Instagram Principal Engineer (IC8) on Promotions, Breaking Prod, Tech Leading | Jake Bolam

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’ll break prod). He also shared interesting stories about his promotions as well as many tips on how to have IC8 impact with a solid work life balance. We discuss: • Struggling initially at Facebook • His promotions from IC6 -> IC8 • Accepting diffs that break prod • Systems for reasonable work life balance at IC8 • His note taking system in VSCode • Advice for his younger self Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (00:50) His rough onboarding to Facebook product team (04:32) Switching to Instagram (06:39) What IC7 scope looks like (09:48) Thoughts on management (10:32) Why he always makes time for others (13:31) His IC7 & IC8 stories (20:54) Swapping out infra for 1000s of engs (22:37) Work life balance tips (IC6 -> IC8) (27:26) Diffs reviews & risk (36:07) Being a good tech lead (42:12) Taking notes in VSCode (47:03) Advice for his younger self (49:54) Outro Where to find Jake: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/• https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ Threads: https://www.threads.com/@theregularbuiltozzy https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ Where to find Ryan: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ • X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/ • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlp https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakebolam/eterman To hear more, visit www.developing.dev https://www.developing.dev?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=show-notes-spotify-open-access

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  Even if I see your diff is gonna blow up production, I will comment on it and be like, this is gonna blow up production? And then accept it and be like, yeah, make sure you fix that first, right?

• 0:09Ryan Peterman?

  This is Jake Bullum. He's a Principal Engineer, or IC8 at Instagram, who got promoted twice from Staff Engineer.

• 0:16Speaker 00

  So I think IC8 was like, so let's go and put him on one of the projects we have that is like impossible and everyone thinks it's stupid.

• 0:24Ryan Peterman?

  And yet, his work-life balance is somehow reasonable. So sadly, you have a pretty good balance?

• 0:29Speaker 00

  Yes. And it's all the systems that have been building my whole career that I think are like able to keep me here. Yeah, you probably wanna know about it.

• 0:35Ryan Peterman?

  I thought he had a really interesting note-taking system.

• 0:38Speaker 00

  And my note-taking system is actually in VS Code.

• 0:41Ryan Peterman?

  And he shared a lot more than you might think.

• 0:43Speaker 00

  I'm also a bit of a loose unit and sometimes say dumb stuff.

• 0:47Ryan Peterman?

  Here's the full episode.

• 0:50Ryan Peterman?

  Your work has such insane blast radius because you got to IC8 or Principal Engineer in the industry. On your path to IC8, what were you hired in as to Meta? And maybe you can give a high-level timeline of the teams you were on?

• 1:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, sure thing. Yeah, so I came into Meta as a six and actually joined Facebook Groups at the time. So Groups went from, I don't know, 10 or 15 people to like 700 in like two or three years. But yeah, so I joined right at the peak of it, like 700.

• 1:19Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 1:20Speaker 00

  And I was on some team like Groups Integrity. It was actually pretty wild for me. I had a pretty slow ramp up to Meta because I joined when they, it was middle of COVID. COVID had just started, so they hadn't really figured out remote onboarding yet, so it was really slow. And then I joined my team and the election was coming, so no one could really ramp me up. So I was just kind of operating solo on like random stuff. So yeah, I had a really slow start to Meta for most people. So actually empathize with a lot of people that like, took like a year to ramp up instead of like three months.

• 1:51Ryan Peterman?

  Was your performance at risk initially because you were onboarding remotely or?

• 1:56Speaker 00

  I think my manager like helped, helped a lot like with the system. And I managed to get like a meets all or something like this. You know, definitely wasn't excelling. And I had a few little projects that like probably helped them sell that. But yeah, I'm pretty sure they told this like slow onboarding story during PSC.

• 2:14Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 2:14Speaker 00

  Which was kind of crazy, especially because Groups was like so critical at the time, right? They had so many engineers. And right after that, I actually just, I just decided to switch teams because I had some friends on Instagram and they were like, yo, come and work on. Instagram web. And this is, this has actually been a bit of a theme throughout my career. So I joined Meta to work on UIs, right? To work on web, to use React. I loved React. And I joined this group's integrity team. We weren't doing really any of that. Like, I was doing it like twenty percent of the time, but most of the time with backend systems, right? So I was like, okay, cool. I'll move to this team.

• 2:51Ryan Peterman?

  So is your background before Meta all more like full stack or front end work?

• 2:56Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I spent, I started coding at a really young age and it was always on the front end. And then when I went to companies, I would like to do like front end product. And every single company I ever worked at moved me into like front end infrastructure very quickly. And then backend infrastructure. And actually, one of my big draws to Meta was, oh, they're so big. I'll always be able to work on front end product.

• 3:17Ryan Peterman?

  Right, like specializing.

• 3:18Speaker 00

  Yeah. And this theme continued where I got pulled into Instagram now to do front end product. It was like awesome. Within a couple of months, I was on the front end infrastructure team.

• 3:28Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 3:28Speaker 00

  In Instagram. And then, yeah, within like a year, I was on the backend infrastructure teams. And I was like, oh, it doesn't matter which company I'm at.

• 3:36Ryan Peterman?

  How do you, how do you keep getting pulled to the backend? Like, what is drawing you?

• 3:42Speaker 00

  I think, well, now, because you've done it so many times, you end up knowing like a lot about it. And like all the different like architecture and the systems that you have to sort of put together. And it, it just, it is more impactful now, right? With the big switch to mobile. The only thing that's like rivaling it is the server, right? Like, web has become such a small amount of our traffic. You've got to go to where the more important stack is.

• 4:06Ryan Peterman?

  I see. So generally, you are picking projects based off of where the impact is. And that is leading you to go to backend stuff or like.

• 4:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. Like on, at Instagram, at web, we probably had like less than a hundred people would work on it, you know, around the company part time.

• 4:24Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 4:24Speaker 00

  And on the backend, we have like two thousand, three thousand engineers working on it.

• 4:29Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah. That makes sense.

• 4:30Speaker 00

  Even from the engineering point of view.

• 4:31Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right. So then, so then you were IC six on the group's team. You were onboarding slowly and you weren't liking it. It was this backend integrity system. You switched to Instagram web as an IC six, is that right?

• 4:45Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 4:46Ryan Peterman?

  Okay. And so that's where your career started to really pick up.

• 4:51Speaker 00

  Yes. So I think I came in and like had all the skill sets. So I was like basically ramped up immediately and like. Landing impact immediately. And my managers on the team at the time recognized that I was like pretty strong. And we were, we were growing too. They were moving from one of our stacks to another stack.

• 5:08Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 5:09Speaker 00

  And they were like, hey, we're gonna have like two or three teams. What do you think about like stretching to be the Uber TL across these teams, right? Cause that's six to seven barriers started. You're not on one team anymore. You're kind of leading like a bunch of teams.

• 5:21Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 5:22Speaker 00

  And I was like, yeah, I think I can do it. So they kind of gave me the opportunity to like do that.

• 5:27Ryan Peterman?

  Right. Why do you think they came to you for the opportunity? Yeah, I think that's one of the big things people look for.

• 5:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:35Ryan Peterman?

