The Peterman Pod

Episodes

Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9) On Influencing Engs, Failures, and Learnings

February 9, 2026

Meta Distinguished Engineer (IC9) Ryan Peterman shares how to influence engineers, learn from major failures, and build deep technical expertise.

Instagram Principal Eng (IC8) On Building IG Stories, 1 Promo Per Half, Small Teams

February 2, 2026

Instagram Principal Eng (IC8) Ryan Peterman on building Stories with small teams, his rapid IC4 to IC8 climb, and overcoming failure.

Meta Senior Staff (IC7) Eng's Honest Demotion Story

January 23, 2026

A Meta Senior Staff Engineer shares his honest story of seeking a demotion due to high-level ramp-up challenges and a preference for hands-on work.

Airbnb Staff Eng on How To Not Get Stuck at Senior and Untold Rules of Calibrations

January 19, 2026

An Airbnb staff engineer reveals how to get promoted from Senior, the unspoken rules of performance calibrations, and why he pitched his own move to management.

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

January 12, 2026

From new grad to Principal Engineer at Meta: A story of building core systems like Instagram's A/B testing and navigating a non-linear path.

Anthropic Eng Leader And Ex-Senior Director at Meta On Microsoft vs Facebook, Career Learnings

January 4, 2026

Fiona Fung shares lessons from Microsoft, Meta, and Anthropic on leadership, dogfooding, kindness, and navigating high-velocity tech cultures.

Best Software Engineering Career Advice of 2025

December 29, 2025

Top tech leaders advise their younger selves: Clarify your values, balance career with life, overcome imposter syndrome, and build relationships.

Frontline Manager at Meta to Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 Years (Career Story)

December 22, 2025

From PhD to CTO, Rong Yan explains how a 'North Star' goal, technical depth, and strategic job moves fueled his rapid career growth.

Boris Cherny (Creator of Claude Code) On How His Career Grew

December 15, 2025

Boris Cherny, creator of Claude Code, shares career lessons from Meta, the power of latent demand, and how AI is rapidly changing engineering.

Instagram Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On 3 Promos Through Redefining Expectations (Career Story)

December 8, 2025

Meta Senior Staff Engineer Marius Schultz shares his rapid ascent from IC4 to IC7 by redefining expectations, scaling impact, and leading Threads.

CloudKitchens CTO on Intelligence, Regrets, Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick Stories

November 21, 2025

Uber Senior Staff in <4 years. CTO Brian Atwell shares his brutally honest takes on extreme work ethic, IQ in hiring, and redesigning Big Tech.

Uber Distinguished Eng On Unfair Promos, Influence, Engineering Regrets (Career Story)

November 11, 2025

Uber Distinguished Engineer on scaling impact from a team tool to 120k servers, why senior engineers must code daily, and how to truly influence.

Shopify Distinguished Eng (L10) on Principal+ Engineering, Career Story, Regrets

October 24, 2025

Ex-Google/Shopify Distinguished Engineer Ilya Grigorik on building a resilient career by optimizing for being the "only," not the best.

Mozilla Firefox CTO on Browser War Stories and the Path to Distinguished Engineer

October 10, 2025

Mozilla CTO Bobby Hawley on the browser wars with Google, pioneering Rust, tackling security exploits, and navigating a career in open source.