Building platforms, ecosystems & open-source communities: Lessons from Viam & MongoDB w/ Eliot Horowitz @ Viam #213

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

#MBA #Business #ELC #Tech #Podcasting Education #Special Features

1:03:38

Too many entrepreneurs get stuck on the business treadmill, hustling nonstop, unable to scale, and unknowingly stalling their growth. That’s where Dave Ramsey began. After crashing into $3 million in debt, he rebuilt from scratch, turning a small radio program into a national show with millions of listeners. With over three decades of experience in entrepreneurship, business growth, and content creation, he knows what it takes to build a lasting business. In this episode, Dave reveals the six drivers of long-term success, the five key stages of startup growth, and how he balances life as an entrepreneur and a content creator. In this episode, Hala and Dave will discuss: (00:00) Introduction (00:23) The Core Principles of Financial Freedom (05:42) Adapting to Change as a Content Creator (09:22) Balancing Content Creation and Entrepreneurship (12:34) How to Create a Clear Path in Business (15:19) The Truth About Starting a Business Today (18:22) The Six Drivers of Business Success (26:20) Shifting From Tactical to Strategic Thinking (29:44) The Five Stages of Business Growth (41:10) Leading with Care, Clarity, and Accountability (47:10) Identifying the Right Leadership Skills (48:35) Starting a Media Business as an Entrepreneur Dave Ramsey is a personal finance expert, radio personality, bestselling author, and the founder and CEO of Ramsey Solutions. Over the past three decades, he has built a legacy of helping millions achieve financial freedom. As the host of The Ramsey Show , Dave reaches more than 18 million listeners each week. He is the author of eight national bestselling books. His latest, Build a Business You Love , helps entrepreneurs navigate growth and overcome challenges at every stage. Sponsored By: Shopify - Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at youngandprofiting.co/shopify OpenPhone: Streamline and scale your customer communications with OpenPhone. Get 20% off your first 6 months at openphone.com/profiting Airbnb - Find yourself a co-host at airbnb.com/host Indeed - Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/profiting RobinHood - Receive your 3% boost on annual IRA contributions, sign up at robinhood.com/gold Factor - Get 50% off your first box plus free shipping at factormeals.com/factorpodcast Rakuten - Save while shopping at rakuten.com Microsoft Teams - Stop paying for tools. Get everything you need, for free at aka.ms/profiting LinkedIn Marketing Solutions - Get a $100 credit on your next campaign at linkedin.com/profiting Resources Mentioned: Dave’s Book, Build a Business You Love: bit.ly/BuildaBusinessYouLove Dave’s Website: ramseysolutions.com Active Deals - youngandprofiting.com/deals Key YAP Links Reviews - ratethispodcast.com/yap Youtube - youtube.com/c/YoungandProfiting LinkedIn - linkedin.com/in/htaha/ Instagram - instagram.com/yapwithhala/ Social + Podcast Services: yapmedia.com Transcripts - youngandprofiting.com/episodes-new Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Podcast, Business, Business Podcast, Self Improvement, Self-Improvement, Personal Development, Starting a Business, Strategy, Investing, Sales, Selling, Psychology, Productivity, Entrepreneurs, AI, Artificial Intelligence, Technology, Marketing, Negotiation, Money, Finance, Side Hustle, Mental Health, Career, Leadership, Mindset, Health, Growth Mindset, Side Hustle, Passive Income, Online Business, Solopreneur, Networking.…

hace 29 días 42:54

MP3•Episodio en casa

ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ

Eliot Horowitz is the Founder and CEO of Viam, an engineering platform unlocking AI, automation, and data for devices in the physical world. With a deep commitment to advancing technology, Eliot leads Viam in helping companies build solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate, marine, industrial manufacturing, and more.

A career software developer and technology leader, Eliot co-founded MongoDB in 2007, writing the core code base for the pioneering database and leading the engineering and product teams for 13 years as CTO. MongoDB, which went public in 2017, has since reached a market cap of over $20 billion. Before MongoDB, he co-founded the ecommerce company ShopWiki and served as CTO, and he began his career in software development in the R&D group of adtech firm DoubleClick.

Eliot is passionate about using technology to address pressing societal issues, including working with WAVS to protect marine life in the North Atlantic and supporting Billion Oyster Project’s work to help restore New York Harbor’s ecosystem.

SHOW NOTES:

The origin story of founding Viam (2:56)
How Viam can be a game-changing platform, accelerating robotics software & hardware 10x to 100x (4:33)
The ideation journey behind Viam: Building a platform that simplifies the integration of hardware and software development (6:11)
Solving challenges with seamless APIs, a modular system, the right abstraction layers, and a comprehensive platform (9:54)
Key questions for identifying the right abstraction layers at Viam (11:32)
Optimizing your platform for flexibility and ease of use (13:32)
The evolution of product building, from first-hand experience to customer-driven (16:33)
How Eliot’s MongoDB Experience shaped Viam’s user-centric approach, open-source strategy, business model & ecosystem approach (18:48)
Cultivating developer communities & leveraging community insights at MongoDB & Viam (23:01)
Frameworks for deciding on your business model & pricing (24:52)
Eliot’s approach to building developer tools & products used by engineers (26:23)
Aligning your eng team & stakeholders on the product vision (29:51)
What it means to deeply understand engineers and how they interact with your product (31:10)
Strategies for eng leaders to better connect with customers (34:38)
Viam’s real-world applications & what’s next (36:31)
Rapid fire questions (39:31)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Viam - At Viam, we believe in the power of technology to make our world smarter, happier, and more sustainable. We're building a revolutionary engineering platform for problem-solving in the physical world, so that innovators from all disciplines can address humanity's most complex challenges with practical solutions. Together with our partners, we're committed to making a lasting positive impact on industries, communities, and the planet.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

225 episodios

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Building platforms, ecosystems & open-source communities: Lessons from Viam & MongoDB w/ Eliot Horowitz @ Viam #213

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

64 subscribers

published hace 29 días

MP3•Episodio en casa

ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ

SHOW NOTES:

The origin story of founding Viam (2:56)
How Viam can be a game-changing platform, accelerating robotics software & hardware 10x to 100x (4:33)
The ideation journey behind Viam: Building a platform that simplifies the integration of hardware and software development (6:11)
Solving challenges with seamless APIs, a modular system, the right abstraction layers, and a comprehensive platform (9:54)
Key questions for identifying the right abstraction layers at Viam (11:32)
Optimizing your platform for flexibility and ease of use (13:32)
The evolution of product building, from first-hand experience to customer-driven (16:33)
How Eliot’s MongoDB Experience shaped Viam’s user-centric approach, open-source strategy, business model & ecosystem approach (18:48)
Cultivating developer communities & leveraging community insights at MongoDB & Viam (23:01)
Frameworks for deciding on your business model & pricing (24:52)
Eliot’s approach to building developer tools & products used by engineers (26:23)
Aligning your eng team & stakeholders on the product vision (29:51)
What it means to deeply understand engineers and how they interact with your product (31:10)
Strategies for eng leaders to better connect with customers (34:38)
Viam’s real-world applications & what’s next (36:31)
Rapid fire questions (39:31)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Viam - At Viam, we believe in the power of technology to make our world smarter, happier, and more sustainable. We're building a revolutionary engineering platform for problem-solving in the physical world, so that innovators from all disciplines can address humanity's most complex challenges with practical solutions. Together with our partners, we're committed to making a lasting positive impact on industries, communities, and the planet.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

225 episodios

#MBA #Business #ELC #Tech #Podcasting Education #Special Features

ทุกตอน

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building partnerships w/ complex stakeholders, aligning tech debt w/ business value & decisive vs. thoughtful decision-making #217 49:41

hace 1 day49:41

49:41

ABOUT FUNMI OLUDAIYE Funmi is a Managing Director and the Head of the Digital Risk Office for Enterprise Partnerships at Goldman Sachs, where she is pioneering a first-of-its-kind global initiative to embed critical business, security, and engineering risk practices within the engineering organization. With nearly 15 years of experience as a software engineer, architect, and engineering manager, she has a proven track record of leading high-performing teams, delivering innovative technology solutions, and championing best practices in developer experience and productivity across large-scale engineering teams. Most recently, she was the Head of Engineering for Consumer Deposits at Marcus by Goldman Sachs, and prior to that, she led the product engineering teams that built and launched the firm's award-winning credit card partnerships with Apple and later, General Motors. Funmi is a passionate advocate for underrepresented groups in the technology industry and is committed to mentoring the next generation of engineering leaders. Her wealth of experience and dedication to driving positive change make her a sought-after speaker and advisor. ABOUT KETAN GUPTA Ketan is a seasoned engineering leader with 13+ years in software development, cloud, architecture, product delivery, and organizational leadership. He excels at building high-performing engineering teams and driving strategic initiatives. As an active community builder, he contributes to the Engineering Leaders Community and champions software craftsmanship. ABOUT SASHA HALL Sasha Hall is an Engineering Manager at Planitar Inc, makers of iGUIDE. A University of Waterloo graduate with over 5 years of leadership experience at Pegasus Aeronautics and Deep Trekker, Sasha brings valuable insights on decisive leadership, effective communication, and strategic vision in growing organizations. Their career path through underwater robotics at Deep Trekker, aerial drone systems at Pegasus Aeronautics, and spatial mapping technologies at Planitar showcases a passion for innovative hardware and sensing solutions. This diverse technical background, combined with consistent leadership dedication, has equipped Sasha with a unique perspective on navigating today's complex engineering challenges. Build AI Voice Agents with ElevenLabs ElevenLabs is the leading Voice AI platform for developers with thousands of ultra-realistic, human-like voices across 32 languages. Developers use ElevenLabs to build life-like, conversational AI voice agents to handle customer support queries, appointment scheduling, and even offer personalized 1-1 tutoring. Get started for free at elevenlabs.io/elc SHOW NOTES: Funmi discusses why successful eng leaders build true partnerships between engineering & business stakeholders (1:58) Navigating the dynamics of engineering & cross-functional team partnerships (3:00) Creating alignment / building relationships through fostering trust & curiosity (4:42) How engaging w/ curiosity is key to building cross-functional relationships (7:21) Funmi’s framework to help identify gaps in understanding (8:56) Recognizing knowledge gaps and relying on subject matter experts (10:15) Tips for navigating partnerships with multiple stakeholders (13:14) What’s going on with ELC New York & the power of connecting with eng leaders (14:45) Ketan discusses cloud transformation and AI integration (17:08) Considering challenges w/ security, scalability, cost, flexibility & AI in cloud vs. hybrid migrations (18:04) Explaining the impact of technical debt on organizations (20:04) The STIR framework for managing tech debt during cloud migrations (21:17) Translating tech debt into business value w/ STIR (24:17) Separating continuous improvement / performance from tech debt (27:02) Understanding team strengths & bolstering team motivation (29:24) Ketan’s experience with ELC London (31:07) Have fun with decision-making (33:29) Sasha discusses optimizing team processes amid company growth & new hires (35:11) Effective decision-making - balancing being decisive & thoughtful (37:36) Examples of balancing quick decision-making w/ thoughtfulness (39:05) How to refactor repetitive tasks to improve efficiency (40:32) Balancing time, risk & impact in decision-making processes (42:06) The value of building a network & finding mentors outside your own company (45:03) Advice for jumping into ELC community events (47:41) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Recalibrating leadership priorities, leveraging your time & empowering senior leaders w/ Vinod Marur #216 40:19

hace 9 días40:19

40:19

ABOUT VINOD MARUR Vinod Marur is the SVP of Engineering at Databricks. He was previously at Rubrik where he served as SVP Engineering and established a mature engineering organization geared for rapid product development and innovation with a deep focus on product quality and organizational development. Prior to that Vinod spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles across some of Google’s most critical business units, including Search, Ads, and Payments as well as tapping into his passion for developer platforms to create and lead the Actions on Google platform, used by third parties to develop for Google Assistant and other Google products. Build AI Voice Agents with ElevenLabs ElevenLabs is the leading Voice AI platform for developers with thousands of ultra-realistic, human-like voices across 32 languages. Developers use ElevenLabs to build life-like, conversational AI voice agents to handle customer support queries, appointment scheduling, and even offer personalized 1-1 tutoring. Get started for free at elevenlabs.io/elc SHOW NOTES: Vinod’s process for recalibrating his leadership focus / priorities (2:25) Why routine can be dangerous & the mental shift required to prioritize impact (4:17) Examples of pivoting & how Vinod’s leadership priorities adapted (7:57) Strategies for assessing core priorities when scaling (9:39) Identifying where the most leverage is for your time (11:05) Signals that it’s time to recalibrate your organization’s priorities (13:27) Solving for information asymmetry: designing communication and collaboration structures (16:20) Rewriting hiring playbooks & tailoring recruitment pitches in a shifting market (18:56) Hiring tactics that worked five years ago that don’t anymore (21:21) The impact of AI on hiring practices (22:55) Current factors impacting hiring engineering leaders (25:30) Vinod’s framework for identifying the right problems to solve when transitioning to a new role (27:14) “The best leaders often start small, and progress to tackle larger problems” (28:33) Strategies for accelerating the impact of senior cross-functional partners (29:40) Obsessing over a single organizational goal & identifying champions to carry initiatives forward (31:25) Vinod’s latest obsession: the implementation and evolution of operational reviews (33:48) Rapid fire questions (36:36) LINKS AND RESOURCES ACQUIRED - Acquired tells the stories and strategies of great companies, hosted by Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal. Acquired is a depth-first show. Episodes are 3-4 hours long, and are better described as "conversational audiobooks" than "podcasts." Episodes occasionally feature guests, such as the founders/CEOs of NVIDIA, Berkshire Hathaway, Starbucks, Meta, Spotify, Uber, Zoom, CAA, Sequoia Capital, and all five Benchmark partners. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
From early days to IPO: Scaling leadership, enterprise growth, product ownership, & outgrowing your failure modes w/ Jon Hyman #215 57:14

hace 16 días57:14

57:14

ABOUT JON HYMAN Jon Hyman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Braze, the customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, in-app, and more. He leads the charge for building the platform’s technical systems and infrastructure as well as overseeing the company’s technical operations and engineering team. Prior to Braze, Jon served as lead engineer for the Core Technology group at Bridgewater Associates, the world’s largest hedge fund. There, he managed a team that maintained 80+ software assets and was responsible for the security and stability of critical trading systems. Jon met cofounder Bill Magnuson during his time at Bridgewater, and together they won the 2011 TechCrunch Disrupt Hackathon. Jon is a recipient of the SmartCEO Executive Management Award in the CIO/CTO Category for New York. Jon holds a B.A. from Harvard University in Computer Science. ABOUT BRAZE Braze is the leading customer engagement platform that empowers brands to Be Absolutely Engaging.™ Braze allows any marketer to collect and take action on any amount of data from any source, so they can creatively engage with customers in real time, across channels from one platform. From cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered experimentation and optimization, Braze enables companies to build and maintain absolutely engaging relationships with their customers that foster growth and loyalty. The company has been recognized as a 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Companies to Work For, 2024 Best Small & Medium Workplaces in Europe by Great Place to Work®, 2024 Fortune Best Workplaces for Women™ by Great Place to Work® and was named a Leader by Gartner® in the 2024 Magic Quadrant™ for Multichannel Marketing Hubs and a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave™: Email Marketing Service Providers, Q3 2024. Braze is headquartered in New York with 15 offices across North America, Europe, and APAC. Learn more at braze.com . SHOW NOTES: What Jon learned from being the only person on call for his company’s first four years (2:56) Knowing when it’s time to get help managing your servers, ops, scaling, etc. (5:42) Establishing areas of product ownership & other scaling lessons from the early days (9:25) Frameworks for conversations on splitting of products across teams (12:00) The challenges, complexities & strategies behind assigning ownership in the early days (14:40) Founding Braze (18:01) Why Braze? The story & insights behind the original vision for Braze (20:08) Identifying Braze’s product market fit (22:34) Early-stage PMF challenges faced by Jon & his co-founders (25:40) Pivoting to focus on enterprise customers (27:48) “Let’s integrate the SDK right now” - founder-led sales ideas to validate your product (29:22) Behind the decision to hire a chief revenue officer for the first time (34:02) The evolution of enterprise & its impact on Braze’s product offering (36:42) Growing out of your early-stage failure modes (39:00) Why it’s important to make personnel decisions quickly (41:22) Setting & maintaining a vision pre IPO vs. post IPO (44:21) Jon’s next leadership evolution & growth areas he is focusing on (49:50) Rapid fire questions (52:53) LINKS AND RESOURCES When We Cease to Understand the World - Benjamín Labatut’s fictional examination of the lives of real-life scientists and thinkers whose discoveries resulted in moral consequences beyond their imagining. At a breakneck pace and with a wealth of disturbing detail, Labatut uses the imaginative resources of fiction to tell the stories of Fritz Haber, Alexander Grothendieck, Werner Heisenberg, and Erwin Schrödinger, the scientists and mathematicians who expanded our notions of the possible. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Essential questions & leadership principles to navigate change, fear & uncertainty w/ Rukmini Reddy #214 45:38