  People who wanna get to these levels, they, even if they want to, sometimes they don't have the opportunity. So.

• 5:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 5:42Ryan Peterman?

  I'm curious, what did you do that, that you think made them come to you and say, hey, we want you to do the IC seven thing?

• 5:50Speaker 00

  So when I was actually joining the team, it was something that I was like looking for too. So I was like, yeah, I want the career growth, right? I think I can do this. Like I, my previous companies, I was actually leading four teams. Before I came to Meta, so Meta likes to down level you, right? So I went from leading four teams to one team when I came to Meta.

• 6:09Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 6:09Speaker 00

  So they were like, yeah, like we'll see what happens in the first month. And if you're like crushing it, we'll like give you that opportunity. So I came in and in the first month, like did what they needed. So they, okay, here we go.

• 6:20Ryan Peterman?

  So when you, like even before you switched, you said, hey FYI, I'm, I'm eager for IC seven and.

• 6:27Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 6:28Ryan Peterman?

  And so they knew that and they basically just gave you the opportunity cause and to see if you could do it.

• 6:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So they knew that about me and then they knew that they needed it on the team too, right?

• 6:38Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right. So you talked about what is IC seven scope? What does IC seven scope look like?

• 6:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, so IC seven scope to me looks like, yeah, so six is like, you're basically like the TL of a team, right? Maybe 10, 12 people. It really depends on your team though. If you're on like. A really complicated part of the stack or something, maybe your team skews differently. But generally like that, or if you're on a really easy part, maybe it skews the other way. But generally like, yeah, six is leading one team and then seven is like across multiple teams or across like a a different area, right?

• 7:12Ryan Peterman?

  So then would eight be even just like another step of that progression?

• 7:16Speaker 00

  Yeah, so eight just keeps going up to, right, for different teams, like your blast radius. And yeah, this is all dependent on how important the problem is that you're working on, right? Working on the backend infrastructure, right? If you're impacting three thousand engineers by like making your frameworks better.

• 7:32Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  And it's taking a lot to make those frameworks better, right?

• 7:35Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 7:36Speaker 00

  You need like hundreds of people to make those frameworks better.

• 7:38Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 7:39Speaker 00

  Like you're hitting pretty big blast radius.

• 7:41Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah. So then your archetype is leading through other, because there's also the other ones like framework specialists, kind of someone that just digs deep somewhere and speeds up a thousand people, but is not directing a thousand people. Maybe you can talk about like the archetypes.

• 7:58Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So this, I'm, yeah, talking through one very specific lens.

• 8:03Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 8:03Speaker 00

  Right. So yeah, there's all these ways that people can, you know, contribute to the business and like be having that large blast impact. And yeah, the most extreme other end of the spectrum is like the specialties, right? So you've got the guys that are like, I don't know, deep on the compiler. Or like, yeah, they change like ten lines of code down there and it saves the business, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars.

• 8:26Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, like a fixer.

• 8:27Speaker 00

  Like the fixes, yeah. So you've got, you've got this range.

• 8:31Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 8:31Speaker 00

  That you can do it in. And maybe they don't like talking to people, right? They don't like running around.

• 8:36Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  But we still realize it's like really good value in having these folks around and give them the career path too.

• 8:41Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Were you intentional about the archetype that you picked for yourself as you grew to I C eight?

• 8:49Speaker 00

  So I guess not really. My philosophy is always just do whatever it takes to get whatever project I'm on done. But you know, I'm leaning into my strengths and my strengths are like talking to people, like being able to yeah coordinate people. I like to think I'm like fun and happy to be around, which gives people like, you know, some motivation other than work. To be there and like, you know, most of the projects I'm on are like marathon projects. So we get to stick around for like a long time together and have some fun.

• 9:18Ryan Peterman?

  Right. So you're like a force multiplier, like you take a group of people and you make them some percentage better because of, you know, your behaviors.

• 9:27Speaker 00

  Yeah, maybe that, maybe that's what happens, but I don't think about it like that. I'm just trying to get us all doing the same thing. And I see the good in people, right? And I like see the strengths in people. I just want people around me to succeed. So I'm just trying to make them succeed. And I guess that end up, you know, compounding and being best for all of us like.

• 9:48Ryan Peterman?

  Have you ever thought about management? Cause like a lot of what you just described, I feel like there's some overlap there.

• 9:54Speaker 00

  I've done some brief stints in management before Meta.

• 9:56Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 9:57Speaker 00

  And yeah, I think it's just, it's not for me. Cause I like to be able to then like, if the project needs it, go and like, you know, land 500 diffs in a couple of months or whatever. Like go and land a ton of code to us across the line.

• 10:09Ryan Peterman?

  I see.

• 10:09Speaker 00

  And can't really do that in management.

• 10:12Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 10:13Speaker 00

  I'm also a bit of a loose unit and sometimes say dumb stuff. So I think I need, it's better if I'm not in management and like, have people in management who can check me on that, you know, occasionally when it's needed.

• 10:25Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right. That makes sense. Yeah, I feel like you have to be a little more sensitive to things as a manager.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 10:33Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I noticed your internal profile said something like always open for a chat or something like that. But my view of an ICA is someone who's drowning in responsibilities and does not have time.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:47Ryan Peterman?

  Why do you make time for, or you know, make yourself available like that if your time is like so precious?

• 10:53Speaker 00

  So yeah, definitely, you know, you're getting worked a lot at ICA and you're, you are overloaded. But yeah, I'll always make time for someone who will, who is reaching out about something, right? You know, maybe, maybe I'll be completely overloaded and the meeting has to be like a few weeks from now. But there's a lot of value in being accessible to everyone, right?

• 11:13Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 11:13Speaker 00

  Like, anyone can come to you and be like, hey, I have this idea or I have this problem, like, can you help me? And you're just like, helping your org or you learn about a problem that you wouldn't have known about otherwise.

• 11:24Ryan Peterman?

  Right. I kind of wondered though, cause someone like you's probably getting so many, you know, outreaches, like, I would have thought you'd have to pick and choose a bit, you know, like, let's say, intern comes to you and is just excited and wants a coffee chat or something.

• 11:43Ryan Peterman?

  In a, in a, in a nice, perfect world, you'd make time for them and you talk to them. But

• 11:48Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 11:49Ryan Peterman?

  In a impact-driven world, some things are gonna need to be dropped. What are your thoughts on picking and choosing your time?

• 11:57Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I, I do try to put the levels thing out of my head always. So if an intern's coming to me, I try to treat them the same as everyone else. So if they came and they were like, asking good questions, right? Or like, you know, you're giving, you're telling them stuff and they're like acting on it and going for it. You know, I'm probably likely to give them more time again. But if they come in and they like kind of ignore it or they ask really bad questions and stuff.

• 12:20Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  Probably not likely to give them too much time again.

• 12:24Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 12:24Speaker 00

  This is assuming I had time in the first place. Yeah, if I'm completely overloaded, like, it'll be like, hey, sorry, like, can we do it in a month? Or this is, here's another person that you can chat to, right? Who would probably be better and helpful.

• 12:38Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 12:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 12:39Ryan Peterman?

  You, you mentioned

• 12:40Speaker 00

  So just trying my best, I guess.

