OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Eng (IC9): The Psychology Behind Tech Career Peaks | Philip Su

Philip Su grew quickly to a Distinguished Engineer at Facebook and OpenAI. We talked about the psychology behind peaking in a tech career and the pressure at the highest levels.

• My ergonomic keyboard project I mentioned, you can follow along here: read.compose.llc
• The Kickstarter page for it: kickstarter.com/projects/ryanlpeterman/compose…

Podcast links:

• YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=RMo04pSSiao
• Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-peterman-pod…
• Transcript: developing.dev/p/openai-and-meta-distinguished…

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 workos.com
• Jira by Atlassian: Get more work done with your favorite agents and models all in one place, check them out at jira.dev

Timestamps:

(00:00) Intro
(00:37) Growth past IC9
(05:39) Motivation changes over his career
(11:36) Asking to not be promoted
(17:33) What made it hard to sustain IC9 performance
(22:22) What motivated him outside of promos
(26:21) Is career advice useless
(29:34) Motivation after you've hit FIRE
(36:08) Meaning and fulfillment
(38:17) Top book recommendation
(40:14) What he would change
(43:24) Outro

Where to find Philip:

• Substack newsletter: molochinations.substack.com
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/suphilip
• X/Twitter: x.com/philipsu

Where to find Ryan:

• Newsletter: developing.dev
• X/Twitter: x.com/ryanlpeterman
• LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman
• Threads: threads.com/@ryanlpeterman
• Instagram: instagram.com/ryanlpeterman
• TikTok: tiktok.com/@ryanlpeterman

Referenced in this episode:

• Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals: us.macmillan.com/books/9780374715243/fourthous…