The Main Thread

We'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. 

• Alex:

• Email vs Capitalism, or Why We Can't Have Nice Things

• “Everything You know about latency is wrong” from Brave New Geek

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

X: @themainthread

Episode 10 Transcript

Is 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. 

• Prepare (Requires Asset Inventory)

• Amir:

• The Art of the Start 2.0, by Guy Kawasaki

• The Mythical Man-Month, by Frederick P. Brooks Jr

• "Don’t Ask Forgiveness, Radiate Intent", by Elizabeth Ayer

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 9 Transcript

Part 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?

• Lee:

• LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmckeeman

• Substack, https://leemckeeman.substack.com

• Swamp Thing, by Alan Moore

• Build and deploy full stack web sites with SvelteKit and Vercel

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 8, Part 2 Transcript

Lee 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. 

• Lee:

• LinkedIn, https://www.linkedin.com/in/lmckeeman

• Substack, https://leemckeeman.substack.com

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 8-1 Transcript

Think 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.

• David:

• New York Tech & Beer socials (https://meetup.com/nyctnb) and New York AI User Group tech talks (https://meetup.com/nycaiu)

• CEO of Meetup David Siegel and Tech Talks coming up in September

• Designing Data-Intensive Applications

• Simple Made Easy, Talk by Rich Hicky (creator of Clojure)

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 7 Transcript

How 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. 

• Eric

• Hacker News

• Yak Shaving

• Design Patterns, Gang of Four

• Unidragon Puzzles

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 6 Transcript

Will 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.

AI has even made some contributions to this Podcast. For instance:

• All Artwork for this podcast is generated by AI using Midjourney.

• David

• HackTheBox.com

• Staff Engineer, by Will Larson

• Find a real language tutor at verbling.com

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 5 Transcript

How 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. 

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

OKR: Objectives and Key Results

PCI: Payment Card Industry

SOC: Systems and Organization Controls

TL: Tech Lead 

TPM: Technical Program Manager

XFN: Cross-functional Team

• BrianJones

• The Lean Startup, by Eric Ries

• Test Driven Development, Where did it all go wrong

• Pete Hodgson blog: Creating and sharing Strategic Architectural Initiatives

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 4 Transcript

This 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."

• Andrew

• Radical Candor, by Kim Scott

• Grokking Algorithms, by Aditya Bhargava

• The First Rule of Prioritization: No Snacking (blog)

Facebook: /themainthread

Threads: @themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread

Episode 3 Transcript

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 of insight, and he’s genuinely a very fun guy to talk to.

JammText.com: text-to-screen software to use at your next party. 

LifeLabsLearning: classes on influential communication

The Pragmatic Programmer, by David Thomas and Andrew Hunt

JavaScript Jabber Podcast, on Top End Devs

Refactoring, by Martin Fowler

Functional Programming Simplified, by Alvin Alexander

The Staff Engineer’s Path by Tanya Reilly

Elasticsearch Documentation

Facebook: /themainthread

Twitter: @themainthread