The Peterman Pod

Brian Kernighan is a former Bell Labs member of technical staff, co-author of the original C book, and the one who popularized “Hello World.” We talked about what Bell Labs was like and the stories behind all the famous tools that were built there.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sMllOlxVgD0
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e072-brian-kernighan

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:42) What Bell Labs was and how he got hired
(06:34) Why so many inventions came from Bell Labs
(14:15) A day in the life at Bell Labs
(27:55) The most impressive people he worked with
(33:50) The AT&T film explaining Unix
(39:46) Why C was so influential
(43:25) How awk was created
(48:40) What he misses most about Bell Labs
(54:10) Are LLMs bad for computer science education
(01:01:46) His 1972 commit in the Go repo
(01:03:43) Grace Emlen, the fake Bell Labs employee
(01:07:39) Why he writes so many books
(01:19:58) His favorite and least favorite languages
(01:24:28) Advice for students and young people
(01:27:42) Outro

Where to find Brian:

• Personal website: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/~bwk/
• Princeton University faculty profile: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/people/profile/bwk
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_Kernighan

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• UNIX: Making Computers Easier to Use: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XvDZLjaCJuw
• Brian Kernighan’s first Harvard CS50 lecture (1996): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ba1XFVy7qw
• A Beautiful Mind: https://www.universalpicturesathome.com/movies/a-beautiful-mind
• Shifts: Important Ideas in Computing: https://www.amazon.com/Shifts-Nine-Ideas-Revolutionized-Computing/dp/0262064294/
• Labscam (Penn & Teller at Bell Labs, 1989): https://www.nokia.com/bell-labs/about/dennis-m-ritchie/labscam.html
• Labscam video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qnsmDNamd2g
• Understanding the Digital World (new edition): https://www.amazon.com/Understanding-Digital-World-Computers-Internet/dp/0691288879

This interview is with Paul Mockapetris, the creator of the internet's Domain Name System (DNS). I talked to him about the story behind building it and certain design choices he made.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LT4iVeUoL18
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e071-paul-mockapetris

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:40) What computing was like before DNS
(09:02) Why URLs are inverted
(16:33) How DNS works
(20:27) How he migrated the internet to DNS
(25:17) Why do companies host DNS servers
(33:17) What is an RFC
(35:07) How he got into computing
(46:39) Advice for his younger self
(52:56) Outro

Where to find Paul:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Mockapetris

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Original DNS RFC 882: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc882/
• Original DNS RFC 883: https://www.rfc-editor.org/info/rfc883/

Scott Aaronson is one of the world's leading quantum computing researchers and spent two years at OpenAI working on AI safety.

We talked about why he thinks the singularity has already begun for math, who gets credit when AI writes the proof, and whether intelligence will still matter once machines do the thinking.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORlscppGGh4
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e070-scott-aaronson

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:34) Why he updated so hard on AI
(01:14) The people still denying AI progress
(03:53) The singularity has already begun for math
(08:30) Will human-driven math research survive
(13:12) Who gets credit for AI-written papers
(15:55) OpenAI's $15M Navier-Stokes proof
(19:20) What if AI proved P = NP
(23:07) Why AI is so good at finding counterexamples
(26:13) The goalposts keep moving
(28:52) Why AI disclosure matters in research
(32:59) The fake Monet experiment
(35:23) Why he blogs instead of getting rich
(39:45) Are AI labs racing too fast
(42:01) Will intelligence still matter
(47:12) Book recommendations
(52:27) Advice for students today
(57:23) Reacting live to a new AI result
(59:58) Outro

Where to find Scott:

• Personal website: https://www.scottaaronson.com/
• Blog — Shtetl-Optimized: https://scottaaronson.blog/
• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Aaronson

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• OpenAI's Navier–Stokes Millennium Prize solution: https://cdn.openai.com/pdf/32d9f210-8b73-45e0-91bc-82a30aef8a9a/navier-stokes.pdf
• Rebecca Goldstein's The Mind-Body Problem: https://rebeccagoldstein.com/the-mind-body-problem-contemporary-american-fiction/
• Andrew Hodges's Alan Turing: The Enigma: https://www.turing.org.uk/book/
• The Man Who Knew Infinity: https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Man-Who-Knew-Infinity/Robert-Kanigel/9781476763491
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76
• Anthropic's subquadratic 3SUM result: https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.06783

Neetcode is the most well-known coding interview prep creator with over 1M+ subs on YouTube. I interviewed him about the latest on coding interviews, his career at Amazon vs Google, and what it was like quitting big tech to do his own thing.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/K15dND_Kfvg

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/neetcode-google-vs-amazon-programming

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:33) Quitting Amazon after 2 months

(06:00) Testing Neetcode on Leetcode

(12:57) Memorizing vs deriving solutions and intelligence

(16:13) The story behind Neetcode

(22:24) Getting a job at Google

(27:47) How it was quitting big tech

(29:38) What he hated most about Google

(30:52) Top technical book recommendation

(32:34) Advice for his younger self

(33:46) Outro

Where to find Neetcode:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/navdeep-singh-3aaa14161/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/neetcode1

• His website: https://neetcode.io/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@NeetCodeIO

• GitHub: https://github.com/neetcode-gh

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/neetcodeio/

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@neetcode.io

• Discord: https://discord.gg/ddjKRXPqtk

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Neetcode's "Maybe Some People Should Just Give Up" video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rsoEipuwXiI

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications: https://www.amazon.com/Designing-Data-Intensive-Applications-Reliable-Maintainable/dp/B08VL1BLHB

In this episode, I asked Ethan Evans (ex-Amazon VP) questions about common situations in corporate politics but they get increasingly darker.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KhjhRRz3VJw
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/e068-ethan-evans

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:
• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:42) How to receive credit for your work
(19:18) Ways for quiet people to get visibility
(21:32) How to be trusted for top projects
(29:52) How to defend from others taking your project
(36:13) How to reject bad projects
(44:10) How to be first for promo
(55:35) How to handle managers that dislike career growth talk
(01:06:30) What if your manager is in the way
(01:15:43) Did he ever have overly political reports
(01:28:06) How to fire a bad manager
(01:35:16) What gives you leverage
(01:43:41) How to defend against peers undermining you
(01:50:24) What if everyone is good at politics
(01:55:11) How Jeff Bezos burned him for empire building
(02:03:27) How to retain your headcount
(02:07:31) Career recommendations for the current landscape
(02:15:11) How to avoid negative layoff optics
(02:18:39) How to develop executive presence
(02:29:25) How to network in a natural way
(02:33:30) How to network with powerful people
(02:41:01) How to learn hidden incentives
(02:44:43) What happens behind the scenes with HR
(02:50:13) Did he burn people to get ahead
(02:53:24) What he says to people who hate politics
(02:59:03) Top book recommendations on power dynamics
(03:00:45) How he would speedrun career growth today
(03:06:56) Outro

Where to find Ethan:
• Personal website: https://www.ethanevans.com/
• Newsletter: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/
• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EthanEvansVP
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/EthanEvansVP
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ethanevansvp

Where to find Ryan:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:
• Never Split the Difference: https://www.blackswanltd.com/never-split-the-difference
• Leadership and Self-Deception: https://arbinger.com/bookstore/leadership-and-self-deception
• The 48 Laws of Power: https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/330912/the-48-laws-of-power-by-robert-greene/

Philip Su grew quickly to a Distinguished Engineer at Facebook and OpenAI. We talked about the psychology behind peaking in a tech career and the pressure at the highest levels.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/
• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RMo04pSSiao
• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835
• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/openai-and-meta-distinguished-eng

Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/
• Jira by Atlassian: Get more work done with your favorite agents and models all in one place, check them out at https://jira.dev/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:37) Growth past IC9
(05:39) Motivation changes over his career
(11:36) Asking to not be promoted
(17:33) What made it hard to sustain IC9 performance
(22:22) What motivated him outside of promos
(26:21) Is career advice useless
(29:34) Motivation after you've hit FIRE
(36:08) Meaning and fulfillment
(38:17) Top book recommendation
(40:14) What he would change
(43:24) Outro

Where to find Philip:

• Substack newsletter: https://molochinations.substack.com/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suphilip/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/philipsu

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374715243/fourthousandweeks/

Casey Muratori is a video game developer and programming creator also known for his talks about the history of software and computing. We talked about surprising parts he found while digging through computer history, where bad code comes from, and his career story.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/jHLbL1Eg4gM

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/casey-muratori-surprises-in-computer

Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work:

• Jira by Atlassian: Get more work done with your favorite agents and models all in one place, check them out at https://jira.dev/

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:08) Digging into computer science history

(04:08) What shocked him

(16:23) Dijkstra was depressed

(26:17) The personal side of goto considered harmful

(35:09) The anatomy of a 35 year mistake

(50:12) Clean code horrible performance

(58:33) How to write high performance code

(01:01:18) Where bad code comes from

(01:06:37) Why design docs before code is a bad idea

(01:09:20) The only unbreakable law in software engineering

(01:15:57) How he got into programming

(01:21:16) Why he didnt work in big tech

(01:30:44) Should you work at a startup early on

(01:34:52) What video game engineering is like

(01:39:57) Why preventing recursion is reasonable

(01:43:24) Is vibe coding bad for the industry

(01:50:17) Technical reading recommendation

(01:54:27) Advice for his younger self

(01:56:54) Outro

Where to find Casey:

• Website: https://caseymuratori.com/

• Newsletter: https://www.computerenhance.com/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/cmuratori

• GitHub: https://github.com/cmuratori

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@MollyRocket

• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/cmuratori.bsky.social

• Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/molly_rocket

• Handmade Network: https://handmade.network/m/cmuratori

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Casey_Muratori

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• The Root of the Root of All Evil: https://computerenhance.com/theroot

• The Big OOPS: Anatomy of a 35-Year Mistake: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wo84LFzx5nI

• Edsger Dijkstra's "Notes on Structured Programming": https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/EWD249/EWD249.html

• Donald Knuth's "Structured Programming with go to Statements": https://doi.org/10.1145/356635.356640

• Edsger Dijkstra's "Go To Statement Considered Harmful": https://www.cs.utexas.edu/~EWD/transcriptions/EWD02xx/EWD215.html

• Ivan Sutherland's Sketchpad thesis: https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-574.html

• Clean Code, Horrible Performance: https://www.computerenhance.com/p/clean-code-horrible-performance

• Where Does Bad Code Come From?: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YpFGkG-u1w

• The Only Unbreakable Law: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IUj1EZwpJY

• Dijkstra letter's reference: https://medium.com/@acidflask/this-guys-arrogance-takes-your-breath-away-5b903624ca5f#.1rdj838x6

Thariq Shihipar is an engineer on Anthropic’s Claude Code team I asked him how Anthropic makes the most out of the models for engineering and how the industry will change soon.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/2Kch3tWMnw8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/how-anthropic-builds-and-how-engineering

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:29) Onboarding at Anthropic