• 12:42Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right.

• 12:44Speaker 00

  To a certain point.

• 12:45Ryan Peterman?

  You mentioned bad questions and good questions. And I think a lot of people who are earlier in their career, that's something that they're thinking about a lot is, should they ask or not? What's good, what's bad?

• 12:56Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 12:57Ryan Peterman?

  Do you have any tips on how to make your questions good?

• 13:01Speaker 00

  Haven't really thought about it too much, but I don't, I don't know, just be.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  Be genuine, right? Don't try and like script it or like pick up line it like.

• 13:11Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 13:11Speaker 00

  Pick up line. Yeah, just be genuine about what you wanna ask or find out.

• 13:16Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 13:17Speaker 00

  Because then naturally you'll find the right person, right? If you ask me one of these questions that is like very helpful for you and I know someone better who can answer it, who has more time, right? Then you're gonna end up with someone better who has more time and it's gonna be better for you in the long run.

• 13:30Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Before we leave the IC seven, IC eight. Yeah, I'm curious. You mentioned there was a big migration that got you promoted to IC seven and you were leading a few teams and your management chain said, we need, we need a leader and you were eager and you you took that on. What was it for IC eight?

• 13:53Speaker 00

  Yeah. Also, just just on that, like getting to the seven one, you gotta also land the project, right?

• 13:58Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right.

• 13:59Speaker 00

  So, yeah, definitely. I think something that happened that helped with the seven one is I was like sort of seen as this person that would like come in and like fix it or get it back on track, right? So we were doing this this back, the the infra migration.

• 14:14Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 14:15Speaker 00

  And it was scoped at like two years or something.

• 14:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 14:17Speaker 00

  And we came in and it wasn't just me. Like I came in and like we all started chatting and stuff and we got excited and we actually ended up delivering like the majority of it in like six months.

• 14:25Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, wow.

• 14:26Speaker 00

  Which was like crazy. No one expected that, which meant that we can then move ninety percent of the resources.

• 14:30Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 14:30Speaker 00

  Onto other stuff, which actually let us put ads on Instagram web the following half.

• 14:35Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 14:36Speaker 00

  Which was also like a year behind and then we shipped it, got on the team and shipped it in like three months, which was kind of crazy.

• 14:42Ryan Peterman?

  That's kind of crazy. What's the how? How did you take some of those two years and make it happen? Did you cut scope or did you? Yeah, what happened?

• 14:51Speaker 00

  Yeah, we cut scope, but I think more it was just like everyone on the team got got hungry for it and was like, yo, two years is silly. Like, we can do this sooner, like. We'd started to gel together, right? Everybody was sort of playing to their strengths, which you're like, here is pretty common and we're like, yeah, we can do this like way sooner than two years.

• 15:10Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 15:11Speaker 00

  I think before we were going very serially too, like we were doing like one page at a time.

• 15:15Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 15:16Speaker 00

  And someone was like, yo, why don't we do like a hundred pages? And we're like. Okay, let's try it. So then we tried it and it was like, you know, really hard at first because we'd just done a hundred pages. But then we had all the like compounding effects of putting it all together. So that was like accelerating us. So we were like switching parts of the strategy too.

• 15:31Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 15:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:33Ryan Peterman?

  How how did you get that team so excited about it?

• 15:37Speaker 00

  I can't take all the credit because I don't know what happens. These situations are organic. You just start talking about it and then people like bouncing off each other and doing it. But yeah, I was just bringing some some of that hungry energy and I guess it was infectious and then everybody was like on board with it and we're all having fun and we're like, yeah, we want to do great. And like, because we shipped it early, right? It was it was good for me, but it was good for everyone else too, right?

• 15:59Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:00Speaker 00

  Lots of promotions on the team.

• 16:01Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. And it's super deserving. I mean, that's insane business impact, like such a huge thing.

• 16:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 16:08Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Because then we got ads on there and then I I can't remember, but we're pulling in like a bunch of money on a surface that had never been monetized, right?

• 16:15Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right.

• 16:15Speaker 00

  Which wasn't slated to happen for a long time.

• 16:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. That makes sense. So and that was the IC seven promo.

• 16:21Speaker 00

  So that was the IC seven promo. So I think IC eight was like, at this point, leadership like identifies you and like knows, okay, so Jake is the type of person, we can go and throw on problems that no one else really wants to work on, or it's like really hard to move. Uh, or the rest of the org thinks is stupid and impossible. So let's go and put him on one of the projects we have that is like

• 16:42Ryan Peterman?

  Impossible.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Impossible and everyone thinks is stupid.

• 16:45Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 16:46Speaker 00

  Which was like, we'd just done the front end, moving it into the into the main meta stack, right? Hey, can you like move the backend into the main meta stack?

• 16:55Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 16:55Speaker 00

  And I was like, cool, that sounds impossible. Let's let's try that.

• 16:59Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 16:59Speaker 00

  And that's, yeah, you you're aware of the details of the project, but that that was an interesting one because, yeah, ninety five percent of the engineering org was like, this is stupid. Why would we waste any resources?

• 17:09Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 17:10Speaker 00

  On this, right? So we knew we wanted to migrate into the other stack, but we couldn't. Go out to the engineering org and say, hey, we're migrating because we get shot down and like everyone would be like, this is the dumbest thing ever and we've like killed morale.

• 17:23Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 17:23Speaker 00

  For the org. So we're like, okay, what can we do? All right, everyone's having this problem with interacting between these two stacks that we have.

• 17:30Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 17:31Speaker 00

  All right, we're gonna go and fix the dev X between the two stacks. And we made a big deal about fixing the dev X between the two stacks.

• 17:37Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 17:38Speaker 00

  For the first year.

• 17:39Ryan Peterman?

  I see.

• 17:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:40Ryan Peterman?

  So, I mean, you said people would think it's stupid. You're talking about the people who are using the existing IG backend stack and are used to it and they're saying, well, it works. Why switch over?

• 17:52Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 17:52Ryan Peterman?

  Those, okay.

• 17:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:54Ryan Peterman?

  And so you had to, you couldn't just immediately initiate migration of infrastructure that thousands of engineers are using without bringing them along and saying, look, it's a good experience still.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Yes. Yeah, I think so. So and also I kind of like, at the time, I like agree with those engineers, right? Like, the majority of our development is in this stack. All our important surfaces are here. Like, it's way better to be in one. And I'm like, yeah, this is true. But like, our other stack was growing in usage. There was already all this cross stuff happening. So like, I don't know, thirty or forty percent of the org were impacted by this.

• 18:33Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 18:33Speaker 00

  But it maybe wasn't hitting the point where it was worth justifying putting like a hundred people on it to like, move it, move it all across.

• 18:40Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 18:41Speaker 00

  So we did the building blocks, right? Like, okay, let's make the highway between the two better, which is like, no one's really gonna argue against that because they're like, they come across it occasionally and they're like, oh, that would make my life better. So we'll do that. And then on the other side, okay, there's stuff missing from dub dub dub. So that was the first year. In the second year, it's like, there's a bunch of stuff missing from dub dub dub that doesn't make it feel like Instagram.

• 19:03Ryan Peterman?

  Mm hmm.

