I quit the best job I ever had to try and build what I wish existed in the world. Two projects I'm working on now:

1. The Peterman Pod - When I first started at Meta, the career stories of incredible engineers always inspired me. I aim to share transparent career stories that I wish I had more of back in the day: https://creators.spotify.com/pod/show/peterman-pod

There are still many engineers who are heros to me that I'd love to bring on the show one day!

2. Compose - I could never really find what I wanted so I'm building the ergonomic keyboard I wish existed. Pictures of our prototype here: https://read.compose.llc/p/our-keyboard-design-reveal

I've earmarked ~6 months of living expenses to fund this new career direction. I'm going to give it my all to see if it's sustainable. 

Thank you for your support, working on my passion projects is something I’m only lucky enough to consider because of you all 🙏

If you're just curious to follow along generally, I'll share occasional updates everytime I have something interesting to share here: https://www.developing.dev/

Nimit Sohoni is an ex-Citadel quant and AI researcher at Cartesia with a PhD from Stanford. I interviewed him to break down what both those careers paths are like. We discussed:

• How SWEs can transition into AI research or quant roles
• Comparing and contrasting tech vs finance experiences
• What his current AI research work at Cartesia is like
• If a PhD is necessary for either of these career paths
• How to learn more about AI research and find papers
• Developing good research taste
• Finance work culture, NDAs, what the work is like

Where to watch:

• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/ewTMEp4t
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/evvWxW_r
• Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gMhyB8nv
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/etfQqMwF

Ryan Peterman

Finally revealing the keyboard I have been working on that I wish existed. Sharing real pictures of the prototype we've built in the linked post.

We'll be launching on Kickstarter to fund the initial batch and would appreciate your support!

Read here:

Open article: Our Keyboard Design Reveal by read.compose.llc

New grad to Principal Eng (IC8) at Meta career story launching Monday. Some interesting bits from the conversation:

1. Concrete example of not doing the team's work in favor of a calculated risk to start something new which paid off (and he would've done if it didn't pay off)

2. How to maximize your luck when it comes to networking / people opportunities

3. How Principal eng (IC8) promos differ from lower level promotions and how to work towards the promo in advance of the promo committee

We went over each of his promotions, the stories behind them, and also a bunch of other interesting stuff because of the domain he was in

If you're interested you can follow along either on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts to get it when it drops!

YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g6C45V4j
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4n-fUxe
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/g6kGhCVH

AI/ML Infra @ Meta | Writing About Software Engineering & Career Growth

Tomorrow's episode: Senior Staff Eng (Google/Meta/Cruise exp) shares the behind the scenes of how to navigate a demotion. He's in between jobs so he was fully transparent about:

- Requesting demotion from Senior Staff at Meta
- Surprising challenges to getting hired at a lower level at Google
- #1 eng level for quality of life
- Meta vs Google cultural differences

You always hear about success stories, you don't usually hear the challenges. Hope this transparency is helpful!

Around a year ago, I wrote a post about "everything I know about shipping code faster". I realize now that most of it is obsolete.

Incredible how fast the software engineering industry changed in just 1 year. 

It's depressing for a lot of engineers, but I haven't felt that way. Software engineering is fun for me because I enjoy seeing computers do useful things. I love seeing AI do things that would've taken me a full day in just a few minutes.

Not to mention that annoying detail-oriented bugs are more rare now. I never enjoyed one-off errors or random compiler / typo bugs.

Many of the things in the old post are things I tell an LLM to do now so maybe there's still value in it.

Anyway, here's the old post if you're curious, it's an interesting time capsule in my opinion: https://lnkd.in/gUaVkQaW

Open article: Everything I Know About Shipping Code Faster by developing.dev

Everything I Know About Shipping Code Faster

One of my favorite career stories dropping Monday. Lead eng that built IG Stories, Mid-level -> Principal (IC8), so many interesting stories from his experience. Some takeaways:

0. He admitted to being bad at Leetcode (failed his interviews at first and provided a useful tip for those who get nervous) yet just a year or two later was an incredibly high performer

1. As a product engineer, intentionally seeking out talented designers to pair with is a great strategy for picking the best projects

2. A/B testing is a tool that shouldn't be applied blindly for every change. Had some interesting stories here from early IG <> FB culture differences

3. Small teams of outlier people drive the outlier results. They actually shrank the IG stories team initially to move faster

Many more takeaways these were just a few that are top of mind. Hope you enjoy the episode. You can find it on Spotify/YouTube/ApplePodcasts

Igor Tsvetkov was a Senior Staff Engineer at Google, Meta and Cruise before seeking out a demotion. He was willing to share the motivation and details of navigating that demotion while he was in between jobs. We discussed:

• Details on the demotion at Meta
• Surprising challenges to getting hired at a lower level at Google
• The best eng level for quality of life
• Meta vs Google cultural differences

