Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Tech Careers Insights

overcommitted.dev | A crew of overcommitted software engineers

A show for software engineers and programmers that are passionate about learning and career growth. Join the women in tech hosts as they share with each other and interview influential folks in the world of software on their career strategies. We cover subjects like AI, software ethics, social media, engineering and leadership strategy, all with the goal of getting better at what we love to do.

  1. Building the Decentralized Social Web: From Collective Social to OpenSocial

    4 DAYS AGO

    Building the Decentralized Social Web: From Collective Social to OpenSocial

    Brittany shares her journey building Collective Social - a Goodreads-style app for all kinds of media built entirely on the AT Protocol - and how it led her to create OpenSocial, a service that lets any app on the decentralized web share group functionality like book clubs. The episode covers the challenges of representing groups when the protocol has no native concept of group identity, using conference talk deadlines as motivation to ship side projects, and rating real-world systems on how well they'd work in a decentralized context. Erika also shares her experience building an interpreter in Go. Show links: Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.comCollective Social: https://collectivesocial.appOpenSocial: https://opensocial.communityCollective Social on GitHub: https://github.com/collectivesocial"Representing groups in ATProto" blog post (Brittany's site)AtmosphereConf speaker profile: https://news.atmosphereconf.org/3mfpjx5luuc2mGitHub Blog - Build a Personal Organization Command Center with GitHub Copilot CLI: https://github.blog/ai-and-ml/github-copilot/build-a-personal-organization-command-center-with-github-copilot-cli/"The art of saying yes" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/say-yes-do-all-the-things/"Living in the inflection point" blog post: https://brittanyellich.com/living-in-the-inflection-point/Nick Gerakines episode (EP19 - AT Proto, MCP, and Open Source): https://overcommitted.dev/ep-19-at-proto-mcp-and-open-source-with-nick-gerakinesPDX ATProto talk: https://youtu.be/xFdak3HbDmM?si=rZoPfyYYoP2awADJ&t=2302AtmosphereConf talk: https://youtu.be/GVOywon3X-Q?si=yzKLfFNF8bzNT9-eThe ATProto Store: https://atstore.fyipdsls.dev: https://pdsls.devAtmosphere Community: https://atmosphere.communitynpmx.dev: https://npmx.devTangled: https://tangled.ioThis is for Everyone by Tim Berners-Lee: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/222376492-this-is-for-everyone Topics: AT Protocol, Decentralized Social Media, Side Projects, Open Source, Software Engineering

    39 min
  2. There are no shortcuts | Craft & career growth with Salma Alam-Naylor

    5 MAY

    There are no shortcuts | Craft & career growth with Salma Alam-Naylor

    Summary In this episode, Erika talks with Salma Alam-Naylor about software engineering craft, programming best practices, and why the long game beats shortcuts. As AI coding tools proliferate and everyone chases speed, Salma digs into deliberate practice, sustainable career strategies, and building genuine expertise that compounds over time. Perfect for engineers feeling burnout from the hype cycle. Links Salma’s website: https://whitep4nth3r.com/ 2021 Jamstack Jammies (Community Creator Award) https://2021.jamstackconf.com/jammies/ Fat bear week website: https://explore.org/fat-bear-week Hell.com wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hell.com Hosts Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devErika (Eggyhead): https://github.com/eggyhead

    47 min
  3. Build Real Tools, Skip LeetCode: Systems Programming for Career Growth with John Crickett

    28 APR

    Build Real Tools, Skip LeetCode: Systems Programming for Career Growth with John Crickett