(02:53) Internal capabilities vs external perception

(06:16) Model vs Harness

(08:55) What percent of Anthropics changes are fully autonomous

(14:51) Computer use

(17:42) How to make the most out of your compute

(20:45) Loop engineering

(22:47) Where the industry will go soon

(26:02) Which model do Anthropic engineers use

(27:38) Is learning a particular model worth it

(30:56) Prompting tips for todays models

(35:04) How to get the models to do tasteful work

(39:00) How much of writing is done by AI at Anthropic

(45:36) Code ownership and maintenance at Anthropic

(52:04) How Anthropic prevents breakages

(55:24) Visibility and sharing your work

(58:42) Luck surface area example

(01:00:57) Should people still learn to code

(01:07:42) Advice for his younger self

(01:09:58) Outro

Where to find Thariq:

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/trq212

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thariqshihipar/

• Personal Website: https://www.thariq.io/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Anthropic's post on removing 80% of Claude Code's system prompt: https://claude.com/blog/the-new-rules-of-context-engineering-for-claude-5-generation-models

Martin Odersky is the creator of Scala and I interviewed him to compare different languages designs (Rust vs Zig vs Python vs Scala) and how AI will impact programming languages.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/LdN4sPWM-WY

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-scala-comparing-languages?r=n49ky

Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

• Jira by Atlassian: Get more work done with your favorite agents and models all in one place, check them out at https://jira.dev/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:44) Why care about functional programming

(06:35) Why should people learn Scala

(09:26) Rust vs Scala

(12:42) Rust vs Zig

(15:45) Scala vs Python

(18:31) The programming languages that influenced him

(22:16) How running on the JVM works

(26:33) Why writing a compiler is hard

(29:19) Why Twitter adopted Scala early on

(31:00) How he believes AI will impact programming languages

(43:40) Will there be less engineers in ten years

(44:34) Top programming languages to learn to grow

(46:18) Top technical book recommendation

(46:51) Why he chose academia instead of industry

(48:28) Reflecting on Scala

(55:42) Advice for his younger self

(56:33) Outro

Where to find Martin:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Odersky

• Website: https://people.epfl.ch/martin.odersky

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/odersky

• GitHub: https://github.com/odersky

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs: https://web.mit.edu/6.001/6.037/sicp.pdf

• A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages (book): http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.html

Sergey Levine is one of the world's top robotics researchers and co-founder of Physical Intelligence. We talked about where humanoid robotics is today, thoughts on the Chinese robotics ecosystem, and his predictions for future timelines.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/9OSbaPjv0Rc

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/sergey-levine-current-state-of-humanoid?r=n49ky

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:37) Where are we today

(04:20) Most surprising capabilities so far

(07:03) The most inspiring real world robotics

(08:36) If OpenAI or Anthropic got into robotics

(10:22) Chinese robotics

(13:15) Will one lab breakout from the rest

(16:59) Thoughts on a concrete roadmap

(21:03) Generalization and demonstrating it

(26:04) Types of data and which is best for robotics

(34:34) Why humanoid robotics differs from Waymo

(37:10) If humanoid robotics failed here is why

(39:55) Are there hot take modeling architectures in robotics

(42:05) Thoughts on AI safety in robotics

(46:44) Top robotics research paper recommendation

(49:35) Why is Boston Dynamics less top of mind

(53:47) Advice for his younger self

(56:42) Outro

Where to find Sergey:

• Google Scholar: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=8R35rCwAAAAJ&hl=en

• Website: https://people.eecs.berkeley.edu/~svlevine/

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Levine

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/svlevine?lang=en

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sergey-levine-5a31a24/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Learning Fine-Grained Bimanual Manipulation with Low-Cost Hardware (ALOHA / ACT paper): https://arxiv.org/abs/2304.13705

• Emergence of Human to Robot Transfer in Vision-Language-Action Models: https://arxiv.org/abs/2512.22414

• Summary of human to robot paper: https://www.pi.website/research/human_to_robot

Anders Hejlsberg is the creator of TypeScript and C#, and I asked him about how the TypeScript compiler got 10x faster through a rewrite in Go and his thoughts on how AI has impacted software engineering.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cywK3XYYJ2o

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-typescript-10x-faster

Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

• Jira by Atlassian: Get more work done with your favorite agents and models all in one place, check them out at https://jira.dev/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:48) Why write a compiler in JavaScript

(07:29) Why rewrite the compiler in Go

(14:49) LLMs for large migrations

(20:12) Why Javascript is so popular

(26:32) Why ever use Javascript on the backend

(32:59) What it takes to build a programming language

(37:06) Will there be fewer languages in 10 years

(42:57) Hands on engineering vs delegation

(49:14) Why fast tooling matters more now

(51:16) AI software engineering predictions

(58:52) The most technically challenging work

(01:02:04) Top book recommendation

(01:03:50) Advice for his younger self

(01:05:00) Outro

Where to find Anders:

• GitHub: https://github.com/ahejlsberg

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ahejlsberg

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Hejlsberg

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ahejlsberg/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Flow type checker repository: https://github.com/facebook/flow

• TypeScript compiler repository: https://github.com/microsoft/TypeScript

• Algorithms + Data Structures = Programs (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithms_%2B_Data_Structures_%3D_Programs

• TypeScript native rewrite: https://devblogs.microsoft.com/typescript/announcing-typescript-7-0/

Leonardo de Moura is the creator of Lean and the Z3 theorem prover. I talked with him about how Lean works and why LLMs plus Lean will fundamentally change how we write software and do math.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/KzdYKeAqWhY

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-lean-the-end-of-handwritten

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:28) How formal verification works

(05:21) A new way of writing software

(13:15) Proof assistants vs programming languages

(21:06) How Lean has assisted in mathematical breakthroughs

(32:03) When is it worth formalizing software

(33:29) How Lean will impact handwritten math

(38:55) The Z3 theorem prover project he started

(45:44) The most technically challenging work of his career

(51:10) Lean vs its competitors

(01:00:37) The future of Lean

(01:04:10) Technical book recommendations

(01:06:15) Advice for his younger self

(01:07:10) Outro

Where to find Leonardo:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonardo_de_Moura

• Website: https://leodemoura.github.io/

• GitHub: https://github.com/leodemoura

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leonardo-de-moura-26a27b5/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/Leonard41111588

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Lean 4: https://github.com/leanprover/lean4

• Mathlib: Lean Mathematical Library: https://github.com/leanprover-community/mathlib4

• Lean4Lean: https://github.com/digama0/lean4lean

• Liquid Tensor Experiment: https://xenaproject.wordpress.com/2020/12/05/liquid-tensor-experiment/

• Veil protocol verification language: https://veil.dev/

• Z3 theorem prover: https://github.com/Z3Prover/z3

• seL4 formally verified microkernel: https://github.com/seL4/seL4

Roberto Ierusalimschy is the creator of the Lua programming language. I interviewed him about Lua's unique strengths, programming language design and predictions for how AI will impact programming languages.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/jCZnFKk6M9A

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-lua-scripting-programming

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:43) What sets Lua apart

(08:35) Comparing Lua with Python

(13:04) Top book recommendation on language design

(14:20) How JIT works and why it is hard

(23:21) Compiling Python and interpreting C

(30:31) How cross language calls work

(36:58) Lua unique design decisions

(51:17) Predictions for AIs impact on languages

(01:00:10) Top 3 languages to learn to become a better engineer

(01:03:21) Advice for his younger self

(01:04:19) Outro

Where to find Roberto:

• Website: https://www.inf.puc-rio.br/~roberto/

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roberto_Ierusalimschy

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• The Evolution of Lua: https://www.lua.org/doc/hopl.pdf

• LuaJIT: https://luajit.org/

• How much does it cost: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUvgoxBm7uc

• JavaScript: The Good Parts (not an affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0596517742

Judea Pearl is a Turing Award winner and a pioneer in artificial intelligence and causal reasoning. We talked about how he got into science, his major breakthroughs and his predictions for AI today.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/FleTXB1fAcQ

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-early-ai-llm

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:54) How he got into AI

(11:17) Greatest scientist of all time

(20:15) What people thought of AI in the 80s

(26:23) Entering academia and researching AI

(34:52) The invention of Bayesian networks

(46:28) Pioneering work in causality

(55:38) The causal hierarchy

(59:34) LLMs and predictions

(01:20:12) A restless mind pays

(01:24:36) Advice for his younger self

(01:26:37) Outro

Where to find Judea:

• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/yudapearl

• Website: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/jp_home.html

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judea_Pearl

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• The Book of Why: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Book_of_Why

• Bayesian networks: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayesian_network

• Alpha-beta pruning: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpha%E2%80%93beta_pruning

• Pearl vortex: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_vortex

• Graphoid: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graphoid

• Causality: Models, Reasoning, and Inference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causality_(book)

• Coexistence and Other Fighting Words: Selected Writings of Judea Pearl, 2002–2025: https://bayes.cs.ucla.edu/COEXISTENCE/

Xavier Leroy (creator of OCaml) is an expert in compilers, formal verification of software and functional programming. This interview should be an approachable resource if you're curious about formal verification of software since I was learning that on the fly during it.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/9Cswiqrq6So

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-ocaml-functional-programming

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:43) What sets OCaml apart

(04:39) OCaml vs Rust

(07:57) Why is manual memory management more performant

(11:21) Javascript vs OCaml

(14:00) Famous Rob Pike quote

(16:05) Type inference and how it works

(22:12) What is formal verification and how does it work

(40:07) What made multicore support difficult for OCaml

(50:17) How programming languages interface and call each other

(57:41) The danger of almost-correct LLM code

(01:05:39) How LLMs will change programming languages

(01:10:26) Industry vs academia

(01:15:05) Most interesting unsolved problems

(01:18:30) Top book recommendations for engineers

(01:21:17) Advice for his younger self

(01:23:31) Outro

Where to find Xavier:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xavier_Leroy

• Website: https://xavierleroy.org/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• CompCert verified C compiler: https://compcert.org/

• seL4 microkernel: https://sel4.systems/

• Programming Pearls (book, not an affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/dp/0201657880

• How to Design Programs (book): https://htdp.org/

David Patterson is a Turing Award winner famous for his contributions to computer architecture. I interviewed him about his past work, thoughts on GPU/TPUs and career advice from half a century of experience.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/Pn4ZwlEh5nw

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-tpu-vs-gpu-vs?r=n49ky

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:42) RISC vs CISC

(12:51) Compilers

(17:38) GPUs

(23:07) GPU vs TPU vs CPU

(32:12) Is Moores law dead?

