Ryan Peterman
@ryanlpeterman • 27,628 subscribers
Building the podcast & ergonomic keyboard I wish existed • ex-software engineer @instagram, @meta • See what I'm building here ↓
Videos
I don't think you'll be able to find a conversation like this one on the internet. I interviewed Ethan Evans (former Amazon VP) about every possible corporate politics situation I could think of and he told me everything since he's retired. Topics we covered: • Managing people out + promos via reorgs • Orgs trying to steal scope • How to fire managers • What leverage engineers have when getting managed out • Handling politically skilled operators • Examples of political messaging • Handling bad managers and mutiny • Empire building + effective backchanneling • Influence without authority • How to avoid politics if you hate them It was fascinating in a morbid curiosity kind of way. I heard so many things in this conversation which I wish weren't true but are. Hopefully this conversation is helpful for people navigating corporate politics. Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript:
Ryan Peterman2,969,405 views • 2 months ago
Avi Wigderson is the only person in history to have won both a Turing Award (computer science) and Abel Prize (math). I interviewed him all about his field. We discussed: • His intuition on a proof of P vs NP • Why we use SAT solvers for most NP problems • Zero knowledge proofs and their impact • Quantum computation and implications • Math and computer science's relationship Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript: Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work: • WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at Timestamps: 00:00 - Intro 01:08 - P vs NP 14:51 - What if you relaxed correctness 25:38 - Why NP complete problems are equivalent 30:33 - Space vs time complexity 43:06 - Why people use SAT solvers 45:53 - Randomness is a resource 55:48 - Randomness depends on computational power 01:21:20 - Zero knowledge proofs and their significance 01:38:30 - Quantum computation and why it matters 01:56:24 - Math vs computer science 02:08:16 - Major breakthroughs and his experience 02:12:31 - Advice for his younger self 02:14:48 - Outro
Ryan Peterman252,399 views • 10 days ago
Simon Peyton Jones is the co-creator of Haskell (pure functional programming language) and I interviewed him about functional programming, why it matters, and his thoughts on other programming languages. In this episode: • Useful and useless programming languages • Rust vs C • Haskell vs OCaml • Why functional programming matters • Static languages and their value for LLMs • Why Excel is his 2nd favorite programming language Where to watch: • YouTube - • Spotify - • Apple Podcasts - • Transcript - Thank you to the sponsor of this episode for supporting my work: • WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at Chapters: 00:00 - Intro 00:39 - What functional programming is 09:18 - Downsides of functional programming 10:53 - Specialized hardware for functional programming 21:47 - Haskell is useless 25:59 - Rust vs C 28:26 - Haskell vs OCaml 35:26 - Side effects in Haskell 44:26 - Type systems 57:30 - How the Haskell compiler works 01:04:35 - Why Haskell is talked about more than used 01:09:07 - Avoiding success at all costs 01:11:12 - LLMs and programming languages 01:13:57 - New programming language design 01:15:59 - Should students continue to learn programming 01:22:33 - Why Excel is is 2nd favorite programming language 01:25:04 - Advice for his younger self
Ryan Peterman56,099 views • 3 days ago
ex-Amazon VP (Ethan Evans): "One of the hardest things for people to understand is I've identified a legitimate weakness in my boss. I go to my skip. Why doesn't he do something? Well, if you come to me with a weakness in one of my employees, there is subconsciously this process that goes on that says, I have two choices. I can believe that you're overly sensitive and high maintenance. In which case, I don't really have a problem. You are the problem. And you know, you're two levels down for me. So if you quit, well, the manager has to do the backfill. And I can tell the manager, you know, Ryan was here. He said this, that and the other. Maybe you can work with him. And that's exactly what you don't want is me ratting you out. But I can make it my manager's problem. On the other hand, if I agree with you and I'm like, you know what, this manager I have really isn't that good. Now I have three problems. This is really bad for me. One, I have to decide what to do with my manager. Maybe I have to manage them out. Two, if I do manage them out, I have to hire and train somebody else. And three, while they're gone, I have to do all their work myself. So you can see why, even if it's subconscious, I have a lot of reasons not to listen "
Ryan Peterman1,246,461 views • 2 months ago
Bjarne Stroustrup is the creator of C++ and a former researcher at Bell Labs at its peak. I interviewed him about: • What made Bell Labs different • Programming language design: types, memory safety, bootstrapping • When abstraction improves performance • Anecdotes from building C++ • Thoughts on AI writing C++ • Mistakes he'd change while building C++ Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript: Thank you to this episode's sponsors for supporting my work: • Cursor 3: a unified workspace for building software with agents, check it out at • WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:50 - The origin of C++ 8:46 - What Bell Labs was like 17:24 - Dennis Ritchie 24:00 - When to build a programming language 31:59 - Bootstrapping a language 33:58 - C++ is not object-oriented 37:32 - Discussing type systems 46:20 - Memory safety 49:26 - Standards committee anecdotes 1:09:40 - Adding automatic garbage collection to C++ 1:18:25 - Template instantiation is Turing complete 1:21:57 - Abstraction and performance 1:28:51 - AI writing code 1:35:54 - His motivation 1:39:18 - Famous quotes 1:46:48 - Reflecting on building C++ 1:49:12 - Top C++ book recommendation 1:50:59 - Advice for his younger self 1:58:06 - Outro
Ryan Peterman320,384 views • 24 days ago
Bjarne Stroustrup (Creator of C++) on the costs of abstraction: "It's compiled away. This is why I talk about zero overhead abstraction. And people are beginning to take me to task for that because that's underestimating the ability of the C++ compiler. We can do negative overhead abstraction." Ryan: "What if you're really good at writing assembly and had all the time in the world to write it?" Bjarne: "If you are very smart and you have infinite time, you can do better. By and large, we are not as smart as the optimizers anymore, and we don't have infinite time."
