Summary

In this episode, Andy talks with Ashley Herd, HR and legal leader turned management coach, and author of The Manager Method. Ashley has led HR and legal teams at organizations like McKinsey and Yum Brands, and she brings a refreshingly real-talk approach to the challenges every manager faces, especially those quiet moments of self-doubt that come with growing responsibility.

In this conversation, you'll hear Ashley's take on why imposter feelings are so common among thoughtful leaders, and how her concept of the "career quilt" reframes even the most uncomfortable professional experiences. She introduces her simple but powerful Pause, Consider, Act framework, which is a practical tool for navigating tough management moments without reacting on instinct. You'll also hear how the language we use about people shapes the way we lead them, why delegation is harder than it looks, and how accountability can be reframed as a positive force on your team. Ashley even shares how Pause, Consider, Act has made her a better parent.

If you're looking for a grounded, practical guide to leading people well (without burning yourself out) this episode is for you!

Sound Bites

• "We all have our career quilts. And sometimes those are different, like different jobs, actual different experiences like that."
• "I felt very much like the other at McKinsey."
• "When you open up and show that you are real, you tend to gain the trust and respect that you're so afraid you'll lose if you do that."
• "People don't care that you know the message. They want to hear the message for themselves."
• "What would I want to have happen to me if I were in the other person's shoes?"
• "A rolling stone gathers stress, not moss."
• "Just thinking about the people that are doing a lot of the work, how you treat them and talk with and about them? That can shape a lot of the outcomes."
• "Tasks can quietly become symbols of our value."
• "When you treat your people well, they are a better parent, friend, relative."

Chapters

• 00:00 Introduction
• 02:17 Start of Interview
• 02:45 What's A Leadership Experience That Shaped You?
• 05:27 The Career Quilt Concept
• 07:47 Imposter Phenomenon in Leadership
• 11:45 Spotlight Effect and How We Worry About Being Watched
• 14:10 Introducing Pause, Consider, Act
• 15:05 What Pausing Actually Looks Like
• 21:30 Empathy Without Carrying Too Much
• 23:47 Rethinking Empathy
• 25:40 How Language Shapes How We Lead People
• 28:52 The Delegation Trap
• 30:33 What Ashley Still Struggles to Delegate
• 33:15 Reframing Accountability
• 38:10 Applying the Book Outside of Work
• 39:43 End of Interview
• 40:22 Andy Comments After the Interview
• 43:20 Outtakes

Learn More

You can learn more about Ashley and her work at ManagerMethod.com.

For more learning on this topic, check out:

• Episode 468 with James Turk. It's a discussion about what to do during the first 45 days when you take on new responsibility.
• Episode 467 with Sabina Nawaz. She was a coach to Microsoft leaders, such as Bill Gates, and she shares insights that, according to her, no one tells you about becoming a boss.
• Episode 142 with Amy Cuddy. Amy is most famous for her TED Talk on power posing. But episode 142 is more about presence and how you can more confidently rise to the most daunting challenges. It's a nice follow-up to what Ashley talked about with the imposter phenomenon.

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Thank you for joining me for this episode of The People and Projects Podcast!

Talent Triangle: Power Skills

Topics: Leadership, Management, Imposter Phenomenon, Delegation, Accountability, Empathy, Team Culture, Communication, Self-Awareness, New Managers, Personal Growth, Psychological Safety

The following music was used for this episode:

Music: Underground Shadows by MusicLFiles
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Music: Tuesday by Sascha Ende
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/peopleandprojectspodcast/505-AshleyHerd.mp3?dest-id=107017

