If you want to escalate, we can escalate

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Off the VPN

Jellyfish

27 episodes

2 months ago

Is bringing up your software engineering salary a dating red flag? How do you strike a balance between career ambition and incendiary burnout? Is it ever okay to hold your code hostage in escrow? Navigating a career in tech raises a lot of tricky questions that aren’t exactly appropriate for the daily stand-up. So let’s take this off the VPN. In this new podcast from Jellyfish, work besties Jasmine and Allison scour the internet to find the real questions engineers and developers are whispering over drinks and posting about anonymously. Together, they’ll tackle the most troubling of inquiries with authenticity, humor, and absolutely no holding back.

All content for Off the VPN is the property of Jellyfish and is served directly from their servers with no modification, redirects, or rehosting. The podcast is not affiliated with or endorsed by Podjoint in any way.

Technology

Business,

Careers

If you want to escalate, we can escalate

Off the VPN

28 minutes

7 months ago

If you want to escalate, we can escalate

Jasmine bought a sauna and “Deb” lost her job. One of those stories is relaxing—the other, not so much. This week, Allison brings a tale straight from the tech trenches: a PM asks for a little backup on a big customer call, and somehow ends up ousted from the team. From calendar drama to missed deadlines and a total breakdown in trust, this one’s got everything except a single honest conversation.

Got a question you’d like answered on the show? Drop us a line at jellyfish.co/offthevpn. And don’t worry! We promise to keep it Off the VPN.

Highlights:

The Vibes Are Immaculate… Until They’re Not: When leadership excitement turns into a pressure cooker.
Fake Demos & Fast Deadlines: How a half-baked prototype turns into an urgent, must-ship-now nightmare.
Burnout & Moving On: What happens when work keeps piling up and the recognition is absent?

Jump into the conversation:
(00:00) Intro
(03:08) A classic PM vs EM power struggle
(04:26) Deb asks for help on a customer call
(07:24) Missed deadlines and broken expectations
(10:56) Performance issues derail the launch
(12:29) EM questions Deb’s 1:1s with data
(14:49) Control, ego, and influence at play
(18:02) Deb gets cut out without warning
(22:59) Bad PM-EM dynamics hurt everyone
(25:28) Crashing out together, one story point at a time