(38:04) GPU benchmarks

(41:40) How to have a bad career

(49:59) Courage and optimism

(55:56) Advice for his younger self

(58:15) Outro

Where to find David:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Patterson_(computer_scientist)

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• AlexNet paper: https://proceedings.neurips.cc/paper_files/paper/2012/file/c399862d3b9d6b76c8436e924a68c45b-Paper.pdf

• David Patterson's “How to Have a Bad Career” talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rn1w4MRHIhc

• “Life Lessons from the First Half-Century of My Career”: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/life-lessons-from-the-first-half-century-of-my-career/

• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_7_Habits_of_Highly_Effective_People

• Working (book): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Working_(Terkel_book)

Martin Hellman is a Turing Award winner who helped to invent public-key cryptography against the NSA's wishes. I interviewed him all about his work and why it broke the law at the time.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/AZLOETBCQM4

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-nsa-public-key

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:34) Why his work broke the law

(08:39) How people did encryption before

(18:51) The crypto wars

(26:22) The story behind Diffie Hellman key exchange

(36:48) Signatures vs key exchange

(43:05) RSA patent wars

(48:08) Why inventions happen at similar times

(50:29) What he worked on after cryptography

(57:31) His thoughts on death

(59:40) Advice for his younger self

(01:00:45) Outro

Where to find Martin:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Hellman

• Website: https://ee.stanford.edu/~hellman/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Martin Hellman's “The Evolution of Public Key Cryptography”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tev3tVzH91s

• Keys Under Doormats: https://cacm.acm.org/opinion/keys-under-doormats/

• Cryptography's Role in Securing the Information Society (CRISIS report): https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/5131/cryptographys-role-in-securing-the-information-society

• Secure Communications Over Insecure Channels: https://doi.org/10.1145/359460.359473

• New Directions in Cryptography: https://doi.org/10.1109/TIT.1976.1055638

Ryan Williams is a professor at MIT and the winner of the Gödel Prize in theoretical computer science. I interviewed him all about his work starting by asking him a popular Leetcode question (3 SUM).

Correction: In this podcast I say "lower bound" when I mean "upper bound" and vice versa. Was speaking using the intuition that lower is better for running time. In reality, the accurate usage is:

"Lower bound" = A proven floor for a problem e.g. "no algorithm can possibly be faster"

"Upper bound" = A proven ceiling for a specific solution e.g. "there exists an algorithm this fast"

Professor Williams answers as if I spoke accurately so the error didn't impact the flow of conversation. Just a correction for the record

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/AaK1SL2i_4Y

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/mit-complexity-theorist-on-leetcode

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:41) Asking him a popular Leetcode question

(03:54) Doing better than the popular optimal solution

(08:26) Fine grained complexity

(17:00) A severe strengthening of P vs NP

(24:38) SAT problems and solvers

(34:51) Hot takes on famous open questions

(46:57) Simulating space with time

(01:01:02) Why he solves hard problems

(01:02:35) How to pick good research direction

(01:07:14) Technical book recommendations

(01:08:31) Advice for his younger self

(01:11:56) Outro

Where to find Ryan:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_Williams_(computer_scientist)

• Website: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rrw/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/r-ryan-williams-a1b534a/

• X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/rrwilliams

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Some Estimated Likelihoods for Computational Complexity: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rrw/likelihoods.pdf

• Simulating Time with Square-Root Space: https://arxiv.org/abs/2502.17779

• Cook and Mertz's tree evaluation paper: https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3618260.3649664

Charlie Marsh is the founder of Astral, the Python devtool startup that was acquired by OpenAI. I inteviewed him about how software engineering is changing and learnings from starting his own company as an engineer.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/Iw65FD4MGgs

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/openai-eng-and-dev-tools-founder

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:40) Origin story

(06:04) The front page of Hacker News

(14:35) Why he chose Rust

(20:10) Full codebase migration from Zig to Rust

(28:40) LLM generated code and open source

(35:34) Performance optimizations

(44:54) Optimization with AI and combating slop

(01:02:08) Learnings as an eng starting a company

(01:17:55) Top technical talk recommendation

(01:18:56) Advice for his younger self

(01:22:00) Outro

Where to find Charlie:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marshcharles/

• GitHub: https://github.com/charliermarsh

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/charliermarsh

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Python tooling could be much, much faster: https://notes.crmarsh.com/python-tooling-could-be-much-much-faster

• The coolest PR he's ever seen: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv/pull/789

• Andrew Kelley’s data-oriented design talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IroPQ150F6c

• Ruff: https://github.com/astral-sh/ruff

• uv: https://github.com/astral-sh/uv

• ty: https://github.com/astral-sh/ty

• Salsa: https://github.com/salsa-rs/salsa

Vlad Feinberg is Google DeepMind’s pre-training area lead and I asked him all about how to land a job at a frontier lab like Google DeepMind, Anthropic or OpenAI.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

• The Kickstarter page for it: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/cDyi91onoJ8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/google-deepmind-pre-training-lead

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:33) Skills frontier labs need

(08:45) The difference between AI research and engineering

(21:41) Domains that matter for the frontier

(30:50) Marketing yourself to frontier labs

(35:13) Concrete steps engineers can take

(38:29) Overview of pre-training areas

(47:23) Jeff Dean spot bonus story

(50:14) Favorite Gemini war story

(58:59) Advice for his younger self

(01:03:07) Outro

Where to find Vlad:

• Personal Website: https://vladfeinberg.com/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/FeinbergVlad

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimirfeinberg/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• How to Land a Job at a Frontier Lab: https://vladfeinberg.com/2026/05/10/how-to-land-a-job-at-a-frontier-lab.html

• ThunderKittens: https://github.com/HazyResearch/ThunderKittens

• Deedy's doomer Tweet: https://x.com/FeinbergVlad/status/2056383124829872466?s=20

• Jacob Steinhardt's "Research as a Stochastic Decision Process": https://cs.stanford.edu/~jsteinhardt/ResearchasaStochasticDecisionProcess.html

• The Scaling Book: https://jax-ml.github.io/scaling-book/

• Dwarkesh and Reiner's video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmkSf5IS-zw

Simon Peyton Jones is the co-creator of Haskell (pure functional programming language) and I interviewed him about functional programming, why it matters, and his thoughts on other programming languages.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/xcB_LF3cdqw

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/co-creator-of-haskell-functional

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:39) What functional programming is

(09:18) Downsides of functional programming

(10:53) Specialized hardware for functional programming

(21:47) Haskell is useless

(25:59) Rust vs C

(28:26) Haskell vs OCaml

(35:26) Side effects in Haskell

(44:26) Type systems

(57:30) How the Haskell compiler works

(01:04:35) Why Haskell is talked about more than used

(01:09:07) Avoiding success at all costs

(01:11:12) LLMs and programming languages

(01:13:57) New programming language design

(01:15:59) Should students continue to learn programming

(01:22:33) Why Excel is his 2nd favorite programming language

(01:25:04) Advice for his younger self

Where to find Simon:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonpj/

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simon_Peyton_Jones

• Personal Website: https://simon.peytonjones.org/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Haskell is useless: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iSmkqocn0oQ

• John Backus Turing Award lecture: https://worrydream.com/refs/Backus_1978_-_Can_Programming_Be_Liberated_from_the_von_Neumann_Style.pdf

• Why functional programming matters: https://www.cs.kent.ac.uk/people/staff/dat/miranda/whyfp90.pdf

• Excel is his 2nd favorite programming language: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_M4P5M85KO8

Avi Wigderson is the only person in history to have won both a Turing Award (computer science) and Abel Prize (math). I interviewed him all about his field.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/5GUcvSAJcJw

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-p-vs-np-zero

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:08) P vs NP

(14:51) What if you relaxed correctness

(25:38) Why NP complete problems are equivalent

(30:33) Space vs time complexity

(43:06) Why people use SAT solvers

(45:53) Randomness is a resource

(55:48) Randomness depends on computational power

(01:21:20) Zero knowledge proofs and their significance

(01:38:30) Quantum computation and why it matters

(01:56:24) Math vs computer science

(02:08:16) Major breakthroughs and his experience

(02:12:31) Advice for his younger self

(02:14:48) Outro

Where to find Avi:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avi_Wigderson

• Personal Website: https://www.math.ias.edu/avi/home

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• PCP Theorem paper: https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/TOPICS/pcp/AS.pdf

• Paper on SAT approximation hardness: https://www.cs.umd.edu/~gasarch/BLOGPAPERS/max3satl.pdf

• Turing's paper: https://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/Turing_Paper_1936.pdf

• Original paper on NP completeness: https://www.cs.toronto.edu/~sacook/homepage/1971.pdf

• Ryan William's breakthrough result on space vs time: https://people.csail.mit.edu/rrw/time-vs-space.pdf

• Old result on space vs time: https://www-wjp.cs.uni-saarland.de/publikationen/HPV75.pdf

• Paper describing constant space majority solution: https://people.cs.umass.edu/~barring/publications/bwbp.pdf

• Fast primality test paper: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0022314X80900840/pdf?md5=6f748cd82fa8efa1a637efab5f632baa&pid=1-s2.0-0022314X80900840-main.pdf

• Deterministic primality test paper: https://www.cse.iitk.ac.in/users/manindra/algebra/primality_v6.pdf

• Randomness vs observer paper: https://people.csail.mit.edu/silvio/Selected%20Scientific%20Papers/Pseudo%20Randomness/How_To_Generate_Cryptographically_Strong_Sequences_Of_Pseudo-Random_Bits.pdf

• Hardness vs randomness paper: https://www.math.ias.edu/~avi/PUBLICATIONS/MYPAPERS/NOAM/HARDNESS/final.pdf

• Erdos original sum vs product paper: https://users.renyi.hu/~p_erdos/1983-18.pdf

• Terrence Tao sum vs product paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/math/0301343

• Seminal interactive proof paper: https://www.cs.miami.edu/home/burt/learning/csc609.221/goldwasser-micali-rackoff-knoweldge-complexity.pdf

• Zero knowledge proof paper: https://www.math.ias.edu/~avi/PUBLICATIONS/MYPAPERS/GMW86/GMW86.pdf

• Shor's algorithm original paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/quant-ph/9508027

• Lattice paper (new hard problems): https://dl.acm.org/doi/epdf/10.1145/258533.258604

• MIP* vs RE paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2001.04383

• Zero knowledge non-interactive proofs: https://eprint.iacr.org/2025/1296.pdf

James Cowling is the CTO at Convex and was previously the most senior engineer at Dropbox. We discussed technical details of his past projects, simplicity vs complexity, and career advice given where AI is today.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

Podcast links:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/3XkmNSuHFmY

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/dropboxs-former-most-senior-eng-building

Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work:

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

Timestamps:

00:00:00 Intro

00:00:53 Systems work during his PhD

00:13:05 Dropbox technical deep dive

00:21:57 Why Dropbox migrated from AWS

00:36:40 How to do massive migrations

00:44:31 Simplicity vs complexity in promos

00:49:23 What technical teams should be focused on

01:00:25 Doing the right thing vs promo hypothetical

01:08:13 Why he dipped into management sometimes

01:11:36 Why you should not lead by example

01:23:23 How to mentor Senior Staff engineers

01:27:30 Career advice for the AI era

01:37:21 Why he started his own company

01:46:05 The most technically challenging work of his career

01:48:10 How he got involved in Silicon Valley

01:52:16 Career regrets

01:55:54 Top technical book recommendation

01:56:36 Younger self and permanent underclass advice

Where to find James:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jcowling/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/jamesacowling

• His company: https://www.convex.dev/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• His PhD Thesis: https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/atc12/atc12-final118.pdf