hace 22 días45:38

45:38

ABOUT RUKMINI REDDY Rukmini Reddy is the Senior Vice President of Engineering, responsible for managing product and platform delivery, infrastructure, and data science. Reddy joins PagerDuty from Slack where she guided the vision, strategy, and execution of a comprehensive re-architecture, transforming the messaging software into an automation platform that empowered users to streamline their work. Additionally, Rukmini spent over a decade in senior executive roles at various enterprise companies, where she built a strong track record in driving engineering and product strategy during periods of hyper-growth and product transformation across SaaS, B2B, and B2C business models. Rukmini has a master of science degree in computer engineering from the University of Arkansas and earned a bachelor’s degree from Osmania University in computer science and engineering. SHOW NOTES: How the role of engineering leadership has evolved from 2021 to 2025 (2:35) The rising importance of financial acumen & enduring importance of resilience in engineering leadership (5:28) Key questions to ground and align your team with mission, vision, customer impact, and position to win the market (7:04) What it means to become the leader your business needs (9:31) “Hugging the elephant” and overcoming fear & uncertainty in 2021 vs. today (12:26) Five questions to help you lead your team through transitions and change (16:03) How to incorporate this framework to drive org change with empathy (18:10) How to address questions about job security and future roles within an organization (20:21) Strategies to guide your team through unspoken fears & unknowns (23:47) Rukmini’s advice to create high-trust, high-impact sources of support through fear, uncertainty, and doubt for the first time (25:19) Navigating org change from first principles (27:21) How to move from the “informed pessimism” dip to “curious optimism” as a team & org (30:00) Using evangelism & experimentation to tackle common adoption fears (34:07) Examples of enablement & skill development / delivery (37:32) The role of enforcement in the adoption transformation curve (39:07) Rapid fire questions (42:33) LINKS AND RESOURCES Good Strategy Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters -Richard P. Rumelt clarifies the muddled thinking underlying too many strategies and provides a clear way to create and implement a powerful action-oriented strategy for the real world. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building platforms, ecosystems & open-source communities: Lessons from Viam & MongoDB w/ Eliot Horowitz @ Viam #213 42:54

hace 29 días42:54

42:54

ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ Eliot Horowitz is the Founder and CEO of Viam, an engineering platform unlocking AI, automation, and data for devices in the physical world. With a deep commitment to advancing technology, Eliot leads Viam in helping companies build solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate, marine, industrial manufacturing, and more. A career software developer and technology leader, Eliot co-founded MongoDB in 2007, writing the core code base for the pioneering database and leading the engineering and product teams for 13 years as CTO. MongoDB, which went public in 2017, has since reached a market cap of over $20 billion. Before MongoDB, he co-founded the ecommerce company ShopWiki and served as CTO, and he began his career in software development in the R&D group of adtech firm DoubleClick. Eliot is passionate about using technology to address pressing societal issues, including working with WAVS to protect marine life in the North Atlantic and supporting Billion Oyster Project’s work to help restore New York Harbor’s ecosystem. SHOW NOTES: The origin story of founding Viam (2:56) How Viam can be a game-changing platform, accelerating robotics software & hardware 10x to 100x (4:33) The ideation journey behind Viam: Building a platform that simplifies the integration of hardware and software development (6:11) Solving challenges with seamless APIs, a modular system, the right abstraction layers, and a comprehensive platform (9:54) Key questions for identifying the right abstraction layers at Viam (11:32) Optimizing your platform for flexibility and ease of use (13:32) The evolution of product building, from first-hand experience to customer-driven (16:33) How Eliot’s MongoDB Experience shaped Viam’s user-centric approach, open-source strategy, business model & ecosystem approach (18:48) Cultivating developer communities & leveraging community insights at MongoDB & Viam (23:01) Frameworks for deciding on your business model & pricing (24:52) Eliot’s approach to building developer tools & products used by engineers (26:23) Aligning your eng team & stakeholders on the product vision (29:51) What it means to deeply understand engineers and how they interact with your product (31:10) Strategies for eng leaders to better connect with customers (34:38) Viam’s real-world applications & what’s next (36:31) Rapid fire questions (39:31) LINKS AND RESOURCES Viam - At Viam, we believe in the power of technology to make our world smarter, happier, and more sustainable. We're building a revolutionary engineering platform for problem-solving in the physical world, so that innovators from all disciplines can address humanity's most complex challenges with practical solutions. Together with our partners, we're committed to making a lasting positive impact on industries, communities, and the planet. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Leading transformation, inspiring vision & empowering teams to operate autonomously w/ Kevin Stewart #212 47:33

hace 5 weeks47:33

47:33

ABOUT KEVIN STEWART Kevin Stewart is an engineering executive focused on building teams to build products. He has helped shape the engineering culture at a number of startups, digital agencies and cloud companies. Kevin is particularly experienced in leading remote and distributed teams to consistently deliver quality products. Although he currently resides in Seattle, Kevin is a lifelong New Yorker with dreams of relocating to a sunny island in the Caribbean. SHOW NOTES: Determining what you think is broken vs. what is actually broken (2:57) Focusing on the root issues around leadership & decision-making (4:46) Strategies for identifying the root cause of what is broken (9:08) A framework for diagnosing issues, making a compelling case to stakeholders, and driving high-impact change (10:59) Factors that impact decision making authority on your teams (13:53) Signals that your org faces learned helplessness & how to override it (16:13) Kevin’s advice for leaders who realize they contribute to a fearful environment (18:26) Kevin’s journey @ Splice and aligning personal values with the company mission (21:02) Challenges behind new strategy rollouts and the need for a customer-centric “north star” (26:26) Witnessing the emotional impact of your product on customers (29:44) Repetition is key when it comes to reinforcing your org’s vision (30:48) Prioritizing your time & resources between strategic and tactical work (32:32) Frameworks for aggressively auditing your calendar (35:47) How to empower your team and delegate. so they can operate autonomously and you can shift your focus to strategy and business objectives (37:37) Rapid fire questions (41:38) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Nvidia Way: Jensen Huang and the Making of a Tech Giant - Tae Kim’s deeply reported business history of the chip-designer Nvidia—from its founding in 1993 to its recent emergence as one of the most valuable corporations in the world—explaining how the company’s culture, overseen by cofounder and CEO Jensen Huang, has powered its incredible success. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Accelerating & upskilling your AI learning journey w/ Maher Hanafi #211 46:44

hace 6 weeks46:44

46:44

ABOUT MAHER HANAFI Maher Hanafi is a seasoned technology engineering leader, driving digital transformation and delivering impactful SaaS solutions. As Senior Vice President of Engineering at Betterworks, he leads the AI vision and applications for their AI-powered performance management software, overseeing the integration of AI tools that enhance HR functions like performance reviews, goal setting and employee development. Maher's passion for technology centers on the transformative potential of AI, particularly Generative AI. He views it as a powerful tool capable of learning, adapting and solving real-world problems, and champions its responsible development to empower individuals. Maher's vision extends beyond technology, aiming to revolutionize tech workplaces by fostering human potential alongside cutting-edge solutions. He employs a people-centric leadership style, building collaborative environments that empower teams to excel. This commitment to empowerment extends to mentoring fellow engineering leaders and sharing his knowledge through public speaking. ABOUT COREY COTO Corey Coto is a creative, data-driven, and innovative executive. He founded Kaizen Insights to help enterprises create business intelligence with their people. Corey was SVP of Product, Design and Engineering at a Vista Equity Partners portfolio company and held engineering leadership roles at Amazon, CoStar Group, and Liberty Mutual. He is a Founder Institute Mentor, an ELC Seattle Chapter Lead, and a startup advisor. Software is his favorite artistic medium because of its power to quickly move the needle on big ideas that can benefit people and the planet. He believes there has never been a better time to build. The future is bright! SHOW NOTES: When Maher realized he needed to rethink his approach to AI & upskill quickly (3:38) Milestones across Maher’s AI knowledge progression (7:42) Set aside time for your eng team to experiment & apply AI learnings (11:09) Why intentionally building different use cases leads to better outcomes (14:22) The importance of revisiting AI decisions as a team (16:53) Frameworks for determining how deep to go into each learning area (19:37) How to navigate the challenges of going from proof of concept to production (22:43) Evaluating the ROI of AI applications (26:47) Strategies for deciding which resources / operating expenses go toward AI use cases (29:24) Tips for developing stakeholder confidence in your AI strategy (32:36) How non-technical experts can build AI awareness & confidence (36:22) Betterworks’ AI roadmap for 2025 (38:48) Rapid fire questions (40:58) LINKS AND RESOURCES Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us - Drawing on four decades of scientific research on human motivation, Daniel H. Pink exposes the mismatch between what science knows and what business does—and how that affects every aspect of life. He examines the three elements of true motivation—autonomy, mastery, and purpose—and offers smart and surprising techniques for putting these into action in a unique book that will change how we think and transform how we live. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Data governance, adversarial testing & more - Essential strategies to scale AI responsibly in a shifting regulatory environment w/ Jim Palmer #210 48:58

hace 7 weeks48:58

48:58

ABOUT JIM PALMER Jim Palmer is the Chief AI Officer at Dialpad. Previously he was CTO and Co-Founder of TalkIQ, a conversational intelligence start-up with expertise in real-time speech recognition and natural language processing, acquired by Dialpad in May of 2018. Prior to TalkIQ, he was the founding engineer on the eBay Now local delivery service. SHOW NOTES: Tips and cheat codes for navigating AI governance (3:30) Breaking down red teaming & adversarial testing in AI governance (8:02) Launching and scaling adversarial testing efforts (11:27) Unexpected benefits unlocked with adversarial testing (13:43) Understanding data governance and strategic AI investments (15:38) Building resilient AI from concept to customer validation (19:28) Exploring early feature validation and pattern recognition in AI (22:38) Adaptability in data management and ensuring safe, ethical data use while adapting to evolving legal and governance requirements (26:51) How to prepare data for safe and sustainable long-term use (30:02) Strategies for compliant data practices in a regulated world (32:43) Building data deletion systems with model training in mind (35:14) Current events and trends shaping adaptability and durability in the AI ecosystem (38:38) The role of a Chief AI Officer (41:20) Rapid fire questions (44:35) LINKS AND RESOURCES Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World - With deep and exclusive reporting, across hundreds of interviews, New York Times Silicon Valley journalist Cade Metz brings you into the rooms where these questions are being answered. Where an extraordinarily powerful new artificial intelligence has been built into our biggest companies, our social discourse, and our daily lives, with few of us even noticing. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Capturing & synthesizing unbiased insights from users, your open source community & yourself w/ James Campbell #209 43:59

hace 8 weeks43:59

43:59

ABOUT JAMES CAMPBELL James Campbell is the co-founder and CTO at Great Expectations, the leading open-source data quality product. Prior to his life at a startup, James spent nearly 15 years working across a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytic roles in the US intelligence community, ultimately serving as Chief Data Scientist at CIA. He studied Math and Philosophy at Yale, and international security at Georgetown. He is passionate about creating tools that help communicate uncertainty and build intuition about complex systems. This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders , not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously. Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform. Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering SHOW NOTES: The origin story of Great Expectations & James’ founding journey (3:28) Pitching / validating your idea through community (6:24) Transitioning from federal government to co-founder of a company (9:20) Recommendations when considering the founder / collaboration path (11:30) James’ experience starting with open source & getting 10k stars on GitHub (13:15) Engaging with your audience to drive growth & share your product’s message (15:17) How open source impacts Great Expectations’ marketing / communication (16:58) Navigating the tension between product vision & product roadmap (19:21) Where that tension showed up in Great Expectations’ early days (22:11) Capturing & synthesizing insights from your users (23:54) Strategies for removing biases from product-related decisions (25:37) Finding the balance between your perspective & community insights (27:13) James’ perspective on different levels of product analysis (29:54) Lessons learned from Great Expectations’ phase changes (31:22) Takeaways from the org’s latest experience / transition (34:51) Defining the “Heilmeier Catechism” & how it impacts James’ leadership style (37:07) Rapid fire questions (40:40) LINKS AND RESOURCES CIA Guide to Analytic Tradecraft - Primer published by the CIA to assist analysts in dealing with the perennial problems of intelligence. American Prometheus - Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s definitive biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, one of the iconic figures of the twentieth century, a brilliant physicist who led the effort to build the atomic bomb for his country in a time of war, and who later found himself confronting the moral consequences of scientific progress. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Upskilling: practices to improve hiring, storytelling & structuring personal/leadership problems with engineering principles #208 43:39

hace 9 weeks43:39

43:39

ABOUT COLLEEN TARTOW Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and diversity leadership makes her a trusted senior advisor among executives. An experienced speaker, author, valued mentor and startup advisor, Colleen holds degrees in astrophysics and lives in Massachusetts. ABOUT JIM LIU Jim Liu is an accomplished engineering leader with a track record of driving business outcomes at companies like StockX and Nordstrom. He is also an active community builder with Engineering Leader Community and Angel Investor communities. Jim and his family reside in Seattle, WA. ABOUT DIVYA ALAVARTHI Divya Alavarthi is an experienced engineering and business leader with 14+ years of expertise in architecture, engineering, product delivery, pre-sales, professional services, and organizational leadership. She developed Salesforce Platform architecture standards, best practices, and minimal viable architectures. She supported a talent pool of 5000+ architects and developers resulting in improved strategic agility, speed to market, and business value in large-scale multi-cloud implementations. This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders , not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously. Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform. Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering SHOW NOTES: The importance of leadership in hiring (1:29) The Tartow Method Explained: Key aspects of a successful hiring practice (3:57) How to build out the interview process & ask the right questions (6:14) Behavioral Interviews and good responses: Tips for gaining clarity from interviewees on abstract skills (7:52) Where eng leaders can start building their hiring skill set (9:16) Colleen’s experience co-leading ELC Boston & advice for 1st time event attendees (10:36) Understanding how to model problems as engineering challenges (14:41) How to use an engineering mindset to tackle personal problems (16:35) Jim’s process for deconstructing problems & solving them like an engineer (18:38) Tips for building / applying your skill set around abstracting problems (21:27) Jim’s perspective on getting involved with a local ELC community (24:36) Ways to help make the most out of your first ELC local experience (27:05) Divya shares about the power of storytelling in engineering leadership (30:07) Build the narrative about your product’s business impact (32:24) An example of bringing different demos & storytelling together (34:09) Frameworks for effective storytelling: build a narrative around a product / demo (36:16) How to start improving your storytelling today (37:35) Divya’s favorite moments with the ELC Seattle chapter & how to get involved (39:42) LINKS AND RESOURCES Check out all of our local chapters & get involved here: elc.community/home/clubs This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
GTM Insights from Top DevTool companies w/ David Mytton #207 51:20

