Who knew an aptitude test could recommend a career as a DBA—and get it right? In Episode 44 of Talking Postgres, PostgreSQL significant contributor Karen Jex walks Claire through her path from Oracle DBA to Postgres consultant, solution architect, and now senior software engineer at Snowflake. My favorite bits: a project switched to Postgres when nobody knew how to install it, faking it as the Postgres expert, and the culture shock of building your own HA and backups. Plus: the warm welcome at PGConf EU 2019 that pulled Karen into the Postgres community; the new Buddy Program at PGConf EU 2026; and moving to the French Alps for the love of mountain biking.

Previously on Talking Postgres:

• Talking Postgres podcast Ep39: From MemSQL to HorizonDB, an engineer's journey with Adam Prout
• Talking Postgres podcast Ep42: How AI is changing software development with Simon Willison

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Conference: PGConf.EU 2026 in Valencia on 20-23 Oct
• Save the date for: POSETTE: An Event for Postgres 2027, happening 30 & 31 March 2027
• Two days this time: FOSDEM PGDay 2027, happening 28 & 29 Jan 2027
• Conference: PGConf.dev 2027 in Montréal
• Conference: PG Day France
• Conference: PGConf India 2027, on 2-5 March 2027
• Conference: EuroPython 2026
• PGConf.EU conference talk: Tuning Postgres for Analytics, by Karen Jex
• DjangoCon Europe 2024 keynote: When I Grow Up I Want to be a Database Administrator, by Karen Jex
• POSETTE speaker page: Karen Jex, with videos of her talks
• PGConf.EU 2023 talk: Elephant in a nutshell - Navigating the Postgres community 101, by Valeria Kaplan
• FOSDEM 2020 talk slides: Fibonacci Spirals and 21 Ways to Contribute to Postgres—Beyond Code, by Claire Giordano
• PostgreSQL.org: Contributor Profiles
• PostgreSQL Europe: PostgreSQL Europe board
• PostgreSQL docs: PostgreSQL 19 release notes
• Voice dictation: Wispr Flow
• Voice dictation: FluidVoice

In this episode, we covered:

00:00 Intro & music

01:55 Becoming a DBA completely by accident

05:46 "You're the database expert. You can figure it out."

12:37 Leaving Oracle, where everything comes bundled

17:23 From DBA to helping other DBAs

21:48 The PGDay France meeting that opened up the community

28:02 Why Django developers love Postgres

34:36 Stepping back to be close to home

43:54 "When I grow up, I want to be a DBA," said no one ever

51:42 How much should you delegate to AI agents?

59:22 Thirty five buddy pairings at PGConf EU

How does a fix for psql tab completion turn into 25 years of contributing to Postgres? In Episode 43 of Talking Postgres, Peter Eisentraut—PostgreSQL committer, core team member, SQL standards contributor, and Chief Architect of Database Servers at EDB—joins Claire to trace that journey. We dig into how scratch-your-own-itch development drew him in, why “the things you do, people welcome them” kept him coming back, and how Postgres changed as it grew from a small database community into a massive ecosystem where, from the Postgres mailing list perspective, “most of the user base is silent.” Plus: what it feels like when code you commit goes straight to everybody who uses Postgres, and the implications of the EU Cyber Resilience Act.

Previously on Talking Postgres:

• Talking Postgres podcast Ep24: Why mentor Postgres developers with Robert Haas
• Talking Postgres podcast Ep26: Open Source Leadership with Bruce Momjian
• Talking Postgres podcast Ep32: The Fundamental Interconnectedness of All Things with Boriss Mejías