Changes

• Dreaming/memory-wiki: add ChatGPT import ingestion plus new Imported Insights and Memory Palace diary subtabs so Dreaming can inspect imported source chats, compiled wiki pages, and full source pages directly from the UI. (#64505)
• Control UI/webchat: render assistant media/reply/voice directives as structured chat bubbles, add the [embed ...] rich output tag, and gate external embed URLs behind config. (#64104)
• Tools/video_generate: add URL-only generated asset delivery, typed providerOptions, reference audio inputs, per-asset role hints, adaptive aspect-ratio support, and a higher image-input cap so video providers can expose richer generation modes without forcing large files into memory. (#61987, #61988) Thanks @xieyongliang.
• Feishu: improve document comment sessions with richer context parsing, comment reactions, and typing feedback so document-thread conversations behave more like chat conversations. (#63785)
• Microsoft Teams: add reaction support, reaction listing, Graph pagination, and delegated OAuth setup for sending reactions while preserving application-auth read paths. (#51646)
• Plugins: allow plugin manifests to declare activation and setup descriptors so plugin setup flows can describe required auth, pairing, and configuration steps without hardcoded core special cases. (#64780)
• Ollama: cache /api/show context-window and capability metadata during model discovery so repeated picker refreshes stop refetching unchanged models, while still retrying after empty responses and invalidating on digest changes. (#64753) Thanks @ImLukeF.
• Models/providers: surface how configured OpenAI-compatible endpoints are classified in embedded-agent debug logs, so local and proxy routing issues are easier to diagnose. (#64754) Thanks @ImLukeF.
• QA/parity: add the GPT-5.4 vs Opus 4.6 agentic parity report gate with shared scenario coverage checks, stricter evidence heuristics, and skipped-scenario accounting for maintainer review. (#64441) Thanks @100yenadmin.

Fixes

• OpenAI/Codex OAuth: stop rewriting the upstream authorize URL scopes so new Codex sign-ins do not fail with invalid_scope before returning an authorization code. (#64713) Thanks @fuller-stack-dev.
• Audio transcription: disable pinned DNS only for OpenAI-compatible multipart requests, while still validating hostnames, so OpenAI, Groq, and Mistral transcription works again without weakening other request paths. (#64766) Thanks @GodsBoy.
• macOS/Talk Mode: after granting microphone permission on first enable, continue starting Talk Mode instead of requiring a second toggle. (#62459) Thanks @ggarber.
• Control UI/webchat: persist agent-run TTS audio replies into webchat history and preserve interleaved tool card pairing so generated audio and mixed tool output stay attached to the right messages. (#63514) Thanks @bittoby.
• WhatsApp: honor the configured default account when the active listener helper is used without an explicit account id, so named default accounts do not get registered under default. (#53918) Thanks @yhyatt.
• ACP/agents: suppress commentary-phase child assistant relay text in ACP parent stream updates, so spawned child runs stop leaking internal progress chatter into the parent session. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• Agents/timeouts: honor explicit run timeouts in the LLM idle watchdog and align default timeout config so slow models can keep working until the configured limit instead of using the wrong idle window.
• Config: include asyncCompletion in the generated zod schema so documented async completion config no longer fails with an unrecognized-key error. (#63618)
• Google/Veo: stop sending the unsupported numberOfVideos request field so Gemini Developer API Veo runs do not fail before OpenClaw can complete the intended Google video generation path. (#64723) Thanks @velvet-shark.
• QA/packaging: stop packaged CLI startup and completion cache generation from reading repo-only QA scenario markdown, ship the bundled QA scenario pack in npm releases, and keep openclaw completion --write-state working even if QA setup is broken. (#64648) Thanks @obviyus.
• Codex/QA: keep Codex app-server coordination chatter out of visible replies, add a live QA leak scenario, and classify leaked harness meta text as a QA failure instead of a successful reply. Thanks @vincentkoc.
• WhatsApp: route message react through the gateway-owned action path so reactions use the live WhatsApp listener in both DM and group chats, matching message send and message poll. Thanks @mcaxtr.
• Auto-reply/WhatsApp: preserve inbound image attachment notes after media understanding so image edits keep the real saved media path instead of hallucinating a missing local path. (#64918) Thanks @ngutman.
• Telegram/sessions: keep topic-scoped session initialization on the canonical topic transcript path when inbound turns omit MessageThreadId, so one topic session no longer alternates between bare and topic-qualified transcript files. (#64869) Thanks @jalehman.
• Agents/failover: scope assistant-side fallback classification and surfaced provider errors to the current attempt instead of stale session history, so cross-provider fallback runs stop inheriting the previous provider's failure. (#62907) Thanks @stainlu.
• MiniMax/OAuth: write api: "anthropic-messages" and authHeader: true into the minimax-portal config patch during openclaw configure, so re-authenticated portal setups keep Bearer auth routing working. (#64964) Thanks @ryanlee666.

