Podcast · 60 episodes
The Peterman Pod, page 2
by Ryan Peterman · English
Sharing the transparent career stories of technical people. Hosted by an ex-Staff engineer at Instagram
All episodes, page 2
AWS Distinguished Eng: Learning From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc BrookerHow AWS engineers learn from large-scale failures (3,000+ postmortems), what makes a good postmortem, why on-call matters, and how engineering practice is changing (serverless/container trends,…13 Apr 2026 · 1 h 12 min · 27 chapters
Ex-Head of Eng at Instagram: Career Regrets and Learnings | James EveringhamCareer lessons from James Everingham (ex-Instagram head of engineering) plus tech-industry strategy: “distribution vs technology,” networking by being useful, and building fast teams.6 Apr 2026 · 59 min · 25 chapters
Retired Amazon VP: How Corporate Politics Work And How To Win | Ethan EvansCorporate politics inside big tech, focusing on how incentives drive “empire building,” how reorgs are used to retain or move people, and how employees can escalate when a manager is incompetent…30 Mar 2026 · 2 h 51 min · 64 chapters
The Co-Creator of Kubernetes On Convincing Google, Building It, and Scaling for LLMsIn this episode of The Peterman Pod, Brendan Burns, co-creator of Kubernetes and current technical fellow at Microsoft, shares insights into his experience building Kubernetes at Google.23 Mar 2026 · 1 h 7 min · 29 chapters
Meta Hiring Lead On Behind The Scenes of Senior+ Eng HiringIn this episode, Austen McDonald, a former hiring committee member at Meta, shares insights into the hiring process for senior engineers.16 Mar 2026 · 1 h 43 min · 47 chapters
OpenAI Codex Tech Lead On How His Career Grew And How He Uses Codex | Michael BolinSharing software engineering career stories to help you accelerate your career. Hosted by ex-Staff engineer at Instagram.9 Mar 2026 · 1 h 20 min · 39 chapters
Distinguished Eng On Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan CantrillIn this episode, Bryan Cantrill, a distinguished engineer formerly at Sun Microsystems and now founder of Oxide Computer Company, shares insights from his extensive 30-year career in software…2 Mar 2026 · 1 h 22 min · 39 chapters
Turing Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie LamportTuring Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport23 Feb 2026 · 1 h 10 min · 26 chapters
Retired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring StoriesRetired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring Stories16 Feb 2026 · 1 h 19 min · 32 chapters
Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9) On Influencing Engs, Failures, and LearningsThis episode features Adam Ernst, a Distinguished Engineer at Meta with a significant impact on iOS infrastructure.9 Feb 2026 · 41 min · 16 chapters
Instagram Principal Eng (IC8) On Building IG Stories, 1 Promo Per Half, Small TeamsSharing software engineering career stories to help you accelerate your career. Hosted by an ex-Staff engineer at Instagram.2 Feb 2026 · 1 h 35 min · 45 chapters
Honest Big Tech Layoff Story After 25 Year CareerRyan Peterman, ex-Staff Engineer at Instagram30 Jan 2026 · 50 min · 25 chapters
Ex-Citadel Quant and AI Researcher On Breaking In, Tech vs Finance CareersEx-Citadel Quant and AI Researcher On Breaking In, Tech vs Finance Careers26 Jan 2026 · 58 min · 29 chapters
Meta Senior Staff (IC7) Eng's Honest Demotion StorySharing software engineering career stories to help you accelerate your career. Hosted by an ex-Staff engineer at Instagram.23 Jan 2026 · 50 min · 22 chapters
Airbnb Staff Eng on How To Not Get Stuck at Senior and Untold Rules of CalibrationsHow Airbnb staff engineers/management handle “untold rules” in senior-to-staff calibration, plus practical advice for getting unstuck as a senior engineer, coaching effectively, and disputing unfair…19 Jan 2026 · 1 h 1 min · 27 chapters
New Grad to Principal Engineer (IC8) at Meta (Career Story)Adrien’s career story from Meta new grad to Principal Engineer (IC8), spanning early Facebook data science/A-B testing, building A-B testing at Instagram, creating Bento (Jupyter-based notebook…12 Jan 2026 · 56 min · 33 chapters
Anthropic Eng Leader And Ex-Senior Director at Meta On Microsoft vs Facebook, Career LearningsFiona Fung, an engineering leader now supporting Anthropic’s Cloud Code team, reflects on differences between Microsoft and Meta/Facebook, career lessons in management, mentoring/coaching, and…4 Jan 2026 · 30 min · 13 chapters
Best Software Engineering Career Advice of 2025A curated compilation of “best career advice” answers from CTOs and distinguished engineers for software engineers, focused on what they wish they’d known earlier.29 Dec 2025 · 16 min · 9 chapters
Frontline Manager at Meta to Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 Years (Career Story)Rong Yan’s rapid career arc from PhD/research scientist (IBM) to frontline engineering manager at Facebook, then director-level roles at Square and senior director at Snapchat, and later startup…22 Dec 2025 · 42 min · 19 chapters
Boris Cherny (Creator of Claude Code) On How His Career GrewCareer growth of Boris Cherny (creator of Claude Code) across Meta and Anthropic, centered on product principles (especially “latent demand”), cross-org collaboration, and building infra/product…15 Dec 2025 · 1 h 25 min · 38 chapters
Instagram Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On 3 Promos Through Redefining Expectations (Career Story)Marius Schulz’s Meta career story from IC4 to IC7, centered on “redefining expectations” promotions, how he handled a blocked promo, and what it takes to deliver next-level behaviors (especially via…8 Dec 2025 · 53 min · 15 chapters
Robinhood SWE Turned $1B+ Founder on Non-Linear Careers, Being Jaded About Promos, Startup LearningsJay Jog (Robinhood SWE turned founder) discusses non-linear career paths, why “playing the game” at big tech can lead to jadedness, and how he built a crypto company after the GameStop/RH episode…30 Nov 2025 · 43 min · 18 chapters
CloudKitchens CTO on Intelligence, Regrets, Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick StoriesBrian Attwell (CloudKitchens CTO) shares career lessons from Uber/Google, argues for “truth-seeking” in engineering ladders and incentives, and explains CloudKitchens’ stealth/privacy approach while…21 Nov 2025 · 59 min · 24 chapters
Uber Distinguished Eng On Unfair Promos, Influence, Engineering Regrets (Career Story)Joakim Recht (Uber Distinguished Engineer) explains how he scaled influence from writing code to leading Uber’s stateful infrastructure platform, Odin, and discusses engineering regrets, promotion…11 Nov 2025 · 1 h 27 min · 26 chapters