• Masters paper: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall19/cos418/papers/vr-revisited.pdf

• Papercuts writing he mentioned: https://medium.com/@jamesacowling/embracing-papercuts-e6390055dfc4

• "Don't lead by example": https://medium.com/@jamesacowling/dont-lead-by-example-4f86b1174e64

• His writing about orienting teams around missions: https://medium.com/@jamesacowling/your-system-is-not-a-sports-team-e17f9eb16b94

Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of the C++ programming language and a former researcher at Bell Labs. We talked about what Bell Labs was like, programming language design, and interesting anecdotes from his experience.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/U46fJ2bJ-co

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/creator-of-c-bell-labs-negative-overhead

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲'𝘀 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸:

• Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at https://cursor.com/

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

0:50 - The origin of C++

8:46 - What Bell Labs was like

17:24 - Dennis Ritchie

24:00 - When to build a programming language

31:59 - Bootstrapping a language

33:58 - C++ is not object-oriented

37:32 - Discussing type systems

46:20 - Memory safety

49:26 - Standards committee anecdotes

1:09:40 - Adding automatic garbage collection to C++

1:18:25 - Template instantiation is Turing complete

1:21:57 - Abstraction and performance

1:28:51 - AI writing code

1:35:54 - His motivation

1:39:18 - Famous quotes

1:46:48 - Reflecting on building C++

1:49:12 - Top C++ book recommendation

1:50:59 - Advice for his younger self

1:58:06 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗷𝗮𝗿𝗻𝗲:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bjarne_Stroustrup

• Personal Website: https://www.stroustrup.com/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲:

• "A History of C++": https://www.stroustrup.com/hopl2.pdf

• "Evolving a language in and for the real world": https://www.stroustrup.com/hopl-almost-final.pdf

• "Thriving in a Crowded and Changing World": https://www.open-std.org/jtc1/sc22/wg21/docs/papers/2020/p2184r0.pdf

• The lecture where he mentioned he lost half his hair: https://youtu.be/69edOm889V4?si=IAZxYNwlUALodEV7&t=474

• Quotes I pulled: https://www.stroustrup.com/quotes.html

David Malan is a Harvard professor known for turning CS50 into a popular online computer science course. We discussed the story behind CS50, how to lecture well, and how AI is changing CS education including in cheating/academic dishonesty.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/bB2o81DnKHk

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/harvard-professor-cs50-what-matters

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝗻𝗸 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲'𝘀 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝘀𝘂𝗽𝗽𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗺𝘆 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝗸:

• Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at https://cursor.com/

• WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at https://workos.com/

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

1:09 - Getting into computer science

3:27 - Becoming the professor of CS50

11:19 - How to lecture well

14:25 - Depth vs engagement in education

18:11 - Why don't we consolidate educational resources

23:20 - Why start with C

31:51 - The ideal use of AI in education

34:54 - Cheating and AI

38:21 - Should we really learn CS still?

45:24 - College vs online education

47:06 - The most difficult concept to learn

51:00 - Growth vs fixed mindset

52:35 - The future of CS50

55:56 - Biggest career regret

1:00:29 - Top book recommendations

1:02:36 - Advice for his younger self

1:03:35 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱:

• Personal website: https://cs.harvard.edu/malan/

• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/dmalan

• Github: https://github.com/dmalan

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/davidjmalan/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/malan/

• Reddit: https://www.reddit.com/user/davidjmalan/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/davidjmalan

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@davidjmalan

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲:

• His first program for CS50: https://x.com/davidjmalan/status/1432538424590929920

• Paper about CS50 improvements: https://cs.harvard.edu/malan/publications/fp310-malan.pdf

• Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hitchhiker%27s_Guide_to_the_Galaxy

• How Computers Work book (not affiliate link): https://www.amazon.com/How-Computers-Work-Evolution-Technology/dp/078974984X

John Myles White recently left his role as a director of engineering at Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL) so we spoke freely about promo culture, how big tech has changed, and how his career grew.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/aPfnP4iAIH8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/msl-eng-director-promo-hacking-industry

𝗕𝗿𝗼𝘂𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝘆𝗼𝘂 𝗯𝘆:

• Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at https://cursor.com/

• My ergonomic keyboard project, you can follow along here: https://read.compose.llc/

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

0:54 - Is he bullish on MSL

5:23 - Running promotions at Meta

15:15 - Growing at Meta

22:22 - Julia core language contributor

29:24 - Academics failing into industry

31:48 - Stats book recommendations

38:02 - Biggest career regret

41:05 - Advice for his younger self

42:46 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-myles-white-115697180/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/johnmyleswhite

• Personal Website: https://www.johnmyleswhite.com/

• Github: https://github.com/johnmyleswhite

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

𝗥𝗲𝗳𝗲𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗰𝗲𝗱 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀 𝗲𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲:

• Evaluating the design of the R language - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/240040602_Evaluating_the_Design_of_the_R_Language

• Stats book he mentioned (not affiliate link) - https://www.amazon.com/Foundations-Agnostic-Statistics-Peter-Aronow/dp/1316631141

• Stats book he mentioned (not affiliate link) - https://www.amazon.com/All-Statistics-Statistical-Inference-Springer/dp/0387402721

Barbara Liskov is a Turing Award winner known for her work in programming languages and distributed systems. We discussed the major problems she solved in her career, stories about Dijkstra, getting rejected from Princeton because she was a woman and misc topics around her work.

🔸 My keyboard Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/T9CGjbPZeaM

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-data-abstraction

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Go To Statement Considered Harmful: https://homepages.cwi.nl/~storm/teaching/reader/Dijkstra68.pdf

• Viewstamped Replication: https://www.cs.princeton.edu/courses/archive/fall09/cos518/papers/viewstamped.pdf

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

1:00 - Getting rejected from Princeton

2:53 - The software crisis

9:03 - The drawbacks of Python

10:17 - Getting into distributed computing

13:09 - Paxos vs Viewstamped replication

21:44 - The significance of Dijkstras letter

25:04 - Why she stayed in academia

30:39 - Why her award was questioned

33:51 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗮𝗿𝗯𝗮𝗿𝗮:

• Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_Liskov

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Mike Stonebraker is a Turing Award winner famous for his contributions to fundamental database technologies. We discussed the story behind building Postgres, where he disagrees with Google/Amazon on databases, and what he's working on now.

🔸 My keyboard Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/YPObBOwIrHk

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-postgres-disagreeing

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Red book of database readings: http://www.redbook.io/

• BEAVER: An Enterprise Benchmark for Text-to-SQL: https://arxiv.org/abs/2409.02038

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

1:03 - How he got into databases

6:43 - Competing with Oracle

9:07 - What made Postgres special

15:55 - One size fits none

21:37 - Why he disagreed with Google

29:14 - Why he chose academia over big tech

30:58 - Replacing state in an OS with a DB

42:02 - Future problems in databases

51:36 - Technical book recommendations to learn databases

52:20 - Advice for younger self

55:52 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗶𝗸𝗲:

• His current company DBOS: https://dbos.dev/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, I talked to Marc Brooker, a distinguished engineer at AWS who started there as a new grad and rose through the ranks. We discussed technical learnings from 3,000+ cloud system postmortems, how software engineering is changing with AI, how to find impactful problems and much more.

🔶 My keyboard Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/u3GjIXP9N0s

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/1qX2GfpbzxzGpGvDZVINdO?si=wsDGZo9PTbCNalKVybFVnA

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/aws-distinguished-eng-learnings-from

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Post we discussed on hobbies and apparent expertise: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2023/04/20/hobbies.html

• Post on software engineering changing: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/02/07/you-are-here.html

• Post about Senior engineers and AI: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/03/20/ic-leadership.html

• Post on Junior engineers and AI: https://brooker.co.za/blog/2026/03/25/ic-junior.html

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

1:27 - Finding problems that matter

11:42 - Learnings from 3000 postmortems

23:58 - Why caches are bad

29:37 - How AI will change software engineering

36:49 - Advice for junior engineers given AI

44:02 - Thoughts for senior engineers

49:59 - Why engineers should write

57:51 - Visibility and apparent expertise

1:04:23 - AWS engineers he admires

1:06:53 - Technical book recommendations

1:09:06 - Advice for his younger self

1:10:37 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗰:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marc-brooker-b431772b/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/MarcJBrooker

• Personal Blog: https://brooker.co.za/blog/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

This is James Everingham, former head of engineering at Instagram and a veteran of the tech world with experience at Netscape. We talked about his unconventional start in the industry, learnings from every leg of his career, and regrets he has looking back.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/VIF5Fm8NdE8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/ex-head-of-eng-at-instagram-career

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

0:00 - Intro

0:57 - Kicked out of college

5:35 - FBI showed up at his house

7:43 - Pre-IPO Netscape experience

25:19 - Joining Instagram as head of eng

29:12 - Why shrinking teams improves velocity

32:59 - Working with Mike Krieger

37:16 - Leading Cryptocurrency project at Meta

42:30 - What he is working on now

54:29 - Career regrets

56:27 - Advice for his younger self

57:42 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗝𝗮𝗺𝗲𝘀:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jevering/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/jevering

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@jevering

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Ethan Evans is a former VP at Amazon has seen pretty much every possible type of corporate politics. Now that he's retired, he could share everything he'd seen including stories about empire building, hidden politics, reorgs, senior promos and dealing with bad managers.

🔸 The keyboard I'm building: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose-simple-ergonomics-beautifully-done

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/6WaeGfLnRvc

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/amazon-vp-reveals-everything-hes

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

2:33 - Empire Building

31:54 - Stealing scope

44:03 - Managing out via reorgs

51:01 - Bad managers and mutiny

01:01:43 - Political messaging

01:11:48 - Handling politically skilled operators

01:20:01 - Orgs trying to steal scope

01:30:26 - Handling difficult people from other orgs

01:36:19 - Handling weak managers

01:46:30 - Backchanneling

01:52:04 - Influence without authority

01:58:04 - Sexual harassment

02:00:49 - Skip overruling firing

02:05:39 - How to fire managers

02:11:31 - Leverage when people are getting fired

02:24:01 - How to grow past senior eng

02:43:01 - How to avoid politics

02:48:15 - Advice for younger self

02:49:51 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗘𝘁𝗵𝗮𝗻:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/EthanEvansVP

• Newsletter: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-BAdkBGjOIlccGLZ3jbLiA

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

This is a conversation with Brendan Burns, co-creator of Kubernetes and current technical fellow at Microsoft working on Azure. We discussed what it was like building it at Google, how he got buy-in, and what he learned along the way.

🔸 My keyboard project: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/FKijpCEH9D8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/the-creator-of-kubernetes-on-building

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:37 - How he convinced Google leaders

00:09:26 - Building the MVP

00:11:43 - How he made time for Kubernetes

00:25:28 - Technical details on building Kubernetes

00:38:46 - Rallying the open source community

00:50:01 - Scaling Kubernetes up for AI training workloads

00:55:31 - Reflections on getting a PhD

01:00:22 - The inevitable trajectory of software is death

01:04:16 - Top book recommendations

01:05:22 - Advice for his younger self

01:06:21 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗲𝗻𝗱𝗮𝗻:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brendan-burns-487aa590/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/brendandburns

• Github: https://github.com/brendandburns

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Austen McDonald is a former hiring committee member at Meta, where he led mobile hiring and conducted hundreds of interviews. In this episode, we talked about what happens behind the scenes in a hiring committee, unethical candidates, and the role referrals play.