hace 10 weeks51:20

51:20

ABOUT DAVID MYTTON A dynamic approach to tech innovation, security, sustainability, and developer empowerment can be seen in everything David Mytton touches. As co-founder of Console and host of the Console DevTools Podcast , he delights in keeping developers ahead of the curve with the tools they need the most. As the founder of Server Density (acquired by StackPath ), he created a product that helped organizations manage mission-critical IT environments. As a sustainable computing researcher at Oxford and a global green tech speaker, he’s brought much-needed attention to the impact of cloud emissions and the water and energy consumption of the data centers that fuel our online lives. Now, as founder and CEO of Arcjet , he’s helping developers and businesses protect their apps with just a few lines of code. His professional career is a direct reflection of his relentless pursuit of making tech smarter and greener. How he invests his spare time showcases his unwavering commitment to mentoring developers and building the communities they need to succeed. SHOW NOTES: David’s founder journey, starting with Server Density (3:20) Behind the early decision to start a company & start building a product (4:50) Key lessons from bootstrapping, raising funding, and being acquired (8:30) How those early lessons shaped Arcjet & Console (10:30) Why VC money can make finding experienced engineers easier (13:16) Strategies to help early teams build their first product / prototype (14:56) Considering company outcomes: Should you build a company just to sell it? (16:23) Signals that it’s the right time for a sale / acquisition (18:14) The story behind Arcjet (20:30) “What makes a great DevTool company” & strategic insights that shaped Arcjet (23:37) Key practices that helped shape Arcjet’s GTM plan (25:36) David’s approach to experimentation and discovery (27:36) The impact of documentation on dev tool companies (31:35) How discovery pathways for dev tools impact sales (33:28) Making the decision-making process easier for users & buyers (35:01) Translating dev tool benefits for finance teams vs. developers (39:56) The impact of design on dev tool companies (42:37) Rapid fire questions (46:02) LINKS AND RESOURCES David’s reading list a16z Blog The Hard Thing About Hard Things - Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World - Niall Ferguson follows the money to tell the human story behind the evolution of finance, from its origins in ancient Mesopotamia to the latest upheavals on what he calls Planet Finance. The Lessons of History - In this illuminating and thoughtful book, Will and Ariel Durant have succeeded in distilling for the reader the accumulated store of knowledge and experience from their four decades of work on the ten monumental volumes of "The Story of Civilization." The result is a survey of human history, full of dazzling insights into the nature of human experience, the evolution of civilization, the culture of man. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating Rapid Change: Skills to Cultivate Resilience, Adaptability & Creativity in Engineering Teams w/ Melody Meckfessel #206 41:17

hace 11 weeks41:17

41:17

ABOUT MELODY MECKFESSEL Melody Meckfessel is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Jasper.ai , the world’s leading AI marketing platform. In her role, Melody shapes the technical vision of the company, oversees product delivery, and spearheads AI research to develop new capabilities that accelerate business outcomes for enterprise marketers. Before joining Jasper.ai , Melody co-founded and served as CEO of Observable, a data visualization platform that empowers teams to understand their businesses through data. She also spent over a decade at Google as Vice President of Engineering, where she led core infrastructure, Search, and DevOps teams for Google and Google Cloud Platform, impacting millions of users worldwide. Melody is recognized for her hands-on approach to engineering leadership and her expertise in building large-scale distributed systems. Her work is crucial in solving complex problems at scale for enterprise companies. She is passionate about defining the future of work with AI, where humans come first. This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders , not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously. Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform. Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering SHOW NOTES: Melody’s perspective on the tech industry’s rapid rate of change right now (2:53) Critical questions to guide investment decisions on “what to build & how“ in a rapidly evolving market (5:57) Strategies for navigating rapid change internally within eng teams (10:07) What it means to be an AI-first engineering organization (12:30) Changes in goals, metrics, and processes to shape your org and guide you through rapid change (15:33) Developing agile communication processes (18:39) Navigating ambiguity as a learned skill - practical ways to strengthen your ability to navigate uncertainty (20:09) Implementing a framework of curiosity & openness within eng teams (22:40) Why great things can’t be planned (26:21) Becoming dynamic and resilient - how to thrive amid uncertainty and constant industry shifts (28:57) How to shift from prescriptive to inspirational - using illustrated inspiration to empower teams (32:00) Breaking through self-imposed limitations - understanding where eng leaders may limit themselves (33:48) Melody’s perspective on fostering a culture of creativity within eng teams (35:06) Rapid fire questions (37:13) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Qualified Sales Leader: Proven Lessons from a Five Time CRO - John McMahon shares valuable lessons for sales leaders and sales reps selling enterprise software solutions. In a conversational and easy to read narrative style, this must-read book provides learnings on how sales leaders can help their reps sell more for higher average deal sizes to executive level buyers. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building Trust: Strategic humor, bridging communication gaps & enabling your team to do more #205 36:36

hace 12 weeks36:36

36:36

ABOUT ANDY KORTZ Andy Kortz is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Integra Testing, where he leads technology transformation and drives operational efficiency in aggressive growth organizations. Andy also is a co-lead for the ELC Local Chapter initiative in Chicago. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise architecture and software development, Andy has consistently delivered innovative solutions while reducing IT expenses and improving application value. Drawing on his expertise in cloud technologies, data solutions, and integrations, Andy focuses on fostering a culture of continuous learning, building and empowering high-performing teams, and delivering customer-centric solutions in fast-paced environments. ABOUT JAMES TYACK James Tyack leads the Learner Success team at Coursera, creating engaging and personalized learning experiences for millions of learners worldwide. An avid user of Coursera and a lifelong learner himself, James is passionate about leveraging technology, including AI, to transform lives through education. Prior to Coursera, he led integration and growth teams at PagerDuty, driving innovation and adoption of incident response tools and best practices. Beyond his professional work, James is the chapter lead for the South Bay Engineering Leadership Community (ELC) group, fostering collaboration among tech leaders. He is also a proud dad to a one-year-old, balancing his career and personal life with a deep commitment to growth and connection. ABOUT JOHN ROSS John Ross is the Director of Infrastructure and Cloud at KUBRA, expertly navigating IT infrastructure and cloud solutions. Based in Toronto, John's career showcases a diverse range of experiences from large corporations to dynamic startups. He has a knack for aligning technology with business objectives, building robust teams, and managing platform migrations to the cloud. With experience in leading industry names like Ingram Micro and Symantec, as well as in the telecommunications sector, John combines strategic insight with a personable approach. His passion for sailing mirrors his love for innovation and precision in professional pursuits. This episode is brought to you by Clipboard Health Clipboard Health is looking for the next generation of exceptional software engineering leaders , not just managers. They’re a profitable unicorn, backed by top-tier investors, and they take the craft of engineering management seriously. Clipboard Health matches highly qualified healthcare workers with nearby facilities to fulfill millions of shifts a year - revolutionizing healthcare staffing with a fast, flexible, and user-friendly platform. Learn more & browse their open roles at clipboardhealth.com/engineering SHOW NOTES: Scaling communication practices in parallel with scaling your org with Andy Kortz (1:18) Tools for bridging communication gaps between groups & building trust (2:49) Use humor strategically to break tension / build trust (5:16) Andy’s introduction to ELC Chicago & the best parts of that community (8:57) Engineering challenges / conversations from ELC Chicago (10:24) What engineering leaders can learn from the best online courses - making a “Day One” commitment with James Tyack (12:28) Frameworks for putting the “Day One” commitment into practice (14:49) What making a “Day One” commitment looks like @ Coursera (17:59) Why the commitment needs to be made explicit (19:25) Practical exercises to encourage innovation & foster creativity (21:06) Strategies for getting hands-on with your learning (23:10) James’s experience with ELC South Bay & connecting with leaders in a specific space (25:05) How to make the most out of attending your first ELC event (26:27) How to level up your teams through servant leadership with John Ross (27:52) Realizing you’re the bottleneck & tips for stepping back / increasing team trust (30:49) John’s experience with ELC Toronto & what ELC means to him (33:12) LINKS AND RESOURCES Check out all of our local chapters & get involved here: elc.community/home/clubs This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Faster iteration & execution: Insights from Google Workspace’s AI product experience journey w/ Anurag Agarwal #204 44:56

hace 13 weeks44:56

44:56

ABOUT ANURAG AGARWAL Anurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create, and build together. With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wide range of consumer and enterprise products and technologies. His career began in the Display Ads team, where he played a pivotal role in developing publisher ad-serving products from the ground up. He then worked on the Search Ads team driving a number of large-scale infrastructure improvements and leading initiatives such as online-to-offline measurement and monetization of surfaces like Maps and Discover. Prior to his role in Workspace, he spearheaded some early-stage incubation projects at Google like Google Health’s CareStudio project aimed to help clinicians get a comprehensive view of patient’s health information. Anurag spent his childhood in Delhi, India and now resides in the Bay Area with his family. SHOW NOTES: A current update on Google Workspace (2:46) Strategies for getting teams to faster iteration & execution (4:41) Prioritizing the right problems & how to set a unified vision to work toward (7:11) Questions to ask to help rationalize during prioritization conversations (10:48) Components of streamlining the decision-making process (13:33) Anurag’s recommendations for facilitating decision-making conversations (15:00) How to encourage your team to ask the right questions & push back (16:55) Frameworks for identifying areas of inefficiency / friction (20:17) Steps for increasing confidence on the front end for an AI product experience (23:38) Filtering insights for faster iteration on AI product concepts (25:59) Measure user impact & make adjustments quickly based on that feedback (27:38) Reducing barriers to feature discovery (29:33) Enabling discovery & engagement of new product experiences (32:05) The role of pilots when testing different product experience changes (35:17) The future product launches Anurag is most excited (39:10) Rapid fire questions (40:36) LINKS AND RESOURCES Google AI is now included, with no add-ons required or usage limits, in Workspace Business and Enterprise plans. Find out more: https://goo.gle/3PsIwf1 How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen - Driven by his trademark sense of curiosity and his determination to grow as a person, David Brooks draws from the fields of psychology and neuroscience and from the worlds of theater, philosophy, history, and education to present a welcoming, hopeful, integrated approach to helping readers become more understanding and considerate toward others, and to find the joy that comes from being seen. Along the way it offers a possible remedy for a society that is riven by fragmentation, hostility, and misperception. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Winning Hearts & Minds: Effective Strategies for Leading Through Change from IC to EM, post M&A and more w/ Kathryn Vandiver #203 42:35

hace 14 weeks42:35

42:35

Kathryn Vandiver (Former VP of Engineering @ Quanata) shares insights on providing new leadership during significant organizational change. First, we dissect what transitioning from an individual contributor to engineering manager is like. Then, we discuss what it’s like stepping into an EM role informally vs. formally; how to host conversations that foster trust; tips for transforming teams from competition to collaboration; helping people get unstuck; and tools for changing hearts and minds. Kathryn also covers frameworks for creating collective agreements between eng leaders & eng teams – and identifying what a successful outcome for collective agreements looks like. ABOUT KATHRYN VANDIVER With over 30 years of experience as a global engineering leader, Kathryn has guided companies ranging from agile startups to Fortune 500 enterprises toward growth and scalability in both B2B and B2C technology areas. She has held leadership roles at VMWare, HPE, NetApp, and Quanata, a State Farm Company. Specializing in engineering and team culture turnarounds, she frequently steps in to provide decisive leadership during periods of transition. Kathryn is committed to valuing every team member's unique contributions, actively seeking the perspectives of both influencers and naysayers to foster positive change. Her collaborative approach has consistently helped teams double or even triple business growth, significantly enhancing company value through successful turnarounds. Passionate about 'paying it forward,' Kathryn mentors, teaches leadership skills, and supports young women in tech on their career journeys. In her spare time, she enjoys hiking the trails of the Bay Area and spending quality time with her family. SHOW NOTES: Shifting from projects to people - dissecting the mindset shift from IC to engineering manager (2:21) What makes the transition from IC to EM challenging (5:05) Taking on informal EM responsibilities vs. a formalized role (8:13) Frameworks for building trust through early conversations (10:13) Tips for approaching the scenario of a resistant / combative team (12:15) Transforming teams during an M&A, from competition to collaboration (14:20) Why listening is key to changing hearts & minds as an eng leader (17:34) Practices to help people get unstuck in their perspective (20:50) Questions to help people uncover where they’re stuck & think critically (23:13) Kathryn’s approach to identifying criteria for success (24:30) How to determine what the endpoint looks like (26:27) Processes for creating collective agreements of how people operate (28:18) Identifying the expectations your team has of you as a leader (31:58) Common areas of friction when creating these collective agreements (33:46) Steps leaders can take to resolve friction within the agreement process (35:13) Signs that your collective agreement practice is successful (36:38) Rapid fire questions (40:01) LINKS AND RESOURCES Super Psyched: Unleash the Power of the 4 Types of Connection and Live the Life You Love - Connection is everything. Let Adam Dorsay, the leading therapist to Silicon Valley’s top executives, help you become super psyched by discovering your personalized formula for more energy, higher performance, better relationships, and a more meaningful life. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
The four modes of coaching & navigating career growth in expanding or contracting companies w/ James Birchler #202 49:03

hace 15 weeks49:03

49:03

We discuss the four modes of coaching and navigate career growth in expanding / contracting companies with James Birchler. James shares highlights from the recent coaching / mentoring workshop he facilitated, and breaks down how each mode of coaching differs tactically. We also cover the dilemma of linear career/leadership growth vs. exponential company growth, different common communication challenges eng leaders face, why people / organizational challenges are harder than technical issues, and how to prepare for & execute uncomfortable conversations. James also shares his unique journey to technical leadership & how past management roles – even in non-tech spaces – have helped shape his thoughts on coaching & eng leadership today. ABOUT JAMES BIRCHLER James Birchler is an engineering and product development leader, technical advisor, and an accredited Executive Coach from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Executive Coaching Institute. In his coaching practice, James focuses on self-awareness, integrity, accountability, and fostering a growth mindset that supports continuous learning and high performance. He focuses his technical advisory practice on common mechanisms and playbooks required at different phases and inflection points of startup growth and scaling: Hiring and interviewing, product development methodologies including Lean Startup and Agile, operational meeting cadence and communication flow, people management, technical leadership, vision/mission development, alignment, and execution. James implemented the Lean Startup methodologies with Eric Ries at IMVU (literally the first Lean Startup ), where his team helped start the DevOps movement by building the infrastructure to ship code to production 50 times a day (which was a lot at the time!) and coining the term “continuous deployment.” He has more than 20 years of experience leading high-performance teams in growth environments, including startups and scaled organizations, including Amazon. He has delivered great consumer software products and implemented product development and innovation processes based on continuous learning and improvement. Presently James advises and coaches Series A+ startups in the US and Europe, and leads innovation practices in hyper-growth areas of last mile delivery technology for Amazon. Previously my roles included VP of Engineering & Operations, VP of Engineering, and Founder at several technology startups including IMVU, Caffeine.tv, SmugMug, iCracked, The Arts Coop, and Letters & Science. You can find James at jamesbirchler.com , LinkedIn , and Substack . SHOW NOTES: Highlights from James’ recent coaching & mentoring workshop (2:41) Shared challenges around building trust in eng teams (5:25) The differences between coaching vs. mentoring (7:01) Building trust in order to best support your team members as a manager (9:38) Defining the advising mode of coaching (11:54) How supporting differs from advising (14:29) The story behind James’ technical leadership journey (16:55) Transitioning from a PhD program & environmental planning career into tech (20:19) The dilemma of career growth: linear leadership growth vs. exponential company growth (23:53) Why organizational challenges are more complicated than technical puzzles (26:49) Navigating career growth during company contraction from the employee perspective (28:02) Preparing for uncomfortable conversations as a coach / manager (31:50) Strategies for actually having those tough conversations (35:36) Frameworks for helping others identify what they want (37:58) Rapid fire questions (42:44) LINKS AND RESOURCES Stop 'Coaching' Your Tech Team (And What To Do Instead) - James’ substack post on the four modes of development breaking down the core differences of coaching, advising, mentoring, and supporting roles and explaining how trust is the secret ingredient to all four. jamesbirchler.com - James’ website where you can find info about his executive coaching and resources for engineering leaders and founders. How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott - NYT bestselling author, Kim Scott, has cracked the code on giving valuable feedback in a way that builds genuine relationships, drives results, and creates positive workplaces. What Are People For? - In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival. New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong - Happiness expert Stephanie Harrison draws upon hundreds of studies to offer a life-changing guide to finding the happiness you have been looking for, all based on a decade of research and brought to life with beautiful artwork. Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations - Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance. Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time: Michel Serres with Bruno Latour - Although elected to the prestigious French Academy in 1990, Michel Serres has long been considered a maverick--a provocative thinker whose prolific writings on culture, science and philosophy have often baffled more than they have enlightened. In these five lively interviews with sociologist Bruno Latour, this increasingly important cultural figure sheds light on the ideas that inspire his highly original, challenging, and transdisciplinary essays. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Unleashing potential in your employees & strategies to grow leadership skills in your org w/ Natalie Glance #201 41:51

