Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Programming Insights

SummaryWhat does it look like to start a software engineering career right now, when AI has erased the "grunt work" that used to be how new grads learned? Brittany and Bethany sit down with Sreya Sarathy, a software engineer at Northwestern Mutual and 2025 UW–Madison grad (double major in computer science and data science), who spent her first year out of school running a free virtual panel series that drew 1,500+ registrations across speakers from Apple, Amazon, IBM, Starbucks, Ford, Deloitte, and GitHub.Sreya shares the Stack Overflow moment that broke her imposter syndrome spiral in college, why adding more to her plate cured her burnout instead of making it worse, how she built the early-career community she wished existed, and what it's like being handed advanced work as a new grad because AI now does the tasks juniors used to cut their teeth on. Plus: her product teardowns on Substack, what senior engineers can actually do to support early-career folks, and her dream of a low-pressure "optimize your life" hackathon.Links- Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/sreya.sarathy/- LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sreyasarathy/ - Substack - https://substack.com/@sreyasarathy- Website - https://sreyasarathy.com/- Designing Data-Intensive Applications - https://bookshop.org/p/books/designing-data-intensive-applications-the-big-ideas-behind-reliable-scalable-and-maintainable-systems-chris-riccomini/7dfa8afce8f3816e?ean=9781098119065&bkshp-astro=t- Don’t Make Me Think -https://bookshop.org/p/books/don-t-make-me-think-revisited-a-common-sense-approach-to-web-usability-steve-krug/d30340ad4751d00d?ean=9780321965516&bkshp-astro=tHosts:- Overcommitted: https://overcommitted.dev- Bethany Janos: https://www.trustyduck.dev/⁠⁠ ⁠- Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com

This week we're trying something new: Closed That Tab, a segment where each host shares one thing they finally read that was worth the time. Erika brings a post on agentic AI identity and delegation - covering why OAuth isn't quite enough for agents that accumulate permissions across a request lifecycle, and what transaction tokens (an IETF draft proposal) offer as a solution. Bethany covers Simon Willison's breakdown of the OpenAI security incident, where an eval harness escaped its sandbox by chaining zero-day vulnerabilities - and what responsible sandboxing and observability should have caught earlier. Brittany shares how she accidentally built a loop engineering system before knowing the term existed: a continuously running agent harness using git worktrees, sub-agents, and a memory file to close around 20 PRs a day, including self-healing flaky tests.

Links:
Erika’s Agentic AI Identity Read: https://khaledzaky.com/blog/delegation-is-the-real-identity-problem-in-agentic-ai
Bethany’s OpenAI CyberAttack Read: https://simonwillison.net/2026/Jul/22/openai-cyberattack
Empire of AI: https://bookshop.org/p/books/empire-of-ai-dreams-and-nightmares-in-sam-altman-s-openai-karen-hao
Brittany’s Loop Engineering Read: https://addyosmani.com/blog/loop-engineering/ 
Superpowers: https://github.com/obra/superpowers 
Brittany’s Loop Engineering Blog post: https://brittany-ellich.offprint.app/a/3mrjj34puva23-108-prs-in-eight-days-accidentally-discovering-loop-engineering

Hosts:
Overcommitted: ⁠https://overcommitted.dev
⁠Bethany Janos: ⁠https://www.trustyduck.dev/⁠
Brittany Ellich: ⁠https://brittanyellich.com
⁠Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

Learn how async-first communication transforms remote engineering culture and developer productivity. Ben Balter, open source governance expert, shares practical strategies for building transparent, documented workflows that help distributed teams collaborate without synchronous bottlenecks—and why this matters for engineers navigating complex project ownership.

Links
https://ben.balter.com/contact/
https://bsky.app/profile/ben.balter.com
https://open-and-async.com/

Hosts
Overcommitted: ⁠⁠https://overcommitted.dev⁠
⁠Bethany Janos: ⁠⁠https://www.trustyduck.dev/⁠⁠ ⁠
Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

Caidan Williams put your terminals, browsers, editors, and AI agents on one infinite canvas. He joins Erika and Brittany to talk about Terminal Graph, the spatial development environment for macOS he built for himself first, and the self-taught path that took him from Minecraft mods at 13 to partner at a Seattle dev studio.

We get into the dataflow model that sets Terminal Graph apart, like piping a git diff straight into Claude Code or grepping a dev server's logs into a browser node. Caidan explains Blueprints, his approach to sharing a whole team workflow as a single file, and what it's like to run a product inside a holacracy with no bosses and no venture money.

Then he tells his career story. No college degree. A gap year spent applying to around 500 companies. Computer vision on dental and MRI images. Burnout, a layoff, and a cross-country move to Seattle with one duffel bag. His honest takeaway is that persistence, not raw talent, is what got him here.

If you build your own tools, wire agents into your workflow, or you're finding a non-traditional way into engineering, this one is for you.

Links
Terminal Graph: https://terminalgraph.com/
Caidan Williams: https://caidan.dev/

Tools mentioned
LazyGit: https://lazygit.dev/
Neovim: https://neovim.io/

Hosts
Overcommitted: ⁠⁠https://overcommitted.dev⁠ ⁠
Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠⁠https://github.com/eggyhead
Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com/

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What do investors actually look for in software engineers and tech founders? Melanie Nabar pulls back the curtain on what VCs see when evaluating engineering talent, sharing insider insights on career growth, technical credibility, and the skills that matter most when funding is on the line. Perfect for engineers ready to level up their career strategy.
Links
Melanie Nabar on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melaniejordannabar/
Volition Capital: https://www.volitioncapital.com/

Hosts
Overcommitted: ⁠https://overcommitted.dev ⁠Bethany Janos: ⁠https://www.trustyduck.dev/⁠ ⁠Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠https://github.com/eggyhead