, DevOps and agile ways of working, where the real bottlenecks sit, the human cost of moving faster, and why the organisation you build around the technology is what decides whether AI helps or hurts.
I joined the adorsys Tapas & Pretzels podcast for a conversation with co-hosts Tim and David, fellow Chief AI Officer, about the question every leader is now asking: how do you move AI from isolated experiments to a company-wide capability? We talked about token economics, what the Chief AI Officer role actually demands, why capability beats tools, the trust gap that governance exists to close, and why most companies are speeding up broken processes instead of rethinking them.
I recently joined the Digital Analog Podcast to talk about what it really means when humans and machines work together. As the Chief of Cybernetic Transformation and Partner at Zühlke, I deal with these questions every day. In this conversation, we covered everything from the biggest obstacles in digital transformation to why AI agents could change the way we collaborate, and why simplicity should be every organization’s guiding principle.
From Christoph Gulden
Welcome to Thought Leaders Talk, a podcast-style daily newsletter where bold minds meet real questions. In each episode, we talk with a guest who doesn’t just follow ideas, they shape them. No nonsense. No posturing. Just clear, original thinking on what truly matters.
In this episode of the Ship It podcast, Gerhard Lazu and I have a deep conversation about what good DevOps looks like in practice. We talk about the real challenges companies face during transformations, how to deal with middle management resistance, technology choices, and where the industry is heading with AIOps and hyper automation.
I joined Eveline Oehrlich, Chief Research Officer at the DevOps Institute, on the Humans of DevOps podcast for a conversation about whether DevOps is dead. Spoiler: it is not. But the reality in most companies is that we have not progressed as far as many people think. In this episode, we talk about what a Chief of DevOps actually does, why companies still struggle with walls of confusion, how platform engineering enables scaling, and my prediction about digital factories.
In this episode of the DevTalk podcast, my colleague Kerry Lothrop and I have a conversation about the state of DevOps. We have known each other for many years at Zühlke, and Kerry wanted to pick my brain on what DevOps really means today, where companies struggle, and where the industry is heading.