🔸 (Sponsor) Hello Interview's Website - https://www.hellointerview.com/

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/nOapM8i5jr0

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/meta-hiring-lead-on-behind-the-scenes

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:49 - What goes on in hiring committees

00:09:02 - Unethical candidates

00:12:50 - How leveling is determined

00:23:12 - Can you negotiate level mid-process

00:32:30 - How non-tech leads can signal scope

00:39:11 - Referrals and bias

00:45:28 - What the rubric looks like

00:50:00 - OpenAI and Anthropic specific discussion

00:52:22 - Most common mistakes senior candidates make

01:02:31 - How to prep depending on your level

01:08:34 - Subjectivity and bias

01:21:02 - The questions you ask at the end matter

01:23:59 - Storytelling tips

01:30:31 - How he got promoted to Senior Manager (M2) at Meta

01:33:32 - His biggest career regret

01:38:13 - The best advice he ever received

01:39:54 - Advice for younger self

01:41:46 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗻:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/austenmc/

• His book - https://thebehavioral.tech/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

This is Michael Bolin, the tech lead for the open source Codex repository and a former distinguished engineer at Meta. We talked about his career path, how OpenAI engineers use Codex and the difference between research-led vs engineering-led company cultures.

🔸 My keyboard project: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/hN5ZFzWFhhg

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/openai-codex-tech-lead-on-how-his

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:56 - Chickenfoot

00:02:45 - Working at Google

00:06:34 - Overhauling Facebook's build system

00:16:36 - Rewriting Facebook's IDE

00:26:01 - Struggles after Principal Eng (E8) promo

00:28:39 - Building a virtual filesystem for Facebook

00:35:47 - Delayed Distinguished promo (E9) and learnings

00:39:56 - Joining OpenAI

00:43:05 - Research-led vs engineering-led cultures

00:44:53 - The story behind Codex

00:51:00 - How he uses Codex

00:57:00 - Why Codex's harness is open source

00:59:50 - Top technical book recommendations

01:05:02 - Why deep technical skills are still valuable (for now)

01:11:07 - How to start projects well

01:14:27 - Advice on writing better and career planning

01:17:06 - Advice for his younger self

01:19:10 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗶𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗲𝗹:

• His personal blog - https://blog.bolinfest.com/

• Twitter/X - https://x.com/bolinfest

• Threads - https://www.threads.com/@bolinfest

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-bolin-7632712

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Bryan Cantrill was a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems and has now founded his own company called Oxide Computer Company. We discussed his career experiences through boom/busts, what competing with Bezos was like, and career regrets.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/qhSL-5GtmQM

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/distinguished-eng-on-stack-ranking

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Link to the part in the talk on Oracle/Sun we discussed - https://youtu.be/-zRN7XLCRhc?si=eExjIMZROGjJcDsw&t=1977

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:42 - Working at Sun Microsystems

00:10:17 - His growth to distinguished eng

00:19:14 - Why goaling on promotion is bad

00:29:34 - Stack ranking and layoffs

00:36:00 - Why he hated the Oracle acquisition

00:44:19 - Why Bezos is the apex predator of capitalism

00:48:04 - Differences between CTO and VP

00:49:58 - Starting his own company

01:02:37 - Grilling him on his past

01:11:57 - AI boom and bust advice

01:14:41 - When he was happiest in his career

01:17:22 - Top career regret

01:19:21 - Advice for younger self

01:20:57 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/bryan-cantrill-b6a1/

• Twitter/X - https://x.com/bcantrill

• Personal Website - https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/

• His company - https://oxide.computer/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

I interviewed Leslie Lamport, a Turing Award winner known for his contributions to distributed systems and the inventor of the Paxos algorithm. We walked through the major contributions of his career for the stories behind them and what he learned along the way.

🔸 My keyboard project: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/U719vQz-WFs

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/turing-award-winner-on-working-with

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Bakery Problem Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/bakery.pdf

• Time Clocks Paper (most cited): https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/time-clocks.pdf

• The Byzantine Generals Problem Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/byz.pdf

• The Paxos Algorithm Paper: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/lamport-paxos.pdf

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:25 - The Bakery Algorithm

00:08:28 - Experiences with Dijkstra

00:14:44 - His most cited paper

00:23:26 - The "Byzantine Generals" problem

00:38:05 - The Paxos Algorithm

00:46:57 - Paxos vs Raft Algorithm

00:51:26 - Building LaTeX

00:54:45 - Why writing improves your thinking

01:00:21 - Why he wasn't an academic

01:02:08 - Grand theory of concurrency

01:07:25 - Why he doesn't think he's smart

01:09:07 - Advice for his younger self

01:09:44 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗲𝘀𝗹𝗶𝗲:

• His works: https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/pubs/pubs.html

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

David Ronca joined Netflix in 2007 and grew to an engineering director there. Later he joined Meta as a Director and transitioned to a Principal engineer working on video technologies. Now he's retired and was graciously willing to share his career story with us. I asked him for everything he learned in his 36 year career.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/retired-netflix-engineering-director

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/ApG9vjbHDCk

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Netflix culture memo (2009) - https://www.slideshare.net/slideshow/culture-1798664/1798664

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:40 - How Netflix was different

00:08:01 - The legendary Netflix culture memo

00:18:54 - How to hire engineers well

00:30:52 - The strongest engineer he's ever met

00:33:02 - Joining Meta

00:50:52 - Near death experience

00:59:04 - Where he learned the most

01:04:09 - Book that impacted his career most

01:11:33 - Advice for his younger self

01:18:32 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidronca/

• Personal Website: https://www.roncatech.com/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

This is Adam Ernst, a Distinguished Engineer at Meta (IC9) who’s built iOS infrastructure that has impacted the entire company. We talked about how his career grew, a major failed project of his, and everything he learned growing to that level.

🔸 My keyboard project link: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/YA_OYJF3Mmw

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/meta-distinguished-eng-ic9-on-influencing

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:47 - His middle school company

00:03:50 - His first project and promo at Meta

00:10:03 - Why code review is undervalued

00:12:42 - Senior Staff (IC7) promo story and project

00:19:26 - His major failed project

00:26:35 - How to handle a failed project

00:29:04 - Thoughts on management

00:31:35 - Technical depth vs breadth

00:33:32 - IC9 expectations

00:34:46 - Senior engineers he admires

00:37:39 - Advice for his younger self

00:39:52 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗱𝗮𝗺:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/adamjernst/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Ryan Olson grew from mid-level engineer (IC4) to a principal engineer (IC8) at Instagram through a series of famous projects. The most notable was when he was the lead iOS developer that built Instagram Stories. We discuss his career journey and learnings.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/instagram-principal-eng-ic8-on-building

• Spotify: Episode link from Spotify after scheduling

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/gpVETZnY9Y0

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Zuckerberg emails I mentioned:

Twitter link: https://x.com/TechEmails/status/1944451283236303184

Threads link: https://www.threads.com/@techemails/post/DMDi5IWpPyC

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:31 - Failing his FB interview

00:03:27 - Interning /w future billionaires

00:14:08 - Interview nerves tip

00:16:37 - Early Instagram experiences

00:34:08 - Building Instagram Stories

00:45:03 - 1 promo per half to Staff (IC6)

00:49:51 - Senior staff promo project (IC7)

00:57:37 - IG labs & his principal promo (IC8)

01:08:19 - Starting Retro and leaving big tech

01:21:33 - Small teams hypothetical

01:25:17 - Examples of talented individuals

01:31:16 - Advice to his younger self

01:34:45 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Retro (his company): https://retro.app/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanolsonk/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanolsonk

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanolsonk/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanolsonk

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, I talked to "Asian Dad Energy" an anonymous big techie who was laid off after 25 years in the industry. We discussed his layoffs experience, his early career in engineering consulting, and the realities of big tech compensation.

🔸 My keyboard project link: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/8bs6KmJX4_g

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/episode/4ApCuf04MXv0nBRqKNLyiQ?si=bko-M46xQM2FHhTG6Vcy6Q

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/laid-off-from-big-tech-after-25-years

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:41 - His layoff story

00:07:02 - Why he expects more layoffs

00:09:42 - Tech consulting before big tech

00:19:25 - Consultants shipping bad code?

00:26:57 - Why do people dislike consultants?

00:30:55 - Big tech compensation

00:40:27 - When age impacted his flexibility

00:42:04 - Why YouTube

00:46:46 - Speaking advice for engineers

00:49:09 - Advice for younger self

00:49:35 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗵𝗶𝗺:

• https://www.youtube.com/@AsianDadEnergy

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, I talked to Nimit Sohoni, a Stanford PhD and AI Researcher at Cartesia who previously worked as a quant at Citadel. We discussed the differences between AI research and quant careers, including work-life balance and the value of a PhD in these fields. Nimit also shared what he's currently working on and offered advice for those looking to transition into AI research.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/_jECS37M3dQ

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/stanford-phd-ai-researcher-and-quant

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:45 - Do you need a PhD?

00:06:25 - Research taste and finding problems

00:09:04 - Why become a quant

00:12:01 - What quants do

00:14:53 - How quants and SWEs collaborate

00:16:29 - Quant vs tech culture

00:26:39 - Quant firm tier list

00:27:56 - Quant insider trading and perf culture

00:30:53 - Going back to AI research

00:35:08 - Who the top competitors are in voice AI

00:39:22 - AI startups vs big labs

00:42:08 - State space models vs transformers

00:49:33 - AI labs: research or product?

