Token woman speaking invitations used to make me sad.
Now they're negotiation practice. I ask for what I want. No is fine. If yes, I practiced asking and getting.
Still shitty. But instead of internalizing, it’s a reminder to self-advocate. A course would be way more expensive 😆
👩🏻💻🎤✨
This year Jean and I ran the first cohort of DRI Your Career. The first time you do something in a completely different format — you can believe in it, but you can only really hope.
I wrote up some reflections on how it went.
When men's workload is automated, it's genius; when women's workload is automated it's a character flaw and morally questionable.
♥️And that's why Alysa Liu is Oakland royalty. In 2026 in the face of rising racism, fascism, and misogyny, a woman that speaks comfortably about Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and Abolish ICE
Gold medal is cool and all, but do you have your own stank face mural of you flexing that gold medal?
Jaeki Cho
One person's productivity is another's prompt. New newsletter on AI, collective productivity, and why the manager's job just got harder.
newsletter.whatsmyjob.club/archive/prod...
Closing question I use in 1:1s that reliably opens things up: "If I made you complain about one thing, what would it be?"
More at cate.blog/2025/02/25/q... — and if this is helpful, you might like the EM Survival Guide: driyourcareer.com/em-survival-...
"Transitioning from the instrument player to the conductor of the orchestra. Incredibly exciting, and deeply terrifying."
Great post from @stroughtonsmith.bsky.social on a month with Codex. How are you approaching the shift?
highcaffeinecontent.com/blog/20260301-A-Month-With-OpenAIs-Codex
I hate the term "servant leadership".
You can't be the servant of people you have power over. The framing is intellectually dishonest.
If you call yourself a servant leader, you're either avoiding your actual responsibilities — or just trying to feel better about having power 👩🏻💻💪💥
Planes don't fly themselves - they just cruise themselves. Takeoff, landing, and the big decisions happen with humans.
Same with AI. What are the ground decisions in the software factory era?
cate.blog/2026/03/03/g...
Wow no I do not have this mug it is amazing thank you!
This is interesting - AI Doesn’t Reduce Work—It Intensifies It - couple of things that stand out to me as problems organizations need to tackle 1) one person's productivity can be another's slop, and 2) cognitive overload hbr.org/2026/02/ai-d...
Some concrete, helpful advice - Mistakes engineers make in large established codebases www.seangoedecke.com/large-establ...
Now's a good time to play around and explore.
Last time I did this? After leaving Google. Spent a year on side projects, built this photo editing app (making it performant was genuinely fun).
Then a friend needed a manager in Colombia. Obviously I said yes.
You never know where it leads 📷👩🏻💻🇨🇴🌎
Oh yeah we have one of these and it's _great_.
As an EM, you're a force multiplier for your team. But what does that actually mean day-to-day?
Three things I think about:
→ The timeframes you operate on
→ Learning opportunities vs. fuckups
→ The clarify and shard
cate.blog/2026/02/24/w...
Some great advice here - The Five Types of Network Connections You Need at Work - www.jillwetzler.com/resources/th...
Love this from Q - Just saying hi - as someone fortunate to be on the todoist list, I always appreciate them! itsjonq.com/posts/just-s...
Really interesting - lately I've been wondering what it looks like to retrofit the software factory model onto an existing engineering team and this starts to answer that question - The Era of the Software Factory 🏭 refactoring.fm/p/the-era-of...
Leading a global team means someone is always working 🌎🌍🌏
You can't be available 24/7.
Need to set boundaries before you lose your mind? This is why @jyhsu.bsky.social and I made The EM Survival Guide: driyourcareer.com/em-survival-guide
A spreadsheet + Claude's analysis just told me something I needed to hear: my best days aren't my busiest days.
They're the ones with clarity, visible progress, and actual human being time.
More details on the process in the blog post.
cate.blog/2026/02/17/t...
Ends midnight PST
All I'm saying here is that there's a strong air from white collar people like we're not supposed to be disrupted. That's for blue collar folks. But we're not special. We never have been. Just lucky. And eventually your luck runs out. Capitalism comes for everybody eventually.
Early bird pricing is still going, plus Galentine's codes:
DRIGALENTINE → $50 off DRI Your Career
EMGALENTINE → $100 off EM Survival Guide
Through Feb 15, midnight PT.
driyourcareer.com
driyourcareer.com/em-survival-guide
It's Galentine's Day 👯♀️ @jyhsu.bsky.social and I built DRI Your Career and the EM Survival Guide together because career stuff is less painful with a friend.
Same goes for taking the course. Grab a friend. Do it together. Hold each other accountable. Debrief over brunch 🥞
Actually the video is only 16 seconds 😆
Advice to new managers: Put your own life vest on first 🦺
Sounds glib in a 30 second video, but what this actually means in practice? That's a bigger project.
This is why @jyhsu.bsky.social and I made: driyourcareer.com/em-survival-guide
I like maje, depending on the fabric you might be able to squash it down. There's also a Spanish brand I bought something from in fabric that doesn't crease. For some less forgiving (but still forgiving) fabric you can steam it next to the shower to make it wearable.
What Raccoon Are You Quiz (and some thoughts on vibe coding)
cate.blog/2026/02/10/w...
