OpenAI & Meta Distinguished Engineer (IC9) On Working With Zuck, Carmack & Career Growth | Philip Su

Philip Su grew to Distinguished Engineer (IC9) at Meta and OpenAI. He has a bunch of interesting stories about working with people like Zuck and John Carmack as well as a ton of advice for software engineers. I was really looking forward to chatting with him and enjoyed this conversation a lot. I hope you find it helpful! In this conversation, we discussed: • What Distinguished Eng (IC9) expectations look like • How he got promoted to IC9 • Working with impressive engineers like John Carmack • What made Zuck and Boz special as coworkers • Learnings from switching between IC and EM 6x • Why he joined OpenAI • Advice for his younger self Timestamps: (00:00) Intro (01:02) Growing to Senior Staff (IC7) at Microsoft (06:38) Management vs IC transitions (17:32) Demotion from IC9 to IC7 at Meta (20:28) IC7, IC8, and IC9 expectations (28:58) IC9 promo story (31:30) Building a strong eng team culture (36:16) Working with Zuck + Meta CTO (38:57) Working with John Carmack and other impressive ICs (41:44) Buying $23000 of coffee in a day (45:35) Why leave Facebook (49:25) Joining OpenAI (55:38) Writing well as a software engineer (1:03:00) Does software eng performance decline as you age? (1:07:00) Building credibility as a young manager (1:10:25) Should you be a generalist or a specialist? (1:12:43) Advice for his younger self Where to find Philip: • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/suphilip/ • Peak Salvation podcast he referenced: https://peaksalvation.com/ Where to find Ryan: • Newsletter: https://www.developing.dev/ • X: https://x.com/ryanlpeterman • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ryanlpeterman/ • Threads: https://www.threads.net/@ryanlpeterman • Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ryanlpeterman