• 19:05Speaker 00

  Let's go and add all that stuff in there. So it's actually easier to build in there. So that was year two. We went and did that. Uh. Now we're in year three where it's like, okay, now we have these two things. And during that time, more of the cross stack stuff has happened.

• 19:20Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 19:20Speaker 00

  Some surfaces did migrate because they were going to get bigger benefits. Uh. Now we've kind of got to the point where people are like, okay, we see the writing on the wall. Like, how can we get in there as fast as possible?

• 19:31Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 19:31Speaker 00

  And now we're in like full migration mode.

• 19:34Ryan Peterman?

  And so the I C eight promo, because I guess the full migration is not fully complete, but there was some milestone in this larger strategy that was worth an I C eight promo.

• 19:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think so. So I think this project, like at some point, someone came to me and was like, yo, should be running this project or something. He's like a very senior engineer at Meta, like, I don't know, ten or ten or eleven. He's been around a while.

• 19:58Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 19:58Speaker 00

  Because the project was like, it was, it was so crazy trying to rewrite Instagram.

• 20:02Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 20:03Speaker 00

  While, you know, the classic metaphor of like, you know, you're on the plane, you've got to

• 20:07Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 20:07Speaker 00

  Switch the whole plane while you're still on it.

• 20:09Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  So, yeah, this project was scoped at like, you know, many I C eights worth of scope or an I C nine or something.

• 20:16Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 20:16Speaker 00

  And we only had, uh, sevens working on it at the time. So there was space for that if you're like going to do it. And then we had, we hit a couple of big milestones, right? So we had some of these surface milestones we had hit. Uh, as well as we'd hit pretty big traffic ones. So we'd hit like massive milestones.

• 20:33Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right.

• 20:34Speaker 00

  But, yeah, that was still enough to be like, okay, yeah.

• 20:37Ryan Peterman?

  Like this is, this is work.

• 20:38Speaker 00

  A lot of work. Yeah, there's a hundred and fifty teams involved. There's like, it's moving, everything that is being moved is like, you know, twenty percent faster or is like way easier to work on. Okay, okay.

• 20:48Ryan Peterman?

  Okay. I mean, yeah, that blast radius is insane. I mean, it makes a lot of sense. Yeah, one thing I was curious about, because you, this is one of those projects where you're switching out a lot of the infrastructure that people are using. How did you make sure all these engineers are happy with the tooling? Because you're, you're switching it out while they're doing their day to day work. Did you, I don't know, have some sort of way to engage the community and keep them happy?

• 21:18Speaker 00

  Uh, yeah. So we have like at Instagram, we have like a group of people we call our server champions.

• 21:24Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, right, right.

• 21:24Speaker 00

  And I think you have these like sort of horizontal groups in many orgs. I've had them at previous companies too, right? They're always called different things. I don't know, the server guild, whatever. You just need, when you have so many teams, people from all around the org to kind of represent the platform that you're working on. And you want like some people from your infra teams, but you want majority people from your product teams. Because infra teams can get quite disconnected from how day-to-day developments happen.

• 21:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  So we had those folks. So we would always like, it's basically a continuous channel. Like we have a chat group and stuff, right? I think there's about forty of us.

• 21:57Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 21:57Speaker 00

  So they're always giving us feedback. We're always asking for feedback. If stuff's coming up, we're asking them to like, let us know, right? Like if someone on the team raises it to them, let us know. I think that's actually like probably our most important feedback channel. We do have the big feedback channels of like, you know, the two thousand person groups where people can post in DevX feedback like. But we find it has to be really bad by the time it gets posted in that group and we probably know about it already.

• 22:24Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:25Speaker 00

  Whereas these server champion groups, like we might know about it within an hour or two, right? Of something like rolling out or breaking.

• 22:31Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 22:31Speaker 00

  In addition to like all the metrics that we monitor, which are very helpful too.

• 22:35Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. As you've grown from IC six to IC eight, you take on more responsibility. How's your, your like hours worked per week changed over the, over time?

• 22:48Speaker 00

  Yeah. So I think sometimes I get really excited at work and I'll be like working like, you know, sixty hour weeks or something like that, seventy hour weeks. Uh, and then other times like, okay, let's get this back under control and I'll like drop it down to like, you know, my forty hour weeks. Or if it's during the summer and I worked sixty hour weeks during the winter, I'll be like, okay, I'm gonna do thirty five hour weeks during the summer or something.

• 23:08Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:08Speaker 00

  So it does, it does fluctuate and depends on what the project's going on. But most of the time I am trying to target like the forty. Hours a week, cause I want that work-life balance. I've got more to life than just working, right?

• 23:20Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 23:21Speaker 00

  But yeah, if I get really excited, I might get into it. If I decide I need to do more personal, I'll like bow out of it.

• 23:27Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. So certainly you have a pretty good balance then, actually. You're able to maintain your impact with a reasonable amount. You're not going crazy.

• 23:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, over the last six months, yes. And it's all the systems that have been building the whole, my whole career that I think are like able to, to keep me here.

• 23:45Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 23:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, you probably wanna know about.

• 23:46Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, yeah. I gotta know about these systems then. What are these systems that are making you able to have this level of impact with that time investment?

• 23:54Speaker 00

  So, yeah, the, the thing is, so definitely do shield my time. So while I am open to people coming in, I do shield my time. So I think.

• 24:01Ryan Peterman?

  Like focus blocks or?

• 24:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, like nearly fifty percent of my week is focus blocks. So I try not to do any meetings on any mornings. So I'm a morning person and I get a lot done in the mornings. So I will not take meetings until after lunch.

• 24:14Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:15Speaker 00

  And that's worked pretty well for me. In addition to that, I try to make it so Wednesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I don't have any meetings.

• 24:23Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  And then also I'll try to put all my one-on-ones on Monday afternoons.

• 24:29Ryan Peterman?

  Is there some specific reason for beginning of the week or just?

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Uh, no, nothing for beginning of the week. I just picked a day that I was like, okay, I'm gonna just do these all in a block.

• 24:39Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 24:40Speaker 00

  And then that leaves basically Tuesday and Thursday afternoons for project meetings.

• 24:44Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 24:44Speaker 00

  This doesn't always work right because.

• 24:46Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I was about to say.

• 24:47Speaker 00

  There's every week, there's exceptions to the rule, but generally I find that shields a lot of my time so that I'm able to, yeah, do stuff to like move the projects forward that I need or like.

• 24:58Speaker 00

  Message people when I need to message.

• 25:00Ryan Peterman?

  Okay, so focus time. What about, cause you said sometimes you just, you just really focus and you do five hundred diffs and like in a couple of months. When you're in that hyper productive coding state, how do you do that?

• 25:14Speaker 00

  Oh, okay. Yeah. So on times where I'm doing that, yeah, like I'll just disappear for like two, two or three weeks. Well, not disappear, but like I will. Cancel like lots of these meetings, right? If you, once a project's going and has momentum or something, you can like, you know, skip a few weeks of

• 25:28Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 25:28Speaker 00

  project updates or sync groups if we're all together and know exactly what we need to be doing.

• 25:33Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:34Speaker 00

  So yeah, we'll cut out meetings and I think I've been praised a little bit for like how few meetings I have on the teams and projects that I run, like people are very surprised when they come in and learn that like this massive project doesn't have central meetings.

