Sam Julien

Hi, new friends and old! 👋 I’m Sam. I live in Vancouver, WA and work as Director of #DevRel for Writer, an enterprise AI platform. I love: ✍️ Writing 👾 Tabletop and video games 🏔️ Outdoorsy stuff 🎶 Making music 🎈 Being a dad My writing lives at samjulien.com. Nice to meet you!

I can’t believe this is how I discover Andrea Gibson but I’m also eternally grateful

I’m almost done with my first play through of Fire Emblem Awakening. What an amazing game and feels like it has a ton of replayability. Three Houses and Engage were both some of my favorite games ever, so this was my next step in the series. What should I play after Awakening? #JRPG #FireEmblem

Happy Father’s Day to my fellow dads! Becoming a dad is the best thing that’s ever happened to me, hope it is true for you as well!

I am obsessed with this song “Wednesday Baby” by Midnight Sister. Her voice scratches something in my brain.

Oh man, so excited for this as a lifelong #JRPG fan: “A Guide to Japanese Role-Playing Games” from @bitmapbooks.com. Look how beautiful it is! 😍

Me: We need to save money Also me:

Dude these Chrono Trigger boss fights are so much harder than I remember. How did teenage me do this?!

Law of parenting 122: no matter what or how much you bring on a trip, your child will ask you for the thing you did not bring.

Why do they make it their entire personality??

I’ve been playing Chrono Trigger on the Steam Deck, first time since the 90s. Man it holds up! Such an amazing game.

If you’re at @writethedocs.bsky.social in PDX, come find us for some Writer hats, socks, and stickers! Who better to give these away to than a bunch of writers??

“Science confers power on anyone who takes the trouble to learn it.” - Carl Sagan

The difficult thing about parenting a toddler is that they’re acting totally as expected and should at that age, it’s just that all of society and a functioning household does not work that way lol

All this talk of Ken Griffey Jr. taking photos at the Master’s made me remember one of my all time favorite SNES games: Ken Griffey Jr.’s Winning Run. I was *obsessed* with this game as a kid. Anyone else?

Finally upgraded my Kindle for my birthday after 10 long years! The size difference is wild. What are some of your favorite books over the last couple of years?

Giving Undertale a shot, I’ve heard lots of great things about it. I’m about 3 hours in and really digging the retro and Earthbound vibes. Have you played it?

I’ve been enrolled at night school at Dishes University lately, meaning I go through Coursera and EdX courses on math, comp sci, and ML while cleaning the kitchen every night. Gotta find the time you can when you’re working and parenting 🤷‍♂️

Can’t even fathom how many hours of insider trading and anti-corruption trainings I’ve gone through my whole career, being told that even accepting a gift >$50 is bribery, and now we have a sitting president openly manipulating the market.

Predicting that CS degrees are going to be in higher demand and more valuable in the coming years due to AI. There is way more to engineering than just writing code, and it will be increasingly difficult to prove competency as models get better at coding. What do you think?

How it feels seeing all the Ghibli memes

Beat God of War (2018) last night. What a great game. I was so surprised by the depth of storytelling and character development. Lots of fun! It’s too bad Ragnarok doesn’t work on Steam Deck.

Unbelievable how kids just become walking talking sources of joy in your life

Please remember that no matter who you are and what you’re going though You (yes you, especially you) are valuable You matter The world is better with you in it

This has been my therapist-recommended textbook for the last year, highly recommend. “Full Catastrophe Living” by Jon Kabat-Zinn

The struggle of “I need to follow the news to be an informed citizen to protect the ones I love” and “I need to protect my mental health so I can continue to provide for the ones I love” is so real these days

Really enjoyed this conversation with @dthompsondev.bsky.social about the role of a director, organizational leadership, building cross-functional influence, and much more. Thanks Danny!

Life advice from Tolkein

As knowledge becomes increasingly commoditized, wisdom becomes more precious.

Our picks of the top ~50 papers for AI Engineers to read from scratch to competent in 2025: latent.space/p/2025-papers Feedback welcome/enjoy!

Happy PR Review Catch-up Day to all who celebrate! 📋

Quarterly experiments > New Year’s resolutions www.samjulien.com/setting-quar...

🥂 Happy New Year everyone! May this be your best year yet!

2024 marked 10 years in tech & my pivot to product/AI engineering. Leveled up fast while prioritizing family. Only regret was being too busy *doing* to do much teaching. 2025 is beast mode—but I'm bringing as many people with me as I can.

Cyberpunk 2077 is a great game but it’s so grizzly and gritty that I don’t really look forward to playing it with my precious little game time. Witcher 3 had some “adult” stories but was set in such a fantasy world that it didn’t hit so hard. Just me?