Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional

Are you a technology professional unsatisfied with your current role? Looking for a resource to help understand changing job functions, changing organizations, or gaining recognition and progression? The Nerd Journey podcast helps explore alternative roles, increase job satisfaction, and accelerate career progression. Each week, we uncover patterns of technical career progression by dissecting careers of guests and discussing different job roles they’ve held, or discussing relevant career topics. We’ve interviewed people in IT operations, sales engineering, technical marketing, product management, people management, network engineering, cybersecurity, software development, entrepreneurs, and more. We also discuss improving job satisfaction and accelerating career growth. We are John White and Nick Korte, two technologists with experience in IT operations and sales engineering who started this podcast in 2018. We release on Tuesdays, and can be found at https://nerd-journey.com.

Episodes

August 26, 2025 39 mins
Mark as Played
Mark as Played
A manager's success isn't what they do, but how they help. Learn to swap your IC skills for the leadership tools you need to thrive in your new role.
Mark as Played
In times of economic and job uncertainty, keeping your career documents sharp is more important than ever. But how can you effectively showcase your accomplishments and skill development without it feeling like a chore? In this solo episode, John White introduces a powerful method for leveling up your career materials using Generative AI as a collaborative tool. The key is a simple but powerful philosophy: You are the thought lead...
Mark as Played
Great leaders ensure their team's success is their own. Get career advice on management, customer advocacy, and allyship for women in tech.
Mark as Played

Being a utility player in the sports world is one thing, but what does a utility player look like in the tech industry? Erin O’Quinn, our guest this week in episode 330, says it takes a willingness to learn, approaching what you learn as something that can help you later, and a willingness to advocate for yourself.

Erin is currently a senior manager of customer advocacy at a sizable tech comp...

  • Mark as Played

    How should we be managing our careers during times of uncertainty? News of layoffs and economic uncertainty induces paralyzing fear and anxiety in many of us. What can we really control in the midst of it all, if anything?

    This week in episode 329, we’ll talk through a 5-pillar framework with actionable steps you can take now to be more proactive in your career even when it’s a difficult job ...

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    Your manager has a preoccupation, but do you know what it is? The answer reveals a clue about their focus and the culture this manager will foster.

    Join us in episode 328 as Joseph Griffiths shares advice for making 1-1s with your manager and skip-level manager more productive, guidance for the aspiring managers listening, and observations from managing both technical and sales teams. We look...

  • Mark as Played

    How well do your personal and professional life align to your passion areas? For returning guest Joseph Griffiths, seeking mentorship helped uncover his core passions (service, honesty, faith, and growth) and fueled the decision to pursue people management.

    This week in Episode 327, Joseph details his transition from solutions architect to business solution strategist and why he sought mentor...

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    If you had something to share, what would you say, and how would you say it? Daniel Lemire asked himself the same question in the process of creating AI Mistakes. As it turns out, AI Mistakes isn’t just a platform for learning in public. It’s something Daniel must be doing. Want to know why?

    After completing the vision board and gaining more perspective on the layoff event that would change h...

  • Mark as Played

    What happens when there is too much change at once after making a job change? Daniel Lemire had learned the principles of DevOps and combined it with his experience as an infrastructure architect to advocate for the adoption of new technologies and processes within a large enterprise. But when Daniel changed roles to focus on innovation and became a senior manager at the same time, there were...

  • Mark as Played

    When you’re missing a specific experience in your career, how do you get it? Daniel Lemire was missing experience in a large enterprise to pair with the things he learned from pursuing a graduate degree. Join us this week in episode 324 to hear the story of what happened when Daniel got that experience that provided the missing context to apply what he learned.

    Throughout this discussion, you...

  • Mark as Played

    If your career was a product, what would the current release notes say? Just as product managers launch a minimum viable product (MVP) and enhance it based on customer feedback, Daniel Lemire unknowingly began building his career this way starting in high school.

    This week in episode 323 you’ll hear about Daniel’s early aspirations to be a pilot in the Air Force and the phone call that forced...

  • Mark as Played

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