00:52:38 - Advice for SWEs who want to try AI research

00:56:48 - Advice for younger self

00:57:49 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗶𝗺𝗶𝘁:

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/nimit_sohoni

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimit-sohoni-68998854/

• Cartesia: https://cartesia.ai/sonic

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, I talked to Igor, a senior staff engineer who has worked at Meta, Google, and Cruise. We discussed his experience of wanting a demotion at Meta and the challenges he faced in that process.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/i1iBweuOQI4

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/meta-senior-staff-ic7-engs-honest

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Igor's post: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7401415295409700864/

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:37 - Why he wanted a demotion

00:07:32 - Why Senior Staff at Meta was different

00:16:01 - Meta vs Google culture

00:19:09 - Downleveling at Google

00:23:17 - Why he's willing to be transparent

00:25:11 - Best quality of life eng level

00:30:42 - Senior Staff promo at Google

00:42:27 - Mentorship stories

00:43:11 - Biggest career regret

00:46:46 - Advice for younger self

00:49:06 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗴𝗼𝗿:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/igorts/

• ML basics youtube videos he made: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLVcptlT8D7DgN5FtLMFUdHb5pJXW1g0YL

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Laurent Charignon was a Staff engineer at Stripe, Airbnb, and Instagram with some experience in management as well. We discussed the unspoken rules you learn as a manager, how he transitioned, what good mentorship looks like, and advice for senior engineers who are stuck looking to grow to Staff.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/airbnb-staff-eng-on-how-to-not-get

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/cgQY_1Uz2b8

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:44 - Joining Airbnb and transitioning to EM

00:18:29 - Untold rules of calibrations

00:23:50 - How to dispute bureaucracy

00:29:54 - Airbnb culture

00:31:36 - Leaving Airbnb for Meta

00:35:56 - Uber TL at Stripe

00:42:52 - How to scale yourself

00:45:22 - What people get wrong in coaching

00:52:58 - Why people get stuck at Senior eng

00:57:24 - Most career impacting book

00:58:39 - Advice for younger self

01:00:27 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗟𝗮𝘂𝗿𝗲𝗻𝘁:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/laurentcharignon/

• Personal Website: https://blog.laurentcharignon.com/

• Twitter/X: https://x.com/lc2817

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Adrien Friggeri went from a new grad to a principal engineer (IC8) at Meta. He is the original TL who started Bento if you’re familiar with that infra at the company. He got to where he was through a series of promotions across different teams and projects. I interviewed him about everything he learned along the way

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/new-grad-to-principal-engineer-ic8

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/2Sjzd9pt6Ts

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

00:43 - First team at FB

07:24 - Senior promo /w IG

16:30 - Story behind Bento (Senior staff promo)

25:33 - Taking on perf risk to start the project

29:03 - Learnings from leaving big tech

32:46 - Joining Clubhouse

35:08 - Return to Meta (again)

40:51 - Principal promo (IC8) and tips

51:37 - Maximizing your luck /w people

54:26 - Advice for younger self

55:42 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗔𝗱𝗿𝗶𝗲𝗻:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/friggeri/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/adrien/

• Personal Website: https://friggeri.net/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Fiona Fung currently supports the Claude Code team at Anthropic and was previously a Senior Director at Meta. She grew quickly through the ranks at Microsoft and Meta before joining Anthropic. I interviewed her about what she learned along the way.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/anthropic-eng-leader-and-ex-senior

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/b5-d8u-c99s

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

00:38 - Impact vs team health

03:04 - Managing managers for the first time

05:31 - Advice on mentoring others

06:55 - What you should use 1 on 1s for

07:56 - Leaving Microsoft for Facebook

10:59 - Microsoft vs Facebook culture

12:01 - Why dogfooding is important

21:25 - Joining Anthropic

27:23 - Feedback that changed her career

28:43 - Advice for younger self

29:14 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗙𝗶𝗼𝗻𝗮:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fionafung/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Hi all, it's been such a fun project for me this year launching this podcast and trying my best to make the content as helpful as possibleAppreciate everyone who has taken the time to watch my videos and give feedback on how to make it betterIt wouldn't be the same without your support! Next year I plan to work hard to keep improving the content, see you in 2026

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

00:50 - Meta Distinguished Eng (Philip Su)

05:23 - Amazon Principal Eng (Steve Huynh)

06:23 - Google Staff Eng by 28 (Ricky Lee)

07:30 - Meta Staff Eng by 25 (Evan King)

08:51 - Shopify Distinguished Eng (Ilya Grigorik)

10:49 - Amazon VP (Ethan Evans)

12:24 - Meta Senior Staff Eng (Dwayne Reeves)

13:14 - CloudKitchens CTO, Ex Uber Senior Staff (Brian Attwell)

13:55 - Instagram Principal Eng (Jake Bolam)

14:42 - Uber Distinguished Eng (Joakim Recht)

15:03 - Creator of Claude Code, Ex Meta Principal (Boris Cherny)

15:45 - Outro

Rong Yan went from a frontline manager at Meta to a Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 years. I interviewed him to ask what led to that rocketship career trajectory in management. We went over how he job hopped into his first Director role and much more.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/frontline-manager-at-meta-to-senior

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/BHlko_Mg-Jk

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

00:46 - Joining Facebook

03:06 - Moving up into a Director role

05:09 - Director skill gaps

15:31 - Domain knowledge & management

18:45 - LA vs SF cultures

20:48 - Senior Director growth at Snapchat

22:43 - Evan Spiegel stories

24:59 - Recruitment at higher levels

32:05 - Career planning in hindsight

34:08 - Biggest career regret

35:33 - How much of growth is luck?

38:19 - Advice for younger self

41:53 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝗼𝗻𝗴:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rong-yan-2004692/

• Personal Website: https://cs.cmu.edu/~yanrong

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Boris Cherny is the Creator of Claude Code but few people know his full career story. I interviewed him about everything he learned growing at Meta and for insights from his time building Claude Code at Anthropic.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/boris-cherny-creator-of-claude-code

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/AmdLVWMdjOk

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:59 - Starting at FB

00:09:43 - Early side projects and book rec

00:17:05 - Being under leveled

00:18:55 - Staff (IC6) promo story

00:25:19 - Proximity to leadership learnings

00:29:36 - Scoping out work for 100s of engs

00:35:31 - Senior Staff (IC7) promo story

00:44:39 - How to find side projects

00:50:45 - Principal (IC8) promo story

00:54:20 - Building credibility in a new org

01:04:23 - Joining Anthropic

01:10:05 - Why Claude Code succeeded

01:15:56 - Claude Code use outside of code

01:17:22 - What he thinks of competition

01:22:57 - Advice for his younger self

01:23:57 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗼𝗿𝗶𝘀:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bcherny/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/bcherny

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@boris_cherny

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Marius Schulz grew to a Senior Staff Engineer (IC7) at Instagram by redefining expectations three times (once for each promotion). We talked through each promotion and how he did it. There were also interesting learnings from when his promotion got blocked once even though he greatly exceeded expectations.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/instagram-senior-staff-eng-ic7-on

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/OXJHfb_lZII

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00 - Intro

00:55 - Choosing his specialty

02:29 - Greatly exceeding expectations with no promo

08:04 - Senior promo

15:30 - Staff promo

24:43 - Leverage and IC4/5/6 way of solving problems

29:51 - Senior staff promo

44:29 - Career planning past IC7

47:32 - Did IC7+ expectations scare him

49:49 - Advice for his younger self

52:29 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗿𝗶𝘂𝘀:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariusschulz/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/mariusschulz/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@marius.schulz

• Personal Website: https://mariusschulz.com/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Jayendra Jog left Robinhood and raised $35m to start his own crypto startup (Sei Labs). Before he left, he got jaded about software engineering career ladders yet was coasting through promotions at Robinhood. I asked him about how he did that along with a bunch of questions about when to leave your job, how to raise money, and what to expect as a founder.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/quitting-robinhood-and-raising-35m?open=false

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/f4eeoetb8t4

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:54 - Big tech internships

00:04:51 - Joining Robinhood

00:07:58 - Big tech vs startups discussion

00:10:16 - Getting jaded about Robinhood career growth

00:16:04 - Coasting and getting promoted

00:18:54 - Gamestop stories from the inside

00:22:34 - Leaving Robinhood

00:30:25 - Learnings from raising $35m

00:34:07 - What value does crypto provide?

00:37:47 - Learnings and when to leave

00:40:41 - Advice for his younger self

00:41:58 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗝𝗮𝘆:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jayendrajog

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/jayendra_jog

• His Company: https://x.com/Sei_Labs

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Brian Attwell grew to Senior Staff at Uber by age 25. After that he left Uber to join CloudKitchens (Travis Kalanick’s current startup) and quickly became the CTO after his team doubled in size every 6 months. I asked him about how he did it. He also had a bunch of interesting takes about big tech and stories about Travis Kalanick and Steve Jobs.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/cloudkitchens-cto-on-intelligence

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/egNtHu4q-vI

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:01:26 - Growth to Senior Staff at Uber

00:10:05 - Was it luck?

00:11:45 - Interviewing for IQ

00:18:02 - Intelligence and prioritization

00:22:19 - How his team doubled every 6 months

00:28:30 - Manager promos tied to scope

00:39:13 - Amazon and Google brutal honesty

00:43:39 - CloudKitchens behind the scenes

00:50:24 - Biggest career regret

00:54:17 - Travis Kalanick experiences

00:56:01 - Most impactful advice received

00:56:56 - Most impactful book for career

00:57:53 - Advice for his younger self

00:58:48 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗻:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brian-attwell/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/attwellbrian

• CloudKitchens: https://cloudkitchens.com/careers/

• CloudKitchens tech blog: https://techblog.cloudkitchens.com/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Joakim Recht grew to a Distinguished Engineer at Uber and I asked him what it took to get there. We covered his full career including the project that got him promoted, what makes a great software engineer, and learnings from promo committees.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/uber-distinguished-eng-on-unfair

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/feNh_ubBAMI

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0MX9PyeCzDhdlyRv6slwIX

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:56 - Distinguished promo project

00:19:07 - How to grow your influence

00:22:38 - Unfair promo story

00:33:09 - On delegation

00:39:05 - Why engs don’t trust management

00:47:58 - Politics as he grew

00:57:00 - How to pick mentees

01:03:22 - Why he left Uber

01:15:16 - Biggest Uber eng mistake

01:20:15 - Uber scandals

01:24:35 - Advice for younger self

01:26:14 - Outro

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗝𝗼𝗮𝗸𝗶𝗺:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/recht/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Ilya Grigorik grew to a Distinguished Engineer (VP-level role) at Shopify and I asked him what it took to get there. We covered his full career including the behind the scenes of his startup getting acquired by Google, his growth to Director at Google, and what it means to operate like a Distinguished engineer.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/distinguished-engineer-at-shopify

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0MX9PyeCzDhdlyRv6slwIX

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:45 - Thoughts on Waterloo

00:04:36 - Starting his own company

00:08:40 - Google acquisition story

00:14:04 - Joining Google

00:20:28 - Switching back to IC

00:26:42 - Principal+ Engineering at Shopify

00:40:09 - Career regrets

00:44:53 - Top career-impacting book

00:46:59 - Advice for younger self

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗜𝗹𝘆𝗮:

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@igrigorik

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/igrigorik/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/igrigorik

• Personal Website: https://ilya.grigorik.com/

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Bobby Holley went from an intern to the CTO of Mozilla Firefox. I asked him about everything he learned in that process. We cover his full career including some interesting stories on living through the browser wars and advice on career growth.

