The Peterman Pod
Episodes
The Co-Creator of Kubernetes On Convincing Google, Building It, and Scaling for LLMs
23 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
This is a conversation with Brendan Burns, co-creator of Kubernetes and current technical fellow at Microsoft working on Azure. We discussed what it w...
Meta Hiring Lead On Behind The Scenes of Senior+ Eng Hiring
16 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Austen McDonald is a former hiring committee member at Meta, where he led mobile hiring and conducted hundreds of interviews. In this episode, we talk...
OpenAI Codex Tech Lead On How His Career Grew And How He Uses Codex | Michael Bolin
09 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Distinguished Eng On Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan Cantrill
02 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Bryan Cantrill was a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems and has now founded his own company called Oxide Computer Company. We discussed his ca...
Turing Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport
23 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
I interviewed Leslie Lamport, a Turing Award winner known for his contributions to distributed systems and the inventor of the Paxos algorithm. We wal...
Retired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring Stories
16 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 engin...
Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9) On Influencing Engs, Failures, and Learnings
09 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Instagram Principal Eng (IC8) On Building IG Stories, 1 Promo Per Half, Small Teams
02 Feb 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 whe...
Honest Big Tech Layoff Story After 25 Year Career
30 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 expe...
Ex-Citadel Quant and AI Researcher On Breaking In, Tech vs Finance Careers
26 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I talked to Nimit Sohani, a Stanford PhD and AI Researcher at Cartesia who previously worked as a quant at Citadel. We discussed the ...
Meta Senior Staff (IC7) Eng's Honest Demotion Story
23 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 demoti...
Airbnb Staff Eng on How To Not Get Stuck at Senior and Untold Rules of Calibrations
19 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
Laurent Charignon was a Staff engineer at Stripe, Airbnb, and Instagram with some experience in management as well. We discussed the unspoken rules yo...
New Grad to Principal Engineer (IC8) at Meta (Career Story)
12 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 inf...
Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9) On Influencing Others, Failures, and Learnings
05 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
TEST
Anthropic Eng Leader And Ex-Senior Director at Meta On Microsoft vs Facebook, Career Learnings
04 Jan 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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 Mi...
Best Software Engineering Career Advice of 2025
29 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 possibleApprecia...
Frontline Manager at Meta to Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 Years (Career Story)
22 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 caree...
Boris Cherny (Creator of Claude Code) On How His Career Grew
15 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 an...
Instagram Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On 3 Promos Through Redefining Expectations (Career Story)
08 Dec 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Marius Schulz grew to a Senior Staff Engineer (IC7) at Instagram by redefining expectations three times (once for each promotion). We talked through e...
Robinhood SWE Turned $1B+ Founder on Non-Linear Careers, Being Jaded About Promos, Startup Learnings
30 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
CloudKitchens CTO on Intelligence, Regrets, Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick Stories
21 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Uber Distinguished Eng On Unfair Promos, Influence, Engineering Regrets (Career Story)
11 Nov 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Shopify Distinguished Eng (L10) on Principal+ Engineering, Career Story, Regrets
24 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 includ...
Mozilla Firefox CTO on Browser War Stories and the Path to Distinguished Engineer
10 Oct 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 incl...
Intern to Microsoft Distinguished Engineer in 11 Promotions (Career Story)
05 Sep 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Ex-Stripe CTO on What Grew His Career, Hiring Without Leetcode, Coding as a Leader (Career Story)
29 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 Goog...
Behind the Scenes of this Podcast So Far (25,000 Sub Special)
22 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
We hit 25,000 subscribers! 🎉🎉🎉Thanks so much to everyone who has supported my work, never thought we'd be here let alone this fastHad some sp...
Meta Senior Manager (M2) on Manager Career Growth, PIPs, Amazon vs Meta | Stefan Mai
15 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 Sen...
Instagram Staff (IC6) Promo Despite 10 Team Switches in 9 Years (Career Story)
08 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 pr...
Amazon VP On Promotions, Getting Fired Twice, Working With Bezos | Ethan Evans
01 Aug 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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....
Tech Lead for Meta's Most-Used Programming Language (Promotion Story)
25 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
GoogleX Chief Scientist On Imposter Syndrome, Career Growth, Project Taste
18 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Meta Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On Zuck Stories, Rapid Career Growth, Code Machine Archetype
11 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
26 Year Old Meta Staff Eng (IC6) On Promotions, Redefining Expectations, Secret Equity Bonuses
04 Jul 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 hig...
Instagram Principal Engineer (IC8) on Promotions, Breaking Prod, Tech Leading | Jake Bolam
31 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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’l...
OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Engineer (IC9) On Working With Zuck, Carmack & Career Growth | Philip Su
23 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
Industry Secrets We Wish We Knew Before Graduating | Staff Eng Talk @ UCLA
02 May 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 t...
21x Hackathon Winner Turned College Dropout | Jia Chen Interview
14 Apr 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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...
Amazon Principal Engineer On Layoffs, Interviewing & Career Growth | Steve Huynh
02 Mar 2025
Contributed by Lukas
Steve Huynh became a software engineer at Amazon with a Liberal Arts degree. He started as a Support Engineer and eventually became a Principal Engine...
Staff Engineer @ Meta by Age 25 | Evan King
17 Jan 2025
Contributed by Lukas
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 acqui...
Ex-Meta Staff Eng & YC Startup Cofounder | Rahul Pandey
27 Dec 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 ...
28 Year Old Staff Engineer @ Google
22 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
Ricky (@findingricky) went from Junior (IC3) to Staff (IC6) at Google by 28. He doesn’t consider himself the best engineer, instead crediting his bl...
Staff at Airbnb by Age 26 | Zach Wilson
01 Nov 2024
Contributed by Lukas
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 compa...