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: ht...

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 ep...

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
•...

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...

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:

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...

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...

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.developi...

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/crea...

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

• Tran...

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/podca...

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

• Tran...

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/crea...

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://ww...

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.co...

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

• Tran...

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.develo...

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...

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

• T...

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...

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 supp...

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:

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...

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 S...

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 𝘀𝗽𝗼𝗻𝘀𝗼...

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/

...

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...

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 f...

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/id17773...

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 - Join...

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...

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...

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 commi...

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...

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:

<...

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

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

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...

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

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-o...