Dev Forward Studios presents
“every leader has a tell”
A narrative podcast about tech leadership. Fictionalized, dramatized stories of the decisions a new engineering leader makes under pressure and incomplete information, in the thirty-one days before a job that could be the bravest thing he has ever done, or the stupidest. Poker is the lens, not the subject.
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Eleven episodes. A countdown to day one.
Thirty-one days from a job he hasn't started, Kevin reads about a poker-club raid three times, then signs the offer to go do the same thing. The season's held breath begins. With Dana, the wartime CEO whose advice thrills and gets people fired.
The entire business rests on a single legal theory. Kevin brings it to Marcus, a compliance lawyer who is calm now and will not stay that way. Compliance, it turns out, is architecture.
He's inheriting eight engineers who didn't choose him, and joining alongside three who did. Priya, his former boss, on the difference between being wanted and being trusted, and the three questions to ask in every first one-on-one.
An entire job hangs on a scaling number nobody can source. Triple it. Triple what, from what, says who? Dana wants speed, Priya wants proof, and Maya is the one who can actually find where the number came from.
Barrels versus ammunition. Priya on raising the standard before raising the pace, putting velocity behind gates, and the quiet question forming under all of it: is this even the team?
Everything routes through one man. The single point of failure isn't the code, it's the founder, and Kevin can see the silhouette without having met him. Marcus's calm cracks for the first time.
The season's emotional core. Sol, the friend allowed to ask about ego and fear, keeps asking why Kevin actually wants this, and Kevin starts, barely, to answer. Dana pulls the other way.
The low point, where the rehearsal breaks. Tom is the ghost of who Kevin becomes if he gets this wrong. The lonely truth: the peers you brought with you become the people who report to you, and that changes everything.
Conviction. The climb back. Strategy as a stop-doing list, tempo per front, and the moment Kevin partially rejects the most charismatic voice in his head. The plan completes here.
The eve. The shortest episode, the held breath before the cliff. No new frameworks, only acceptance. Priya's reveal pays off, Sol asks the question one last time, and the plan is neat while the fear list is still long.
The finale, recorded after starting. Reality is the final mentor and it picks winners. The gap between rehearsal and reality, the founder finally heard, the future-tape in context, and a last sound that casts the line for season two.
A capable engineer is one month from a hard new job, and he's walking toward it carrying a decision he's already made but hasn't lived. Under the Gun is the rehearsal: he thinks the problems through out loud, seeks counsel from recurring mentors who don't agree with each other, and commits to a plan while a clock runs.
It's a narrative podcast about tech leadership, fictionalized and dramatized, where poker is the lens for decisions made under pressure and incomplete information. The lessons are real. The names and the company are not.
A production of Dev Forward Studios.