• 25:47Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Like there, there are no meetings.

• 25:49Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 25:49Speaker 00

  Like people are like, hey, I want to get involved, can you add me to the syncs? I'm like, there are no syncs.

• 25:54Ryan Peterman?

  Well, how do you, how do you keep, cause those meetings have some value, so.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  They have some value, so this, the work streams that need to have them will, but like overall and overarching, there isn't any. So there's not this tiered thing. It's like if you're on a particular work stream, right? There is one sync for that.

• 26:10Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:11Speaker 00

  You don't have to go to like a series of syncs where it's like, okay, we need to go to this one. And then I need to go to like this level one and this level one.

• 26:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 26:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:19Ryan Peterman?

  Is there some high leverage, like leads kind of meeting?

• 26:23Speaker 00

  So there isn't, so there isn't that yet, but there is probably a core group of like, you know, fifteen TLs across the different areas. But we don't all just sit in a meeting and meet together.

• 26:33Ryan Peterman?

  Hmm.

• 26:33Speaker 00

  If we need to, we'll like chat in a, chat in a group, but we didn't even have a chat group.

• 26:37Ryan Peterman?

  There's not even a chat.

• 26:38Speaker 00

  There's not even a chat group.

• 26:39Ryan Peterman?

  It's just all ad hoc as needed.

• 26:41Speaker 00

  It's all as ad hoc as needed and like if we need to have some of these conversations, we'll just push it into the wider forums.

• 26:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 26:48Speaker 00

  Or if there does need to be a thing that's like sensitive or something and we do need to chat about it together, we, we will do the ad hoc stuff.

• 26:55Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 26:56Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:56Ryan Peterman?

  I like that. I mean, most recurring cadences are suboptimal because they're just static, you know, so.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:04Ryan Peterman?

  I do kind of like that.

• 27:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. So this is part of the philosophy too. So always be available, right? So if someone needs to talk to me that day, I will find time to like talk to that person, right?

• 27:14Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 27:14Speaker 00

  Whether it's like I have to be out, I'm out going for lunch or something, I'll take the phone call. Like I'll do meetings in all sorts of weird places to make sure that people like have the info they need and they're on the block.

• 27:25Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right. And in those times where you're a coding machine, are you also diff review machine and what's it look like?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah, whatever's needed. I actually, usually when I fire up, I'm getting in the zone, I'll quickly, I'll go to the diffs first. Because anyone who's got a needs review diff, right? Like they're semi-blocked or like they're not being able to land what they're landing. So yeah, I'll go through all of that first. Get that in before I even start coding myself and every hour I'll go back and check again.

• 27:54Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. So you're like really on top of diff review then?

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Really on top of diff reviews. Yeah, like actually, I think there's probably lots of memes floating around for me. Cause like people put up diffs and like five minutes later, it's like stamp on me and they're like, what the hell is going on? And that's a lot because I'm on top of it, but also because I have this philosophy on like diff reviews and risk where.

• 28:13Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 28:14Speaker 00

  If like, if I don't think the diff is risky, right? You're getting a very rudimentary review and like basically you can put that code in. Like, so if it's like gated, it's not on a core system, right? Right. These things, then you're gonna just get a very high level diff review and then basically I'm just like trusting you.

• 28:33Ryan Peterman?

  So you're saying you modulate your level of time investment based on how risky the diff is?

• 28:39Speaker 00

  Based on how risky the diff is, right? So if you're rewriting it, right? Where it's all gated right now and we just want the high level trunk. Architecture to be correct. If you're working on like some child component or something, it's like, cool. It's gated. It's not critical to the system.

• 28:53Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 28:54Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm trusting you to do whatever you need to do over there.

• 28:57Ryan Peterman?

  So you'll just stamp it?

• 28:58Speaker 00

  So just stamp it, let it in. Yeah.

• 29:00Ryan Peterman?

  Some people view quality diff review as a, uh, like an important thing rather than just stamping. So you ever get pushed back on that?

• 29:09Speaker 00

  This is my controversial one. Yeah, for sure. So yeah, so I, I think that is correct for like the, the trunk of the system, the core. Core parts of the system or anything that's already live in prod like is gonna get pretty thorough review. Yeah. If it's not live in prod and it is one of these sub, like sub parts of the system or less critical things. Like I'll still skim it to make sure you didn't do anything like absolutely crazy, like introduce like, I don't know, security issues or you know, start. Mining crypto on our servers or something. But, uh, yeah, I'll just like, let, let that, let that fly in.

• 29:44Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I, I, it makes sense. You're basically trading off speed for, I guess, quality, but it's not dumb quality. It's like. These are places where it makes sense to make the trade off.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Where you make, yeah. So you can have like lower quality components for like these, the child, the child parts of the system, right? Or the leaf parts of the system. And also these parts are like generally easier to unit test.

• 30:07Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  If they do fail, they only blow up like a small part of it, right?

• 30:11Ryan Peterman?

  Just a little blow up.

• 30:12Speaker 00

  Just a little part of it. If it is badly architected, it's only on this like. Tiny part of the system, it's not impacting, you know, hundreds of engineers, maybe it impacts a couple.

• 30:22Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 00

  And someone one day is like, what the hell's up with this?

• 30:24Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 30:25Speaker 00

  Doesn't take a long time to rewrite, right?

• 30:26Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right.

• 30:27Speaker 00

  If you mess up the architecture in the core trunk, probably takes like hundreds of people a long time to like fix.

• 30:32Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. Have you, have you ever had some, I remember early in my career, I was all about speed and I was approving some diffs and then someone would come back to me and say, why'd you approve this? That was too, you know, like, let's slow down a little bit on this. You ever get some feedback where someone says, hey, you know, calm down like?

• 30:52Speaker 00

  This definitely, this definitely happens. Actually, interesting thing. So teach the people close to me and my teams that like, hey, it's okay. Buy stamped or diff to like, put it back in review again if you actually need deeper review.

• 31:07Ryan Peterman?

  Hmm.

• 31:08Speaker 00

  Uh, or like, flag it, flag it in the summary or the test plan, like, or a comment on it, like, hey, I'm actually looking for a deep review on this. If you know that's how our team operates now.

• 31:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 31:18Speaker 00

  Uh, and this is actually really good because I might have thought it's like a child part of the system and maybe it is still a child part of the system. But they've thought, hey, this is like, could be like more performant or like, I actually want you to double check this.

• 31:30Ryan Peterman?

  Hmm.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  Uh, so then we use that signal to be like, okay, this person actually wants things. So if I missed it, even if they put a comment on it, they'll throw it back into review and like, be like, need real review or something like that, cause they knew, they knew what happened.

• 31:43Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 31:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:44Ryan Peterman?

  I see. That makes sense.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  But yeah, there's definitely, this is not the philosophy of everyone at Meta, right? Like we, most people, it's like quality, high quality for everything.

• 31:53Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, and it depends on the system though.

• 31:55Speaker 00

  Depends on the system. Also depends on like, this is like trust you build on your team too.

• 31:59Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, exactly.

• 31:59Speaker 00

  You on the team, probably not gonna get this treatment for the first couple of weeks.