In 2024 the Verge's consumer tech reporter paid $173 for a WD Black SN850X 2TB SSD. But "now that same SSD costs $649..." "Like with RAM, demand from the AI industry is swallowing up supply from a limited number of manufacturers, leading to a drastic reduction in the inventory that's available to consumers" — and skyrocketing prices: The price on my WD Black drive nearly quadrupled since November 2025, and consumer SSDs across the board are seeing similar increases, much like with RAM. The 4TB version of the popular Samsung 990 Pro SSD previously cost $320, but will now run you nearly $1,000. External SanDisk SSDs saw a 200 percent price hike at the Apple Store in March.... According to price trends from PC Part Picker, NVMe SSD prices began ticking upward in December 2025, with prices on 256GB to 4TB SSDs now double or triple what they were just a few months ago, and continuing to climb.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

This week on the GeekWire Podcast: we take the show on the road — or rather, on the rails — recording on Sound Transit’s 2 Line as we ride the world’s first light rail on a floating bridge from Seattle’s Northgate neighborhood to Microsoft’s campus in Redmond.

It’s an engineering marvel decades in the making — the bridge, that is, not the podcast. That said, juggling a couple of handheld mics and portable recorder on a crowded train, we did have to overcome some logistical challenges to make it happen. 

Along the way, we chat with fellow passengers and talk about the week’s headlines, including Anduril’s autonomous warship facility on Seattle’s ship canal, and golf star Bryson DeChambeau’s acquisition of Bellevue-based Sportsbox AI ahead of the Masters.

Then we get a behind-the-scenes look at the engineering from Sound Transit’s Henry Bendon. He explains how engineers solved the unprecedented challenge of running 55 mph trains on a bridge that constantly moves with wind, waves, and changing lake levels.

Bendon describes the surge in ridership since the Crosslake Connection opened on March 28, and what the line means for connecting the tech hubs on both sides of the lake.

After arriving in Redmond, we sit down with Microsoft President Brad Smith to talk about the company’s two-decade role in making the Crosslake Connection a reality.

Smith says the line gives people “a choice they didn’t have a month ago.”

We ask what it says about how we build big things in this region that it took nearly 60 years to get from idea to reality. “What really matters is people stuck with it,” he says.

We discuss the unlikely duo of Microsoft and Amazon — fierce competitors in cloud computing and AI — collaborating on regional transit and civic issues. “When it comes to local issues, we’re not competing with Amazon, we’re working together,” Smith says.

And finally, we challenge him with a trivia question that hits close to home.

Subscribe to GeekWire in Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen.

BONUS: Why a Distinguished Engineer Stopped Reading Code — Lights-Out Codebases and the End of the IC

Philip Su has spent two decades at the highest levels of software engineering — Microsoft, Meta (where he reached Distinguished Engineer, IC9), OpenAI, and now building his own product solo with AI. In this episode, he makes a provocative case: the individual contributor role as we know it is over, code reviews are becoming a liability, and the best engineers are already managing AI agents instead of writing code themselves.

From Amazon Warehouse Floors to OpenAI

"Every day at work, I lifted six tons of packages with my arms. No one learned my name. And it was the structure — the ability to leave work behind when I clocked out — that pulled me out of a spiral."

 

Philip's path through tech is anything but typical. After scaling Facebook's London engineering office from a dozen engineers to 500+, he stepped away from Big Tech entirely. During Peak 2021, he worked the floor at Amazon's flagship warehouse south of Seattle — 11-hour shifts, processing 15,000 packages a day. He documented the experience in his Peak Salvation podcast, exploring depression, the divide between the wealthy and the working class, and the maddening inefficiencies inside one of the world's largest employers. That experience reshaped how he thinks about work, systems, and what actually matters when you strip away titles and stock options. He later joined OpenAI as an individual contributor — going from leading hundreds of engineers to writing code again — before leaving to build Superphonic, an AI-powered podcast player.

