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The Peterman Post

developing.dev

Sharing learnings from the transparent career stories of technical people, written by an ex-software engineer @ Instagram. Click to read The Peterman Post, by Ryan Peterman, a Substack publication with hundreds of thousands of subscribers.

Engineering management / careersSoftware / engineering practice

’23’24’25’26
Posts
183 from 17 Feb 2023 to 26 Oct 2026
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weekly (60 in the last year)
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personal blog
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2026 52

  1. Brian Kernighan: Inside Bell Labs, The Best Programmer, Why C Won
  2. The Story Behind Creating DNS | Paul Mockapetris
  3. Scott Aaronson: The Mathocalypse & Does Intelligence Matter Anymore?
  4. Neetcode: Google vs Amazon, Programming Interviews, Quitting Big Tech
  5. Amazon VP: Questions On Corporate Politics But They Get Increasingly Darker | Ethan Evans
  6. OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9): The Psychology Behind Tech Career Peaks | Philip Su
  7. Update on Quitting My Job
  8. Casey Muratori: Surprises In Computer History And Where Bad Code Comes From
  9. How Anthropic Builds And How Engineering Will Change Soon | Thariq Shihipar
  10. Creator of Scala: Comparing Languages And How AI Will Impact Them | Martin Odersky
  11. Sergey Levine: Current State of Humanoid Robotics, China & Future Predictions
  12. Creator of TypeScript: 10x Faster Typescript, Why AI Won't Replace SWEs | Anders Hejlsberg
  13. Creator of Lean: Handwritten Math Will Change Dramatically | Leonardo de Moura
  14. Creator of Lua: Scripting, Programming Languages, Predictions | Roberto Ierusalimschy
  15. Turing Award Winner: Early AI, LLM Predictions, Causality | Judea Pearl
  16. Creator of OCaml: Functional Programming, Formal Verification, Programming Languages | Xavier Leroy
  17. Turing Award Winner: TPUs vs GPUs vs CPUs, Computer Architecture, RISC vs CISC | David Patterson
  18. Turing Award Winner: NSA, Public Key Cryptography, Crypto Wars | Martin Hellman
  19. MIT Complexity Theorist: Why You Can Do Better Than “Optimal” On Leetcode & SAT | Ryan Williams
  20. OpenAI Eng & Dev Tools Founder: How Software Engineering Is Changing | Charlie Marsh
  21. Google DeepMind Pre-Training Lead: How To Get a Job at a Frontier Lab | Vlad Feinberg
  22. Co-Creator of Haskell: Functional Programming, Thinking in Types, Useless Languages | Simon Jones
  23. Turing Award Winner: P vs NP, Zero-Knowledge Proofs, Quantum Computation | Avi Wigderson
  24. 3 Top Takeaways From Dropbox’s Former Most Senior Engineer | James Cowling
  25. Dropbox’s Former Most Senior Eng: Building Great Systems and Advice for the AI Era | James Cowling
  26. Takeaways from Bjarne Stroustrup (Creator of C++)
  27. Creator of C++: Bell Labs, Negative Overhead Abstraction, Mistakes | Bjarne Stroustrup
  28. Takeaways from Harvard CS Professor David J Malan
  29. Harvard Professor: CS50, What Matters More Than CS, Lecturing Well | David J Malan
  30. Takeaways from PyTorch Eng Director at MSL
  31. PyTorch Eng Director: Promo Hacking, Industry Shifts, Regrets | John Myles White
  32. Turing Award Winner: Data Abstraction, Dijkstra, Distributed Systems | Barbara Liskov
  33. Turing Award Winner: Postgres, Disagreeing with Google, Future Problems | Mike Stonebraker
  34. AWS Distinguished Eng: Learnings From 3000 Incidents And How Engineering Is Changing | Marc Brooker
  35. Ex-Head of Eng at Instagram: Career Regrets and Learnings | James Everingham
  36. High Performers Understand Incentives
  37. Amazon VP Reveals Everything He's Seen In Corporate Politics | Ethan Evans
  38. The Creator of Kubernetes On Building Kubernetes
  39. Meta Hiring Lead On Behind The Scenes of Senior+ Eng Hiring
  40. OpenAI Codex Tech Lead On How His Career Grew And How He Uses Codex | Michael Bolin
  41. Distinguished Eng On Stack Ranking, Competing with Bezos, Regrets | Bryan Cantrill
  42. Turing Award Winner On Thinking Clearly, Paxos vs Raft, Working with Dijkstra | Leslie Lamport
  43. Retired Netflix Engineering Director On Regrets, Video Engineering, Hiring Stories
  44. Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9) On Influencing Engs, Failures, and Learnings
  45. I Quit My Job
  46. Instagram Principal Eng (IC8) On Building IG Stories, 1 Promo Per Half, Small Teams
  47. Honest Big Tech Layoff Story After 25 Years
  48. Stanford PhD, AI Researcher and Ex-Citadel Quant Shares His Experience
  49. Meta Senior Staff (IC7) Eng's Honest Demotion Story
  50. Airbnb Staff Eng on How To Not Get Stuck at Senior and Untold Rules of Calibrations
  51. New Grad to Principal Engineer (IC8) at Meta (Career Story)
  52. Anthropic Eng Leader and Ex-Senior Director at Meta on Advice That Changed Her Career