• 32:02Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 32:03Speaker 00

  Although I do wanna defer to like, how do I accept this diff? Not, how do I reject this diff?

• 32:08Ryan Peterman?

  Hmm.

• 32:08Speaker 00

  Which I think is an important philosophy to have.

• 32:11Ryan Peterman?

  Hmm. Why is that?

• 32:12Speaker 00

  Yeah. Uh, cause like, I'm not trying to like knit your code and get you to write it the exact way I would write it, right? I'm trying to be like, okay, what is absolutely blocking this thing from going to, going to production like? Big, high-level architecture things, like, I don't know, some critical bugs, like, is it gonna blow up prod, right? Not like, write it exactly the way I would write it.

• 32:34Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 32:35Speaker 00

  I think that takes a while to get to, too, right? Like, more senior engineers usually become amenable to this.

• 32:40Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 32:40Speaker 00

  But when you're in, yeah, when you're like in the first five years of your career, maybe you've only seen a few ways of writing it right, so you want people to write it that exact way.

• 32:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. I, I think when you're working in a team where there's high trust and you get to the point where people, they have feedback, but they accept with nits, you know? I, I love that, cause everyone's just trusting each other, you know, move fast.

• 33:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:03Ryan Peterman?

  And I have some feedback, but it's not that important. It's just like, take it if you will.

• 33:09Speaker 00

  Man, this is where I push that needle even further again, so I'll like, even if I see your diff is gonna blow up production.

• 33:15Ryan Peterman?

  You accept.

• 33:16Speaker 00

  I will comment on it and be like, this is gonna blow up production? And then accept it and be like, yeah, make sure you fix that first, right?

• 33:23Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  I've never had a case where someone's like landed it.

• 33:26Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:27Speaker 00

  With a comment on it that says, hey, this is gonna blow up production. Cause you can, can you imagine like sitting in Sev Review or something and someone's like, the diff had a comment on it, this is gonna blow up production and it blew up.

• 33:37Ryan Peterman?

  That's wild that you accept that, though.

• 33:39Speaker 00

  Yeah, except I just trust them to fix it, right?

• 33:41Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:42Speaker 00

  Fix it the right way. Once again, if they have trust, if it's like a new person on the team and I'm not sure if they're gonna fix it the right way.

• 33:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:49Speaker 00

  Right, I might be like, ping me again when it's like ready.

• 33:52Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 33:52Speaker 00

  But yeah, ninety-nine percent of the time, I would just like, accept and go.

• 33:55Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 33:55Speaker 00

  And yeah, haven't had to do the thing where I pull back because I've never had one that's been shipped accidentally.

• 34:01Ryan Peterman?

  Exploded production.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  And that's actually a little bit of a philosophy I use across, like, I guess, building these systems, judging how fast I'm moving.

• 34:09Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 34:10Speaker 00

  If I'm doing something and it's not, I'm not getting feedback that it's like broken or I'm not seeing negative effects from it, right? Even if it is controversial and crazy.

• 34:18Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:18Speaker 00

  I'll keep pushing the boundary on it, right?

• 34:21Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:21Speaker 00

  Same as our rollouts, like, if we're at one percent, we're getting like very little feedback and like, metrics are looking good. And we might move to like ten percent the next day and people are like, that's crazy. Like step to like two, three, five things. It's like, well, we're not, we're not getting any like signals that it's not going poorly. As soon as we get signals that it's going poorly, we start pulling back, but otherwise I find you like move too slowly.

• 34:43Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 34:44Speaker 00

  You wanna be moving at like the fastest speed you can without ruining things.

• 34:48Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:49Speaker 00

  So if you're not getting, if you're not making anything worse, like keep trying to find that edge.

• 34:53Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 34:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:55Ryan Peterman?

  I, I had a tech lead early in my career and I had taken down prod or something and I was talking to him about it and he, you know, on one, on one end, you shouldn't break prod generally. But he also said, if you never break prod, you're probably, that's probably not also optimal. Like there, there should be some level of risk, otherwise you're moving too slowly.

• 35:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly.

• 35:22Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, try not to break prod, but if you never break it, you're probably like very slow.

• 35:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, and if you're breaking it every day, you're probably going way too fast. Yeah.

• 35:32Ryan Peterman?

  Exactly, exactly.

• 35:33Speaker 00

  Need to fix something.

• 35:34Ryan Peterman?

  Do you use AI at all?

• 35:36Speaker 00

  Yes, I've been, I use it, I use chat G P T like, I don't know, ten times a day outside of work and then internally we have like our own things that I use too. But I think it's great, right? Like just like harness the tools that are coming. They have a bunch of caveats and they make mistakes and stuff, but like, I don't know. I had to use, if someone said, don't use a calculator, I'd be like, what the fuck? Use the, use the tool, the tool's there, figure out a way to use it, right? Yeah, then maybe we won't get replaced if we become masters of the tools.

• 36:04Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly.

• 36:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 36:07Ryan Peterman?

  I wanted to talk about being a tech lead a bit, cause I feel like that's one superpower that you have. To start, what would you say is the role of a tech lead? Like what are the important things to do? And how do you see that role?

• 36:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, so. Yeah, people probably have a different opinion on this all over the place. But yeah, mine is just like, okay, you're the tech lead. You're responsible for this project now, right? Like, do whatever it takes to get this project done. Usually, the highest leverage thing you can be doing is like making sure everyone else is like contributing to the project and moving in the right direction.

• 36:37Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 36:38Speaker 00

  But sometimes you might have to switch and do other things like writing code or jump into fixer mode. There's been a few times where I've had to like, no one else can debug what this thing's doing. So I spent two weeks chasing like the craziest bug through the system to like find that kind of code that's messing up.

• 36:53Ryan Peterman?

  At this point, you've probably coached tech leads because you're in a position with leverage.

• 36:58Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 36:59Ryan Peterman?

  What's the most common mistake you see people make if they're transitioning into more of a leadership role?

• 37:04Speaker 00

  I think getting like, kind of disconnected from what the, what the goal is of the project, right? It's so easy to get caught up in the day to day operations of like, we need to be doing this, we need to be doing Y. And like lose track of the fact that like, the direction we're heading in might have actually shifted a little bit. And it's like your responsibility to like shift the team towards, towards the goal again, right?

• 37:25Ryan Peterman?

  Right. I know at Meta, regardless of how high level you are, you're expected to make technical contributions.

• 37:33Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 37:33Ryan Peterman?

  But generally, there is a sentiment of as you become a higher and higher tech lead, you get further and further from the code.

• 37:40Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 37:40Ryan Peterman?

  And more in doc work and leadership meetings and things.

• 37:43Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 37:44Ryan Peterman?

  How do you strike that balance?

• 37:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, so it definitely is a, a hard balance to strike, but I'll still, I'll still write code probably nearly, nearly every week. Even if it's like a small amount of code, because then I'm using the full tool chain. Often it's because no one else wants to do it, or it's something that, you know, maybe I'm going to do it 10 times faster because I know, know that thing. And I don't want them to waste a week on it, so I'll go and do it.

• 38:11Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 38:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I just, I just like find the time and those focus blocks and stuff help with that too, right? And it might, if it gets to Wednesday and I haven't written code and nothing's come up, I might go and do that.

