Beyond Coding

What senior engineers do differently has less to do with output than most career ladders suggest, and Lindsey Simon, VP of Engineering at Vercel, has watched the distinction sharpen as everyone in the valley becomes a "member of technical staff." From why new grads with hackathon years might out-prepare engineers with six years on the job, to what happens when PR throughput stops being your lever, this is a conversation about what earns seniority now.
In this episode, we cover:
Why engineering roles are consolidating into "member of technical staff"
How to ask agents first and frame better questions to humans
The scope-of-impact ladder and what the best engineers systematize
Learning how to learn: closing gaps to 100% understanding
Why writing is the skill that scales
If you're wondering whether your years of experience still compound, or you're early-career and tired of the "woe is the juniors" narrative, this one reframes both.

TIMESTAMPS
00:00:00 - Impact the Business
00:00:31 - FOMO all the time: The 2006 Google Interview
00:01:52 - Engineering Roles Are Consolidating
00:02:52 - The "Member of Technical Staff" trend in SF
00:03:33 - Interns Demo to the CTO
00:04:33 - How New Grads Out-Prepare Senior Engineers
00:06:10 - Ask Your Agent Before You Ask a Human
00:08:01 - Digging Backwards Into Fundamental Understanding
00:09:22 - "We're All Junior Engineers Again"
00:10:22 - Management Is Not Leadership
00:12:04 - Losing PR Throughput as Your #1 Lever
00:13:11 - Fulfillment Beyond Shipping Features
00:14:32 - Building for Fickle Engineers: Telemetry Beats Opinions
00:16:11 - Watching Users Struggle With Your Product
00:18:12 - Have Expectations for Seniors Actually Changed?
00:19:57 - Claude Says a Month, It Takes Two Hours
00:20:33 - What the Best Engineers Do Differently
00:21:30 - How Vercel React Skill Came to Be
00:22:23 - Why Conference Conversations Hit Different
00:23:35 - Learning How to Learn: Close Gaps to 100%
00:25:41 - The Case for Liberal Arts in Tech
00:27:03 - Get Feedback Early, Don't Hide in the Cave

Guest - Lindsey Simon, VP of Engineering at Vercel:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindseysimon
#softwareengineering #ai #careergrowth

The fastest engineers are falling behind, and Kitze was one of them. He built his reputation on raw coding speed, then realized his coding wasn't competing with anyone's coding anymore, it was competing with their setups. Wake-up call for developers: Kitze now runs 140 projects solo with agent loops, and in this episode he breaks down what separates the engineers pulling ahead from the ones getting left behind.
In this episode, we cover:
Vibe coding vs vibe engineering, and how to get better results from your agents
Police files: Self-correcting loops that end every agent turn with zero errors
Why teams of 10 are collapsing into teams of 2, and who survives
The rude awakening coming for engineers who refuse to adapt
The number one advice to stay on track and fight FOMO
For individual contributors, tech leads, and principal engineers who don't plan on falling behind

TIMESTAMPS:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:40 - Vibe Coding vs Vibe Engineering: The Real Difference
00:02:16 - Police Files: The Self-Correcting Loop on Every Turn
00:05:23 - Capture Every Frustration as a Rule
00:06:53 - Why Being the Fastest Coder Stopped Mattering
00:09:45 - Problem Solver vs Problem Lover: Pick One
00:10:43 - The Rude Awakening Engineers Don't Want
00:12:05 - Why Teams of 10 Become Teams of 2
00:13:09 - Loop Engineering: The Edge Anyone Can Build
00:16:08 - Why No Agent Orchestrator Works Yet
00:17:07 - Starting a Fresh Codebase: What Kitze Transfers
00:19:14 - No Sidebars: Inventing an Agentic OS
00:21:07 - How Kitze Shipped 300 Changes Across 200 Repos
00:23:40 - We Are Becoming the Bottleneck
00:24:25 - Why Leadership Must Give Engineers Room to Experiment
00:26:16 - The Token Divide: Not Everyone Can Compete
00:27:41 - Learn Now or Lose Access Later
00:29:33 - The Culling: Coasting Is Going Away
00:30:45 - Why LLM Code Reviews Beat Tired Seniors
00:33:21 - Solo Engineers With Agent Swarms vs Teams
00:34:53 - Agents Climbing the Org Chart to CEO
00:36:03 - What Distinguishes the Best Engineers: Unblocking
00:36:50 - Ego Is the Real Bottleneck
00:37:55 - Kitze's #1 Advice: Stick to One Model