You always hear about the success stories, but you don't usually hear people being as transparent about their challenges. Igor was gracious enough to share transparently with the hopes that it'd be helpful for the community

Where to watch:
• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gBjqr2eH
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gEa5KhnP
• Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gMhyB8nv
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/gwTFBnmU

Adrien Friggeri grew from a new grad to a principal engineer (IC8) at Meta. He's the original TL who started Bento (serverless Jupyter notebooks). He got to where he was through a series of promotions across different teams and projects. We discussed:

• The story behind Bento
• How to take calculated risks on projects outside of your team's scope
• Maximizing your luck /w people
• Joining Clubhouse
• How the promos at the highest levels differ from earlier ones

Where to watch:
• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gRdq7TcC
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gXiJvcgK
• Apple: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/ggym5S2c

Tomorrow's episode of the pod: Ex-Citadel Quant and AI Researcher /w PhD from Stanford breaking down what both of those career paths are like

Also some thoughts on how SWEs could transition into AI research or quant roles. Hope it's helpful!

The thesis for Adrien's Senior Staff promo (IC7) was based off building Bento (serverless Jupyter notebooks) infra that is widely used at the company

How do you even get started on building something like that? Few interesting takeaways from the story:

0. He noticed his dev setup was inefficient (bunch of repeated boilerplate and setup work). He wrote a bunch of scripts to help himself move faster and solved his own problem

1. He aligned with his management chain to work on building this out more to help others move faster (even though it was completely different from the current work on his team)

He took on some risk here since if it didn't work out he'd have to find something quickly to save his performance that half. Luckily it worked out

2. To spread the distribution of this developer offering, he worked it into the company's onboarding process. And since Meta was growing so quickly, this ended up getting widespread adoption across the company

The leverage and scale of his impact eventually led to his promotion to Senior Staff (IC7). I love this story because he created the opportunity himself (it was permissionless). One of my favorite parts of the impact engineers can create

Anyway, I hope it was helpful and if you're interested in the whole story in his own words you can jump to 16min in, direct link here: https://lnkd.in/gvaetx-E

Open video: New Grad to Principal Engineer (IC8) at Meta (Career Story) on youtu.be

New Grad to Principal Engineer (IC8) at Meta (Career Story)

Laurent Charignon coached me to Staff at IG and I asked him to share all his top advice on how to grow and not get stuck at Senior

He was a Staff engineer at Stripe, Airbnb, and Instagram with some experience in management as well. He has a lot of stories from his experience I think you'll find helpful. We discussed:

• Unspoken rules you learn as a manager
• What people get wrong in coaching
• Why people get stuck at Senior
• The book that impacted his career most
• Culture and learnings across Stripe, Airbnb, and IG
• How to find Staff-level problems

Where to watch:
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gzzMfnjT
• Apple: https://lnkd.in/gMhyB8nv
• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gizWdeg9
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/gM8-ysGU

This anonymous big techie (going by "Asian Dad Energy" on YouTube) was laid off after a 25 year career and shared his honest career story. I brought him on so you can learn from that experience as well as stories from his career as a whole. We discussed:

• His transition from consulting into big tech leadership
• Why consultants aren't welcomed & experience in big tech
• His layoff story and details
• Why the layoff happened and expectations on future layoffs
• What stops consultants from shipping bad software
• Advice for software engineers on how to speak better

Where to watch:
• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/eNkYTJiA
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eykvPNqr
• Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gMhyB8nv
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/eX7CkubV

Igor (Google Senior Staff) was between jobs so he was able to fully honest about his demotion story. The comments seem to love his transparency, here are the links if you're curious to see what they saw:

• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gMqVHqmk
• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gBn_Auq8

No alternative text description for this image

I quit the best job I ever had to try and build what I wish existed in the world. Two projects I'm working on now:

1. The Peterman Pod - When I first started at Meta, the career stories of incredible engineers always inspired me. I aim to share transparent career stories that I wish I had more of back in the day.

There are still many engineers who are heros to me that I'd love to bring on the show one day!

2. Compose - I could never really find what I wanted so I'm building the ergonomic keyboard I wish existed. Pictures of our prototype here: https://lnkd.in/ex8EgvMf

I've earmarked ~6 months of living expenses to fund this new career direction. I'm going to give it my all to see if it's sustainable. 

Thank you for your support, working on my passion projects is something I’m only lucky enough to consider because of you all 🙏

Ryan Olson grew from mid-level (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 discussed:

• Stories working with Mike Krieger (cofounder of IG)
• How IG felt like it was dying and building IG Stories
• Getting 1 promo per half to Staff
• The power of small teams
• Starting Retro (to combat doom scrolling)
• Failing his first FB interview
• Examples of the most talented people he's ever worked with

Where to watch:

• Spotify: https://lnkd.in/gKb4xB75
• YouTube: https://lnkd.in/g5V5F28z
• Apple: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R
• Transcript: https://lnkd.in/gA7HpHTv

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