• 38:21Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 38:22Speaker 00

  This is all caveated on the fact that I'm always trying to work on what I think is the most important thing, right? Like if we're saving that person, you know, their whole week of doing it, it's going to take me an hour, I'll go and do it.

• 38:32Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 38:33Speaker 00

  Uh, but there might be periods of time where we're doing a big review, or you know, we're going to get a headcount injection, or. I don't know, we need to be doing X, Y, or Z. And then that's way higher leverage for me to be spending my time on. And I won't code for a few weeks.

• 38:46Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right. How do you, I think this is more junior people lack this. But how'd you develop that skill of seeing what is impactful with your time? Where's the ROI? Where'd you learn that?

• 38:59Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's, I don't know, just like practice. Practice makes perfect. And you've seen a lot of scenarios, so you kind of know.

• 39:06Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Which one after a while?

• 39:08Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 39:08Speaker 00

  But yeah, when I didn't have that gauge, and I still use this a little bit now, it's always like, what do I, what do I think myself is really important that no one else is willing to work on?

• 39:18Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 39:18Speaker 00

  And that's usually the area I would go to.

• 39:21Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, interesting.

• 39:21Speaker 00

  Before I had developed like a good sense of it. Cause now there'll be some times where I'm like, oh, no one's working on it because it's stupid. But like.

• 39:29Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 39:29Speaker 00

  If I really think it's really important, I will like find a way to work on it.

• 39:33Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, interesting. Yeah, there's a famous essay inside a workplace somewhere. And the title of it is like, go where you're rare or something like that.

• 39:43Speaker 00

  Oh.

• 39:44Ryan Peterman?

  And this kind of reminds me of that. It's a scarce thing that you could solve that problem and.

• 39:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 39:50Ryan Peterman?

  You know, it makes sense.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  Man, I haven't seen that essay. I love that.

• 39:53Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of gold in workplace.

• 39:56Speaker 00

  There is a lot of gold.

• 39:57Ryan Peterman?

  Sleep on, on the, like the all time essays in, in workplace.

• 40:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:02Ryan Peterman?

  They're buried somewhere in there.

• 40:04Speaker 00

  There's another one from one of our, like, I don't know, IC tens that we have at the company, who talks about the 20% of the time he just works on stuff that like, he's never gonna get credited for, right? It's like the kind of org contributions or if you get very senior, it might be the code contributions. Cause like, they don't really care if I code.

• 40:22Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 40:23Speaker 00

  Or not anymore, right?

• 40:24Ryan Peterman?

  What's the rationale?

• 40:26Speaker 00

  That if you're always, if you spend a hundred percent of your time working on stuff that you get credited for, you're probably dropping a lot of stuff, right? And I see, I see it happen, like someone might come and be like, hey, can you like help me with this thing? Or something like that. And I'll be like, well, I'm, I'm, no, I'm never gonna get credit for this. So I just say no to them. But there was actually a lot of value in helping that person. I'm just like, when performance comes around, no one's gonna be like, oh, he helped this person. Cool. So I actually like that kind of mindset. And it was kind of how I was operating before I read this too. But like, yeah, 20 or 30% of my time.

• 40:58Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 40:59Speaker 00

  I would just do things that I know I'm not gonna get credited for.

• 41:01Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. PSC is all about doing things that are measurable.

• 41:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:06Ryan Peterman?

  There can be a hundred little. Things that you help people with that made them five percent better or something.

• 41:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:14Ryan Peterman?

  That's not going to be in your PSC because your PSC is probably just giant migration item, giant, you know, this, giant of that. Not all those little things.

• 41:21Speaker 00

  Not all the little things. And like those twenty or thirty percent, you want them to, from your point of view, you think they're valuable, right? But just no one else is going to think they're valuable.

• 41:29Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Like, I think helping that person, I think doing things for the org, the wider org.

• 41:34Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 41:34Speaker 00

  Is valuable. I think having some coding time is valuable, right?

• 41:37Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 41:38Speaker 00

  Other people like, probably not.

• 41:39Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah. I think also, early in my career, I, I worked so much extra hours just doing whatever people gave me that I do think it actually became valuable at a later time, like.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:52Ryan Peterman?

  I was no credible and known as someone who's just gonna like unblock you no matter what, like.

• 41:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:58Ryan Peterman?

  Be responding late or whatever, just because I was into it.

• 42:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:02Ryan Peterman?

  So there's a hidden things outside of PSC that.

• 42:05Speaker 00

  Yeah, and then that becomes valuable, right?

• 42:07Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, and then that becomes valuable, yeah.

• 42:08Speaker 00

  Like, a lot of people appreciate the fact that I'm a senior engineer who still codes.

• 42:12Ryan Peterman?

  I think we talked about the work diary thing. I wrote something about how it's important to have some documentation of the things you're landing or the state of investigations, et cetera, and the value of writing. What's your process for keeping track of your work and writing?

• 42:29Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah. So basically, I have a really good note-taking system because I'm terrible at remembering things. So, and my note-taking system is actually in VS Code.

• 42:40Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, really?

• 42:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, so I just have another VS Code instance spun up, so I can have two running or whatever.

• 42:45Ryan Peterman?

  Is it just a text doc?

• 42:46Speaker 00

  It's just a text doc.

• 42:47Ryan Peterman?

  Okay.

• 42:48Speaker 00

  And so I'll have it, and I don't, I don't actually use multiple monitors. So I just have like the workspace thing or whatever on Mac where I can just use a couple of fingers and it just flicks across.

• 42:57Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, like that, okay, yeah.

• 42:58Speaker 00

  So it's always very easily accessible. And I'll just dive across and I'll have, I'll create a new readme file in one folder. I don't have the whole, I don't have a folder archive. It's just one folder. And I'll have like, yeah, like current project name or something just saved in there.

• 43:15Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  And that way I can like search for a file name in like two or three characters and jump between file names. So I have now on there, there's probably like tens of thousands of files because I have notes for everything on there.

• 43:27Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 43:27Speaker 00

  But I, this is my like indexed way of like sort of jumping between lots of thoughts.

• 43:33Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  And writing them down. And then I have like keyboard shortcuts for inserting like the current date and time.

• 43:38Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 43:38Speaker 00

  Right. So I can like kind of index it on that.

• 43:41Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, wow.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 43:42Ryan Peterman?

  It's like an extension of your brain. It's like.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:45Ryan Peterman?

  You're just constantly noting things down and all the.

• 43:47Speaker 00

  Constantly noting it down. And I don't have to spend any time organizing it, right? Because there is no folder structure, just one. Giant thing. The only thing that it's organized by is like searching for a file name, or you can use word search, right?

• 43:59Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, just like Ctrl F or.

• 44:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, Ctrl F. But most of the time I'm like, have a pretty good idea of what thing I saved it under, right?

• 44:05Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:06Speaker 00

  It's every one on one. There's like a, a name of a person, right?

• 44:09Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Every project, there's one. I have like a couple of root level ones, like priorities.

• 44:14Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 44:15Speaker 00

  Work does priorities. So then in there I'll have these timestamp each day, these are the priority things, write some memos for me up the top, like, you know, don't spend time on X today, right? Or like this year, don't spend time on this, like focus on Y.

