From Code Reviews to Teamwork: Deep Dives with Miikka Koskinen

Welcome back to the ToniTalksDev Podcast! In this episode, host Toni reconnects with experienced software engineer Miikka Koskinen for a wide-ranging discussion at the intersection of code, collaboration, and career development.

About Our Guest:

Miikka Koskinen, based in Helsinki, is a seasoned software engineer with over 15 years of experience spanning mathematics, technology, and open source development. Miikka's journey began with QBasic at age 10 and has evolved through a variety of languages and domains—from embedded systems to large-scale consulting—and contributions to the Clojure ecosystem at Metosin.

Episode Highlights:

Code Review Culture: Learn how Miikka approaches code review as a process of collaboration and mutual learning, not just gatekeeping. We discuss the value of early feedback, building shared understanding, and fostering psychological safety within engineering teams.

Teamwork & Trust: Miikka shares insights on establishing trust in remote and distributed teams, the dangers of defaulting to blame, and how shared ownership of code leads to healthier team dynamics.

Career Path: Generalist vs. Specialist: Reflect with us on the pros and cons of being a generalist versus a specialist in the software industry. Miikka offers candid thoughts about career development, lifelong learning, and finding your niche (or not!).

Technical Writing & Thought Leadership: Discover the benefits of maintaining a technical blog and how publishing your thoughts—whether on engineering practices or database migrations—can enhance your professional reputation and open new career opportunities.

Open Source & Community: We discuss Miikka’s journey with open source, contributing and maintaining libraries, and the dynamics of knowledge sharing in public and private codebases.

Emerging Tech: Get Miikka's take on S3 object storage’s new capabilities and potential impacts on distributed system design and next-generation database architectures.

Why Watch?

Whether you're interested in evolving your team's code review practices, looking to strengthen collaboration and trust, or evaluating your own growth as a software professional, this episode offers practical strategies and honest reflections.