The View from the Middle - People First Leadership for the Age of AI
Two sisters. Two decades in tech. Two completely different paths — and one shared conviction: the middle isn't where you're stuck. It's where the real work happens. Ann Samuel (Senior Director of Global Technical Support) and her sister (Director of Engineering) started their careers together in India, diverged into different corners of the tech world, and somehow landed in the same place: leading teams through one of the most disruptive moments in the industry's history. This is the podcast for mid-career women in tech who are done pretending they want the VP title — and done apologizing for it. For the directors and senior managers who are the invisible glue holding their organizations together. For anyone navigating AI, ageism, layoffs, and leadership without a roadmap. No executive platitudes. No hustle culture. Just two sisters telling the truth about what it actually looks like to lead from the middle — and why the view from here is exactly right.
Episodes
THE VIEW FROM HERE — Season 1 Finale
Four episodes. A layoff. An AI disruption. A squeeze. And the invisible work that holds everything together.
In the Season 1 finale of Sister Code, Ann and Preethi go back for what they left on the table — the self-compassion that was missing from the layoff conversation, the support system that was missing from the AI disruption conversation, and the human cost of being the glue t...
The middle manager is the translator, the buffer, the glue — and the first person the spreadsheet sees as redundant.
Ann and Preethi unpack what it actually costs to lead from the middle — where each side assumes the director is aligned with the other, making the role both essential and completely misunderstood.
Ann describes leading teams that coordinated 67,000 cloud changes every six months — the human conduc...
In this episode, Preethi and Ann go somewhere most leadership podcasts won't: the honest conversation about what AI is actually doing to our teams, our roles, and our sense of professional identity right now, not in some distant future.
Preethi opens with a moment from a real leadership meeting. The question she didn't say out loud. The one most leaders in tech are carrying: am I also at risk?
Ann answers from experience — she ...
Every layoff creates three distinct experiences — and almost no one talks about all three. The person who got the call. The person who delivered it. And the ones still showing up every day, present in body and already calculating the runway.
Ann shares her own layoff story — raw and unfiltered — and together with Preethi, they hold all three voices in the same conversation. No toxic positivity. No five-step framewo...
Two sisters. Twenty years in tech. Completely different paths — and one shared question: what if the view from here is exactly right?
In Episode 1, Ann Samuel (Senior Director of Global Technical Support) and Preethi (Director of Engineering) tell the origin story of Sister Code — from growing up together in India, to starting their careers at the same company, to diverging into support and engineering leadership in the ...
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