𝗣𝗼𝗱𝗰𝗮𝘀𝘁 𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/mozilla-firefox-cto-on-browser-war

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/0MX9PyeCzDhdlyRv6slwIX

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• NYT article link: https://www.livemint.com/Industry/q2EjgGX6d5Ouwec479WSqM/For-Mozilla-Google-group-hugs-get-tricky.html

• Mozilla VP twitter thread: https://www.computerworld.com/article/1722183/former-mozilla-exec-alleges-google-torpedoed-firefox-with-oops-excuses.html

• Internal memo on writing: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1518xKjijjEWHQb6wZjAWJrUN8liZGGI9v5pRFr9eFHo/edit?tab=t.0#heading=h.1gfr5hva69qx

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

00:00:00 - Intro

00:00:57 - Starting at Mozilla

00:04:57 - Browser wars history

00:10:55 - Google relationship changing

00:16:11 - Why work for free

00:19:02 - Projects that drove his career

00:33:12 - No performance reviews

00:34:42 - Rust adoption

00:43:33 - Career progression

00:47:54 - Should you focus on promos

00:57:14 - Distinguished promo rejection

01:00:56 - Examples of distinguished engs

01:10:54 - Advice for aspiring distinguished engs

01:14:40 - AI browser wars

01:26:32 - Biggest technical regret

01:29:11 - Book that impacted his career most

01:32:09 - Advice for his younger self

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗕𝗼𝗯𝗯𝘆:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bobbyholley

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/bhology

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

David Fowler went from an intern to a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. That’s 11 different promotions all at the same company. I asked him about everything he learned by going through that process.

𝗘𝗽𝗶𝘀𝗼𝗱𝗲 𝗟𝗶𝗻𝗸𝘀:

• Transcript: https://www.developing.dev/p/intern-to-microsoft-distinguished

• YouTube: https://youtu.be/d8tRM8RJ52M

• Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-peterman-pod/id1777363835

𝗧𝗶𝗺𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗮𝗺𝗽𝘀:

(00:00) Intro

(00:53) Microsofts leveling system

(03:17) Joining Microsoft

(10:18) First successful project

(16:22) Bootstrapping his own project

(25:44) His principal promotion

(37:10) His distinguished promotion

(49:51) Engineers he looks up to

(53:40) Expanding on his top tweets

(1:05:20) Big company tip on reorgs

(1:08:25) What keeps him at Microsoft

(1:17:22) Microsoft culture after Satya

(1:23:04) Career regrets and work life balance

(1:29:51) Advice for his younger self

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗗𝗮𝘃𝗶𝗱:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidfowl/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/davidfowl

𝗪𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗳𝗶𝗻𝗱 𝗥𝘆𝗮𝗻:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

David Singleton was the CTO at Stripe for 7 years before he left to start /dev/agents. Prior to Stripe, he grew from a junior engineer to a VP at Google. I recently asked him about everything he knows about career growth and being an excellent engineering leader. We discussed how Stripe hired at scale without Leetcode, why he thinks all engineering leaders should write code, the book that impacted his career most and many more topics.

Episode Links:

• Transcript

• Youtube

• Apple

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Intro

(00:00:56) Before Google

(00:06:34) Joining Google

(00:12:56) Deciding to try management

(00:24:15) How to decide on EM vs IC

(00:28:58) Biggest gap in managing managers

(00:34:21) The difference between VP and Senior EM

(00:37:43) How to communicate well

(00:46:14) How managers can scale themselves

(00:51:17) How to build a new engineering site

(01:01:21) What kept him at Google

(01:03:57) The story behind joining Stripe

(01:12:34) Comparing and contrasting cultures

(01:20:55) How to set culture

(01:29:25) Is Stripe too reliable?

(01:33:48) Hiring at scale without Leetcode

(01:38:06) Lessons learned working with Stripe's leadership

(01:40:31) Why leave Stripe

(01:44:55) How his AI startup plans to compete

(01:48:46) Career reflections, regrets, what went well

(01:54:03) Top book and habit that impacted his career

(01:57:40) Advice for younger self

(01:59:04) Outro

Where to find David:

• If you are a builder: https://sdsa.ai/build

• If you are very excited about what they are building and would consider joining his talent dense team, you can email David here: dps@sdsa.ai

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/dps

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidpsingleton/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@davidsingleton

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@petermanpod

This episode was produced with the help of SF Podcast Studio: https://www.sfpodcast.studio/

We hit 25,000 subscribers! 🎉🎉🎉

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported my work, never thought we'd be here let alone this fast

Had some spare studio time booked and figured I might as well use it as time for an FAQ episode. This episode is for anyone whose curious about some of the story behind the podcast

Feeling very lucky, thank you all! 🙏

Also if you have any feedback for me about the show and how to make it better, I'd love to hear it. Feel free to drop a comment

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:58) Story behind the podcast

(05:30) Behind the scenes of the top episodes

(10:06) Dream guest list

(12:03) Learnings from podcasting

(13:10) Balancing content with a full time job

(14:28) Outro

Stefan Mai was a Senior Manager (M2) with experience across Meta and Amazon. We went over his career story in growing to M2 which is equivalent to Senior Staff (IC7) in big tech. Since he started his own company now, he was happy to be fully transparent about the behind the scenes of managing in big tech.

Since he founded the interview prep company, Hello Interview, I also thought it’d be interesting to talk about trends he’s seeing in AI cheating tools and how to get offers at OpenAI/Anthropic. We discussed:

• Meta Senior Manager (M2) career growth story

• Amazon vs Meta culture

• Which company had stronger engineers

• How low performer quotas & PIPs work

• Eng vs manager career growth

• Transitioning to AI/ML as an eng

• Getting offers at OpenAI and Anthropic

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:59) Early career at Amazon

(05:46) Growth to eng manager at Amazon

(11:31) Storytelling tips

(16:28) Why he left Amazon

(22:59) Transitioning to AI/ML

(27:01) Senior manager (M2) promo story at Meta

(31:30) Mutiny and manager politics

(40:34) Are managers harder to layoff?

(49:50) Senior manager (M2) skill gaps

(53:21) Eng vs manager career growth

(56:27) Amazon vs Meta culture

(01:00:34) Amazon vs Meta performance

(01:05:24) Low performer quotas

(01:08:55) Can you get out of a PIP?

(01:12:23) AI interview cheating

(01:16:42) Passing OpenAI & Anthropic interviews

(01:18:33) Job hopping

(01:22:37) When he grew the most

(01:24:22) How to write better

(01:26:22) Career motivations past M2

(01:28:11) Advice for younger self

Where to find Stefan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stefanmai/

• His company: https://www.hellointerview.com/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Sash Zats grew to be a Staff Engineer (IC6) at IG despite switching teams 10 times in 9 years. His career journey was a series of jumps to exciting projects and letting career growth happen as a byproduct. I interviewed him to show you how team switches can play out.

We discussed:

• How 10 team switches in 9 years affected his career

• The story behind the Instagram blockchain initiative

• His 2 diff in 6 month performance review

• What working on Instagram Threads was like pre-launch

• The value of prototyping

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:49) First team: iOS on Newsfeed Delight

(05:30) What makes a good designer partner?

(08:30) Joining a hardware team

(12:08) 2 diffs in 6 months

(15:03) Joining the Instagram blockchain team

(21:37) Joining Instagram Threads pre-launch

(28:53) Working with an exceptional engineer (Peter)

(33:02) Working on AI prototyping teams

(37:15) Reflecting on team switching’s impact on career growth

(44:35) Why leave Meta

(46:15) Advice for younger self

(47:53) Outro

Where to find Sash:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sashzats/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/zats

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Ethan Evans went from being fired twice because of poor soft skills to getting promoted to Vice President at Amazon with a team of over 800 engineers. I asked him about everything he learned along the way.

We discussed:

• Being fired for poor soft skills

• What VP promotions look like

• Working with Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy (current Amazon CEO)

• VP performance reviews

• Stack ranking, PIPs and how managers can fire anyone

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:01) Experience before Amazon

(05:03) Getting fired twice & learnings

(14:02) Joining Amazon

(16:02) What VP promotions look like

(26:03) Promotion failure story

(29:14) Integrating Twitch into Amazon

(33:48) Jeff Bezos vs Andy Jassy stories

(36:53) VP performance reviews

(41:10) Stack ranking & PIPs

(46:11) A manager can fire anyone they want

(50:45) Advice for his younger self

(53:03) Outro

Where to find Ethan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethanevansvp/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/EthanEvansVP

• Newsletter: https://levelupwithethanevans.substack.com/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-BAdkBGjOIlccGLZ3jbLiA

Where to find Ryan:

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

Dwayne Reeves is a Senior Staff Engineer (IC7) at Meta who is the Tech Lead of the most used programming language (Hack) at the company. He started at the company as a new grad from MIT and shared the story of how his career grew. We discussed:

• His promotions to Senior (IC5), Staff (IC6), and Senior Staff (IC7)

• The value of type systems

• Transitioning to a TLM and why he switched back

• Working with brilliant engineers and overcoming imposter syndrome

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:39) Joining Facebook

(04:52) Did MIT help with career?

(07:13) His first team

(10:37) Why static typing is superior

(13:17) The uncanny valley of type systems  

(16:11) Senior Eng (IC5) promotion story 

(19:24) Staff Eng (IC6) promotion story 

(23:38) Manager transition story

(28:57) Managing ICs vs EMs

(32:54) Senior staff Eng (IC7) promotion story

(35:42) Impressive ICs

(40:33) Why stay at Meta

(44:28) Advice for younger self

(45:46) Outro 

Where to find Dwayne:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dwaynereeves/

Where to find Ryan:

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

Carey Nachenberg was a Chief Scientist at a GoogleX moonshot, a Fellow (senior most eng at Symantec) and a professor at UCLA. I interviewed him about his career story and we discussed:

• Story behind his growth to IC10 (VP equivalent)

• How high-level IC recruiting works

• How imposter syndrome held him back

• How to develop “project taste”

• How AI is affecting his students

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:54) Growth to Fellow at Symantec 

(13:13) The most complex malware

(16:13) Why C was faster than assembly

(17:17) Imposter syndrome

(21:28) What matters more than intelligence

(28:03) Experience at GoogleX

(34:24) Leaving GoogleX

(37:43) Experience at Lyft

(43:40) Getting credit on collaborative projects

(46:53) Becoming a professor at UCLA

(49:13) How to speak well

(53:23) How AI affected his students

(1:03:53) Career regrets

(1:07:16) Finding work you enjoy

(1:09:03) Advice for younger self

(1:11:04) Outro

Where to find Carey:

•  LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/carey-nachenberg-14bbb03/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Michael Novati got promoted to Senior Staff (IC7) Eng at Facebook by the age of 27. He did it while the company was still called Facebook so he had a bunch of interesting pre-IPO stories. In our conversation, we discussed:

• Growth to Senior Staff (IC7) by 27

• Being the #1 code committer at Meta

• Volunteering to resign if his code broke prod

• Stories of working with Zuck pre-IPO

• What was common among IC7+ engineers

• How LLMs will affect the code machine archetype

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:46) Joining Facebook

(10:26) Facebook IPO experience

(16:30) His internal newsletter

(24:26) Working with Zuck

(29:50) Engs that impressed him

(36:20) Will LLMs kill coding machines?

(47:20) Operating as an IC7

(1:10:30) IC7+ only group

(1:12:55) Landing code faster

(1:18:29) Why he left Meta

(1:20:52) IC7+ talent

(1:24:28) Advice for younger self

(1:25:58) Outro

Where to find Michael:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaelnovati/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Simon Kindström is a Staff Software Eng (IC6) at Instagram who joined the company as a new grad and got promoted every year. He also achieved the highest ratings ("Redefines Expectations") twice which is almost unheard of. He shared stories about his high performance including what it's like to receive secret equity bonuses.