2025 33

  1. Frontline Manager at Meta to Senior Director at Snapchat in 3 years (Career Story)
  2. Boris Cherny (Creator of Claude Code) On How His Career Grew
  3. Instagram Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On 3 Promos Through Redefining Expectations (Career Story)
  4. Robinhood SWE Turned $1B+ Founder on Non-Linear Careers, Being Jaded About Promos, Startup Learnings
  5. What To Buy That Improves Quality of Life
  6. CloudKitchens CTO on Intelligence, Regrets, Steve Jobs and Travis Kalanick Stories
  7. What Would You Automate if It Was Free?
  8. Uber Distinguished Eng On Unfair Promos, Influence, Engineering Regrets (Career Story)
  9. Shopify Distinguished Eng (L10) on Principal+ Engineering, Career Story, Regrets | Ilya Grigorik
  10. Mozilla Firefox CTO on Browser War Stories and the Path to Distinguished Engineer
  11. Mozilla Firefox CTO on Browser War Stories and the Path to Distinguished Engineer
  12. Intern to Microsoft Distinguished Engineer in 11 Promotions (Career Story)
  13. Stripe CTO on What Grew His Career, Hiring Without Leetcode, Coding as a Leader (Career Story)
  14. Behind the Scenes of this Podcast So Far
  15. Meta Senior Manager (M2) on Manager Career Growth, PIPs, Amazon vs Meta | Stefan Mai
  16. Instagram Staff (IC6) Promo Despite 10 Team Switches in 9 Years (Career Story)
  17. Amazon VP On Promotions, Getting Fired Twice, Working With Bezos | Ethan Evans
  18. Tech Lead for Meta's Most-Used Programming Language (Promotion Story)
  19. GoogleX Chief Scientist On Imposter Syndrome, Career Growth, Project Taste | Carey Nachenberg
  20. Meta Senior Staff Eng (IC7) On Zuck Stories, Rapid Career Growth, Code Machine Archetype
  21. 26 Year Old Meta Staff Eng (IC6) On Promotions, Redefining Expectations, Secret Equity Bonuses
  22. On Writing Well At Work
  23. Instagram Principal Engineer (IC8) on Promotions, Breaking Prod, Tech Leading | Jake Bolam
  24. OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Engineer (IC9) On Working With Zuck, Carmack & Career Growth | Philip Su
  25. Industry Secrets We Wish We Knew Before Graduating | Staff Eng Talk @ UCLA
  26. 21x Hackathon Winner Turned College Dropout | Jia Chen Interview
  27. Amazon Principal Engineer On Layoffs, Interviewing & Career Growth | Steve Huynh
  28. The Path to Managing Managers
  29. 100,000 🎉
  30. When Job Hopping Doesn't Make Sense
  31. Staff Engineer @ Meta by Age 25 | Evan King
  32. Everything I Know About Shipping Code Faster
  33. What Worked (and Didn’t) in a Decade of Goal Setting