Ryan Peterman144,643 views • 23 days ago
Boris Cherny (Creator of Claude Code): "The one technical book I would recommend to everyone that has had the greatest impact on me as an engineer is functional programming in Scala. You're probably never going to use Scala day today, but the way it teaches you to think about coding problems is just such a change from the way that most people were in coding, either practically or in school. It's just. It's incredible. It's going to completely change the way that you code now. I think in types, when I code, the thing that matters in your code the most is the type signatures. This is more important than the code itself." Boris Cherny
Ryan Peterman363,779 views • 1 month ago
Barbara Liskov (Turing Award Winner): "Python has modules, but it doesn't have encapsulation. It allows code on the outside to muck around with what's going on on the inside of a module. Encapsulation is a crucial part of making modularity work. And when you're building big programs so you have many programmers working on them, your team is really only as strong as your weakest programmer. So it's nice if the compiler can enforce things and make certain kinds of bad behavior not possible."
Ryan Peterman183,081 views • 1 month ago
Barbara Liskov is a Turing award winner famous for her contributions to programming languages and distributed systems. I interviewed her recently about: • Being rejected from college based on gender • The software crisis of the 1970s • Paxos vs Viewstamped replication (her invention) and why one is more well known • Stories of Dijkstra and how his work influenced hers • Why her Turing award was questioned Where to watch: • Youtube - • Spotify - • Apple Podcasts - • Transcript -
Ryan Peterman169,357 views • 1 month ago
Marc Brooker ( Marc Brooker ) is a Distinguished Eng at AWS who has been building distributed systems there for almost 2 decades. I interviewed him about technical learnings from his experience. We discussed: • Learnings from 3000+ post mortems • When caching is a bad idea • How software engineering is changing • Visibility and apparent expertise • How to find the best problems Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript:
Ryan Peterman218,541 views • 1 month ago
Boris Cherny ( Boris Cherny ) created Claude Code, but few know his full career story. Today I'm sharing an interview with him about how he grew as an engineer, we discussed: • Why every engineer needs "side quests" • Why being under leveled is a good thing • The story behind his growth to Principal (IC8) at Meta • Technical book that had the biggest impact on him as an engineer • The most important principle in product engineering • Claude Code stories & competition in AI coding products You can find the full episode here: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Transcript: • Apple:
Ryan Peterman577,196 views • 5 months ago
Leslie Lamport won a Turing award for his fundamental contributions to distributed systems. For instance, he invented the Paxos consensus algorithm that is a critical component of many distributed systems today. I interviewed him about his work and career. We discussed: • Why he never considered himself smart • The stories behind Paxos and Byzantine Generals Problem • Experiences working with Dijkstra • Paxos vs Raft Algorithms • How to improve your thinking Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript:
Ryan Peterman337,886 views • 3 months ago
Marc Brooker (AWS Distinguished Eng): "The downside of caches, especially in distributed systems, is they have this mode, where the cache is empty or contains the wrong data. The system is slow, often down, because now the backend isn't scaled to deal with all of this uncached traffic. Customers are very disappointed and often it is down in a stable way. Like it's still it's down, but it's not going to come back up under its own energy. Because, for example, all of this traffic is causing a huge amount of contention in my database or is saturating the network and so I can't even refill the cache. It's not even getting the right kind of data in In general, I prefer to see the teams around me avoiding caching where possible." Marc Brooker
Ryan Peterman136,399 views • 1 month ago
Leslie Lamport (Turing Award Winner, Inventor of Paxos & Latex): "I would meet with Dijkstra once a week. When he thought of something, had some idea, he would write it down and send it out to people. He sent the first concurrent garbage collection algorithm. I looked at it, and I realized that I could simplify the algorithm. That seemed to me like a very simple idea, a very obvious idea. And I sent it to him, and then I got the next version of the paper. I discovered he had made me an author, and that had actually impressed Dijkstra. The reason for my success, the reason I wound up getting a Turing Award, was not that I was particularly that smart, but that I had this gift of abstraction, and Dijkstra was smart enough to realize that."
