Tech lead, coach, author, and the person 500+ engineers called when they needed someone who actually got it.

Anemari Fiser burned out in a role she loved. And then she built something better. After a decade in tech - starting as a software engineer, becoming a tech lead at 26 (the youngest on her team, a detail she quietly kept to herself for years) - she left her full-time role, got her coaching certification, and built a practice that's now shaped 500+ engineers and 400+ tech leads across companies of all sizes.

Based in Barcelona and working globally, Anemari helps teams navigate the messy middle of tech leadership: the part where your title changes but nobody hands you the manual. She helps companies scale by empowering tech leads through leadership training, coaches tech professionals on performance and confidence, and frequently speaks at conferences about the lessons, challenges, and successes she’s encountered throughout that journey.

And most recently, she captured those lessons in her first book with O’Reilly Media, Leveling Up as a Tech Lead: Growing as a Technical, Project, and People Leader.

The title "tech lead" is used frequently and it means something different at every company. What stays consistent is the pressure: you're suddenly accountable for your team's technical outcomes, your people's growth, and the business side you may have ignored before.

Anemari has seen this story hundreds of times. She knows what actually helps. In this episode, she gets honest about hiding her age early in her career, what burnout really looks like when you love your work, and why motivation is the wrong thing to rely on - whether for writing a book or for growing as a leader.

In this episode, we'll talk about her path from software engineer to tech lead to full-time coach, navigating age and experience in tech, the one burnout strategy that actually works (redistribution), what a tech lead actually is and why every company answers differently, writing a technical book with O'Reilly and what consistency really requires, accountability as the real engine of progress, how AI is reshaping the tech lead role, and why intentional growth beats motivation every time.

Your call to action? → Make a plan for where you want to be and how you want to get there. Build small steps along the way because motivation is not what's going to keep you there. Consistency is.

00:00 Introduction to Tech Leadership and Coaching

03:03 Navigating the Journey from Engineer to Tech Lead

05:50 The Impact of Age and Experience in Tech

09:13 Transitioning to Freelancing and Coaching

11:59 Understanding the Role of a Tech Lead

14:54 Burnout in the Tech Industry

18:02 The Writing Process of a Tech Leadership Book

21:12 The Importance of Accountability in Growth

23:52 Current Trends in Tech Leadership and AI

26:52 Final Thoughts on Intentional Growth

• 📚 Leveling Up as a Tech Lead (book)
• 🎓 Soft Skills for Tech Leads (course)
• ✉️ Substack
• 🌐 Website
• 🔗 Anemari on LinkedIn

Anna Miller, founder of Outlier Mentors, on why your job search isn't a job search problem.

Anna Miller has coached over 100 engineers into roles at companies like Google and Amazon. She has 44,000+ LinkedIn followers who tune in for her straight talk on what actually works in today's job market. And she built Outlier Mentors, a career mentorship community, to fill the gap she kept seeing: engineers who are talented, hardworking, and completely unprepared for how getting hired actually works.

Spoiler: it's not about blasting out applications.

Anna brings a no-nonsense, deeply human approach to job searching. She understands that the process is emotional, that rejection emails often mean nothing, and that the engineers who get hired aren't necessarily the most skilled, they're the ones who show up prepared, visible, and practiced.

Anna's network-first philosophy isn't just theory. It's built from years of watching engineers miss offers not because they weren't qualified, but because they treated the job search like a form submission instead of a human process. Getting the interview and passing the interview are two completely different skill sets, and most people never train for either one.

In this episode, we'll talk about how the tech hiring landscape has changed, why online visibility is the most underrated career skill, not taking rejection emails at face value, the difference between landing an interview and passing one, what Outlier Mentors actually does, the mentorship model from networking through offer, AI role play for interview prep, the emotional barrier that hold engineers back, and why recording yourself might be the highest-leverage thing you can do for your career.

Your call to action? → Record yourself speaking about something. Anything. If you do it, you will be a more successful person in life.

00:00 Introduction to Career Mentorship in Tech

02:18 Navigating the Job Market: The Role of Networking

05:15 The Importance of Online Visibility

08:24 Understanding the Job Search Process

11:25 The Evolution of Interview Preparation

14:16 The Difference Between Landing and Passing Interviews

16:29 The Emotional Aspect of Job Searching

19:26 The Mentorship Model and Its Benefits

22:07 Innovations in Interview Preparation: AI Role Play

24:38 Final Thoughts on Communication and Self-Reflection

Anna Miller, LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/annamiller/

Outlier Mentors - https://outliermentorship.systeme.io/

From Navy Nuclear Reactors to 4,000+ Students: Why Fundamentals Still Beat AI

Erik Gross is the co-founder of the Tech Academy and author of The Uncommon Engineer. A Navy nuclear reactor operator turned sales professional turned software engineer, Erik couldn't find junior developers, so he built a school to train them.

In this episode, we talk about Erik's journey from programming on a Vic 20 at age 11, to operating nuclear reactors in the Navy, to co-founding one of the earliest coding bootcamps. We dig into why AI is a game changer for experienced developers but a potential crutch for beginners, the moment systems architecture "clicked" on a submarine in Idaho, how the Tech Academy bakes AI training into every bootcamp, job search tenacity, and Erik's upcoming book, The Uncommon Engineer.

Your call to action? → If you can read and do basic math, you can learn to code. Whatever method you choose, give it a shot.

00:00 Introduction to Erik Gross

01:00 The Vic 20 and Learning to Code at 11

02:01 Inside the Computer: A Lesson from Dad

02:36 Navy Nuclear Power and Digital Circuitry

03:00 The Unexpected Tech Career in Sales

03:27 The Blunt Conversation That Changed Everything

04:31 Landing the First Tech Job

05:27 The Search for Junior Developers

05:56 How the First Coding Bootcamp Inspired the Tech Academy

06:36 Staying Current as a Working Developer

07:37 AI for New Developers vs. Experienced Engineers

09:26 Domain Expertise and Garbage In, Garbage Out

11:22 "Explain It Like I'm Five": Using AI to Learn

12:50 Principles Over Syntax

14:29 AI as a Companion, Not a Replacement

15:19 Why Claude is a Game Changer

16:33 AI in the Tech Academy Curriculum

17:56 The Current Tech Job Market

18:56 Tenacity in the Job Search

22:03 The Uncommon Engineer: Erik's New Book

22:26 The Submarine in the Desert

25:35 When Systems Architecture Clicks

29:02 One Takeaway: You Can Learn to Code

• Erik Gross, LinkedIn
• The Tech Academy
• The Uncommon Engineer (coming soon!)
• Tool reference: Claude by Anthropic