Philip Su grew to Distinguished Engineer (IC9) at Meta and OpenAI. He has a bunch of interesting stories about working with people like Zuck and John Carmack as well as a ton of advice for software engineers. I was really looking forward to chatting with him and enjoyed this conversation a lot. I hope you find it helpful!
In this conversation, we discussed:
• What Distinguished Eng (IC9) expectations look like
• How he got promoted to IC9
• Working with impressive engineers like John Carmack
• What made Zuck and Boz special as coworkers
• Learnings from switching between IC and EM 6x
• Why he joined OpenAI
• Advice for his younger self
Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(01:02) Growing to Senior Staff (IC7) at Microsoft
(06:38) Management vs IC transitions
(17:32) Demotion from IC9 to IC7 at Meta
(20:28) IC7, IC8, and IC9 expectations
(28:58) IC9 promo story
(31:30) Building a strong eng team culture
(36:16) Working with Zuck + Meta CTO
(38:57) Working with John Carmack and other impressive ICs
(41:44) Buying $23000 of coffee in a day
(45:35) Why leave Facebook
(49:25) Joining OpenAI
(55:38) Writing well as a software engineer
(1:03:00) Does software eng performance decline as you age?
(1:07:00) Building credibility as a young manager
(1:10:25) Should you be a generalist or a specialist?
(1:12:43) Advice for his younger self
Where to find Philip:
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suphilip/
• Peak Salvation podcast he referenced: https://peaksalvation.com/
Where to find Ryan:
• Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/
• X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/
• Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
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