Context Is King
Welcome back to Break, a Fallthrough aftershow! In this episode, Annie and Michael Hedgepeth stick around for Break. The panel kicks off with Michael's anxiety about his "distinguished engineer" rant, which shifts into a discussion about broken career ladders and why companies need to hire librarians. Michael adds wisdom on context management being the key to getting value from AI, while the group explores why staff engineers who only know code might be in trouble. Matthew shares how Oxide onboards new hires, Annie flips the script on what juniors bring to the table, and Kris questions whether software engineers know what engineering is. The episode wraps with unpopular opinions: Michael argues AI will create Michelin-star software instead of endless McDonald's apps, and Annie takes a firm stand on top sheet usage that sparks surprisingly passionate debate.
Enjoying the aftershow? Let us know on social media! If you prefer to watch instead of just listen, head over to YouTube where you can watch this episode of Break!
Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!
Chapters:
Enjoying the aftershow? Let us know on social media! If you prefer to watch instead of just listen, head over to YouTube where you can watch this episode of Break!
Thanks for tuning in and happy listening!
Chapters:
- Prologue (00:00:00)
- Chapter 1: The "Distinguished Engineer" Problem (00:01:11)
- Chapter 2: Career Tracks and Skill Mismatch (00:03:08)
- Chapter 3: Why Companies Need Librarians (00:05:57)
- Chapter 4: Context Management and AI Effectiveness (00:10:07)
- Chapter 5: How LLMs Actually Work (00:14:21)
- Chapter 6: The Revolution in What Makes Engineers Valuable (00:17:45)
- Chapter 7: Why Staff Engineers Who Only Code Won't Make It (00:19:12)
- Chapter 8: Onboarding New Hires at Oxide (00:24:26)
- Chapter 9: The Multi-Dimensional Value of People (00:28:34)
- Chapter 10: Is Software Engineering Really Engineering? (00:31:48)
- Chapter 11: Unpopular Opinions - AI Creates Michelin, Not McDonald's (00:37:05)
- Chapter 12: Unpopular Opinion - Top Sheet Supremacy (00:43:00)
- Epilogue (00:47:46)
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Creators and Guests
Host
Matthew Sanabria
Matthew is an engineering leader focused on building reliable, scalable, and observable systems. Matthew is known for using his breadth and depth of experience to add value in minimal context situations and help great people become great engineers through mentoring. Matthew serves the Go community as a member of GoBridge. In his spare time, Matthew spends time with his family, helps grow his wife's chocolate business, works on home improvement projects, and reads technical resources to learn and tinker.