hace 18 weeks41:51

41:51

Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo joins us for a conversation on unleashing potential in your employees! We discuss practices that have helped Duolingo create a meaningful path for hiring & developing engineers through their onboarding & internship programs. We also cover topics including scaling your eng org, upskilling recent grads / new hires, balancing meaningful work with measurable impact, communicating alignment within your org, formal & informal steps for building eng leadership capabilities, and essential skills for managers of all types. ABOUT NATALIE GLANCE Natalie is a lifelong learner and seasoned leader with extensive experience at startups and established companies. She’s currently the Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo. At Duolingo, Natalie ensures engineers can help set product direction and strategy. She’s championed a culture of extensive A/B testing, and is excited about the ways generative AI can both build new features and accelerate content creation for these features. She oversees many of the efforts dedicated to scaling Duolingo’s technology to new subjects, like Math and Music. Natalie is passionate about mentorship and education. She co-founded the Int’l AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), which offers an annual Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award for a promising young independent researcher in the field of computational social science in the early stage of their career. SHOW NOTES: Natalie’s eng leadership background & journey scaling Duolingo (2:41) Duolingo’s approach to eng leadership & passion for unleashing potential (5:42) Implementing a mentoring program to improve eng development / retention (6:42) How the mentoring process changes as an org scales (8:51) Duolingo’s onboarding process & tips for building an onboarding program (10:12) Ways Duolingo has crafted a successful internship program (12:43) Frameworks for intern hosts to collect meaningful projects for interns (15:38) Behind the Thrive intern program (HootCamp) for rising juniors (17:44) How Duolingo’s guiding principles drive Duolingo University (21:08) Strategies for upskilling new grads into strong technical contributors (22:13) Best practices for unlocking potential & contributing to people’s growth (25:40) Natalie’s approach to balancing meaningful work with measurable impact (26:44) Practices for creating alignment within your org (28:30) Duolingo’s thought process for role training & growing leaders (30:44) Breaking down the formal & informal steps for building leaders within the org (32:41) Essential skills for role managers to develop (34:22) Addressing challenges faced by managers of managers (36:47) Rapid fire questions (38:24) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership - Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy.” This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building an AI-first company & interactive AI avatar leadership use-cases w/ Rong Yan #200 47:56

hace 19 weeks47:56

47:56

In this episode, we explore building an AI-first company and engineering org with Rong Yan (CTO @ HeyGen)! We dive into the potential of HeyGen’s interactive avatars, imagining how they can help engineering leaders scale their impact, foster team alignment, coach effectively, and accelerate decision-making. Rong shares insights on the structure of an AI-first company and optimizing for AI teams with engineering capabilities. Plus what it means to “lead with speed” and balance product quality and velocity in an AI-first company and key leadership principles, like why it’s crucial to invest in your top performers and how to act as a productivity multiplier. ABOUT RONG YAN Rong Yan is HeyGen’s Chief Technology Officer. He brings the company's technological mission of making visual storytelling accessible to everyone, to life. Rong has nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience from companies including IBM, Facebook, Square, Snap, and HubSpot. Most recently, Rong was the VP of Engineering at Hubspot where he led the Data Intelligence and Automation product line and spearheaded the development of an intelligent CRM platform using data and AI. He was also the Director of Engineering turned Senior Director of Engineering at Snap, where he led a product engineering team of over 250 engineers across six locations, responsible for developing, optimizing, and maintaining core Snapchat features, including Camera, Messaging, Stories, Discover, Memories, and Identity. He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Tsinghua University and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. SHOW NOTES: Introducing HeyGen’s interactive avatar & what this means for eng leaders (3:40) How a visual layer for AI agents could scale your leadership & build alignment in your teams and orgs (5:58) The different levels of communication flow within a company (8:17) How interactive avatars can enable interactions and coaching at scale (10:46) The possibilities of interactive avatars for personalized coaching, habit building, and behavior change (14:02) Insights on building an AI-first company (20:29) What the structure of an AI-first company looks like (22:05) How leading with speed works within an AI-first company (24:10) Navigating the balance between product velocity & quality (27:23) The impact of the “leading with speed” paradigm on hiring (30:34) The role of an engineering leaders is to be a productivity multiplier (32:40) How AI impacts productivity as an eng leader (34:43) Where to start when it comes to improving productivity (36:38) AI’s role in blurring the lines between IC & management (39:48) Spend more time on your top people (42:45) Rapid fire questions (44:21) LINKS AND RESOURCES HeyGen - With HeyGen, businesses can simply write their script and generate their video. No camera, no budget, no headaches. We've helped over 45,000 companies and millions of people create, localize, and personalize videos at scale. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Re-defining & elevating engineering’s strategic role with the business w/ Rajashree Pimpalkhare #199 41:41

hace 20 weeks41:41

41:41

In this episode, Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences @ Twilio) reflects on her experiences re-defining engineering’s relationship with the business throughout her career. We cover how the role of engineering varies across industries, why it’s paramount for engineering leaders to find their seat at the business table & rethink how engineering can drive the org’s strategic goals. Rajashree shares insights on how to unlock the creative side of product & business leaders, lessons learned from solving various customer problems, frameworks for eng orgs to combat & overcome learned helplessness, communication practices for framing decision-making, and adjusting from a “no, but” to a “yes, and” mindset. ABOUT RAJASHREE PIMPALKHAREE Rajashree is the VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences - the world's most flexible customer engagement platform, that powers customer facing sales and service teams with the context, data, and channel flexibility they need to turn ordinary conversations into opportunities to drive repeat sales. Previously, Rajashree led product development at Quizlet - the popular student application that helps over 60 million learners worldwide every month study, practice and become an expert in whatever they are learning. Prior to Quizlet, Rajashree led engineering for Intuit’s 3rd party Developer Platform and app store – enabling a thriving ecosystem of thousands of small business applications that connect to Intuit’s QuickBooks Platform. Prior to Intuit, she held several engineering leadership roles at PayPal building innovative global payment products for consumers and merchants. Rajashree started her career at Intel as a design engineer and subsequently worked on industry changing software solutions for semiconductor chip design at Synopsys. Rajashree is passionate about building purpose-driven teams that exhibit engineering excellence, customer-first thinking and an inclusive culture. She is a strong advocate for women and under-represented minorities in technology; and takes a personal interest in coaching and mentoring talent at all levels to balance the playing field and help them grow in their careers. Rajashree received a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore. SHOW NOTES: Why engineering’s role in the business varies across industries (2:21) Finding a seat at the business table & elevating the strategic role of engineering (5:32) How Rajashree’s experiences shape her approach as an eng leader (8:54) Strategies for unlocking product / business leaders’ creativity (11:53) Shifting from a “no, that won’t work” to “yes, and here’s how” mindset (14:13) Rajashree’s experience in her global services role (16:46) Lessons learned on solving problems for different customers (19:52) Insights on scaling & productizing (21:17) Deconstructing the concept of learned helplessness in eng orgs (23:13) Frameworks for helping overcome learned helplessness (26:29) Communication practices for eng leaders to frame their decision-making (28:53) Improve your ability to ask better questions & improve dialogue bandwidth (32:16) Rapid fire questions (35:20) LINKS AND RESOURCES Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon - Colin Bryar started at Amazon in 1998; Bill Carr joined in 1999. These two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
How engineering leaders can better drive business outcomes & increase alignment between product and engineering w/ Gokul Rajaram #198 43:36

hace 21 weeks43:36

43:36

In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration between product & engineering, and how to achieve greater productivity. ABOUT GOKUL RAJARAM Gokul Rajaram is an investor and company helper. He serves on the boards on Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Most recently, he was an executive at DoorDash, a food ordering platform. Prior to DoorDash, he worked at Block as Product Engineering Lead, where he led several product development teams and served on Block’s executive team. Prior to Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul is also on the board of The Trade Desk and Coinbase. Gokul holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being class valedictorian. He also holds an M.B.A. from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship. SHOW NOTES: Why it’s critical for eng leaders to drive business outcomes (2:04) How to shift your leadership to impact organizational changes (4:18) Facilitating conversations around setting numerical / time-driven goals (6:56) Navigating the shift to a customer-centric structure & approach (9:18) Recommendations for building around this customer-oriented model (12:04) Decision-making strategies when approaching customer outcomes (13:25) Understand the role of confidence in the decision-making process (15:40) Challenges faced by eng leaders when making this customer-centric shift (18:06) How eng leaders can introduce / reinforce accountability in eng orgs (20:11) Bridging the gap between PMs & eng leaders (23:07) Challenges / dysfunctions that prevent product & engineering alignment (25:01) Establishing trust, open dialogue, and mutual respect from the get-go (26:39) Communication frameworks that increase alignment between product & eng (32:39) How eng leaders can better approach “move fast & break things” demand (35:37) Rapid fire questions (40:19) LINKS AND RESOURCES Gokul’s website - Contains a collection of Gokul’s writing that covers a wide range of topics related to product development, hiring, strategy, leadership, and more! The Mistborn Saga - Brandon Sanderson’s high fantasy saga which chronicles the efforts of a secret group of Allomancers who attempt to overthrow a dystopian empire and establish themselves in a world covered by ash. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
From VPE to CTO - mission-aligned teams, prioritizing company over department outcomes & the power of a “not do” list w/ Ryan Fox #197 40:56

hace 22 weeks40:56

40:56

Ryan Fox, CTO @ Super.com , joins us to dissect his leadership transition from Vice President of Engineering to CTO. He shares how he created his own job description and – perhaps most importantly – identified & found buy-in around his “not do” list. We also cover Ryan’s favorite strategies for coaching department heads, why it’s important to focus on strategic thinking as an eng leader, tips for instilling accountability & autonomy, and defining different levels of situational leadership. Patrick and Ryan also dissect Super.com ’s MAT leadership approach and how it is incorporated into their engineering functions. ABOUT RYAN FOX Ryan Fox is the CTO at Super.com , an all-in-one app that has helped millions of customers save, earn and put over $150 million back in their pockets. Previously, Ryan worked as both a SWE and SRE at Google. SHOW NOTES: Ryan’s background / experience with Super.com (2:04) What sparked his transition from VP of Engineering to CTO (3:40) How Ryan tackled creating his own job description (5:50) Strategies for prioritizing responsibilities & developing a “not to do” list (8:20) Process for defining what not to do (9:32) Examples of building buy in for a “not to do” responsibility (11:45) Insights on prioritizing company wide outcomes vs. departmental outcomes (13:33) Transitioning from a department head to coaching other department leaders (15:26) Components of a successful coaching conversation about strategic thinking (18:48) Frameworks for instilling accountability & autonomy in department heads (21:25) Understanding situational leadership & S3 / S4 definitions (23:08) Incorporating mission-aligned teams into the engineering organization (25:37) Why the MAT leader focuses on business, not people aspects (27:52) Elements that contribute to the MAT model’s success (29:32) The intersection of MAT & functional leadership (32:04) Ryan’s advice to leaders new to the MAT approach (34:20) Rapid fire questions (36:29) LINKS AND RESOURCES MAT Resource Guide - A guide to understand the Mission-Aligned Team organizational structure, how Super.com rolled out MATs, and how such a structure may be able to help your organization. All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, the show features insider takes on business, technology, and society and interviews with the world's most influential thinkers. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Leading change, navigating career growth & finding inspiration beyond engineering - Live from ELC Annual 2024! #196 29:16

hace 23 weeks29:16

29:16

In this episode, we’re bringing listeners into the final conversations from the pop-up podcast booth at ELC Annual 2024! Patrick sat down with a few eng leaders attending the event to discuss takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 & eng leadership insights they want to share with others in the community. He chatted with Nick Hurlburt (Executive Director of the Aselo program @ Tech Matters), Manju Abraham (Vice President of Engineering, Primary Storage @ HPE), and Bhupesh Bansal (Head of Engineering - Product Server @ Square). These leaders share some of the guiding principles of their eng leadership careers, highlights from ELC Annual 2024, advice for first timers attending these types of events, and more. ABOUT NICK HURLBURT Nick Hurlburt is the Executive Director of the Aselo program at Tech Matters, a nonprofit with a mission to bring the benefits of technology to all of humanity. Aselo is an open source contact center platform used by crisis helplines in over 15 countries. After completing an MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Nick began his career developing early, large-scale AI software at Amazon. He then spent six years overseas working on conflict relief efforts in Burma and South Sudan before returning to the U.S., where he managed software teams at a San Francisco machine learning startup before building the initial version of Aselo as Tech Matters’ first engineer. He gets excited about systems thinking, understanding different cultures, and walking through forests reminiscent of his rural Wisconsin childhood. ABOUT MANJU ABRAHAM Manju Abraham was VP of Engineering for Primary Storage products at HPE. She has over 25 years of experience leading Engineering organizations to deliver enterprise products of high quality, building, scaling and leading transformation, as an effective change catalyst, across companies like HPE, Delphix, NetApp, HP etc. ABOUT BHUPESH BANSAL Entrepreneur and technical leader passionate about making a positive impact in the world. 18+ years track record of building teams, large-scale distributed systems, and consumer products scaling to 100M+ users. SHOW NOTES: Why it’s important to incorporate non-eng principles into engineering (1:52) Don't run if the people can't run (4:20) The importance of iterating & identifying patterns that work (5:57) Nick’s ELC Annual 2024 highlights (7:35) Advice for first-time attendees to get the most out of ELC Annual (8:10) Challenges around cultural transformations (9:33) How transformations incorporate structure & order (11:35) Manju’s experience at / takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 (15:14) Advice for folks on how to get the most out of an experience like this (18:19) Bhupesh’s roundtable on managing yourself & learning to let go (20:17) When Bhupesh started to embody the principle of managing yourself (21:52) Frameworks for making the shift to identifying yourself as a leader (24:17) Top ways you can invest in yourself & final takeaways (26:27) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Career growth in today’s market + effective partnerships between engineering & hiring partners - Live from ELC Annual 2024 #195 29:58

hace 24 weeks29:58

29:58

We’re back with another episode live from ELC Annual 2024’s podcast booth! Patrick discusses the practices and rituals around effective hiring & recruiting with a few speakers and roundtable hosts from ELC Annual 2024, including Lawrence Bruhmuller (SVP of Engineering @ Great Expectations), Eric Fettner (Co-Founder @ Job Sauce), and Scott Swedberg (CEO & Co-Founder @ Job Sauce). Scott shares insights & takeaways from his roundtable conversation on assessing career growth & determining next steps during this trend of eng orgs continuing to become flatter. Eric and Lawrence also stop by the booth to share about their unique partnership, hiring best practices, ensuring candidates maintain your org’s engineering culture, and more. ABOUT SCOTT SWEDBERG Scott Swedberg is CEO & Founder of The Job Sauce, a boutique recruiting firm for high-growth companies. He founded The Job Sauce as a career coaching company, and partners with ELC to support engineering leaders in their careers and talent acquisition. He and his wife, Lauryn, live in Denver with their daughter and cat. ABOUT ERIC FETTNER Eric Fettner is co-founder of The Job Sauce, a high-touch recruiting firm serving Seed through pre-IPO startups. After helping launch the most successful vertical at Eventbrite (IPO September 2018), Eric was ready to take on something new. He began by building The Job Sauce as the premier provider of career services for tech workers. This focus on candidate experience revealed the horrible experience most recruiting firms provide, leading to the birth and success of The Job Sauce Recruiting, trusted by top startups funded by top VCs. ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMULLER Lawrence Bruhmuller is currently the SVP of Engineering at Great Expectations, the open-source data quality solution used by thousands of data engineers in the industry. He has over 12 years of experience as an overall head of engineering, mostly focused on growth-stage startups. Previous roles include CTO roles at Pave and Optimizely, and VPE roles at WeWork, ClearSlide, and Symantec. Lawrence has been a part of small startups and also larger companies, and has developed products for individual users and also the world’s largest enterprises. In particular, he has focused on delivering cloud-first products in the B2B application and developer tooling spaces. Lawrence is passionate about the intersection of engineering management and the growth stage of startups. He has written extensively on engineering leadership ( https://lbruhmuller.medium.com/ ), including how to best evolve and mature engineering organizations before, during and after these growth phases. He enjoys advising and mentoring other engineering leaders in his spare time. Lawrence holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Amy, and their three daughters. SHOW NOTES: What brought Scott Swedberg to ELC Annual 2024 & how he supports eng leaders (3:12) Summarizing Scott’s ELC Annual roundtable discussion on career growth (5:39) Understanding how trends shift as technology evolves & investor priorities pivot (9:01) Final takeaways on exploring career growth & next steps (11:26) Eric Fettner & Lawrence Bruhmuller explain their recent partnership (14:19) Questions eng leaders should ask to aid calibration / alignment between partners (17:21) Ensuring new candidates reinforce the eng culture you’re aiming to build (18:29) Strategies for adopting / adapting cultural practices while hiring & onboarding (20:33) Effective communication between eng leaders & talent partners (22:49) Lawrence explains Great Expectations’ team structure (25:04) Recommendations for providing feedback between partners (26:37) The importance of timing when it comes to the hiring process (28:00) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Selling your ideas, leveraging curiosity in tough conversations, managing emotions & psychological safety - Live from ELC Annual 2024! #194 24:05

