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“If I wasn’t an employee, who was I?”

On the Thursday before Thanksgiving at 8 AM, a single calendar notification ended a career that had spanned 18 years. Within minutes, the Slack channels went dark, the access was revoked, and the identity I had spent nearly two decades building as a "tech leader" vanished into a black monitor.

In this return episode of Still Technically Here, we’re pivoting. We’re moving away from technical systems and leadership-centered problem solving and diving deep into the human side of things. I’m sharing the raw, unpolished story of my own transition—from the "Work-Role Enmeshment" that made a layoff feel like a psychological trauma, to the uncomfortable "liminal space" where growth actually happens.

This isn’t just a story about losing a job; it’s a manual for anyone currently "debugging" their life while the code is still running. Whether you’re a teacher, a nurse, an engineer, or an entrepreneur, if you’ve ever felt that the ground was moving under your feet, this episode is your compass.

In this episode, we explore:

• The Enmeshment Trap: Why we fuse our self-worth with our professional output and how to perform an "Identity Audit" to decouple the two.
• Navigating the Liminal Space: Understanding the "mid-air" suspension between who you were and who you are becoming—and why discomfort is a prerequisite for transformation.
• The Power of the Radical "Yes": How saying yes to the small, scary, and "un-strategic" things—like an empty seat next to a stranger—creates the data points you need to build your next chapter.
• Growth vs. Fixed Mindsets: Applying Dr. Carol Dweck’s research to move from "I am my job" to "I am my skills."

The Transition Toolbox: I’m leaving you with three tangible systems you can run right now:

1. The Verb Audit: Identifying your portable power.
2. The Weak-Tie Outreach: Expanding your surface area for luck.
3. The Micro-Yes Protocol: Building your bravery muscle one small interaction at a time.

The access was revoked and the chair was gone, but the architect remains. Turns out, I’m Still Technically Me. And that’s the only person I need to be.

Connect with the show:

• www.stilltechnicallyhere.buzzsprout.com
• IG & TikTok: @stilltechnicallyhere

Research Referenced:

• Identity Fusion & Enmeshment – Dr. Janna Koretz (HBR)
• The Rites of Passage & Liminality – Arnold van Gennep & Victor Turner
• Mindset – Dr. Carol Dweck
• The Strength of Weak Ties – Mark Granovetter
• Daring Greatly – Dr. Brené Brown

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Have you ever looked at your schedule and seen an unforgiving block of meetings from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.? You're running on 100% utilization, but your high-leverage output is zero.

As a leader, constant availability is a vulnerability. Your calendar isn't an itinerary; it's a traffic jam where low-priority requests are blocking your most critical work: strategy, coaching, and deep design. You've become the victim of uncontrolled inbound traffic.

In this episode, we stop being the truck that crashes and become the traffic controller. We install the manager's version of a system defense mechanism: Rate Limiting Your Calendar.

We'll discuss why being easily available is an expensive operating cost, and how you're constantly paying the 23-minute context-switching penalty.

🛠️ You Will Learn to Implement a Three-Layered Defense System:

1. The Asynchronous Filter (The Narrative-First Rule): Making synchronous meetings the exception, not the rule. If the goal is information transmission, the meeting is cancelled and replaced with documentation.
2. The Deep Work Block (Non-Negotiable Time Blocking): How to carve out and protect 2-3 consecutive hours, treating this time like a non-negotiable meeting with a CEO to ensure strategic work gets done.
3. The Decision-Maker Filter: Delegating your presence and authority for technical or operational meetings, reserving your time only for decisions that absolutely require you.

Stop trading the long-term impact of being strategic for the short-term comfort of being agreeable. Rate limiting your calendar is the necessary system upgrade that frees up the bandwidth required to be a true leader.

Tune in to learn how to stop simply feeling busy and start being truly effective.

Next week: The Stakeholder Firewall. How to protect your team from external noise.

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We've all been there: the late-night pull to polish a piece of code, a deck, or a document that’s already 80% finished and shippable. That urge? It’s The Perfectionist’s Loop, and it’s the moment your technical integrity transforms into your team’s biggest leadership bottleneck.

In this episode, we expose the enormous economic and psychological costs of chasing that final 20% of perfection. We dive into why managers get stuck debugging the small stuff—from rewriting a simple database query for "efficiency" to delaying high-leverage strategic work—and how this habit erodes team autonomy and shatters managerial credibility (the "glass balls").

You'll learn how to stop being the team’s editor and start being the Force Multiplier. We introduce three immediate, tactical tools you can deploy to set clear boundaries and build team ownership:

1. The High-Risk Triage Test: Quantify risk to filter for Black Swans, not Fat Tails.
2. The Two-Question Dependency Filter: Stop Reverse Delegation by enforcing the Minimum Viable Standard (MVS).
3. The 4-Question Rework Dialogue: Shift failure from personal fault to process improvement.

If you’re ready to debug your perfectionism, trust the 80/20 rule, and reclaim your strategic time, this episode is your essential tuneup.

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You were the 10x engineer, now you're drowning in meetings. That urge to dive back into the code? That’s the Two-Body Problem—the agonizing pull between the code you love and the team you lead. When you solve a quick bug for a dopamine hit, you become the biggest bottleneck and introduce organizational technical debt.

In this episode, we tackle the context-switching fatigue of new managers and provide the blueprint to escape micromanagement hell.

Learn the three tactical tools to delegate without fear:

1. The One-Way/Two-Way Door Test for clear decision-making.
2. The "What Have You Tried?" Filter to build team competence.
3. The Manager Commit for safe, low-risk IC work.

Your job is no longer to be the fastest coder, but the Chief Architect of your team’s capacity. You didn't stop being an engineer; you became the operating system.

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Are you an underrepresented technical leader carrying the crushing weight of the "Only One" in the room? This isn't just Imposter Syndrome; it's the fear of confirming a bias. In Episode 1, we get candid about the high stakes of representation and the mistakes that feel like identity crises.

We're going to get into:

1. The crucial difference between Imposter Syndrome and the "Only One" Syndrome.
2. How to adopt the "Failure is Data, Not Identity" mindset to process mistakes like a leader.
3. Two powerful, actionable steps (Cognitive Restructuring & the 5-Minute Rule) to quiet the critic and advocate for yourself with authority.

It’s time to fire your inner critic. Your competence is a fact; your language should reflect that authority. Stop paying the confidence tax and own your space.

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Stop feeling like a fraud wrestling with the chaos. It's time to reclaim your expertise, own your influence, and realize your competence is Still Technically Here.

If you're an engineer, architect, or (technical) leader wrestling with the pull between the hands-on execution you love and the high-stakes strategy you must own—hit subscribe.

We cut through the organizational bullshit with candid conversations, dropping the corporate jargon to give you the intentional, thoughtful systems needed to scale your impact. Your expertise is Still Technically Here for a reason, and we'll help you realize it.