SEEK Bytes

Heard “monoliths bad, microservices good” a few too many times? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, engineers Elliott Millar, Will Lark and Seamus Kearney pull apart the hype and get real about monoliths, microservices and monorepos – when each makes sense, and how messy the definitions get once you’re in real systems. From tiny startup apps and internal admin tools to large, distributed platforms with dozens of squads, they walk through scalability, deployment, team ownership, dependency nightmares and why a well‑built monolith can still be a great choice – even in 2025. In this episode, we explore: • What a monolith really is (beyond “big ball of mud”) – single codebases, single deploys, scale‑up limits and why they’re so powerful for early‑stage products and small teams • How microservices and distributed systems change the game on scalability, reliability and ownership – along with new headaches in orchestration, testing, dependencies and people‑coordination • Where monorepos fit in, why “good vs bad” isn’t the right lens, and how organisation, boundaries and team design matter more than chasing the latest architecture trend If you’re a backend or full‑stack engineer, architect or tech lead wrestling with “Should we split this up?”, this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

Ever been on‑call with angry 500s in production and zero helpful logs? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, engineers Reyna Tan, Seamus Kearney, Will Lark and Elliott Millar dive into how SEEK uses Datadog as their go‑to observability platform – from metrics and traces to dashboards and on‑call. They unpack how Datadog helps them follow the full journey of a request across services, spot Dynamo and API issues, and use synthetic tests to run real login/apply flows in production – catching outages before customers do. Along the way they share tips on debugging with browser tools and the debugger keyword, and why learning tools like Datadog is a career‑level superpower, especially across big internal platforms and multiple squads. In this episode, we explore: • How Datadog ties together metrics, traces and APM so you can see end‑to‑end request lifecycles, pinpoint slow or failing dependencies, and support systems you didn’t build yourself • Using synthetic tests and monitors to continuously exercise real user flows in production, alerting PagerDuty when upstream auth, GraphQL or downstream services break • Why observability and debugging skills (Datadog dashboards, browser DevTools, the debugger keyword) are underrated force‑multipliers for grads and experienced engineers alike If you’re a software engineer, SRE or tech lead who wants fewer mystery outages and faster incident response, this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

Using ChatGPT to write code, tests and essays – game over for engineers or just the next power tool? In this episode of SEEK Bytes, engineers Nick Skoufis, Bridget Barnes, Elliott Millar and Reyna Tan dive into what ChatGPT really is, where it shines, where it fails hard, and how it might change the day‑to‑day reality of software work. From asking it to refactor test suites, generate React and Webpack configs, or even build a text‑adventure Zork clone, through to security, cheating in coding tests, and mass tech layoffs, they unpack the hype, the risks and the genuinely useful ways to bring large language models into your toolbox – without handing them the steering wheel. In this episode, we explore: • How ChatGPT actually works under the hood (tokens, probabilities, “confidently wrong” answers) – and why you still need humans in the loop • Real‑world uses for developers: refactors, boilerplate, documentation, internal Q&A and dreaming about private, company‑only instances over your own codebase • What AI means for jobs, interviews and academia – from automation and coding tests to who actually gets replaced (and why that probably isn’t great engineers) If you’re a software engineer, student or tech lead trying to figure out how to use ChatGPT without letting it use you, this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode

Love the freedom of working from home but worried about what it’s doing to your growth and team culture? In this first episode of SEEK Bytes, engineers Elliott Millar, Bridget Barnes and Nik Skoufis get real about remote, hybrid and office life at SEEK – from pre‑pandemic experiments to fully remote roles and everything in between. They talk about the upsides (no commute, more time with pets and kids, flexible schedules) and the trade‑offs: missing out on incidental learning, cross‑team connections and those random hallway chats that turn into career‑shaping insights – and how they’ve learned to deliberately recreate that online. In this episode, we explore: • How SEEK engineers were already experimenting with WFH before the pandemic – and what changed when offices suddenly shut • Practical ways to keep incidental learning, mentoring and cross‑team serendipity alive in a remote‑first world • Why communication, internal tools and informal time are the glue for effective remote teams – and how SEEK structures in‑office days and “forced fun” so they actually work If you’re a software engineer, early‑career dev or tech lead trying to figure out what great remote/hybrid work really looks like, this episode is for you. 🔔 Follow the SEEK Bytes podcast so you never miss a new episode