    Tech careers don't need to mean grinding LeetCode. In episode 57, John Crickett — 30+ year engineer, Coding Challenges creator (90K+ subscribers) — makes the case that programmer productivity skyrockets when you build real tools instead. We dig into why your own Redis, Git, or shell beats practice problems, how Coding Challenges went from $17 domain to viral sensation (1,500 signups in one weekend), and what it means to level up through systems programming. Links Coding Challenges (Newsletter): https://codingchallenges.substack.com/Coding Challenges Website: https://codingchallenges.fyiFrom The Challenges - Git: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/from-the-challenges-gitWill AI Kill Coding?: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/will-ai-kill-codingUsing AI To Solve A Coding Challenge: https://codingchallenges.substack.com/p/using-ai-to-solve-a-coding-challengeTech Lead Journal #178 — John Crickett: https://techleadjournal.dev/episodes/178/Confessions of a Data Guy — What Makes Great Engineers: https://www.confessionsofadataguy.com/decades-in-software-engineering-what-actually-makes-great-engineers-john-crickett/Coding Chats Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/59GU7gzyK2RdIDVkhNS2ntJohn Crickett on GitHub: https://github.com/johncrickettJohn Crickett on LinkedIn: https://uk.linkedin.com/in/johncrickettJohn Crickett on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/johncrickett.bsky.socialJohn Crickett on X: https://x.com/johncrickett Hosts Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany: https://trustyduck.devBrittany Ellich: ⁠https://brittanyellich.com ⁠Erika: ⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

    43 min
  4. Run Toward Something - Career Growth, Mentorship & Work-Life Balance with Dave Schwantes

    21 APR

    Run Toward Something - Career Growth, Mentorship & Work-Life Balance with Dave Schwantes

    Summary Career growth through mentorship and work-life balance with Dave Schwantes, Senior Software Engineer at GitHub. Brittany and Dave explore why running toward meaningful work beats running from burnout, how mentorship became his primary form of engineering leverage, and what career happiness actually looks like across different life stages. From Instacart and Couchsurfing to building in-house bootcamps, Dave shares how sustainable engineering culture beats individual productivity hacks—and his take on how AI tools reshape what engineers really need to master. Links Dave's personal site: https://dinosaurseateverybody.comDon't Break Prod (bite-sized career advice): https://dontbreakprod.comGrave Danger (Dave's spooky ska band) on Bandcamp: https://gravedangerskath.bandcamp.comDave on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dorkrawk.bsky.socialDave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschwantesDave on GitHub: https://github.com/dorkrawkWeb Dev Challenge Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sEoZG8EIwThe Engineer Manager Pendulum article: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/ Host Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devBrittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

    39 min
  5. Building Your Own Tech Career Path - Bootcamp, Teaching & Big Platforms with Sabrina Goldfarb

    14 APR

    Building Your Own Tech Career Path - Bootcamp, Teaching & Big Platforms with Sabrina Goldfarb

    Summary Sabrina Goldfarb rejected the tech career playbook. No CS degree, bootcamp instead, teaching before big platforms. Now an engineer on GitHub's Copilot team and instructor at Frontend Masters, she shares how methodical planning, patience, and trust in the process led to career growth most thought impossible. If you're considering a non-traditional path in software engineering, this episode proves there's more than one way to build a meaningful tech career. Links Frontend Masters: Practical Prompt Engineering: https://frontendmasters.com/courses/prompt-engineering/Sabrina Goldfarb on LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/sabrinagoldfarb Hosts Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28Erika (Eggyhead): https://github.com/eggyhead

    40 min
  6. Building Bulletproof Systems: Warren Parad on Software Engineering for High Availability

    7 APR

    Building Bulletproof Systems: Warren Parad on Software Engineering for High Availability

    Summary In this episode of the Overcommitted Podcast, hosts Bethany and Erika sit down with Warren Parad, CTO and co-founder of Authress, a user authorization API built for reliability. Warren shares how his team stayed fully operational during the massive AWS US-East-1 outage in October 2025 using DNS failover and multi-region strategies, and what the delayed alert logs taught them about timestamp trust. The conversation kicks off with a candid discussion on AI agents and critical thinking, whether managing multiple coding agents is really multitasking or just micromanagement, and what the trade-offs mean for early-career engineers. Warren traces his reliability-first mindset back to his roots in electrical engineering and healthcare IT, where late-night on-call pages through Citrix proxies and hospital billing systems shaped how he thinks about uptime today. The group also explores what it really takes to build a Five Nines organization and how hiring practices need to match the reliability culture you want. The episode wraps up with a round of Never Have I Ever: SRE Edition, featuring Friday deploys gone wrong, blaming DNS, and discovering outages from customer tweets. Links Authress, Warren's company, user authorization API for software makers. The product he's building and wants to plug. Adventures in DevOps Podcast, Warren's podcast, co-hosted with Will Button. 300+ episodes on DevOps, engineering leadership, and cloud architecture. How When AWS Was Down, We Were Not, Authress's blog post detailing their resilience strategy during the October 2025 AWS outage. Referenced in Theme 1 questions. So You Want to Build Your Own Authorization?, Warren's article on why authorization complexity creeps up on teams. Referenced in Theme 2 questions. An Interview With Warren Parad, CIAM Weekly, March 2025 interview covering Warren's views on CIAM, FedCM, and the future of authentication. FedCM, Browser Native Auth (Adventures in DevOps Episode), Adventures in DevOps episode diving into FedCM and why authentication should move from user-land to kernel-land. Warren Parad on LinkedIn, Warren's LinkedIn profile. Warren Parad on Bluesky, Warren's Bluesky profile. Warren Parad on GitHub, Warren's GitHub profile, includes Authress repos, OpenAPI Explorer, and other open-source work. Authress Knowledge Base, Technical articles from the Authress team on auth, security, and infrastructure. Warren Parad, Personal Site, Warren's personal website. Hosts Overcommitted Bethany Janos Erika (Eggyhead)