In this episode, we discuss:

• His promotions to Staff in 3 years

• The story behind his "Redefines Expectations" ratings

• What it's like to receive performance-based equity bonuses

• His transition to management

• Why he switched from management

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(02:34) Staff promotions in 3 years

(10:32) “Redefines” expectations ratings

(20:01) Redefining expectations without promotion?

(29:55) Staff promotion story

(41:00) Transitioning to and from management

(54:50) Secret equity bonuses

(58:14) The best interns

(1:07:50) Where most of his growth came from

(1:12:04) What keeps him at Meta

(1:15:20) Advice to his younger self

(1:17:05) Outro

Where to find Simon:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/simonkindstrom/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/• X/Twitter: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@ryanlpeterman• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Jake Bolam grew from Staff Eng (IC6) to Principal Eng (IC8) at Instagram. He had some hot takes about diff reviews and risk (he accepts diffs that’ll break prod). He also shared interesting stories about his promotions as well as many tips on how to have IC8 impact with a solid work life balance.

We discuss:

• Struggling initially at Facebook

• His promotions from IC6 -> IC8

• Accepting diffs that break prod

• Systems for reasonable work life balance at IC8 

• His note taking system in VSCode

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:50) His rough onboarding to Facebook product team

(04:32) Switching to Instagram 

(06:39) What IC7 scope looks like

(09:48) Thoughts on management

(10:32) Why he always makes time for others

(13:31) His IC7 & IC8 stories

(20:54) Swapping out infra for 1000s of engs

(22:37) Work life balance tips (IC6 -> IC8) 

(27:26) Diffs reviews & risk 

(36:07) Being a good tech lead 

(42:12) Taking notes in VSCode

(47:03) Advice for his younger self

(49:54) Outro

Where to find Jake:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/• Threads: https://www.threads.com/@theregularbuiltozzy

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Philip Su grew to Distinguished Engineer (IC9) at Meta and OpenAI. He has a bunch of interesting stories about working with people like Zuck and John Carmack as well as a ton of advice for software engineers. I was really looking forward to chatting with him and enjoyed this conversation a lot. I hope you find it helpful!

In this conversation, we discussed:

• What Distinguished Eng (IC9) expectations look like

• How he got promoted to IC9

• Working with impressive engineers like John Carmack

• What made Zuck and Boz special as coworkers

• Learnings from switching between IC and EM 6x

• Why he joined OpenAI

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:02) Growing to Senior Staff (IC7) at Microsoft

(06:38) Management vs IC transitions

(17:32) Demotion from IC9 to IC7 at Meta

(20:28) IC7, IC8, and IC9 expectations

(28:58) IC9 promo story

(31:30) Building a strong eng team culture

(36:16) Working with Zuck + Meta CTO

(38:57) Working with John Carmack and other impressive ICs

(41:44) Buying $23000 of coffee in a day

(45:35) Why leave Facebook

(49:25) Joining OpenAI

(55:38) Writing well as a software engineer

(1:03:00) Does software eng performance decline as you age?

(1:07:00) Building credibility as a young manager

(1:10:25) Should you be a generalist or a specialist?

(1:12:43) Advice for his younger self

Where to find Philip:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suphilip/

• Peak Salvation podcast he referenced: https://peaksalvation.com/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Ricky (Google Engineering Manager) and I were recently invited to give a talk at UCLA for the UPE/ACM clubs. We wanted to share the industry secrets that college didn’t teach us about the tech industry, career growth, and more.

Students were able to submit questions in advance that we prepared slides for. We received a bunch of interesting questions that should be helpful to any college kids looking to get into tech. You can look at the timestamps below to jump to whatever questions you’re most interested in.

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:47) Primer on SWE levels

(06:12) How to succeed as an intern? 

(09:13) How did you get promoted quickly?

(11:36) How much of success is luck?

(13:32) If you had one piece of advice, what would it be?

(16:11) What if I’m not a gigachad coder?

(19:12) How to handle imposter syndrome?

(21:36) How to advocate for yourself?

(24:20) Big tech vs startups for new grads?

(30:28) How do people measure impact?

(32:17) Would an MBA help for eng management?

(33:45) How was college recruiting?

(36:10) How do you make as much money as possible?

(38:00) Parting words

(40:10) What are your current goals?

(42:02) Thoughts on job hopping?

(45:49) What Ricky works on?

(46:06) Thoughts on how AI affects engineering?

Thank you to Jordan Nguyen (ACM), Ashley Cheng (UPE), and Lune Chan (Videography) for hosting and helping produce this event!!

Where to find Ricky:

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@findingricky 

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/findingricky

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Jia Chen is a 21 year old that won 21x hackathons and co-founded her own startup, all while being a content creator. She’s worked hard to succeed in tech despite attending a non-target school, and has recently dropped out to work on her startup, Sprint.dev.

We discuss:

• Winning hackathon strategies

• How to stand out as a college student

• Content creation

• Dropping out to build a startup

• College reflections and advice

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:55) Getting into hackathons

(04:10) Hackathon strategy

(15:20) Developing agency & time management

(19:27) Standing out at a non-target school

(20:19) Is college useful?

(24:28) Personal brand

(26:25) Dropping out to build a startup

(32:32) Advice to younger self

Where to find Jia:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jia.seed/

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/audrey-chen-tech/

• Startup (Sprint.dev): https://www.sprint.dev/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Steve Huynh became a software engineer at Amazon with a Liberal Arts degree. He started as a Support Engineer and eventually became a Principal Engineer (top ~1% at Amazon) before starting his own career growth YouTube channel, A Life Engineered.

We discuss:

• Why most interview prep advice is garbage

• Why most people don’t become Principal Engineers

• Amazon’s performance-based layoff culture

• How to avoid being laid off

• Regrets & advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(00:37) Transitioning from liberal arts to tech

(06:31) Becoming a software development engineer

(17:37) Breaking into the tech industry today

(22:56) Future of software engineering with AI

(26:06) SDE1 → SDE3 promos

(33:11) Perf-based Layoffs at Amazon

(46:22) His Principal promotion project

(59:53) Best parts of Amazon's culture

(1:05:22) His best and worst managers among 20+

(1:09:09) Career reflections

Where to find Steve:

• Newsletter: https://alifeengineered.substack.com/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@ALifeEngineered

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/a-life-engineered/

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/alifeengineered/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Evan King went from Junior (IC3) to Staff (IC6) at Meta 3 years out of college. After that he quit FAANG to start a few companies that were each acquired. In this conversation we go over his career growth, his transition to startups and what he learned along the way. 

We discuss:

• What got him promoted to Staff in 3 years

• What stands out in Meta’s culture

• Creating and leading a new team at IC5

• Differences between big tech and startups

• Regrets looking back

• Advice for his younger self

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro

(01:28) Getting into programming

(09:34) Leetcode

(15:45) Picking his first team

(22:00) P*nis story

(25:13) Mid-level promo

(29:03) How to ship code fast

(35:28) Senior promo

(52:45) Staff promo

(1:12:02) Meta impact culture

(1:13:16) On being a tech lead

(1:16:46) Influence without authority

(1:19:29) Management vs Eng

(1:26:46) Why leave Meta

(1:36:25) Technical learning (big tech vs startups)

(1:40:26) When to build a startup

(1:44:27) How much he worked

(1:49:02) Biggest career regret

(1:51:54) Advice for new grads & past self

Where to find Evan:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evan-king-40072280/• His Company: https://www.hellointerview.com/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ 

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

Referenced:

• Evan's post on Substack: https://www.developing.dev/p/new-grad-to-staff-at-meta-in-3-years

• Ryan’s eng blog for Meta (part of IC6 promo): https://engineering.fb.com/2022/11/04/video-engineering/instagram-video-processing-encoding-reduction/

• Meta’s graph database, Tao: https://engineering.fb.com/2013/06/25/core-infra/tao-the-power-of-the-graph/

Rahul Pandey (@rpandey1234) grew to Staff at Meta through a few interesting legs of his career:

• Stanford to Startup - He joined a startup that one of his professors was starting right out of college. This startup was acquired within a year by Pinterest.

• Junior to Mid-level @ Pinterest - His promotion was rejected twice. He appealed the second rejection and got the promotion.

• Senior to Staff @ Meta - He interviewed for Senior at Meta and got a promotion through job hopping. From there, he worked towards his Staff promotion and got it.

After getting to Staff at Meta, he started his own YCombinator-funded startup, Taro. In our conversation we cover:

• What got him promoted to Staff at Meta

• Joining startups and “two-way doors”

• How his promotion was rejected twice and he appealed successfully

• When job hopping is good and when it is bad

• What real networking looks like

—

Where to find Rahul:

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rpandey1234/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@RahulPandeyrkp

• Twitter: https://x.com/rpandey1234

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rpandey1234/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 – Intro

1:12 – Stanford to Startup

12:25 – Jr to Mid-level at Pinterest

30:20 – Senior to Staff at Meta

45:12 – Management (TLM) at Meta

53:40 – Leaving Meta to create a startup

1:05:32 – Career reflections

Ricky (@findingricky) went from Junior (IC3) to Staff (IC6) at Google by 28. He doesn’t consider himself the best engineer, instead crediting his blend of technical and soft skills for his ability to land promotions quickly. In our conversation, we discuss:

• Managing your manager

• Finding good projects (and rejecting bad ones)

• Imposter syndrome

• Switching from IC to engineering management

• Work-life balance

—

Where to find Ricky:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/@findingricky 

• YouTube: https://youtube.com/@findingricky

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, we cover:

00:00 – Intro

01:08 – Promotion timeline

02:34 – Junior to Mid-level

04:24 – Finding independence

10:39 – Mid-level to Senior

11:20 – Learning how to say no

17:26 – Senior to Staff

20:18 – Finding next-level work

23:42 – Transitioning to management

33:46 – Reflections

Zach Wilson is an engineer who grew to Staff (IC6) at Airbnb by age 26. He worked at Meta, Netflix, Airbnb and more recently has started his own company. In our conversation, we discuss:

• His promotion from Junior (IC3) to Mid-level (IC4) at Meta

• What blocked his promotion to Senior (IC5) at Meta

• Job hopping to Senior at Netflix instead

• Burning out at Netflix when given Staff scope

• Negotiating Staff at Airbnb

• Regrets & learnings

—

Where to find Zach Wilson:

• Instagram: https://instagram.com/eczachly/

• X: https://x.com/EcZachly

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@eczachly

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/eczachly/

• YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@EcZachly_

• Newsletter: https://blog.dataengineer.io/

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/

• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman

• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/

• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman

In this episode, we cover:

00:27 Introducing Zach Wilson

03:14 Landing a Job at Facebook

06:33 Choosing the Right Team at Facebook

07:28 IC3 to IC4 at Meta

13:54 Trying for IC5 at Meta

23:49 Getting hired as an IC5 at Netflix

39:49 Negotiating IC6 at Airbnb

52:09 Building internal brand when job hopping

56:55 Reflection & learnings