hace 25 weeks24:05

24:05

This episode came live from ELC Annual 2024! Local ELC chapter leaders from across the globe share some of their favorite leadership principles, covering topics like how to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior leaders, how to manage yourself and your regulate emotions, how to leverage curiosity in tough conversations, how to build psychological safety and more! Thank you Ali Littman (VP of Engineering @ Modern Health), Mehmet Sencer Kardayi (CTO @ Dexter Energy), Tarik Kilick (Engineering Manager @ Booking.com ), and Liz Sink (Director of Engineering @ Amount) for sharing your insights + a huge thank you to all of our local leaders for what you do to make community happen across the world! Check out all of our local chapters & get involved here: elc.community/home/clubs ABOUT ALI LITTMAN Ali Littman is the Vice President of Engineering at Modern Health, a mental health technology company with a global workforce of both full-time and contracted staff. She has 15 years of experience in health tech and a business degree from Haas at Berkeley. She specializes in scaling organizations and has a track record in taking companies through hypergrowth, navigating major strategic product development pivots, as well as running major department reorganizations to optimize for current delivery and future-state architecture needs. ABOUT TARIK KILIC Tarik is an engineering leader who loves building products and teams that love building products. Currently @Booking.com, previously at SurveyMonkey and Heineken. ABOUT MEHMET SENCER KARADAYI With 15+ years of experience in the tech industry, Mehmet has worked both as an individual contributor and a manager in big-tech(Booking, Meta) and as a software consultant in both the private and public sector. He likes to call himself a "failed serial-entrepreneur"(0 to 1) 😅 and nowadays is focusing on scaling tech startups(1 to 100). Outside of work, Mehmet has a diverse set of hobbies 🎱🏀♟️🥽🏓🛹🤹 and likes adding new ones to the set every now and then. ABOUT LIZ SINK Liz Sink is currently a Director of Engineering at Amount, a digital origination and decisioning SaaS platform for deposits and lending. Liz also spearheaded the ELC Local Chapter initiative, collaborating with ELC to establish the inaugural chapter in Chicago, where she is working to build a community and leadership culture. Drawing on her diverse background in software engineering, education, and social work, Liz focuses on building cohesive, empowered teams, developing high-quality products, and driving progress and innovation in engineering leadership. SHOW NOTES: How to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior eng leaders (1:37) Strategies to help someone start building this skillset (3:05) Why building ELC San Diego is meaningful to Ali (6:58) How to discover which metrics are most relevant for direct-to-consumer (8:26) Learn to manage yourself as a leader (10:21) Leveraging curiosity to make tough conversations collaborative (12:14) Tarik & Mehmet’s perspective on the Amsterdam ELC community (14:09) Creating psychological safety & trust for eng leaders (18:42) Why this topic is important for employee retention, satisfaction & innovation (19:19) An invitation to ELC Chicago (22:29) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Collaboration & Innovation in the Time of AI w/ Anurag Agarwal & Lizzie Matusov #193 40:30

hace 26 weeks40:30

40:30

We’re back with another session from ELC Annual 2024! This episode features an engaging session on collaboration & innovation in the time of AI with Anurag Agarwal, VPE, Google Workspace @ Google, and Lizzie Matusov, Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient! In this conversation, they dissect how AI is transforming not only the products engineering teams are building but also how teams work together internally. They cover how Google / Google Workplace specifically use AI both internally & externally, strategies for creating & maintaining alignment across a large org, how Anurag addressed challenges during this transitional period, and more. ABOUT ANURAG AGARWAL Anurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create and build together. With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wide range of consumer and enterprise products and technologies. His career began in the Display Ads team, where he played a pivotal role in developing publisher ad-serving products from the ground up. He then worked on the Search Ads team driving a number of large-scale infrastructure improvements and leading initiatives such as online-to-offline measurement and monetization of surfaces like Maps and Discover. Prior to his role in Workspace, he spearheaded some early stage incubation projects at Google like Google Health’s CareStudio project aimed to help clinicians get a comprehensive view of patient’s health information. Anurag spent his childhood in Delhi, India and now resides in the Bay Area with his family. " One of the things we sort of tried to do from very early on is to make sure teams see their success in terms of overall workspace success, in terms of more users actually being able to accomplish their work more effectively using all of Workspace's tools, right? It's not about the individual tools, it's really about the whole together.” - Anurag Agarwal ABOUT LIZZIE MATUSOV Lizzie Matusov is the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, a developer tool that surfaces the friction slowing down engineering teams and resolves it directly. Her team also co-authors Research Driven Engineering Leadership, a newsletter that uses research to answer interesting questions on engineering leadership and strategy. She previously worked in various engineering roles at Red Hat and Invitae, and has an MS in Engineering Sciences and MBA from Harvard. SHOW NOTES: Anurag’s career at Google & what he’s currently working on (2:38) The evolution of Google Workspace & incorporating GenAI (4:31) Diving into internal AI use within Google / across teams (6:37) Challenges faced while creating alignment (9:47) Frameworks for setting goals & aligning KPIs more effectively (11:57) How Google ensures its team feel safe to fail & allow autonomy (14:03) Strategies for maintaining alignment across a large org (16:09) How Anurag’s leadership has evolved through technology transformations (18:07) Strategies for helping teams accomplish tasks & be continuously learning (20:33) Anurag’s favorite rituals / changes from this transition (24:09) Audience Q&A: What has been your biggest challenge shipping AI? (25:26) Defining Workspace’s corpus for the individual vs. the enterprise (27:29) How do you ensure content moderation when using AI features? (28:13) Build guardrails for LLMs depending on the context (29:18) How the center of excellence team distributed its knowledge across various orgs (30:48) Strategies for drawing a line where Gemini responds & ensuring determinism in the response (32:15) Quotient’s processes for QA & automation (34:02) Understanding the ethics / responsibilities behind AI usage (35:11) The evolution of developmental practices with deterministic code vs. apps written with AI (36:43) Anurag & Lizzie’s key takeaways (38:28) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Collaborative Teams Are More Productive Teams w/ Marcel Weekes & Arquay Harris #192 41:03

hace 27 weeks41:03

41:03

One of the most important aspects of success is a team’s ability to collaborate – but it can also be one of the most challenging parts. In this episode, we’re highlighting a popular session ELC Annual 2024 on how to encourage collaboration, ultimately increasing productivity and creating more likely outcomes of success. This conversation features Marcel Weekes, VP of Product Engineering @ Figma, and Arquay Harris, former VP of Engineering @ Webflow. This conversation also features a robust Q&A session from ELC Annual attendees on their most pressing collaboration questions – including diagnosing teams that are struggling to collaborate, how to measure the success of collaborative tools, strategies for building rituals / processes around collaboration, and much more. ABOUT MARCEL WEEKES Marcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, where he oversees product and growth engineering efforts across Figma's entire platform. Marcel brings decades of experience and previously served as the VP of Engineering at Slack where he led the teams building Messaging features and Slack Connect. "A trait of product engineers that I have found to be successful in predicting positive outcomes is they view code as a tool to get something done. Engineers on the other end of the spectrum who might be more elite code engineers or more like, ‘I got this algorithm to go like .005 percent faster,’ frankly that's not what's going to get your product to product market fit. If you're not focused on the end goal here, you're going to make suboptimal decisions the whole way.” - Marcel Weekes ABOUT ARQUAY HARRIS Arquay has held Engineering leadership positions at Slack, Google and CBS Interactive. A developer who also has a Masters in Design, Arquay loves the marriage of form and function. Following her most recent role as VP of Engineering at Webflow, Arquay is currently enjoying retirement. She fills her days with occasional mentoring and speaking engagements as well as pursuing her many hobbies. SHOW NOTES: Marcel’s definition of effective team collaboration (2:36) How Figma’s dev mode is reducing collaborative tension (5:42) Processes & rituals that increase productivity early on (7:12) Marcel & Arquay’s collaboration example: success with Slack Connect (9:44) Why collaborative teams are ultimately more productive teams (13:21) Audience Q&A: Frameworks for diagnosing teams that are struggling to collaborate (14:25) How to avoid over collaboration / communication (17:09) Strategies for creating collaboration standards early on in a project (19:33) Navigating the balance between collaboration & preserving autonomous teams (22:23) Encouraging engineers to care about broader outcomes & collaboration (26:54) Tips for measuring the success & productivity of collaborative tools (29:11) How to foster cross-collaborative respect between design & engineering (32:19) Building relationships across teams / functions to promote smooth operation (34:27) Recommendations to help developers & design to share more work in progress (36:52) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Scaling AI for an Immersive 3D Platform with 77 Million Daily Active Users w/ Anupam Singh & Maria Kazandjieva #191 37:49

hace 28 weeks37:49

37:49

We had a blast at ELC Annual 2024, so we wanted to bring our podcast listeners some of the best highlights from popular sessions! This episode features one of the ELC Annual sessions with Anupam Singh (VP of AI & Growth Engineering @ Roblox) & Maria Kazandjieva (Co-Founder @ Graft), as they discuss building AI/ML models at a massive scale. Anupam shares how Roblox – an immersive 3D platform with more than 77 million daily active users – scaled from zero to nearly 200 different AI models. They discuss strategies for deciding when to use open source vs. creating proprietary models; how to operationalize your models for 24/7 use; the importance of data pipelines; current and future challenges to keep in mind when creating / scaling AI models; and answer some questions from the live Q&A. ABOUT ANUPAM SINGH Anupam leads Roblox's AI & Growth engineering teams, which provide the infrastructure for high throughput AI services for safety, recommendations, and assistants. Before Roblox, Anupam was chief customer officer at Cloudera, where he led product, engineering, and field teams for Data Warehousing products. Anupam has co-founded two companies in the Big Data space, acquired by Cloudera and Marketshare, respectively. Anupam built his database expertise on the SQL Query Optimizer teams at Oracle, Sybase (now SAP), and Informix (now IBM). He graduated from Pune University in India and holds patents in the areas of automatic SQL performance tuning, object databases, and resilient query execution. "The journey always starts with, 'Let's pick a model and first decide whether we want to build our own model or we want to use one of the open source ones.' The next step is, 'Do you want to do it on public cloud?' Roblox has 24 data centers worldwide and two massive data centers in America. We have hundreds of thousands of CPUs that we could use and so for us, it's very important to decide, 'Do we really need a large model? Can you take the 700 billion model, make it into a 7 billion parameter model, and magically get it to run on the CPU?'” - Anupam Singh ABOUT MARIA KAZANDJIEVA Maria is a co-founder and an engineering leader at Graft, an early-stage AI startup. Prior to that, Maria worked at Netflix, where her team earned two Emmy awards for technical achievement. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Outside of work, you can find Maria kickboxing & trail running, baking & eating carbs, or relaxing with a non-fiction book and her two feline supurrvisors, Foosball and Gemma. SHOW NOTES: How Roblox is being powered by AI (00:30) The process of scaling AI models from zero to 200 @ Roblox (2:34) Examples of Roblox starting with open source vs. building its own model (5:06) What AI models are doing in terms of safety for children (7:12) Strategies for deciding to use open source vs. building a proprietary model (11:19) Why Roblox is choosing to open source some of their own models (13:06) How to operationalize / engineer AI models for 24/7 use at scale (14:20) The importance of data pipelines in the AI journey (16:18) Current / future challenges as Roblox continues to scale its models (19:52) Tips for identifying use cases where implementing & scaling AI can be helpful (22:21) Audience Q&A: How do you make decisions when you’re lacking specific measurements / quantities? (24:29) When you deploy a model, how do you ensure confidence in its performance? (27:36) Recommendations for allocating / estimating the budget for a model (29:03) Anupam’s insights on maintaining so many models effectively (31:03) How do you imagine the multimodality of your 3D models moving forward? (33:11) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Podcast Break for ELC Annual 2024! 3:16

hace 36 weeks3:16

3:16

We’re taking a quick break from releasing episodes for a few weeks while we wrap up everything for ELC Annual. We’ll be back in late September with new guests! We have some excellent sessions at the conference - check out the agenda here: https://sfelc.com/annual2024#agenda Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Connecting bugs & quality to the business bottom line w/ Dave Rhodes #190 48:40

hace 37 weeks48:40

48:40

Dave Rhodes, CEO @ Sauce Labs, joins the pod to discuss the value of great digital experiences & how/why quality issues affect companies’ bottom lines, and how to connect bugs to the business! Dave dissects strategies for addressing quality issues, examples connecting quality with the bottom line, best practices for quality testing strategies, and incorporating the philosophy of embracing the impossible within your eng teams. We also cover highlights of Dave’s recent report, “Every Experience Counts” exploring the relationship between broken experiences, lost consumer trust, and topline revenue. And to set the stage & magnify the stakes, the Crowdstrike & Microsoft outage coincidentally happened the day we hit record. ABOUT DAVE RHODES Dave Rhodes is CEO of Sauce Labs, a leading provider of continuous testing and software quality solutions to deliver digital confidence to enterprises. He has a proven track record as a strong operational leader with success in building and scaling growth businesses. Previously, Dave held key leadership roles at Unity, where as Chief Revenue Officer he grew the company’s revenue from $160M to $640M (4x growth) and navigated its public market debut in 2020. He then created and oversaw Unity’s AI-powered business, Digital Twins. He has also held leadership roles at Paradigm and Autodesk. Rhodes holds an MBA in marketing and finance from the University of San Diego and a bachelor of science degree in computer science from the University of California at San Diego. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode is brought to you by Revelo! Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide: A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fit A payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and compliance A team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hires With Revelo , you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team. Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire. SHOW NOTES: The Crowdstrike / Microsoft news & how bugs affect the bottom line (2:31) Understanding the stakes & complexity of the Crowdstrike issue (5:05) Dave’s perspective on & passion for digital experiences (7:50) The impact of cloud computing, high-speed connectivity, AI / ML, and COVID on software innovation (10:10) Examples of how digital experiences drive a business’s bottom line (13:45) How the quality of a product impacts developer velocity & motivation (17:31) Connecting the bottom line with product quality / bugs (20:31) Strategies for communicating the business benefits of developing for scale (24:51) Addressing quality issues that impact top OKRs, like customer churn (26:48) Highlights of the “Every Experience Counts” report (31:51) Best practices for eng leaders looking to evolve their current testing strategy (35:13) What it means to think about the impossible & reverse engineer it (38:05) Frameworks for instilling this mindset into your eng teams (41:18) Rapid fire questions (44:17) LINKS AND RESOURCES Every Experience Counts - Sauce Labs’ report exploring the relationship between broken experiences, lost consumer trust, and topline revenue. Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life - The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life—distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Live from Config 2024! Product-building, leadership & execution lessons behind the launch of Figma’s Dev Mode w/ Marcel Weekes #189 39:57