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Conference: FOSDEM 2027
• LinkedIn: FOSDEM PGDay 2027 announcement
• Conference: Prague PostgreSQL Developers Day (P2D2)
• Conference: PGDay Lowlands 2026 (the “friendliest” conference)
• Conference: PGConf EU 2026 in Valencia on 20-23 Oct
• PGConfEU Conference talk: What does the EU Cyber Resilience Act mean for PostgreSQL and its community
• Wikipedia: EU Cyber Resilience Act
• PGConf.dev on LinkedIn: PGConf.dev account
• PGConf.dev conference talk: Committer Review: An Exercise in Paranoia, by Robert Haas
• PostgreSQL.org: Committers
• PostgreSQL mailing list: Postgres 19 release management team
• Blog: Peter Eisentraut Blog
• Blog post: Where are all the PostgreSQL users, by Peter Eisentraut
• PGCA non-profit: PostgreSQL Community Association
• Brett Cannon at PyCon 2014: I came for the language but I stayed for the community
• Planet PostgreSQL: Blog aggregation feed

In this episode, we covered:

00:00 Intro & music

02:14 Tinkering with the Commodore 64

07:57 The itch that became psql tab completion

15:43 Had to make opportunities

23:05 From posting at night to posting during the day

24:40 Why he stopped committing in the afternoon

28:04 On the ground floor of something that grew

30:34 What the Postgres core team actually does

31:47 Borrowing ideas from other OSS projects

36:51 Bringing Postgres into the SQL standards process

38:40 Getting to hang out with database nerds

42:01 Mentoring Postgres contributors

50:56 Making time for Postgres conferences

53:35 What the Cyber Resilience Act means for Postgres

57:36 Where are all the Postgres users?

1:07:00 Becoming a committer early on in Postgres

1:16:22 Contributing to Postgres isn't just writing code

1:19:40 Why FOSDEM is still his favorite

1:22:15 Finding familiar problems in a compiler devroom

1:26:14 Shout-out to the Planet Postgres feed

What’s your gold standard for deciding whether AI-written code is ready for production? In Episode 42 of Talking Postgres, Simon Willison—creator of Datasette, co-creator of Django, and prolific open-source developer—joins Claire to share how AI is changing the way he builds software today. We dig into why his test for shipping AI-generated code is “Could I explain this to somebody else?”, how engineering management skills can be surprisingly useful when managing AI agents, and how the bottleneck is no longer writing code but understanding it. Also: personal credibility, deep research, the Winchester Mystery House, slop proxies, and Simon’s observation that “Features are cheap. That doesn’t mean you should build them all.”

Previously on Talking Postgres:

• Talking Postgres podcast Ep 30: AI for data engineers with Simon Willison

Links mentioned in this episode:

• Blog: Simon Willison’s Blog
• Project page: Datasette, for finding stories in data
• GitHub repo: sqlite-utils
• Blog post: Release of alchemy-utils 0.1a0 (featuring Postgres & DuckDB)
• Blog post: There are no lossless transformations of natural-language text, by Sophie Alpert
• Podcast episode: The Open Weight Revolution with Simon Willison, on Oxide and Friends
• Podcast episode: An AI state of the union, on Lenny’s Podcast
• Wikipedia: Winchester Mystery House
• Idea in Mythical Man-Month: Conceptual integrity
• Blog post: SQLite compressed text-history prototypes, by Simon Willison
• Tools: Simon’s miscellaneous tools repo

In this episode, we covered:

00:00 Intro & music

04:00 A week of work before breakfast

09:12 Red-green TDD makes agents exercise every line

14:42 A million lines mean nothing if you don’t understand it

18:28 Finding low-hanging fruit among open PRs & issues

22:07 Getting work done while walking the dog

23:01 Gold standard: “Could I explain this to somebody else?”

28:27 Slop proxies add no value at all

30:49 Aggressive nitpicking reviews

35:01 Everything in software engineering is about trade-offs

41:16 Racoon heist game is only fun for 1 minute 15 seconds

43:46 New Year’s resolution to be more ambitious

48:11 You have to learn to throw things away

51:57 Features are cheap. That doesn’t mean you should build them all

1:00:45 Engineering management skills are so useful

1:04:44 QA specialists should be having a great time

1:07:53 Writing is thinking, don’t outsource it

1:08:23 Skill atrophy is a choice you make

1:10:07 I believe in people who are motivated

1:11:55 Systems are not set up to deal with this volume

1:18:48 Research agents stopped being absolute garbage

1:21:49 The whole point of the “human in the loop”

1:26:10 Dream: I want there to be more small businesses