Summary

Career growth through mentorship and work-life balance with Dave Schwantes, Senior Software Engineer at GitHub. Brittany and Dave explore why running toward meaningful work beats running from burnout, how mentorship became his primary form of engineering leverage, and what career happiness actually looks like across different life stages. From Instacart and Couchsurfing to building in-house bootcamps, Dave shares how sustainable engineering culture beats individual productivity hacks—and his take on how AI tools reshape what engineers really need to master.

Links

Dave's personal site: https://dinosaurseateverybody.com
Don't Break Prod (bite-sized career advice): https://dontbreakprod.com
Grave Danger (Dave's spooky ska band) on Bandcamp: https://gravedangerskath.bandcamp.com
Dave on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/dorkrawk.bsky.social
Dave on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidschwantes
Dave on GitHub: https://github.com/dorkrawk
Web Dev Challenge Episode: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X2sEoZG8EIw
The Engineer Manager Pendulum article: https://charity.wtf/2017/05/11/the-engineer-manager-pendulum/

Host

Run Toward Something - Career Growth, Mentorship & Work-Life Balance with Dave Schwantes

Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Tech Careers Insights