About The Career Whispers
Welcome to one of the fastest-growing tech career newsletters on Substack 🏆
Useful for anyone working in tech. Highly relevant for startup, unicorn, and Big Tech professionals in product, engineering, design, program/project management, and marketing. Written by me, Erika Gemzer, a Googler and unicorn startup leader who has worn all the hats at all types, sizes, and scales of tech companies.
I am currently leading Strategy & Ops in GenAI for Google DeepMind. I was previously a software engineer at Google, a Chief of Staff and founding team at Verily, a Chief Product Officer at a Series A healthtech startup, and I’ve held engineering, program management, and product leadership roles at multiple startups and public companies.
Despite being deeply technical, my passion lies with people, organizations, and coaching high impact cultures where people can derive immense personal satisfaction from their work. Thank you for your interest in my work.
What to expect as a paid subscriber
I write well-researched, thoughtful series to help tech workers like myself experiment, improve 1% daily, and navigate into the best career possible. For $12/month or $120/year, you get weekly posts across the following topical series:
[1] CAREER WHISPERS—top-of-mind career prompts, news, and micro-experiments to stimulate thought and deliberate action to grow your career and broaden your perspective. These issues usually come out on either Fridays or Weekends to bookend your work week.
[2] DEBUGGING YOUR JOB SEARCH—use data and signals to figure out what’s broken and exactly what you need to do to fix your job search.
[3] MVIP—Minimum Viable Interview Prep tips, tools, and frameworks.
[4] JOB SEARCH DIARIES—peek into the life of a tech job seeker for a full week and learn the latest tips, tools, and job search strategies.
[5] 8(ISH)—peek into the daily work of under-discovered tech legends and their craft.
[6] CLEVER GUERRILLA—learn clever tactics from recruiters and job seekers who found uncommon ways to the front door of opportunity…
[7] Plus…BONUS EDITIONS when I’m feeling inspired to write more 🪄
(See the full archives by topic)
You also get:
Actionable experiments and uncommon advice for tech workers. I focus 100% on tech workers and bring up timely topics relevant to those working at tech companies. I offer tools and insights to help you become more grounded, efficient, and effective at your work. If you implement even one of these tips successfully, I guarantee you’ll feel this newsletter has paid for itself many times.
A pulse on the tech job market and how to navigate to your best job ever. Since the massive layoffs that started in 2022, we’re much more aware of the close ties between capital markets and tech’s growth posture. I cover what’s happening with tech hiring, layoffs, fundraising, why it’s happening, and what it means for your career.
Navigating careers from Big Tech to startups of all sizes. Tech careers are changing rapidly as we learn to work with AI. How do you stay relevant? How do you stay ahead? How do you stay sane? I talk to successful tech careerists and lean into my experience as a senior leader, manager, and IC to bring the patterns that help you navigate your career and thrive.
Resources and templates embedded within posts like sweet little easter eggs for you to discover and turn your learning into action immediately.
Suggest topics you want to hear about by emailing me directly or commenting on posts.
Join me and 5,000+ subscribers. Read reviews from readers.
How much does it cost? $12/month or $120/year (or local currency equivalents). See also the “Discounts” section below for groups and my commitment to purchase pricing parity. Many subscribers expense this newsletter to their team’s learning and development budget. Here is an email you can send to your manager.
(not convinced yet?) Free subscribers only get:
Access my YouTube channel for free videos.
up to one full post per month, usually a JOB SEARCH DIARY or 🤫 CAREER WHISPER
Free previews for most paid articles, to tickle your brain and support your career. One day, I assume you’ll flip the bit and become a paid subscriber.
Expensing The Career Whispers newsletter
Many subscribers expense this newsletter using their (informal or formal) learning, professional development, or training budgets. Here is an email you can send to your manager.
When becoming a paying subscriber, you immediately receive a receipt that you can submit to your internal system or your manager for reimbursement.
You can always go to your account page to generate receipts or invoices for reimbursement now or in the future.
Group/company subscriptions
You can purchase discounted group subscriptions here. Once you have bought a group subscription, manage your group on this page.
When setting up a group subscription, an administrator can purchase X annual seats. They can then add/remove/replace organization members who receive newsletter issues.
Large group discounts: Contact me if you’d like further group discounts when purchasing more than 10 seats.
Invoices: Invoices can be generated for expense reimbursement, and additional group members can be added later.
To add more group members: the group admin can add additional seats. Follow the steps outlined here.
Individual Discounts
Purchase pricing parity: if you are based in a country with lower income compared to the US and Western Europe, you’ll notice there is purchase price parity for your country (and you will pay less to read TCW). Enjoy!
Gift subscriptions
Refer friends and get free months!
Check out the leaderboard, grab your referral link, and see how to get TCW for free here.
Usage guidelines & sharing content
One subscription is intended for one individual, and not for groups. See the ‘Group/company subscriptions’ on details for group subscriptions.
Occasional forwarding of newsletter issues to non-subscribers is completely fine. If you find yourself doing this regularly, please consider getting those people a subscription - or gifting them one!
Read past articles
See all past articles organized by topic, here.
Below are links to the top 10 posts from year one (2023):
TCW #001: The Minimum Viable Interview Prep part 1 of 4: Crafting a Strategic, Compelling Career Story 📇
TCW #011: Debugging your resume 🔎 🐜
TCW #033: How to spot green flags and red flags in job postings ✅ ❌
TCW #028: A guide to tech job searching in a soft talent market (2023-2024)🍦
TCW #016: How to Throw Green Flags, not Red Flags (in Job Interviews)🚦
TCW #003: The Minimum Viable Interview Prep part 3 of 4: Mastering Behavioral Questions 🙋♀️
TCW #032: The 4-hour Job Search 🏝️
TCW #030: A definitive guide for interview thank you notes (with examples) 💌
TCW #031: Your handy post-interview follow-up communications timeline 🗣️
TCW #002: The Minimum Viable Interview Prep part 2 of 4: Walking Down Memory Lane 🚗
Publishing schedule and holidays
I have a full time leadership role in frontier AI and a young baby. I write as much and as often as I can, but there is no set posting schedule for The Career Whispers. I’ve tried it, and it diminishes the quality of the writing, which I cannot accept.
I value founding subscribers very highly and give them outsized access to me, including for free advice and access to my time.
For all paid subscribers, I am responsive to chat pings and through that often source writing topics that subscribers care most about, and I often end up giving free coaching to my paid subscribers through this avenue.
