When Tech Stopped Being "Safe"

For a long time — especially in software engineering — there was an unspoken promise: if you were smart enough, fast enough, or technical enough, the rest would work itself out. That promise no longer feels reliable. In this episode of Wired for Change, host Amy Yee is joined by Cate Huston, author of The Engineering Leader, to explore what’s changed — and what engineering leadership demands now. Cate brings lived experience from across the tech landscape, including working as a software engineer at Google, leading distributed teams at Automattic, and navigating trust, privacy, and accountability at DuckDuckGo. This conversation isn’t about all tech roles equally. Many parts of the tech ecosystem — hardware, infrastructure, safety-critical systems — have long operated under different constraints. What we examine here is a pattern that emerged most strongly in software engineering, particularly in Big Tech and high-growth environments. We talk about: Why technical excellence is no longer a safety net How engineering identity shifts when “writing code” stops being the differentiator AI as a multiplier of judgment — not a replacement for it Leadership as force multiplication rather than individual output Why careers are bigger than any one job or organization This isn’t a doom-and-gloom episode. It’s a reframing — about judgment, agency, and leadership when the old assumptions no longer hold. Chapters: 00:00 – When tech stopped being “safe” 03:10 – The broken career contract in software engineering 07:20 – Identity: “I write code” vs “I build things that matter” 11:45 – From pampered engineers to scrappy reality 16:40 – Layoffs, uncertainty, and the end of the safety net 21:30 – Careers vs jobs: letting go of “up and to the right” 26:50 – AI as a multiplier (and when it backfires) 33:40 – Judgment over answers in modern leadership 39:30 – Scaling teams by scaling judgment 45:20 – Leadership without authority or abundance 52:10 – Self-management before managing others 58:45 – Feedback, growth, and readiness for responsibility 1:04:10 – Values, privacy, and real trade-offs in tech 1:10:20 – Letting go of old career beliefs 1:13:00 – Working with reality as it is