Ryan Peterman172,061 views • 2 months ago
Leslie Lamport (Creator of LaTex): "If you think you know something but don't write it down. You only think you know something. It reveals what you haven't said. And that there's steps in there. You may think they're obvious, but you haven't written them down. And that's where errors come in. That's where that one third of the paper's errors come in, because it really makes you honest."
Ryan Peterman133,621 views • 2 months ago
Bryan Cantrill (Former Distinguished Eng at Sun): "Stack ranking is organizational cancer. Especially if you are going to terminate a bottom N% because you've incentivized people to have dead weight on their teams. Ryan: "So you think a manager is strategically keeping around..." Bryan: "Oh, I know. So I mean, that definitely happened at Sun. For sure. I mean, there were people that were like, why are they still here? They don't seem to be doing anything... And someone kind of took me aside and like, yeah, that person is in your best interest because like they get a good. So you can be an excellent or a superlative." Bryan Cantrill
Ryan Peterman119,789 views • 1 month ago
Mike Stonebraker is a Turing award winner famous for his fundamental contributions to databases (e.g. Postgres, C-Store and much more). I interviewed him recently about: • The story behind Postgres & the hardest technical challenge in building it • Where he disagreed with Google's technical decisions • Future problems in databases • Literature recommendations to learn databases • Why LLMs score 0% on his text-SQL benchmark • What if you replaced all state in an OS with a DB Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 1:03 - How he got into databases 6:43 - Competing with Oracle 9:07 - What made Postgres special 15:55 - One size fits none 21:37 - Why he disagreed with Google 29:14 - Why he chose academia over big tech 30:58 - Replacing state in an OS with a DB 42:02 - Future problems in databases 51:36 - Technical book recommendations to learn databases 52:20 - Advice for younger self 55:52 - Outro Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript:
Ryan Peterman109,203 views • 1 month ago
Ethan Evans (ex-Amazon VP) on his Director promo: "So I said, my career is very important to me. I need to understand how important it is to Amazon because if it's not as important to Amazon as it is to me, I need to think about that. And you know, I need to think about that isn't a direct threat. But you laughed. Everyone understands. But I'm not doing it in a way that is easily easy for him to push back on. See, if I say, well, if it's not as important to you, making it personal with him, if it's not important to you as it is to me, then I might quit. That's a threat. And all managers are going to be like, hey, you can't extort me, right? That isn't how it works right? He pushed the promotion through." Ethan Evans Ryan: "When you say that wording, I feel the effects of extortion a bit, right? But I couldn't, I could not label it extortion."
Ryan Peterman106,286 views • 1 month ago
James Cowling (James Cowling) was the most senior engineer at Dropbox (Senior Principal) before he left to start his own company, Convex. I interviewed him about: • Career navigation in the "AI era" • Why simplicity >> complexity • Promo incentives tied to complexity • Technical details of his major projects and PhD • His top career regrets • Thoughts on the permanent underclass Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript: Thank you to this episode's sponsor for supporting my work: • WorkOS: makes your app Enterprise Ready with easy to use APIs to add SSO, SCIM, RBAC, and more in just a few lines of code, check them out at Timestamps: 0:00 - Intro 0:53 - Systems work during his PhD 13:05 - Dropbox technical deep dive 21:57 - Why Dropbox migrated from AWS 36:40 - How to do massive migrations 44:31 - Simplicity vs complexity in promos 49:23 - What technical teams should be focused on 1:00:25 - Doing the right thing vs promo hypothetical 1:08:13 - Why he dipped into management sometimes 1:11:36 - Why you shouldn't lead by example 1:23:23 - How to mentor Senior Staff+ engineers 1:27:30 - Career advice for the AI era 1:37:21 - Why he started his own company 1:46:05 - The most technically challenging work of his career 1:48:10 - How he got involved in Silicon Valley 1:52:16 - Career regrets 1:55:54 - Top technical book recommendation 1:56:36 - Younger self & permanent underclass advice
Ryan Peterman31,870 views • 17 days ago
Adam Ernst is a Distinguished Eng (IC9) at Meta who has built iOS infra that impacted the entire company. He's someone I've always looked up to ever since I first started at Meta. We discussed: • How to influence engineers • Why code review is undervalued • Projects that got him promoted • Learnings from a major failed project • Examples of engineers he admires • Advice for his younger self His style of influence is one of my favorites; he's the type of engineer that digs deep and solves problems others can't. He's an engineer who embodies "Talk is cheap. Show me the code." Hope you enjoy the episode and learn something new Where to watch: • YouTube: • Spotify: • Apple Podcasts: • Transcript:
Ryan Peterman194,500 views • 4 months ago