2024 52

  1. Ex-Meta Staff Eng & YC Startup Cofounder | Rahul Pandey
  2. The Developing Dev: Compiled 2024
  3. New Grad to Staff at Meta in 3 years: Evan King
  4. Why Leetcode Is So Popular
  5. One Thing I Wish I Changed
  6. 28 Year Old Staff Engineer @ Google
  7. "How I Ship Projects at Big Tech Companies"
  8. Revealing My Passion Project
  9. Staff at Airbnb by Age 26 | Zach Wilson
  10. What You Work On >> How Hard You Work
  11. Engineering Confidence
  12. Write Down the Plan
  13. The Case Against Documenting Code
  14. Staffing Your Projects
  15. A New Era of Writing Code
  16. Unlearning Leetcode
  17. Backchannel Alignment
  18. Should You Become an Engineering Manager?
  19. Big Tech vs Startups (for New Grads)
  20. Tech Lead Manager (TLM) Roles
  21. Judgment
  22. How To Get Promoted (Without Getting Lucky)
  23. Junior (IC3) to Staff (IC6) via Job Hopping
  24. Earning Trust
  25. IC Promo "Champions"
  26. Product Thinking
  27. Work-Life Balance
  28. From Liberal Arts Major To Amazon Principal Engineer: Steve Huynh
  29. Promoting Your Work
  30. Why I Switched Teams
  31. Writing Tactics - Part 2
  32. Writing Tactics - Part 1
  33. Staying Sharp
  34. Standing on the Shoulders of Giants
  35. Scope, Not Titles
  36. An Optimized WFH Setup
  37. Time In Role Gatekeeping
  38. The Best Manager I've Had
  39. Shipping Code Faster
  40. The Tech Lead's Playbook
  41. A Simple Pattern for Finding Next-level Scope
  42. How AI Will Affect Your Career
  43. Mentorship’s Role in My Staff Promotion
  44. Staff Engineer Panel Summary
  45. Scaling Yourself
  46. How To Influence Without Authority
  47. Why Write Small Diffs
  48. How To Onboard
  49. Ratings != Promotions
  50. How To Drive Meetings
  51. Why Most Engineers Aren't 10x Engineers
  52. How To Write

2023 46

  1. How Promotions and Ratings Work
  2. How To Write an Effective Self-Review
  3. Best of "The Developing Dev" 2023
  4. What I Wish I Knew As a Mid-Level Engineer
  5. Promotion via Job Hopping
  6. Efficient Communication
  7. Top Tech Company Engineering Blog Posts
  8. 5 Skills the Best Engineers I Know Have in Common
  9. From Microsoft Intern to Meta Staff Engineer: Raviraj Achar
  10. 6 Software Engineering Templates I Wish I Had Sooner
  11. Top 3 SWE Skills I Picked Up On The Job
  12. How Some Engineers Always Lead
  13. Setting Up Cross-Team Workstreams
  14. Protect Your Time
  15. Building Experience Faster
  16. Finding Next-Level Scope
  17. Be Visible
  18. FAANG Career Ladder: Staff (L6) vs Senior Staff (L7)
  19. Speedrunning Guide: Senior (L5) -> Staff (L6)
  20. FAANG Career Ladder: Senior (L5) vs Staff (L6)
  21. Speedrunning Guide: Mid-level (L4) -> Senior (L5)
  22. Speedrunning Guide: Junior (L3)-> Mid-Level (L4)
  23. FAANG Career Ladder: Mid-level (L4) vs Senior (L5)
  24. FAANG Career Ladder: Junior (L3) vs Mid-level (L4)
  25. 5 Books Every Software Engineer Should Read
  26. Threads' Invisible Armor
  27. Resilient Systems Through Retrospection
  28. New Grad to Senior Engineer in 2 years: Jordan Cutler
  29. Finding Staff-Level Scope
  30. Job Hunting in the Layoff Era
  31. Maximizing Impact in the Layoff Era
  32. Generalist or Specialist?
  33. Optimizing for Opportunity
  34. Investing Your Career
  35. Tools of the Trade
  36. Why Communication Is More Important Than Code
  37. How To Tell If You Have a Good Eng Manager
  38. Why I Stayed at Meta When All My Friends Left
  39. Staff+ Career Growth: Product or Infra?
  40. Cracking the Coding Interview
  41. Why Engineers Need To Write
  42. The Only Three Classes That Mattered From My College Degree
  43. 3 Mistakes I Made as an Engineer, but Had To Become a Manager To See
  44. Move Fast Without Breaking Anything
  45. How to Start Reviewing Code
  46. The Story Behind this Newsletter