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Thriving in Engineering

Alex Ponomarev 9 Episodes Sep 22, 2026

Thriving in Engineering explores the human and practical sides of software engineering beyond strategy and sprint plans. Host Alex Ponomarev draws on 25 years of engineering leadership to share frameworks for leading with confidence, staying calm under pressure, and building strong teams. The podcast features conversations with engineers, leaders, and builders about how AI transformation is actually happening in practice, beyond the headlines and hype. Each episode focuses on one guest at a time.

Episodes

Why Metacognition Beats Coding Skill in the AI Era, with Carol Palombini Sep 22, 2026 2214 Carol Palombini is a Leadership & Culture Consultant specializing in the human side of AI adoption. A psychologist, former Head of HR, and executive coach with extensive experience working with technology leaders, she helps organizations assess whether their leaders, people, and culture are ready for AI-driven change.Her work brings leadership readiness, psychological safety, workforc

Don't Outsource Your Thinking to AI, with Michał Poczwardowski Sep 8, 2026 2371 Michał Poczwardowski is a Staff Engineering Manager with over a decade of combined engineering, leadership, and management experience, and the founder of Perspectiveship, a newsletter on timeless leadership and communication skills. He mentors software leaders in decision-making and problem-solving.This is the Thriving in Engineering Podcast, where we talk to engineers and technical leade

Why She Stopped Waiting for Permission to Build, with Elena Calvillo Aug 25, 2026 1949 Elena Calvillo is an independent product builder based in Mexico City. After more than a decade in enterprise product management, she went independent in January 2026 and now builds her own products full time, including DraftKit, an async writing workspace for Substack creators. She writes Prompt-Led Product on Substack, where she teaches product managers how to build with AI instead of j

Why Non-Technical People Are Better at AI Than They Think, with Alyssa Fu Ward, PhD Aug 11, 2026 1990 Alyssa Fu Ward is a data science leader and executive coach with a PhD in behavioral science from Stanford. She has worked at companies including Meta and Twitter, and now coaches professionals navigating AI-driven change in their work and identity. She writes Step Up Step Together, a newsletter on technology, work, and what she calls "how to human."This is the Thriving in Engineering Pod

The Green Status That Isn't True, with Michi Goetz Jul 28, 2026 2010 Michi Goetz is the Director of Technical Program Management at Celonis, and he writes TPM Breakdowns, a Substack on the realities of program management.In this conversation, we discuss:1: Why status reports turn red two days before launch, and why calling it red early is a gift, not a failure2: What his survey of 250 TPMs revealed about where AI adoption actually stands3: Why bad underlyi

The Builder PM: Why AI Is Pulling PMs Back Into Engineering, with Amy Mitchell Jul 21, 2026 1687 Amy Mitchell is a Product Manager who started her career writing code and leading an engineering team before a lateral move pushed her into product. She writes Product Management IRL, a newsletter where she shares what she's learning as AI reshapes the job, including a term she's been using lately: the "builder PM," product managers stepping back into code, sales conversations, and go-to-

Empathy Is Your Differentiator: Why AI Doesn't Replace Human Skills, with Colette Molteni Jul 7, 2026 1641 Colette Molteni works in data analytics and AI governance inside a major tech company, where her job has shifted in the last six months from building dashboards and presenting to leadership to building the AI agents that do that work instead. She also writes Empathy Elevated, a newsletter on human skills for tech professionals, and has a decade of experience watching organizations bolt AI

Building on a Swamp: Why AI Doesn't Fix a Broken Dev Process, with Roman Nikolaev Jul 7, 2026 2166 Roman Nikolaev is Head of Technology at Cambri, a Nordic research tech company whose AI-first platform helps global brands like Nestlé and Coca-Cola test product concepts before launch. He's also the author of High Impact Engineering, a Substack newsletter on practical, field-tested guidance for engineering leaders. Roman has been building and scaling software teams for over 20 years — an

Mastering AI Integration in Engineering Teams: Strategies from Shamim Rajani Jun 30, 2026 1896 Shamim Rajani is COO and co-founder of Genetech, a software development company with 100+ people and offices in Karachi and Detroit serving clients across North America and Europe. She's also co-founder of Code Girls, a bootcamp that has trained over 2,000 women in Pakistan's tech industry, former chairperson of PASHA — Pakistan's national IT industry association — and writes The Leadersh

Thriving in Engineering

Episodes

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