hace 38 weeks39:57

39:57

In our latest episode, we’re coming to you live from Config 2024, Figma’s annual design conference for people who build products! This is our first time ever doing a live interview from another conference, so we are excited to share it with you. We’re joined by Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering @ Figma. In our conversation, we dive into topics including highlights from Config 2024 & reactions to Figma’s latest feature demos (like Dev Mode), how Figma’s eng teams are involved in product design iterations, why product support teams help preserve Figma’s community, strategies for incorporating feedback into design / product roadmaps, best practices for prioritization conversations, and more. Marcel also shares a preview of what to expect from his session on collaboration @ ELC Annual 2024! ABOUT MARCEL WEEKES Marcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, where he oversees product and growth engineering efforts across Figma's entire platform. Marcel brings decades of experience and previously served as the VP of Engineering at Slack where he led the teams building Messaging features and Slack Connect. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode is brought to you by Revelo! Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide: A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fit A payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and compliance A team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hires With Revelo , you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team. Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire. SHOW NOTES: Config 2024 as the “Coachella for designers and creatives” (3:47) Marcel’s favorite conference moments that represent the Config community (5:04) Reactions to the latest Figma feature demos (7:18) Defining Dev Mode & why it’s a highlight for Figma @ Config (13:00) Figma’s approach to building Dev Mode as an eng org (16:05) How eng teams are becoming involved in product design iterations (18:58) What eng leaders can learn from Figma’s “heavy lifting approach” (20:22) Characteristics of product support teams that impact the Figma community (24:20) Processes for closing the loop between product support & engineering (26:02) Figma’s feedback process & how it gets incorporated into releases now (28:23) Prioritization conversations & how teams operate together (31:47) Understanding the timing of feedback on the product roadmap (34:38) Previewing Marcel’s ELC Annual 2024 session on collaboration (37:08) LINKS AND RESOURCES Config 2024 in review - A recap from Dylan Field, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Figma, that highlights all of the major news and releases from Config 2024. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Tackling All Top 10 Engineering Leadership Challenges w/ Farhan Thawar #188 40:40

hace 39 weeks40:40

40:40

Farhan Thawar, VP & Head of Engineering @ Shopify, was our first-ever ELC pod guest, so it’s fitting that he’s here to join us for this culmination of our series tackling the Top 10 challenges that engineering leaders face in a rapid-fire, high-energy format! Farhan shares insights into individual challenges, including motivating others after a reorg or period of uncertainty, why always being willing to learn & help is key for managing in any direction, strategies for creating buy-in, and best practices for coaching / mentoring. We cover team challenges, such as working cross-functionally to identify a shared truth and vision, using demos to measure dev productivity, and maintaining high velocity without losing quality. Farhan also dives into org-wide challenges, like understanding team topologies & building out your org’s resources. ABOUT FARHAN THAWAR Farhan Thawar ( @fnthawar ) is VP, and Head Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. Farhan is an avid investor and advisor to startups in Toronto and San Francisco, including being a mentor at yCombinator and First Round Capital. Previously, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode is brought to you by Revelo! Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide: A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fit A payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and compliance A team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hires With Revelo , you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team. Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire. SHOW NOTES: Strategies for motivating your team after reorgs, rifts, or other uncertain times (2:37) Farhan’s favorite quick wins & ways to re-engage with your team (4:48) Managing up & sideways by being transparent and always looking to help (7:31) Be dedicated to learning / bouncing ideas around with others (9:59) Frameworks for identifying the long-term, winning opportunities to pursue (12:13) How to influence & create buy-in around ideas (15:26) Navigating situations where your idea / perspective is facing resistance (18:18) Best practices for messaging a pitch when working cross-functionally (21:03) Utilizing individual frameworks when mentoring & coaching (23:10) Questions to ask when developing a personal career development framework (27:30) Approaching performance-related conversations (29:11) How to use demos to measure developer productivity (32:09) Methods for maintaining high velocity without losing quality (35:21) Insights on team topologies & identifying / building the needs of your org (37:14) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Strategic Thinking, Org Design & Aligning Engineering & Business Goals - Tackling the Top 10 Eng Leadership Challenges! #187 43:06

hace 40 weeks43:06

43:06

In Part 3 of the Top 10 Challenges series, we’re addressing the biggest org-level challenges that eng leaders face. We’ve compiled conversations from past podcasts and conference sessions that cover org-related topics, such as aligning engineering & business goals, team topologies & org resourcing, and thinking strategically. This episode features a slate of top eng leaders with valuable insight to share: Jessica McKellar @ Pilot, Andrew Lau @ Jellyfish, Samir Naik @ Plaid, Former VPE @ Robinhood Surabhi Gupta, Aaron Erickson @ NVIDIA, Mike Tria @ Gusto, Emad Elwany @ Docusign, and Scott Woody @ Metronome. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Aligning Engineering and Business Goals: Invest in tracking metrics to identify / meet long-term business-building goals w/ Jessica McKellar (00:43) How to align metrics with overall, long-term business strategy w/ Andrew Lau (4:56) Planning Team Topologies and Organizational Resources: the transition between PMF & scale-up w/ Samir Naik (12:12) Approaching org design & planning during periods of hypergrowth w/ Surabhi Gupta (18:45) How to do an effective reorg w/ Aaron Erickson and Mike Tria (24:41) Strategic Thinking: Organizing engineering by strategic themes & complete units of value w/ Emad Elwany (30:12) The transition from a large unified eng team to embedding experts and building specialized teams catered to specific customer personas w/ Scott Woody (37:26) LINKS AND RESOURCES Becoming a better strategic contributor & business leader with Jessica McKellar Navigating 2024: Engineering management principles to tackle the unknowns & challenges ahead with Andrew Lau How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth with Samir Naik Hypergrowth, Scaling & Org Design with Surabhi Gupta How to Do an Effective Reorg with Aaron Erickson and Mike Tria Organizing eng by strategic themes / complete units of value & consensus building to drive velocity with Emad Elwany Rapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models with Scott Woody This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Speed v. Quality, Measuring Productivity & Cross-Functional Relationships - Tackling the Top 10 Eng Leadership Challenges! #186 42:01

hace 41 weeks42:01

42:01

This is Part 2 of our Top 10 Challenges series! In this episode, we’re focusing on three common team challenges that eng leaders face: how to increase velocity without losing quality, measure productivity & create meaningful metrics, and work cross-functionally with other teams. We identified these challenges based on conversations with hundreds of eng leaders from podcast episodes, ELC events, and more. For this ep, we’ve pulled insights from various eng leaders, including Richard Wong @ enrich, Fatemah Alavizadeh @ Notion, Andrew Fong @ Prodvana, Randall Koutnik @ Jellyfish, Abi Noda @ DX, Barbara Nelson @ InfluxDB, Laura Fay @ L Fay Associates, and Jeremy Henrickson @ Rippling. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Increasing Velocity (Without Losing Quality): Understanding the speed vs. quality dilemma w/ Richard Wong (0:58) Defining velocity & its impact on users’ ROI w/ Fatemah Alavizadeh & Andrew Fong (6:17) Measuring Productivity and Creating Meaningful Metrics: What drives productivity & makes for meaningful metrics w/ Randall Koutnik (11:31) The DevEx framework for improving developer productivity w/ Abi Noda (21:02) Working Cross-Functionally with Other Teams: Why it’s important to have cross-functional excellence between eng & product w/ Barbara Nelson & Laura Fay (26:28) Cross-functional communication strategies for addressing misaligned priorities w/ Jeremy Henrickson (37:13) LINKS AND RESOURCES Speed vs. Quality with Richard Wong How to Create Sustainable Velocity in Your Team with Fatemeh Alavizadeh and Andrew Fong Banish Bad Management with Metrics that Don't Suck with Randall Koutnik The next evolution to measure & improve developer productivity & experience with Abi Noda Bridging the Divide: Strategies for Cross-Functional Excellence between Engineering and Product Management with Barbara Nelson and Laura Fay Align & Scale Engineering AND Product with Jeremy Henrickson This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Coaching, Influencing, Motivating & Managing Up - Tackling the Top 10 Engineering Leadership Challenges! #185 42:32

hace 42 weeks42:32

42:32

In today’s episode, we’re kicking off a four-part series on the Top 10 challenges eng leaders face based on feedback from hundreds of eng leaders. In Part 1 of this mini-series, we’re tackling the first four issues: developing & coaching team members, strategies for motivating & inspiring others, influencing / creating organizational buy-in, and managing up & sideways. This episode compiles some of the best insight we’ve gained on these issues from a collection of past ELC episodes, ELC Annual sessions, events, and more, with insight from Tara Ellis @ Netflix, Elaine Zhou @ SageCXO, Pete Peterson @ Riviera Partners, Johnny Ray Austin @ Best Egg, Jan Chong @ Tally, Matt Spitz, Laura Tacho @ DX, and Preeti Kota @ Atlassian, and Dan Kador @ Abridge. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Developing and Coaching Team Members: Best practices for building & growing your team’s skills w/ Tara Ellis (0:59) Match your high performers with the right fit for their goals w/ Elaine Zhou (8:04) Influencing and Creating Buy-in: Generating & showcasing quick wins to gain buy-in w/ Pete Peterson (12:03) Communication strategies for eng leaders to create buy-in w/ Johnny Ray Austin (17:59) Managing Up and Sideways: Three key principles for effectively managing up w/ Jan Chong (23:13) Strategies for managing sideways w/ Matt Spitz (26:57) Motivating Others: Inspiring developer productivity as an eng leader w/ Laura Tacho (30:51) How leaders @ Atlassian addressed pain points & inspired developers to address them w/ Preeti Kota & Dan Kador (34:43) LINKS AND RESOURCES A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Career Growth & Internal Mobility with Tara Ellis Building self-sufficient teams and operating in constrained funding environments with Elaine Zhou Navigating complex stakeholders, competing interests & gaining buy-in with Pete Peterson Navigating the Acquisition Journey: Insights on Transparent Communication, Team Integration, and Strategic / Operational Shifts with Johnny Ray Austin Managing Up with Jan Chong Leading beyond domain expertise & laying early-stage security program foundations with Matt Spitz Move beyond measurement & inspire developer productivity with Laura Tacho Developer Joy: Maintaining “Flow” and Sustained Productivity with Preeti Kota and Dan Kador This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
The Top 10 Challenges Engineering Leaders Face: A Sneak Peak 2:00

hace 43 weeks2:00

2:00

After surveying hundreds of engineering leaders, we’ve pinpointed the top 10 challenges engineering leaders face! Exciting news - next week marks the launch of our 4-part series, sharing some of the best insights from hundreds of ELC events, podcasts & conference sessions. The finale? A dynamic rapid-fire session with Shopify's VP of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, tackling each challenge head-on. Have solutions of your own? Share your strategies and help spread knowledge throughout our community. Reach out at podcast@sfelc.com or tag ELC in a post/comment on LinkedIn. Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building scalable hiring processes & systems promoting operational excellence w/ Stephen Poletto #184 48:52

hace 44 weeks48:52

48:52

Today’s conversation focuses on building scalable hiring processes as your org grows and creating systems that promote operational excellence, featuring Stephen Poletto, CTO @ Lattice. He shares examples of how they introduced & scaled their hiring processes to better articulate employee value propositions, implement experience differentiators, and created hiring rubrics & loop documentation. Stephen also reveals strategies for defining what operational excellence looks like within your org, how certain rituals impact company psychology / behavior, and steps for ending & replacing rituals that are no longer working. Additionally, we dissect frameworks for adding incentives within your eng org that improve organizational impact – and how to avoid bad incentives. ABOUT STEPHEN POLETTO Stephen Poletto is the Chief Technology Officer at Lattice, where he leads the company's product development, and where he scaled the engineering team from 20 to 150 team members. Stephen began his career at Apple before spending eight years building and growing technical teams at Dropbox. Stephen has had the opportunity to incubate new products such as Dropbox Carousel and Dropbox Paper, and also work on at-scale products such as the Dropbox mobile app and Dropbox's platform infrastructure. Stephen lives in San Francisco. In the winter, you can find him snowboarding in the mountains. "Even very simple things like a candidate's been in back to back interviews. You hop on. 'Hey, how are you? Do you need a five minute break?' We would train interviewers on some of those tactics, right? At the beginning of the call, set the agenda. ‘We're going to spend this amount of time on these topics. We're going to spend this amount of time to give you space to ask questions of me.’ Now the candidate knows what to expect. They're put at ease. It's simple stuff but it really colors the way that people feel about the interview itself. What kind of feeling do they have about the company coming out of it?” - Stephen Poletto Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Stephen’s primary goal when he first joined Lattice (3:15) Steps for building out a systematic & repeatable hiring process (5:51) Defining & articulating employee value propositions during the hiring process (8:00) Strategies for presenting company culture via hiring / onboarding (10:21) Hiring experience differentiators & how to make them the norm (13:27) Training the engineering team on how to effectively hire (16:53) Stephen’s process for creating a hiring rubric & loop documentation (20:06) How hiring systems can be tweaked / evaluating current hiring needs (22:20) Identifying what operational excellence means for your org (24:22) Rituals / dilemmas to focus on that influence psychology & behavior (26:13) Examples of ending & replacing processes / operations (29:58) Signals that a ritual is no longer serving your needs (32:12) Frameworks for applying incentives / rewards within an eng org (34:57) Navigating the balance between output vs. input (38:57) First steps toward better organizational impact & avoiding bad incentives (41:07) Rapid fire questions (43:37) LINKS AND RESOURCES Product-Led AI - Greylock partner and former product builder Seth Rosenberg talks with founders about their inspiration and process to build, test, and continually reimagine how AI and humans work together. The Holloway Guide to Equity Compensation - Stock options, RSUs, job offers, and taxes—a detailed reference, including hundreds of resources, explained from the ground up, for both employees and managers. Steve Bartel’s blog - Steve Bartel is the co-founder and CEO of Gem. Prior to founding Gem, Steve was an engineering leader at Dropbox where his experience working closely with the recruiting process allowed him to see the lack of technology in the space. This inspired him to co-found Gem, which allows recruiting teams of all sizes to source talent, engage with talent, and use data to improve recruiting processes. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Conscious Career Growth w/ Wade Chambers #183 1:01:25

hace 45 weeks1:01:25

1:01:25

In today’s episode, we’re highlighting one of our favorite past conversations, featuring Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Included Health. We cover tools for increasing your capacity to win as an eng leader, getting unstuck in your career / moving forward, and applying “conscious growth” and neuroplasticity principles to the career. Wade shares stories of success – and failure – as an eng manager, best practices to measure success as an eng leader, and how to increase your team’s performance & potential. ABOUT WADE CHAMBERS Wade Chambers ( @wadechambers ) is the CTO and SVP of Engineering at IncludedHealth, a company that provides technology solutions to improve the way patients get healthcare matched to their needs. He has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, Proofpoint, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth. “The more that you can recognize that, ‘Oh, I feel uncomfortable...’ and you can just sit with it a minute. As opposed to react to it. There's always a feedback mechanism in that. That willingness to be in the discomfort a little bit longer. You're actually going to learn so much about yourself in that moment. And if you can act on that, that's what unlocks you to move forward.” - Wade Chambers Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Wade’s background in building a habit of conscious growth & digging deeper (4:14) Overcoming early failures as a first-time manager (8:11) Why it’s hard to unhear the truth & how to incorporate feedback as a manager (13:08) How understanding neuroplasticity impacts career development (18:11) Moving along the spectrum of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence (19:30) Align your growth to impact your company AND move your career forward (24:37) Why eng leaders need to truly understand their org’s business needs (29:49) Strategies for both winning & increasing your capacity to win (35:30) How to increase the potential of individuals & your overall team (40:52) Factors that are keeping you stuck in career growth (44:39) Turning to books to maximize learning / growth (52:11) How to identify core principles & why they drive your behavior (55:37) Final thoughts on closing the gap between where you are & where you want to be (58:54) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Why Engineering Needs a Seat at the Negotiating Table with Melody Hildebrandt #182 50:25

