Engineering, AI/ML Training Infrastructure

Instagram

• Landed the largest single efficiency win at the company that half and wrote publicly about the optimization (https://engineering.fb.com/2022/11/04/video-engineering/instagram-video-processing-encoding-reduction/)
• Won a company-wide award for efficiency work that Mark Zuckerberg recognized publicly (IG - https://www.instagram.com/p/CkihQRtO5yO/, FB - https://www.facebook.com/4/videos/884058129426425/)

Staff Software Engineer, Media Infrastructure

• Incepted and led video ads pipeline rewrite (5 eng involved) that reduced memory errors by 98%, drove +3.9% ads watch time wins, and exceeded cross-org revenue goals
• Wrote about the optimization publicly here - https://about.instagram.com/blog/engineering/making-instagram-video-ads-performant

Senior Software Engineer, Media Infrastructure

• Cut send latency in half for Instagram media messages as backend tech lead for a workstream of 5 engineers
• Wrote a technical blog post detailing the biggest win here: https://about.instagram.com/blog/engineering/cutting-threads-send-latency-in-half
• Found and fixed bug in cache breaking hash function which reduced cache fill from origin data centers by 50%

Software Engineer II, Media Infrastructure

• Drove full rewrite of IG's video processing pipeline which reduced CPU costs by 23% and prevented 3 site-wide outages by removing an unreliable dependency
• Wrote for the IG Engineering Blog about strategies we used in the rewrite to keep latency down - https://instagram-engineering.com/video-upload-latency-improvements-at-instagram-bcf4b4c5520a

Software Engineer I, Media Infrastructure

Amazon Lab126

Software Engineer I

Bloomberg L.P.

Software Engineering Intern

In 3 years at Instagram I got promoted from new grad (IC3) to staff engineer (IC6). I got lucky to have had such wonderful mentorship and aim to share that knowledge through my newsletter (www.developing.dev) to help others who don’t have access to similar resources. If you're a software engineer, you might be interested in subscribing.

Amazon VP (Ethan Evans) interview dropping tomorrow! Seriously one of the best episodes I’ve ever recorded. Amazing stories about:

• Went from being fired twice for poor soft skills to getting promoted to VP at Amazon

• Stories working with Jeff Bezos, Andrew Jassy (current Amazon CEO), Emmett Shear (CEO of Twitch) 

• Amazon layoffs & stack ranking behind the scenes

Will share the full episode here tomorrow!

Ryan Peterman

AI/ML Infra @ Meta | Writing About Software Engineering & Career Growth

Ethan Evans went from being fired twice because of poor soft skills to getting promoted to Vice President at Amazon with a team of over 800 engineers. I asked him about everything he learned along the way. We discussed:

• Being fired for poor soft skills
• What VP promotions look like
• Working with Jeff Bezos and Andy Jassy (current Amazon CEO)
• VP performance reviews
• Stack ranking, PIPs and how managers can fire anyone
• Advice for his younger self

Where to watch:
Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gdFBDupe
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4n-fUxe
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R

New podcast episode dropping tomorrow:

• Meta Staff (IC6) promo despite 10 team transitions in 9 years
• Stories working on IG blockchain and Threads teams
• 2 diffs in 6 months performance review
• How he ramped up on different tech stacks: iOS -> Android -> hardware -> blockchain -> AI

Will drop it here in the morning!

Stefan Mai was a Senior Manager (M2) with experience across Meta and Amazon. We went over his career story in growing to M2 which is equivalent to Senior Staff (IC7) in big tech. Since he started his own company (Hello Interview) now, he was happy to be fully transparent about the behind the scenes of managing in big tech. 

We discussed:

• Meta Senior Manager (M2) career growth story
• Amazon vs Meta culture
• Which company had stronger engineers
• How low performer quotas & PIPs work
• Transitioning to AI/ML as an eng
• Getting offers at OpenAI and Anthropic
• Advice for his younger self

Where to watch:

Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gZF24vXF
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4n-fUxe
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R

The Peterman Pod hit 25,000 subs! 🎉

Thanks so much to everyone who has supported my work, never thought we'd be here let alone this fast

For this week, I thought I'd do something a little different and talk about the behind the scenes of the podcast and the future

If you're curious: 
YouTube: https://lnkd.in/gneV82HD
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4n-fUxe
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R

Open article: The Peterman Pod by podcasts.apple.com

GPT5 via Codex migrated my blog from Jekyll to Next.js in one shot

My favorite part this is the mindset shift; these tools lower the activation energy of random programming side projects

The url is just my tag (ryanlpeterman) w/ .dev TLD if you're curious

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Sash Zats grew to be a Staff Engineer (IC6) at IG despite switching teams 10 times in 9 years. His career journey was a series of jumps to exciting projects and letting career growth happen as a byproduct. I interviewed him to show you how team switches can play out. 

We discussed:

• How 10 team switches in 9 years affected his career
• The story behind the Instagram blockchain initiative
• His 2 diff in 6 month performance review
• What working on Instagram Threads was like pre-launch
• The value of prototyping

Where to watch:

Youtube: https://lnkd.in/gtjgK4eD
Spotify: https://lnkd.in/g4n-fUxe
Apple Podcasts: https://lnkd.in/gm8r-2_R

New podcast episode dropping tomorrow:

• Meta Senior Manager (M2) career growth story
• Amazon vs Meta culture discussion
• Which company had stronger engineers
• Transitioning to AI/ML as an eng
• How low performer quota & PIPs work

Will drop it here in the morning!

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