Monica Beckwith, a performance engineer at Microsoft and author, joins Kirk Pepperdine, a seasoned Java engineer, to discuss JVM performance advancements since JDK 8. They dive into the importance of experimental design in performance engineering, the role of observability, and the challenges of benchmarking. The duo emphasizes the future reliance on automation and AI, advocating for collaborative approaches across disciplines to tackle distributed system complexities, while sharing insights from their experiences and research.