Shows
The Main ThreadEpisode 10: The Journey So FarWe've reached the end of Season 1! In this final episode, Alex and Brian take some time to reflect on what we've learned so far, what themes tend to keep coming up across episodes, areas we're targeting for personal growth, and finally, what you can expect from Season 2. Thanks for being a part of our first season! We'll be back in 2024 with all new guests, insights, and stories from the Staff Engineer's Journey.
Picks & Plugs
Alex:
Email vs Capitalism, or Why We Can't Have Nice Things
Brian:
“Everything You know about latency is wrong” from Brave New Geek
Get in to...
2023-11-2233 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 9: Security PrioritiesIs your platform secure? How do you know? How do you even know all of the machines, networks, software, and data that make up your platform in the first place? We're joined by Amirali Shahinpour, Head of Security Data Platform at Twitch to discuss driving security priorities across your organization.
Amir's Framework for addressing vulns:
Prepare (Requires Asset Inventory)
Identify (Threat intel: what’s affected?)
Analyze (Prioritize: use extra context from Inventory)
Communicate
Treat (take action)
Picks & Plugs
Amir:
The Art of the Start 2.0, by Guy Kawasaki
Alex:
The Mythical Man-Month, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr
"Git Hidden Gem...
2023-11-1036 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 8, Part 2: Empathy and InclusionPart 2 of our discussion with Lee McKeeman, Staff Engineer at Google, on empathy and inclusion. Why do companies struggle to prioritize efforts around inclusion and accessibility? And what can we, as technical leaders, do about it?
Picks & Plugs
Lee:
LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmckeeman
Substack, https://leemckeeman.substack.com
Alex:
Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore
Brian:
Build and deploy full stack web sites with SvelteKit and Vercel
Get in touch!
Facebook: /themainthread
Threads: @themainthread
Twitter: @themainthread
Transcript
Episode 8, Part 2 Transcript
2023-10-0635 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 8, Part 1: Empathy and InclusionLee McKeeman is currently a staff engineer at Google, who’s also spent time at Amazon and Meta. Lee is passionate about how we as technical leaders can influence our work environments to be more empathetic and inclusive so that people of varying races, genders, creeds, ages, and neruodiversities, all feel empowered to contribute their best ideas to the work that we do.
Picks & Plugs
Lee:
LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmckeeman
Substack, https://leemckeeman.substack.com
Get in touch!
Facebook: /themainthread
Threads: @themainthread
Twitter: @themainthread
Transcript
Episode 8-1 Transcript
2023-09-2932 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 7: Community BuildingThink about the roles you play in your community. Social planner, Little League coach, Dungeon Master. Did anyone explicitly give you that authority? Or did you just gravitate towards your interests and put yourself out there? Can we do that at work, too? Are we defined by the title given to us by our companies, or can we put ourselves out there to take on broader roles that align with our strengths? David Cunningham, Sr Engineer with The New York Times, joins us to discuss how to do both.
Picks & Plugs
David:
New York Tech & Beer socials (https...
2023-09-1536 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 6: Evaluating New TechnologiesHow do you decide whether that shiny new frontend framework or that highly performant, memory-safe backend language is really going to solve your problems? Join our guest Eric Justusson, as we talk about how to leverage quick experiments, tracer bullets, greenfield projects, and hackathons to responsibly evaluate the benefits and costs of onboarding new tech for your team.
Picks & Plugs
Eric
Hacker News
Random engineering idioms:
Yak Shaving
Bike Shedding
Spike
Rubber Duck Debugging
Cargo Culting
Others
Alex
Design Patterns, Gang of Four
Brian Ogilvie
Unidragon Puzzles
Get in touch!
Facebook: /themainthread
Threads: @themainthread
2023-09-0137 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 5: AI MadnessWill AI fundamentally change the way we as engineers interact with our work and our world? Or is it mostly hype? We’re joined today by David Ashe-- Senior Software Engineer with American Express--to explore the benefits, risks, practical uses, and downright bizarre results of AI.
Misc Show notes
AI has even made some contributions to this Podcast. For instance:
All Artwork for this podcast is generated by AI using Midjourney.
The captions for this episode were initially generated by AI on Podbean.com, and corrected by yours truly.
Picks & Plugs
David
HackTheBox.com
Alex...
2023-08-1838 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 4: Technical Vision and StrategyHow do you establish a vision of the future that addresses a specific business need for your company? And how do you turn that vision into a concrete strategy to execute? Our guest Brian Jones is an engineering manager in Central Security at Meta, and he'll share his techniques for building vision and strategy at scale.
Acronym Glossary
CISSP: Certified Information Systems Security Professional
DAU: Daily Active Users
GRC: Governance Risk (Management) & Compliance
HSM: Hardware Security Model
MSSP: Managed Security Service Provider
NFT: Non-Fungible Token
O...
2023-08-0432 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 3: The Cake AnalogyThis episode is a tasty one. Today’s guest introduced me to an analogy that illustrates beautifully the progressively growing scope and responsibilities of an engineer from Junior to Senior to Staff and beyond. I love this analogy so much that I invited him onto the show to share it with you. So get out your aprons, prep your mixers, and welcome our guest Andrew Preece, as we whip up: "The Cake Analogy."
Picks & Plugs
Andrew
Radical Candor, by Kim Scott
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When the Stakes are High, by Grenny, Patterson, McMillan, Switzler, and Gregory
Lin...
2023-07-2137 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 2: What is a Staff Engineer Anyway?So... what is a Staff Engineer anyway? What even is the job description? In this episode, we’re joined by Abhishek Mistry–Staff Engineering Leader at Hudson River Trading–to discuss exactly that. What is this job ICs aspire to? How is it different from management? How do you influence and lead people when you actually have no real authority? Is it better to go broad or to go deep? How does the Staff Engineer scale their impact and provide, like Tom Brady, tremendous value above replacement? Abhishek has been in the tech industry for many years. He has tons o...
2023-07-2135 minThe Main ThreadEpisode 1: Welcome!On this first episode, Brian Ogilvie and Alex Gaiser discuss where we are in our careers as senior software engineers, what we're looking to learn as we look to grow into Staff+ engineers, and more about the format of the show.
Links:
The Pragmatic Programmer, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt
Mode Cloud SQL editor
Refactoring, by Martin Fowler
Staff Engineer, by Will Larson
Get in touch!
Facebook: /themainthread
Twitter: @themainthread
2023-06-2228 min