Danila Shtan runs engineering at Nebius, one of the biggest AI clouds in the world, and he told me exactly which engineers he hires on the spot. There are only hundreds of people on the planet with the skill he wants most, and it is not the one you are grinding on. We get into which engineering skills are actually scarce and well paid today, and which ones are quietly on the way out.
In this episode we cover:
The engineering skills in highest demand right now and which ones are on the way out
Why an AI cloud CTO restricts Claude Code inside his own company
Dan's rule for merging any AI-written code into production
Why working with an agent is like managing a junior engineer
The interview question that surfaces top tier engineer qualities
Why he still runs algorithm interviews today
If you are an engineer trying to work out where the value sits now that agents write the easy code, this is a straight answer from the person building the infrastructure underneath all of it.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - AI Agents doing everything is a lie
00:00:44 - What Nebius Actually Does
00:04:31 - The Engineers In Highest Demand Right Now
00:06:58 - Inside the Hiring Process
00:08:12 - The Bootcamp: You Join the Company, Not a Team
00:10:51 - Why You Can't Use AI in Their Interviews
00:16:31 - Why He Banned the Word "Headcount"
00:22:25 - Why a CTO Is Not a Technical Role
00:24:49 - The One Skill Every Manager Needs
00:25:48 - Why Smart People Fail at This
00:28:17 - "The Promise of Agents Is Bullshit"
00:31:39 - How AI Multiplies Your Baseline Skill
00:35:32 - Why an AI Agent Is Just a Junior Engineer
00:36:57 - Why He Won't Let His Team Use Claude Code
00:37:46 - His Rule for Merging AI-Written Code
00:40:28 - The Interview That Predicts Great Engineers
00:42:32 - From T-Shaped to Round-Shaped Engineers
00:44:30 - Is There Still a Path for Juniors?
00:45:28 - Why Hard Skills No Longer Matter
00:47:11 - The Engineers Who Will Become Obsolete
00:50:04 - The Real Reason People Stay at Banks
00:52:26 - Where AI Agents Actually Help
00:54:40 - Why He Still Uses Algorithm Interviews
00:56:05 - Tech Enthusiasts vs. Real Engineers
#AIEngineering #TechCareers #SoftwareEngineering

120,000 tech workers have been laid off in 2026, yet there are 60,000 open roles. Engineers applying are sending out 100 applications for zero replies. Former Reddit, Uber and Disney Plus recruiter Keki Mwaba breaks down why the market broke, why every resume now looks identical, and what gets you hired when yours looks like everyone else's.
In this video, we cover:
Why 120,000 layoffs and 60,000 open roles don't add up
Why CVs have become too good and it's no longer enough
How to treat LinkedIn as a platform
Getting into companies like OpenAI and Anthropic
How to reach out to people without seeming fake
If you're a software engineer trying to stand out in the most competitive tech market in years, this is the playbook.
Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Intro
00:00:35 - How bad is the tech job market in 2026?
00:02:38 - 120,000 laid off, 60,000 jobs open: the math is not mathing
00:04:05 - LinkedIn isn't a CV, it's a platform
00:08:30 - The underrated move: comment your way into a job
00:10:48 - Is AI ruining LinkedIn?
00:13:50 - Never feel safe: how to prepare before a layoff
00:15:34 - What layoffs do to the people who stay
00:17:03 - "Did I just automate myself out of a job?"
00:18:48 - Why every resume now looks the same
00:20:11 - Why referrals beat applications
00:22:13 - Do software engineers still have a future?
00:23:32 - The staff engineer who wants to quit for plumbing
00:26:16 - Patrick on his own job security
00:30:21 - 70% of job descriptions now demand AI skills
00:31:34 - Is middle management disappearing?
00:33:53 - The impossible ask: stay current, deliver, and not burn out
00:37:02 - How to get hired at OpenAI or Anthropic
00:39:18 - How to message someone without seeming fake
00:41:42 - Build a portfolio that shows your thinking
00:45:12 - Your personal branding plan for the next few weeks
Guest: Keki Mwaba, career and recruitment expert:
https://www.linkedin.com/in/keki-mwaba
#techjobs #softwareengineering #careeradvice

Jeroen Gordijn and Jeroen Dee: two frontrunners who stopped writing code months ago and say software development is already solved. Typing code is no longer necessary, but what matters more now? If you're an engineer that loves coding, you're in a tougher spot than you might realize.

In this video, we cover:
- Why writing code is "solved" but engineering isn't
- Spec-driven development and how to get it started in your team
- The "Dark Factory" and why code review is a huge bottleneck
- Model vs harness: what matters more, and why
- The unhealthy side of agentic coding

If you write software for a living and you're trying to work out what your job becomes next, start here.

Timestamps:
00:00:00 - Coding Is No Longer Necessary
00:00:43 - Why "Software Development Is Already Solved"
00:02:57 - Should You Even Read the AI's Code?
00:05:05 - What Is a "Dark Factory"?
00:06:52 - If You Can Regenerate It, Why Care About Quality?
00:07:49 - Spec-Driven Development Explained
00:11:32 - Adopting Specs Without Starting From Scratch
00:13:23 - Model vs Harness: What Matters More?
00:17:27 - Is Your Harness the New IDE?
00:20:18 - Why Everyone Plateaus (and the Innovation Token)
00:22:50 - Where to Actually Spend Your Time
00:24:57 - The Unhealthy Side: "It's Free Cocaine"
00:28:00 - Is This Sustainable, or Just Subsidized?
00:30:33 - Should You Run Models Locally?
00:34:31 - Looping, Scale, and Automating Review
00:37:53 - What's Left for Engineers to Do?
00:39:13 - If You Love Writing Code, You're in Trouble
00:41:18 - Why Teams Are Getting Smaller
00:43:03 - What an "Agentic Company" Looks Like
00:46:25 - How to Start: Find Your Spark
00:50:13 - The One Habit That Keeps You Ahead

Guests:
Jeroen Gordijn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroengordijn
Jeroen Dee: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeroendee

#AgenticEngineering #SoftwareEngineering #Agents