No More Code Reviews: The Lights-Out Codebase

"We'll one day be scared, positively petrified, to use any mission-critical software known to have allowed human interference in its codebase."

 

Philip borrows the concept of "lights-out" from data centers that run with zero human workers and applies it to codebases. A lights-out codebase is one where no human ever sees or edits the code. He's already built two apps this way — Tanya's Snowfield and OTD: On This Day — without looking at a single line of code from repository creation through production release. His argument is not just about efficiency. Code reviewers are becoming the bottleneck. The volume of AI-generated code is already too high for humans to keep up, and the same LLM that wrote the code often catches bugs that another instance of itself introduced. Philip has been running both Codex and Cursor as PR reviewers on GitHub, and has been surprised by how often they identify issues in both human- and AI-generated code. He believes we are approaching a threshold where human intervention in codebases will be seen as risky and irresponsible — not the other way around.

AI Killed the Individual Contributor

"You're not building the thing anymore. You're pondering and tweaking the machine that builds the thing."

 

In his widely discussed essay "AI Killed the Individual Contributor", Philip argues that maximizing productivity with AI now requires engineers to spend their time on what are essentially management tasks: setting priorities, resolving conflicts, delegating to agents, reviewing output, and giving feedback. The IC role isn't disappearing because AI codes better — it's disappearing because the highest-leverage use of an engineer's time has shifted from writing code to orchestrating the systems that write code. Right now, it feels like managing a team of barely competent interns. But Philip expects that to change fast. Soon it will feel like managing high performers who are faster and more capable than you — and the engineers who thrive will be the ones who learned to let go of the keyboard and focus on judgment, direction, and taste.

Building Solo with AI: The Superphonic Experiment

"20x productivity means we have 20x fewer PMs than we need."

 

Philip is putting his thesis to the test with Superphonic, an AI-powered podcast player he's building essentially as a solo founder. What would have required a team two years ago, he now ships alone — leveraging AI agents for coding, testing, and review. But the productivity multiplier creates its own problems. When you can build 20x faster, the bottleneck shifts from engineering capacity to product judgment. You need to know what to build, not just how to build it. Philip's reference to The Mythical Man-Month is deliberate: adding more people (or agents) doesn't solve the fundamental challenge of building the right thing. The hardest part of being both the architect and the manager of your AI agents is knowing when the model breaks down — when you need to step in and do the work yourself rather than delegating.

What Teams Get Wrong About AI Integration

"There is a lot more that can be done to increase the quality of AI output even if all progress on foundation models stops."

 

For Scrum Masters and agile coaches helping teams adopt AI tools, Philip's warning is clear: don't treat AI as just another developer on the team. The integration requires rethinking how work is structured, how quality is assured, and what it means to be an engineer. Teams that bolt AI onto existing workflows without changing the underlying process will get marginal gains at best. The ones that redesign their workflows around AI capabilities — including accepting that humans may not need to review every line of code — will see transformational results. Philip's practical advice: do the work yourself first. Understand what the AI is doing before you delegate wholesale. The engineers who skip this step lose the judgment they need to manage the output effectively.

About Philip Su

Philip Su is a Distinguished Engineer (IC9) who scaled Facebook's London office from a dozen engineers to 500+, served as site lead at OpenAI, and now builds Superphonic — an AI-powered podcast player. He writes about the future of software work at Molochinations on Substack. LinkedIn

 

You can link with Philip Su on LinkedIn.

Download audio: https://traffic.libsyn.com/secure/scrummastertoolbox/20260411_Philip_Su_BONUS.mp3?dest-id=246429

I opened GitHub on my phone before my morning coffee had finished brewing. There it was — a pull request, freshly opened, titled "chore: upgrade astro to v6.1.2". I hadn't asked anyone to do it. I hadn't filed an issue, assigned a task, or written a single command. An agent had woken up, checked the npm registry, read the Astro changelog, inspected my codebase, applied the changes, run pnpm install, and handed me a PR to review. All I had to do was drink my coffee and click Merge.

This is the promise of what GitHub Next is calling Continuous AI — and it's already working on my blog.