    50 min
  7. Scaling Search Engineering at DoorDash: From Monoliths to Custom Search Engines with Satish Saley

    31 MAR

    Scaling Search Engineering at DoorDash: From Monoliths to Custom Search Engines with Satish Saley

    Summary In this episode of Overcommitted, Satish Saley, a senior software engineer with extensive experience on DoorDash's search platform team, discusses scaling search systems at a hyper-growth company. This conversation dives deep into software engineering challenges and software development strategies that impact programmer productivity and career growth. Satish details two major engineering transformations: rebuilding the search indexing pipeline with Kafka, Flink, and Elasticsearch, and later replacing Elasticsearch with a custom search engine based on Apache Lucene, which significantly improved performance and reduced costs. The episode also explores the complexities of migrating off monoliths, securing leadership buy-in for technical rebuilds, and why respecting legacy systems is crucial in engineering culture. Additionally, the hosts share personal stories of database pivots and conclude with a confessional segment on technical decisions that didn't age well. This episode is packed with insights for software engineers and tech professionals interested in the intersection of technology, scaling, and work life balance. Links Satish Saley on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/satish-saley-65527525/ Conway's Law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway%27s_law Build Faster Indexing with Apache Kafka and Elasticsearch: https://careersatdoordash.com/blog/open-source-search-indexing/ Introducing DoorDash's In-House Search Engine: https://doordash.engineering/2024/02/27/introducing-doordashs-in-house-search-engine/ Hosts Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

    48 min

  8. 24 MAR

    Overcommitted After One Year: Insights on Software Projects, Growth, and What's Next

    Summary In this special one-year anniversary episode of Overcommitted, Brittany, Erika, and Bethany reflect on their journey from a small accountability group to a thriving weekly podcast and community of over 160 software engineers. They discuss their experiences within the software development lifecycle, the challenges of maintaining programmer productivity, and the evolution of their engineering culture. Listeners will hear candid stories about mastering interview skills, handling the complexities of production admin, and navigating promotional efforts. The episode also highlights the podcast's unexpected role as a valuable networking tool for remote workers in tech careers. Looking ahead, the hosts share exciting plans including new panel-format episodes, community events, and automation initiatives. Closing with affectionate roasts in their first-ever Overcommitted Superlatives, this episode offers both insight and entertainment for anyone passionate about software projects and sustainable work-life balance in tech. Links Episode 1 - Imposter Syndrome: https://overcommitted.dev/imposter-syndrome-in-software-engineering/Overcommitted Discord Server: https://discord.gg/d9gZyYuqKdComputer systems: A programmer's perspective: https://www.amazon.com/Computer-Systems-Programmers-Perspective-3rd/dp/013409266X Hosts Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.devBethany Janos: https://github.com/bethanyj28Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.comErika Eggyhead: https://github.com/eggyhead

    28 min
See All (59)

About

A show for software engineers and programmers that are passionate about learning and career growth. Join the women in tech hosts as they share with each other and interview influential folks in the world of software on their career strategies. We cover subjects like AI, software ethics, social media, engineering and leadership strategy, all with the goal of getting better at what we love to do.

Information

You Might Also Like