• 44:30Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:30Speaker 00

  Which is actually helpful reminders because I'll jump in there once a week and be like, oh crap, I'm trying to break that habit.

• 44:35Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 44:36Speaker 00

  I'll get out of this.

• 44:37Ryan Peterman?

  So I guess that's you writing things in and cataloging.

• 44:42Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:42Ryan Peterman?

  When you pull, like, let's say you're writing your performance review. That's one reason people like use. So you just kind of dive through there. Is there like one that's like achievements or like?

• 44:53Speaker 00

  So I've only once in my career for a year, kept track of the projects and stuff that I did. Uh, and yeah, this year I'm not keeping track again.

• 45:01Ryan Peterman?

  Okay.

• 45:02Speaker 00

  So yeah, I don't keep track of what is actually happening on the like.

• 45:05Ryan Peterman?

  Alright, so you just, at the end, you just kind of like.

• 45:07Speaker 00

  Figure it out. Yeah. Which has downsides, right? You know, it takes like a whole day to figure out what you did for the year.

• 45:13Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:14Speaker 00

  But yeah, I just haven't found value in tracking everything each day.

• 45:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 45:18Speaker 00

  Because I already have like the system of like what I need to do on the day to day.

• 45:20Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, I mean, dailies probably be too much anyways, like I feel. I always liked writing launch posts because at the end of the year, I just scroll through. What just, every launch post is like a bullet in my PC. So.

• 45:34Speaker 00

  That's a good one. I like that because you gotta put those out anyway, right?

• 45:37Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, you gotta put those out anyways. So it's just like, I'll just look at those later.

• 45:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 45:42Ryan Peterman?

  Okay, I like that that note taking. It's simple.

• 45:44Speaker 00

  It's it's simple. And then the other thing that's part of it is there it there are links between the files.

• 45:49Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, uh.

• 45:50Speaker 00

  So I have a VS Code extension, which lets me put links between the files very easily.

• 45:54Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 45:55Speaker 00

  So I can just, and it's, I don't know, it's like, I press one key and same, because I'm using everything based on the file name, right? I just like start time file and bang, it's linked.

• 46:04Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 46:04Speaker 00

  So that's the way that it's kind of organized. I can like jump between these thoughts or whatever.

• 46:10Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 46:10Speaker 00

  And then it actually has a, the same VS Code extension has this thing where you can view it as a graph. So if you started linking all your files together, you can then view a graph and see how you've like organized your mind and you're like, holy shit.

• 46:23Speaker 00

  But that's gimmicky, like I never use it, but like occasionally you fire it up and you're like, wow.

• 46:27Ryan Peterman?

  It's like your own internal Wikipedia, like what you got going on.

• 46:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:31Ryan Peterman?

  Like linking between thoughts and.

• 46:33Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. And then once you've been doing it for a while, now I've been doing it for like ten years or something. It's just like ten years of thoughts.

• 46:40Speaker 00

  And I have all my personal stuff in there too, right? It's kind of weird because then you see the work and the personal overlap at some.

• 46:45Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But I wonder if it could, you could feed it to an L M one day and it can.

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 46:51Ryan Peterman?

  Be useful or something. You can retrieve from it easier.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, it'll like know everything about me.

• 46:57Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 46:58Speaker 00

  Because it's got my diary in there too. It's got like all sorts of things, yeah.

• 47:01Ryan Peterman?

  Oh, that is so cool. I see we're like low on time. So the last thing that I want to ask you is, let's say you were going back into the industry. This is like you just graduated college.

• 47:14Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 47:14Ryan Peterman?

  And you were gonna give yourself some advice. What would you, what would you say?

• 47:20Speaker 00

  Oh, man. Well, okay, go where you're valued. I've seen lots of people go on to teams where they're not val- not valued.

• 47:28Ryan Peterman?

  Like, what do you mean they're not valued?

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Like you're, you're really good at working on front end, right? And then you end up on a back end team and all of a sudden your performance is crap or like, you're really good at fixing. Or like you like working on framework things and you're on a product team and you're like constantly tweaking the frameworks and making them better. And then you get a really bad rating at the end of the year, even though you landed like five hundred diffs or something.

• 47:49Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 47:50Speaker 00

  Like go into the environment in which like you're valued and maybe you end up being in an environment you're not valued in for a year. But just like recognize that and get out of it.

• 47:59Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 47:59Speaker 00

  Right. So I think.

• 48:00Ryan Peterman?

  So like lean into your strengths, basically.

• 48:02Speaker 00

  Yeah, you're you're trying to lean into your strengths, but the your management chain or your team around you doesn't care about your strengths, right? Go and find a team that likes your strengths and go there.

• 48:13Ryan Peterman?

  Right.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  And you're gonna be way happier. It's gonna work much better for you.

• 48:17Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, definitely. And it seems like your career, that's kind of where it started to, you made that jump into a web team.

• 48:24Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 48:24Ryan Peterman?

  Instagram, you were excited about it and you just kind of went up from there.

• 48:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, exactly. General philosophy is just like, I don't know, be nice, be be good. What's the word? Have have fun. Like I I'm always being a joker, right? Like even even when I'm talking to leadership or like writing out these big posts, right? Like most of the time, they're not super professional. I'm trying to be like, you know, have a little bit of fun with it.

• 48:51Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 48:52Speaker 00

  Be be simple, right? Don't overcomplicate your posts.

• 48:56Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right. I mean, a lot of people, they present like a work, you know, a work.

• 49:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:02Ryan Peterman?

  Form of themselves and then, uh, you know, outside of work, they're a different person.

• 49:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, so yeah.

• 49:07Ryan Peterman?

  You're saying try to meld those things.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  For me, I try to do the do the same thing because that's like kind of true to me and like I think makes makes work more interesting and like we're having to work on it.

• 49:18Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 49:18Speaker 00

  Spend a lot of time here, right?

• 49:20Ryan Peterman?

  It'd be more fun, but I wonder why. There's got to be some trade off because it seems like so many people are. Yeah, what's the trade off?

• 49:27Speaker 00

  I think like depending on the type of person you are, like sometimes I can end up saying really dumb stuff, right?

• 49:33Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  And then the way that I've had to counter this at work, people know that like, oh, Jake's very nice and he says something dumb and you tell him, he'll like be like, oh, yeah, shit, sorry, that was dumb and like apologize for it and.

• 49:43Ryan Peterman?

  Yeah.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Stuff like this, obviously can't go out and say like really crazy stuff, but thankfully I don't do that in my personal life anyway.

• 49:50Ryan Peterman?

  Right, right, right.

• 49:51Speaker 00

  But yeah, I try to bring my like, I don't know, myself to work.

• 49:55Ryan Peterman?

  Thanks for listening to this podcast. I hope that it was helpful. This podcast is a hobby of mine, and so I'm not selling anything and I don't have any sponsors. But if you want to support the podcast, please drop a like if you're on YouTube or wherever you're listening to this, if you're on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, if you could leave a review, that would be much appreciated. And I'm always looking for new people to interview, so if you have any suggestions on that, people you think would be interesting to bring on to the podcast, please let me know with a comment and I'll take a look.