hace 46 weeks50:25

50:25

We revisit an episode from the podcast archives – Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ Fox) shares her experience representing the tech org during the biggest deal in entertainment history! We cover Melody’s most important lessons negotiating on behalf of the tech org plus how they leveraged the M&A event to accelerate innovation and productivity. Melody will be joining us as one of our featured speakers @ ELC Annual 2024 (our two-day conference on 8/27-8/28! Check out our incredible line up of speakers, other conference experiences & tickets at sfelc.com/annual2024 Use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount. ABOUT MELODY HILDEBRANDT Melody Hildebrandt ( @mhil ) is Chief Technology Officer for Fox Corporation, where sets set the comprehensive technology strategy for the Company. She previous served as the company’s Chief Information Security Officer and as the President of its research and development subsidiary, Blockchain Creative Labs. In her current role, Hildebrandt leads the development, design and implementation of emerging technologies across the FOX enterprise, spanning FOX Sports, FOX News, FOX Entertainment, FOX Television Stations, and Tubi Media Group. Her current focus is on future planning, including developments in artificial intelligence and authenticating and monetizing premium content via blockchain technology. She also continues to oversee the cyber-security posture of the business and leads technology M&A efforts, identifying areas for investment and growth. Prior to FOX, Hildebrandt held the role of Global Chief Information Security Officer at 21st Century Fox, where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of 21CF businesses, including 20th Century Fox, FOX Networks Group, National Geographic Partners, FOX News, Star India and others. Before 21CF, she was Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, where she helped start its commercial work and led Palantir’s business in cyber security, anti-money laundering and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted US and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she designed military and strategy wargames. Hildebrandt is the Executive Sponsor of Women in Technology at FOX. "One thing that we intervened on very quickly because we were AT the table for (the conversation), "How should we structure the deal?" Was to do something that was quite counter-intuitive I think, and very controversial... Which was to say ‘Let's essentially value all of our current technology assets at near-zero... And make them part of the deal.’" - Melody Hildebrandt Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Background on the Fox Disney “mega-deal” (03:39) How to structure an M&A to accelerate your tech roadmap (06:01) Motivating engineering teams with forcing functions (10:14) What it was like representing a tech org in deal structuring (13:13) How to develop an engineering org’s merger strategy (17:36) M&A negotiation tips for engineering leaders (20:07) A critical skill for eng leaders: converting tech pains into business goals (22:59) How to get executive buy-in on engineering initiatives (27:58) “Crashing” your way to a seat at the table (31:05) Melody’s process for setting the strategic direction of an engineering org (32:19) Managing engineering teams from high and low — the middle is death (34:35) Why this M&A event continues to accelerate innovation (37:37) Rapid-Fire Questions (42:26) LINKS AND RESOURCES (article) A super-powered approach to tech transformation - Melody Hildebrandt & Paul Cheesborough’s article on the untold story of the 21st Century Fox & Disney transaction (podcast) Conversations with Tyler esteemed economist Tyler Cowen engages with today’s most underrated thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between. (book) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir (reference) The Masked Singer NFT project - www.maskverse.com…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Working backward from winning & preparing for future tech innovation w/ Evan Welbourne #181 43:44

hace 47 weeks43:44

43:44

We discuss how to navigate the delicate balance between meeting current customer needs while also preparing for future tech trends & opportunities with Evan Welbourne, Head of AI and Data @ Samsara. Evan dissects the rapidly transforming pace of developing AI/ML products, sharing strategies for merging conversations around differing product-building processes, tips for moving seamlessly / gaining approval between product development stages, defining what customer success looks like, methods for working backward from problems, and best practices for avoiding friction throughout the product development process. He also shares frameworks for envisioning & working toward future tech possibilities while simultaneously developing hypotheses that inform future direction, creating diverse AI/ML team composition, and effectively communicating with stakeholders. ABOUT EVAN WELBOURNE Evan Welbourne is the Head of AI and Data and Samsara, leading the organization’s machine learning, computer vision, data science, and data analytics teams – as well as data engineering and data platform for the company. He has a long-standing career in both machine learning and IoT. Before Samsara, Evan held various roles at Amazon, including the Head of Machine Learning for Alexa Smart Home and Manager of the Computer Vision Research Group. He also led research teams at Samsung and Nokia. Evan earned his Ph.D and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto. "With AI, there's something new every week. You could stay in those stages forever. You can just keep iterating and trying new things, but at some point you have to kind of cut it off. You've got to time box it and just go with something that you know will work. You're constantly also calibrating between the quality of what you're delivering and the time it takes you to deliver it. A lot of that problem backs into this early stage of the process. We do want to do a good job of understanding opportunity but there's analysis paralysis. We don't want to just get stuck there.” - Evan Welbourne Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code " podcast10 " (all lowercase) for a 10% discount SHOW NOTES: Staying customer-focused while working toward the future @ Samsara (3:22) Merging forward-looking technology & customer-problem-focused product-building conversations (5:54) Defining customer success & working backwards from winning (8:38) How stage gates can confirm / assess feature accuracy & maturity (10:58) What the approval moment looks like while moving from stage to stage (15:29) Understanding what stages offer the greatest opportunity for risk / friction (17:11) Signals to watch for that allow you to move forward with confidence (19:30) Best practices for anticipating & preparing for future possibilities (21:13) Using smaller-scale projects to inform future direction of larger-scale products (23:12) Communication strategies for working with less technical stakeholders (25:22) Methods for effectively communicating complex, technical information (27:59) AI / ML team composition at Samsara (30:04) Frameworks for aligning & motivating folks to focus on customer needs (32:59) Strategies for introducing new technologies & scientific research into your teams (35:06) Introducing AI into mission-critical internal tools (36:34) Rapid fire questions (39:17) LINKS AND RESOURCES Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control - Stuart Russell lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Inside ELC Annual 2024: 2 days to recharge, reconnect & empower your growth #180 8:02

hace 48 weeks8:02

8:02

Welcome to a special episode highlighting ELC Annual 2024, our annual conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world! Tune in to hear how we built this 2-day experience to be the ultimate accelerator of leadership and professional growth. We cover how the conference will expand your perspectives with curated peer-led roundtables and expert-led sessions with people like Thuan Pham (former CTO @ Uber & Coupang), Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ FOX), James Everingham (VPE @ Meta) Marcel Weekes (VPE @ Figma), Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VPE @ Twilio) and 40+ more speakers! We promise that you will walk away from the event with meaningful connections and actionable strategies that will empower your career and leadership growth. Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey! Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024 And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Effective impromptu communication & harnessing team topologies w/ Lakshmi Baskaran #179 50:20

hace 49 weeks50:20

50:20

Lakshmi Baskaran shares insights on impromptu communication, why it’s important, and a framework for successfully navigating these tricky situations! We also cover team topology and why it’s so important to have the right composition of product-minded vs. technical-minded engineers within any eng team. Lakshmi shares how prioritizing team topology will impact hiring, influence engineering culture, and aid in eng team reorgs / restructures. She also discusses what the future of AI looks like for executive eng leaders & what to consider when adopting AI practices / technologies. And to bring it all together, we dissect how Lakshmi’s Triple-A impromptu communication framework operates in the context of both team topology & AI adoption. ABOUT LAKSHMI BASKARAN Lakshmi Baskaran is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, and an angel investor with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. She has built and managed high-performing engineering teams for startups, scale-ups, and publicly listed companies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia. She is currently serving as the VP of Engineering at Metadata, a SaaS company that offers a Marketing Operating System to prominent brands and businesses worldwide. Lakshmi is passionate about coaching and mentoring business leaders and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. With the right support, she firmly believes that any woman can unleash her potential and make a significant impact on the world, rising to the heights of a great leader, entrepreneur, and a board member. Lakshmi shares her insights on leadership and technology through her writing on Medium and Thrive. “Imagine you're presenting it to your executive leadership team or to your board. As an engineering leader, you want to spice up that message with how it is interesting to your customers. The framework that I use in scenarios like this is called 'What If And So That' framework. If you're running an email platform, what if you're able to search through millions of emails in a sub millisecond so that your users can have faster search abilities compared to our competitors? Build a dream scenario and tell them how the technology can help them meet their dream scenario.” - Lakshmi Baskaran We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 – Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: Why the topic of effective impromptu communication is important (2:46) Dissecting frameworks & tools for impromptu conversations (7:16) An example of high-quality impromptu communication with a CEO (11:52) Implement the Triple-A framework (14:03) The impact of this communication method on peers (16:37) Lakshmi’s insights on team topologies & essential aspects of different eng teams (18:26) Considerations for eng team composition (20:56) How new hires play into assembling and/or reforming early-stage eng teams (23:44) Aligning with teams about what they’re looking for in terms of hiring / composition (26:12) The impact of product & tech-minded eng leaders on engineering culture (29:19) Opportunities to employ impromptu comm skills in the context of team topology (31:42) Lakshmi’s observations on AI adoption (33:47) Frameworks for effectively communicating about AI considerations (37:11) How eng leaders should apply these AI areas into their decision-making (40:40) The role of impromptu communication in AI conversations (42:33) Rapid fire questions (45:00) LINKS AND RESOURCES Lakshmi’s blog post on identifying product-minded and tech-minded engineers The Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership - Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy.” This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Balancing technical depth & high-level business strategy w/ Oded Kedem #178 40:31

hace 50 weeks40:31

40:31

We dissect one of the biggest challenges that eng leaders face in their day-to-day – navigating the balance between going deep in technical work & maintaining a high-level view of business strategy. Oded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer @ BigPanda, shares examples from his experience, covering strategies for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology, bringing technical expertise to the executive team, bridging the gap between marketing & technology, and aligning customer expectations with a product’s actual capabilities. Oded also shares frameworks for prioritization conversations, valuable questions to pose during executive decision-making conversations, and approaches to changing past technical decisions. ABOUT ODED KEDEM Oded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer at BigPanda, brings a wealth of experience in software from ground-up development to managing engineering teams and was also the founder of Zerto, a Cloud BC/DR company. Throughout his many years in the industry, Oded has developed a deep understanding of AIOps and the needs of customers. He recognizes that we are just scratching the surface with AI and automation. “As companies evolve, people change roles and the technology changes, the requirements change. We chose in the past, the product does it in method A. Let's ask, 'Okay, why did we choose A in the first place?' And once in a while, someone from engineering came up and said, 'Yeah, I have a great idea. Let's do B.' And I would always send them, 'Okay, go back to the documentation, because if you thought this through and you think that making these changes is worth our while and the risk and the instability it may bring, let's go, let's do it.'” - Oded Kedem We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: Keeping a high-level view while diving deep into the technology (2:48) The story of how Oded first connected to this particular problem (5:03) Oded’s process for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology (7:20) Prioritization strategies & why it’s sometimes hard to say no to jumping in (9:40) How to bring technical expertise / value to the exec team (13:57) Best practices for tough conversations regarding org direction & capabilities (17:40) Types of questions to ask in executive conversations (19:58) Oded’s favorite question to pose (23:33) Bridging the gap between marketing & technology (24:26) How an eng perspective helps shape a product’s marketing outcome (27:12) Frameworks for aligning customer expectations with a product’s capabilities (29:33) Approaches to changing past technical decisions as an eng leader (31:21) Rapid fire questions (35:25) LINKS AND RESOURCES Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know - Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Harnessing Professional Strategies & Tech Performance Tools for Personal Growth w/ Chris Cravens #177 53:49

hace 51 weeks53:49

53:49

Chris Cravens (Former VPE @ Splunk and CIO @ Uber) shares practical tips for applying professional strategies / tech performance tools into our personal lives - to increase intentionality, goal setting, and habit formation in all aspects of our lives. He shares why it’s so easy to dedicate 90% of your time & attention to work while only dedicating 10% to your personal life and reveals from his own experience how he discovered a better work-life balance by applying OKRs, goal setting, postmortems, and deep reflection. We also cover frameworks for identifying feeling-based goals, building habits & accountability within your personal life, combating negative self-talk, and rewiring your brain to focus on the present & not dwell on past failures. ABOUT CHRIS CRAVENS Chris Cravens is an industry veteran with a quarter century of successes delivering measurable value for high-growth enterprises in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. An avid change agent and catalyst for transformation, Mr. Cravens has led major global scale-up and transformation efforts for Software Engineering, Information Technology, Security, Facilities teams. As the first CIO at Zynga and Uber, he led critical functions that enabled scale from small startups to major global enterprises in record time. Mr. Cravens led digital transformation at Splunk, scaling revenue from $800M to $2.2BN in three years by reimagining and supercharging Go to Market capabilities with automation and high value software capabilities that drove greater deal size and velocity. Currently, Mr. Cravens provides expert consulting supporting Private Equity and Venture transactions and transformations and is an active Strategic Advisor, Coach, and Investor to startups delivering innovative, disruptive technologies to accelerate digital transformation. “I would just keep doing things like that because of that philosophy of in the absence of clear leadership, step in, be the one who is responsible and it goes back to that anxiety from childhood. There are people who have much healthier outlooks, and I've just never been wired that way. So I have to kind of question each decision I make as I go to do a new thing or take on more stuff. 'Is this the right thing for me to do right now, or am I making my life harder?'” - Chris Cravens We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: Chris’s experience of his first week @ Uber (2:02) Borrowing professional life tools & using them in your personal life (4:53) Why it’s easy to give 90% of time to work & only 10% to your personal life (8:26) How Chris navigated his own transition (14:34) Treat a sabbatical like a job (16:15) Adding OKRs to your personal life (19:36) Strategies for assessing feeling-oriented goals (22:05) Combating negative self-talk & treating yourself like you would a good friend (24:58) How Chris’s frameworks have shifted over time when setting personal life goals (27:11) Reflection questions to help illuminate where to center your focus (29:35) Applying positive self-talk within a work context to your personal life (32:39) Incorporate blameless postmortems into a personal context (35:38) Strategies for better habit formation (37:00) How to overcome feeling a lack of motivation to start a new habit (38:08) The significance of having both clarity & accountability (40:56) Tips for rewiring the belief that you can accomplish a goal (45:27) Rapid fire questions (48:21) LINKS AND RESOURCES Chris’s Guide to Thinking Errors The Satanic Verses - novel of Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie led Ruholla Khomeini, the ayatollah of Iran, to demand his execution and then forced him into hiding. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Cold outreach & strategically expanding your business model into services w/ Jon Perl & Scott Wilson @ QA Wolf #176 53:38

hace 1 year53:38

53:38

This is a special episode from our show “Engineering Founders” - Jon Perl & Scott Wilson share the origin story of QA Wolf & deconstruct their best practices (and what to avoid) for early-stage cold outreach, how to add value to your cold email communications, and why experimenting with your cold outreach is important to early sales! We also dive in to the story behind QA Wolf’s strategic move to incorporate services into their business strategy & tangible ways to add accountability measures that will help drive growth in the early days of your company. Check out Engineering Founders - https://hubs.la/Q02tq5ym0 ABOUT JON PERL Jon Perl is the co-founder and CEO of QA Wolf, a startup building the QA solution every engineering leader wishes for. Prior to QA Wolf, Perl led engineering teams in the healthcare and home services space, where he learned firsthand how difficult automated regression testing can be — and how critical it is for teams to have. His interest in software engineering comes from an overarching desire to eliminate boring, repetitive tasks and give people their time back. He has a dog named Finn and enjoys hiking. "Your goal is simply to book a meeting. You're not trying to close a deal through one email. It's like, 'How can I just get on the phone with somebody?' That's the goal.” - Jon Perl ABOUT SCOTT WILSON As co-founder and head of growth at QA Wolf, Scott Wilson is trying to upend 20+ years of stagnation in the QA industry. Before this he launched the marketing efforts at Wyze and helped acquire 6 million paying customers. If he’s not working, you might find him backpacking with Frank the dog, or learning a new illusion. "It's not referencing the weather in Seattle or that you got promoted. Personalization is being contextually relevant to the person. This is how your mind should be thinking. It's like, 'I saw you're a hundred person company with nine engineers on your team and no QA engineers. You're probably going through this and here's a solution for it.'” - Scott Wilson We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: The origin story of QA Wolf & the desire to build an automated QA system (2:08) What got Scott excited about joining the QA Wolf founding team (7:14) Scott’s experience as the non-technical cofounder on the team (9:13) Learn enough to be dangerous & be willing to persist as a founder (10:38) The approach of paying people you can learn from & its impact on QA Wolf (14:11) Lessons learned about cold emailing & effective strategies to implement (17:12) Cold emailing strategies that don’t work (21:00) How to add value to email communication & incorporate experimentation (22:24) Why they shifted the focus from coding to sales / outreach / identifying solutions (26:23) Make accountability mechanisms a key component of early-stage teams (29:09) The false signal of free users & expanding product into services (30:45) Identifying a gap in the business & being open-minded to new ideas (33:20) What the initial testing for QA Wolf’s services approach looked like (35:22) Jon & Scott’s perspective on dealing w/ investors in the automated services space (38:31) Rapid fire questions (44:01) LINKS AND RESOURCES $100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying No How to Hire a Product-Led Sales Leader – at Every Stage This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building & leading a combined engineering & security org w/ Mike Hanley #175 45:44

