New year, same chaos. Allison and Jasmine are back with a tech industry tale that has it all: job-hopping, fake demos, impossible deadlines, and promotions sliding into the void. From conference standing ovations to the reality of shipping a mediocre product, we’re recounting a story about what happens when expectations don’t match the execution. Can a tooltip ruin your life? Let’s find out!
Got a question you’d like answered on the show? Drop us a line at
jellyfish.co/offthevpn. And don’t worry! We promise to keep it Off the VPN.
Highlights:- Vibes Are Immaculate… Until They’re Not: When leadership excitement turns into a pressure cooker.
- Fake Demos & Fast Deadlines: How a half-baked prototype turns into an urgent, must-ship-now nightmare.
- Burnout & Moving On: What happens when work keeps piling up and the recognition is absent?
Jump into the conversation:
(
00:00) Getting back into the swing of things
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01:19) Aaron’s story of tech highs and lows
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03:03) Dream jobs and the engineering rollercoaster
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04:47) Conference demos: Big wins, big risks
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08:19) Leadership shifts, reorgs, and trouble ahead
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10:48) The White Whale of “Vizzy”
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14:03) Fake demos, big promises, execs want it now
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17:31) Product managers and realistic deadlines
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24:16) Chasing a promotion that never comes
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28:43) Silent rejection, a final push, and an empty win
(
32:57) Burnout hits: Knowing when it’s time to go
What is Off the VPN?
Is bringing up your software engineering salary a dating red flag? How do you strike a balance between career ambition and incendiary burnout? Is it ever okay to hold your code hostage in escrow? Navigating a career in tech raises a lot of tricky questions that aren’t exactly appropriate for the daily stand-up. So let’s take this off the VPN.
In this new podcast from Jellyfish, work besties Jasmine and Allison scour the internet to find the real questions engineers and developers are whispering over drinks and posting about anonymously. Together, they’ll tackle the most troubling of inquiries with authenticity, humor, and absolutely no holding back.