The Peterman Pod

Sharing the transparent career stories of technical people. Hosted by an ex-Staff engineer at Instagram

Episodes

Creator of TypeScript: 10x Faster Typescript, Why AI Won't Replace SWEs | Anders Hejlsberg

Aug 17, 2026 · 1h 5m

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Creator of Lean: Handwritten Math Will Change Dramatically | Leonardo de Moura

Aug 10, 2026 · 1h 8m

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Creator of Lua: Scripting, Programming Languages, Predictions | Roberto Ierusalimschy

Aug 3, 2026 · 1h 5m

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Turing Award Winner: Early AI, LLM Predictions, Causality | Judea Pearl

Jul 27, 2026 · 1h 27m

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Creator of OCaml: Functional Programming, Formal Verification, Programming Languages | Xavier Leroy

Jul 20, 2026 · 1h 24m

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Turing Award Winner: TPU vs GPU vs CPU, Computer Architecture, RISC vs CISC | David Patterson

Jul 13, 2026 · 59 min

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Turing Award Winner: NSA, Public Key Cryptography, Crypto Wars | Martin Hellman

Jul 6, 2026 · 1h 1m

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MIT Complexity Theorist: Why You Can Do Better Than “Optimal” On Leetcode & SAT | Ryan Williams

Jun 29, 2026 · 1h 12m

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OpenAI Eng & Dev Tools Founder: How Software Engineering Is Changing | Charlie Marsh

Jun 22, 2026 · 1h 22m

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Google DeepMind Pre-Training Lead: How To Land a Job at a Frontier Lab | Vlad Feinberg

Jun 15, 2026 · 1h 4m

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Co-Creator of Haskell: Functional Programming, Thinking in Types, Useless Languages | Simon Jones

Jun 8, 2026 · 1h 27m

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Turing Award Winner: P vs NP, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Quantum Computation | Avi Wigderson

Jun 1, 2026 · 2h 15m

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Dropbox’s Former Most Senior Eng: Building Great Systems and Advice for the AI Era | James Cowling

May 25, 2026 · 2h 1m

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Creator of C++: Bell Labs, Negative Overhead Abstraction, Mistakes | Bjarne Stroustrup

May 18, 2026 · 1h 59m

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Harvard Professor: CS50, What Matters More Than CS, Lecturing Well | David J Malan

May 11, 2026 · 1h 3m

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PyTorch Eng Director: Promo Hacking, Industry Shifts, Regrets | John Myles White

May 4, 2026 · 43 min

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Turing Award Winner: Data Abstraction, Dijkstra, Distributed Systems | Barbara Liskov

Apr 27, 2026 · 34 min

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Turing Award Winner: Postgres, Disagreeing with Google, Future Problems | Mike Stonebraker

Apr 20, 2026 · 56 min

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AWS Distinguished Eng: Learning From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc Brooker

Apr 13, 2026 · 1h 11m

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Ex-Head of Eng at Instagram: Career Regrets and Learnings | James Everingham

Apr 6, 2026 · 58 min

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Retired Amazon VP: How Corporate Politics Work And How To Win | Ethan Evans

Mar 30, 2026 · 2h 50m

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The Co-Creator of Kubernetes On Convincing Google, Building It, and Scaling for LLMs

Mar 23, 2026 · 1h 7m

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Meta Hiring Lead On Behind The Scenes of Senior+ Eng Hiring

Mar 16, 2026 · 1h 42m

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OpenAI Codex Tech Lead On How His Career Grew And How He Uses Codex | Michael Bolin

Mar 9, 2026 · 1h 20m

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Distinguished Eng On Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan Cantrill

Mar 2, 2026 · 1h 21m

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Turing Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working With Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport

Feb 23, 2026 · 1h 10m

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Retired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring Stories

Feb 16, 2026 · 1h 19m

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

Feb 9, 2026 · 40 min

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

Feb 2, 2026 · 1h 35m

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Honest Big Tech Layoff Story After 25 Year Career

Jan 30, 2026 · 50 min

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Ex-Citadel Quant and AI Researcher On Breaking In, Tech vs Finance Careers

Jan 26, 2026 · 58 min

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

Jan 23, 2026 · 49 min

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

Jan 19, 2026 · 1h 1m

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

Jan 12, 2026 · 56 min

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

Jan 4, 2026 · 29 min

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Best Software Engineering Career Advice of 2025

Dec 29, 2025 · 16 min

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

Dec 22, 2025 · 42 min

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

Dec 15, 2025 · 1h 24m

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

Dec 8, 2025 · 53 min

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Robinhood SWE Turned $1B+ Founder on Non-Linear Careers, Being Jaded About Promos, Startup Learnings

Nov 30, 2025 · 42 min

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

Nov 21, 2025 · 59 min

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

Nov 11, 2025 · 1h 26m

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

Oct 24, 2025 · 50 min

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

Oct 10, 2025 · 1h 35m

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Intern to Microsoft Distinguished Engineer in 11 Promotions (Career Story)

Sep 5, 2025 · 1h 32m

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Ex-Stripe CTO on What Grew His Career, Hiring Without Leetcode, Coding as a Leader (Career Story)

Aug 29, 2025 · 1h 59m

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Behind the Scenes of this Podcast So Far (25,000 Sub Special)

Aug 22, 2025 · 15 min

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Meta Senior Manager (M2) on Manager Career Growth, PIPs, Amazon vs Meta | Stefan Mai

Aug 15, 2025 · 1h 31m

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Instagram Staff (IC6) Promo Despite 10 Team Switches in 9 Years (Career Story)

Aug 8, 2025 · 48 min

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Amazon VP On Promotions, Getting Fired Twice, Working With Bezos | Ethan Evans

Aug 1, 2025 · 53 min

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