hace 1 year45:44

45:44

Mike Hanley, Chief Security Officer and SVP of Engineering @ GitHub, joins us to discuss how GitHub has successfully combined its engineering & security orgs and shares recommendations for how other orgs can pivot to this model. We cover why it’s so important for eng orgs to collaborate with security early on in the product development cycle and tips for educating your engineers on security best practices. We also discuss how the rise of AI tools / usage is changing how companies need to think about & practice security, why AI is providing opportunities for increased safety & security within product development, and strategies for encouraging your org to adopt AI tooling within engineering, security, and beyond. ABOUT MIKE HANLEY Mike Hanley is the Chief Security Officer and SVP of Engineering at GitHub. Prior to GitHub, Mike was the Vice President of Security at Duo Security, where he built and led the security research, development, and operations functions. After Duo’s acquisition by Cisco for $2.35 billion in 2018, Mike led the transformation of Cisco’s cloud security framework and later served as CISO for the company. Mike also spent several years at CERT/CC as a Senior Member of the Technical Staff and security researcher focused on applied R&D programs for the US Department of Defense and the Intelligence Community. When he’s not talking about security at GitHub, Mike can be found enjoying Ann Arbor, MI with his wife and eight kids. "The idea that the security team is walled off or separate or not really connected, not just to engineering but the entirety of the business, you really can't have that. If you think about the pace of modern development, things are moving so quickly. It's so driven by software. The idea that you're like, ‘Hey, I got to walk down the hall and check in with somebody from security who has no idea what's going on in my roadmap, who has no idea what my day to day experience is living in engineering...’ That just doesn't work!” - Mike Hanley We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: GitHub’s convergence of the eng & security orgs (2:33) Benefits of combining engineering & security org mandates (4:46) How the security team is involved with the internal product dev lifecycle (8:05) The downsides of engaging your security team as an afterthought (10:46) What an early-stage yes/and product conversation looks like (12:48) Examples of educating your eng team on security best practices (17:17) Expanding two-factor authentication externally (19:29) Stewarding security as a responsibility & value (21:59) Security & safety implications for orgs using / building AI tools (23:44) Why the rise of AI is a great time for eng / security collaboration (27:09) How to leverage security best practices using AI tools (29:53) Mike’s view that AI will create more opportunities & improve structural tech (32:14) Frameworks for getting to “yes” when it comes to adopting AI tooling (35:15) AI-powered tools GitHub is using to change workflows outside of eng & security (39:06) Considerations pivoting toward combining eng & security functions (40:35) Rapid fire questions (42:25) LINKS AND RESOURCES Why Johnny Can’t Encrypt - Alma Whitten And J. D. Tygar’s argument that effective security requires a different usability standard that is not achievable through the user interface techniques commonly found in consumer software. The Space Trilogy - C.S. Lewis believed that popular science was the new mythology of his age, and in The Space Trilogy he ransacks the uncharted territory of space and makes that mythology the medium of his spiritual imagination. The Works of Peter Drucker This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Adaptability in engineering orgs: how management systems, executive priorities & career transitions evolve w/ Cosmin Nicolaescu #174 41:30

hace 1 year41:30

41:30

In this episode, we are talking about adaptability in engineering orgs, building out impactful management systems, and navigating complex transitions as eng leaders with Cosmin Nicolaescu, CTO @ Brex. He shares how his experience moving from Romania to the United States taught him vital lessons in adaptability that he has applied throughout his eng leadership career. We also discuss how to define what success as a manager looks like, Cosmin’s approach to putting out fires (and deciding which ones to prioritize), why you should restructure your meetings to focus on output vs. review, and how to implement a succession plan. ABOUT COSMIN NICOLAESCU Cosmin ( @getCos ) leads engineering at Brex, building financial technology to accelerate entrepreneurs. Prior to Brex, he was at Stripe, leading financial infrastructure teams, building Stripe Terminal, and establishing engineering teams globally. His career started at Microsoft, launching Azure and Office365. "How are you actually changing the trajectory of something. If the person wasn't there, would things have come out differently? If the person jumped in on something, did that meaningfully change the trajectory of that particular project? The answer should be yes and I think that is a good proxy for, as a manager, are you actually leading teams, people, projects, initiatives, and moving the company forward or are you just operating the machinery?” - Cosmin Nicolaescu We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store: An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali Rao Strategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuel Jellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineering Exciting product roadmap updates from Jellyfish Register for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow ! SHOW NOTES: How Cosmin's transition to the U.S. set the foundation for his approach to adaptability (2:40) Learn to accept what you can & cannot control as an eng leader (5:00) Frameworks for identifying / understanding what execs spend their time on (7:13) Navigating the transition from Microsoft to Stripe (9:12) Building out a successful & impactful management organization (12:08) In-demand qualities of managers during the shift to flatters orgs (15:00) Prioritizing which fires to focus on & willingness to delegate (16:39) Cosmin’s approach to triaging fires @ Brex (18:31) Restructure meetings for output rather than review (21:52) Approaches for adapting to the current macroeconomic environment (25:36) Roles that contributed to successful distributed hiring (29:09) Necessary elements that need to exist for an unconventional transition (31:28) Recommendations for developing & executing a succession plan (34:44) Rapid fire questions (37:30) LINKS AND RESOURCES Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - If you want to build a better future, you must believe in secrets. The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone - As told by Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Hit Refresh is the story of corporate change and reinvention as well as the story of Nadella’s personal journey, one that is taking place today inside a storied technology company, and one that is coming in all of our lives as intelligent machines become more ambient and more ubiquitous. Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents―and What They Mean for America's Future - Professor of psychology Jean Twenge does a deep dive into a treasure trove of long-running, government-funded surveys and databases to answer these questions. Are we truly defined by major historical events, such as the Great Depression for the Silents and September 11 for Millennials? Or, as Twenge argues, is it the rapid evolution of technology that differentiates the generations? This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
“The Third Act” & exploring career paths beyond operational roles w/ Nidhi Gupta #173 38:14

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38:14

Have you ever wondered what to do in the “third act” of your career & beyond when it comes to opportunities outside traditional eng leadership / operational roles? In this episode, Nidhi Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder @ SheTO, joins us to share her perspectives on identifying new pathways, taking time for self-discovery, and deciding which career opportunity you’re most passionate about. She defines what the “third act” of your career is & explains roles, such as fractional roles, coaching, serving on boards, advising, etc. Plus Nidhi explains how her passion for supporting women in CTO roles led her to found SheTO, how to give yourself permission to explore new paths, and validate your next steps. ABOUT NIDHI GUPTA Nidhi ( @NidhiGuptaSF ) is the CEO and Co-Founder of SheTO, a private community for women and non-binary engineers and engineering leaders. Less than 9% of engineering executive roles are held by women. SheTO is working on changing that. Prior to founding SheTO, Nidhi was an accomplished engineering and product executive who has built, scaled, and transformed companies. She has extensive expertise in strategy, R&D, business development, and operations. She has led various Marketplaces and SaaS businesses. As an Engineering and Product leader, she is passionate about building and growing thriving operational organizations that deliver world-class products at scale. Prior to founding SheTO, Nidhi was the Chief Technology & Product Officer at Hired, Upwork and Ning. "If you had all the free time on the planet and didn't have to worry about anything, what do you think you would do? Every single night I would go to bed and the next morning I woke up more excited solving for this 9% number than I was about my job and that told me that that's really something that I'm more passionate about so literally after I came back from vacation, I went and talked to my CEO and I quit my job.” - Nidhi Gupta We now have 10 local communities of engineering leaders hosting in-person meetups all over the world! Local communities are led by eng leaders just like you, who wanted to create a place to connect, share insights & tackle critical challenges in the job. New York City, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, and Toronto in-person events are happening now! We’re launching local events all the time - get involved at elc.community! SHOW NOTES: Defining “the third act” & exploring career paths beyond operational roles (3:24) What it was like for Nidhi to open herself up to new opportunities (6:09) How Nidhi’s passions influenced her to start SheTO (8:01) Additional consideration for & recommendations to inspire self-discovery (11:21) Why it’s important to take a break & pursue additional interests (13:06) Things that kept Nidhi honest with herself through the discovery process (14:51) Potential pathways to nontraditional eng leader roles (19:04) Ruling out particular pathways after the discovery phase (20:47) How Nidhi identified her happiness & transitioned into her role with SheTO (23:10) Strategies validating your assumptions & the journey of SheTO (25:43) SheTO’s pivot during COVID (28:39) What it looks like to give yourself permission to explore (31:05) Set goalposts & measurements for yourself (34:43) Rapid fire questions (35:16) LINKS AND RESOURCES Third Act with Liz Tinkham - Your first act is school, your second act is work, but have you thought about what you’re going to do in your third act? Join host Liz Tinkham, a former Accenture Senior Managing Director, as she talks to guests who are happily “pretired” – using their time, treasure, and talent to pursue their purpose and passion in the third act of their life. The Alex Cross series - A crime, mystery, and thriller novel series written by James Patterson. The protagonist of the series is Alex Cross, an African-American Metropolitan Police Department detective and father who counters threats to his family and the city of Washington, D.C. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Healthy Tension: GTM & Product/Eng Collaboration at Hundreds of Millions ARR Scale w/ Tido Carriero & Joe Morrissey #172 42:45

hace 1 year42:45

42:45

We’re featuring another popular session from ELC Annual 2023 – welcome to “Healthy Tension: GTM & Product/Eng Collaboration at Hundreds of Millions ARR Scale” with Tido Carriero, (Co-Founder @ Koala and Former VPE @ Segment) and Joe Morrissey (General Partner @ a16z & Former CRO @ Segment)! Tido & Joe share stories from the beginning of their partnership at Segment, including their first cross-functional annual planning meeting. They highlight lessons learned from those early days and how others can implement annual planning session frameworks to develop value drivers for their org in order to better serve customers & create products with value. Joe & Tido also cover how to build a healthy, trusting relationship between product & eng when it comes to building / executing a successful GTM strategy. ABOUT TIDO CARREIRO Tido is the Co-Founder & CEO of Koala. Prior to Koala, he led the Product & Engineering team at Segment from less than $5M in ARR to their $3.2B acquisition by Twilio. “I had been at Segment for four years. The big unlock for me and I think what I needed to lean into more in retrospect from a trust perspective was that Joe was really going to be a different kind of go to market partner. We had zoomed way out. We had looked at a multi-year strategy, not just a list of 25 features and ordering them quarter by quarter by quarter.” - Tido Carriero ABOUT JOE MORRISSEY Joe Morrissey is a general partner on the Growth investing team at Andreessen Horowitz, focused on enterprise technology companies. Prior to joining a16z, Joe was chief revenue officer at Segment, where he scaled revenues to upwards of $200M ARR in advance of the company’s $3.2B acquisition by Twilio. Before Segment, he was was the EMEA vice president and general manager for three open source software companies: Hortonworks, which combined with Cloudera in a $5.2B merger in 2019; MongoDB, which went public in 2017; and MySQL, which was acquired by Sun Microsystems for $1B in 2008. Joe holds a bachelor’s degree in business studies from the University of Limerick, Ireland. He currently serves on the boards of Neon Inc., and Hopsworks AB and lives in Menlo Park with his wife and two kids. "You've got to go through this tension and I think one of the things that can happen is you avoid the tension, you avoid the conflict, you say yes to things that maybe you're not comfortable with both on the product and on the go to market side then the plan goes wrong, right? So I really think like the tension is the critical thing and that the struggle is the critical thing and that's where the learning is.” - Joe Morrissey We now have 10 local communities of engineering leaders hosting in-person meetups all over the world! Local communities are led by eng leaders just like you, who wanted to create a place to connect, share insights & tackle critical challenges in the job. New York City, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, and Toronto in-person events are happening now! We’re launching local events all the time - get involved at elc.community! SHOW NOTES: Joe’s first impressions of Tido & the beginning of their relationship (2:28) The story of their low point & working together on annual planning (5:32) What was agreed on in the annual planning session (7:44) Focusing on value drivers & building a trusting GTM partnership (10:55) Why it’s necessary to embrace tension in order to drive growth (15:01) Tido’s lessons learned leading eng product & sales @ Koala (16:05) Audience Q&A: Frameworks for narrowing down value drivers (19:00) The importance of cross-functional participation in planning sessions (22:21) An inside look at the exercise of identifying value drivers (24:02) How deep should salespeople go on the product? (26:27) How does annual planning change day-to-day operations for the year? (27:56) Describing the Lighthouse program (30:10) Reorganizing the org to meet the three identified value drivers (32:32) Engineering leadership’s involvement during the annual plan (35:24) Strategy behind building a platform (38:38) LINKS AND RESOURCES Video version of this episode More sessions from ELC Annual This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Driving innovation at large-scale orgs, translating leadership skills to successfully scale early-stage startups w/ Jeremy Burton #171 48:47

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48:47

We dissect leadership lessons from across vastly different scales of eng orgs – ranging from 13,000-people companies to 10-person start-ups – with Jeremy Burton, CEO @ Observe. He shares how he effectively translated leadership skills from working at large-scale orgs to small, early-stage start-ups & addresses challenges faced when scaling at any point. Jeremy covers start-up strategies for bringing your eng teams closer to your customers & driving innovation at large-scale orgs; characteristics of eng leaders that promote successful scaling; gaining & communicating conviction; driving community engagement & building trust within developer communities; and more. ABOUT JEREMY BURTON Jeremy Burton is the chief executive officer of Observe, Inc. Prior to Observe, Jeremy was Executive Vice President, Marketing & Corporate Development of Dell Technologies, and served in various leadership roles at EMC prior to Dell. A 20-year veteran of the IT industry, Jeremy joined EMC from Serena Software, where he was President and CEO. Previous to Serena, he led Symantec’s $2 billion Enterprise Security product line as Group President of Security and Data Management. Jeremy also served as Veritas’ Executive Vice President of Data Management Group and Chief Marketing Officer. Earlier in his career, he spent nearly a decade at Oracle as Senior Vice President of Product and Services Marketing. Jeremy is currently a member of the board of directors at Snowflake, a seat he's held since 2015, and maintains a part-time role on the advisory board at McLaren Group. "I hear so many times both in startups and bigger companies, 'Oh, we have a sales execution issue.' If your early sales team is not successful, it's never the sales team. It's always the product. Where bigger companies have built new products, they've probably taken it to market too soon and the salespeople will take it to a mature account. It won't be as mature as the other products. The customer will complain and the salespeople will hate it. It'll get a bad name and then it'll get killed. That's the typical mode of operation that I've seen in a large company, which is why you got to keep it a secret until you've got the MVP, then work with a small set of customers and set the right expectation. When you get it right, you've immediately got a distribution channel that you can scale. If you get it wrong, you'll never scale it and you'll just create a whole bunch of problems in your customer base.” - Jeremy Burton We now have 10 local communities of engineering leaders hosting in-person meetups all over the world! Local communities are led by eng leaders just like you, who wanted to create a place to connect, share insights & tackle critical challenges in the job. New York City, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, and Toronto in-person events are happening now! We’re launching local events all the time - get involved at elc.community! SHOW NOTES: Operating at a scale of 13,000 people vs. early stage with 10 (3:13) How Jeremy adapted to operating at vastly different scales (6:30) Transitioning from a back seat role to the front seat (8:32) Approaches to helping folks better operate in ambiguity & face the unknown (11:20) Cycles that gave Jeremy more confidence to operate in instability (14:26) The romanticization of start-ups & challenges with scaling (18:22) Why eng teams should work directly with customers at start-ups (21:14) Leveraging leadership at large orgs to bring eng teams closer to customers (24:36) Strategies for innovation at large-scale orgs (27:38) Dynamics at big companies that incentivize killing new projects (30:38) Characters of eng leaders that lead to successful scaling / innovation (32:56) Recommendations for gaining conviction & communicating that effectively (34:33) Conversation frameworks for creating alignment (37:43) How to create influence & community engagement for developers (38:55) Gaining trust within your community & exuding authenticity (42:10) Rapid fire questions (44:42) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Pivotal Leadership Moments & Career Decision-Making w/ Thuan Pham & Li Fan #170 43:56

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43:56

We’re sharing a session from ELC Annual 2023 – Thuan Pham (Board Director, Advisor, former CTO of Uber & Coupang) shares pivotal moments from his life, leadership journey & career with Li Fan (CTO @ Circle). Thuan shares his best leadership lessons & strategies for scaling during hypergrowth from his time at Uber and how those skills impacted him in roles since then. He shares stories about working at Uber – including both the highs & lows – and reflects on what could have been done differently or better. Thuan also shares advice on how to keep your eng org motivated during crisis; advice he would give his younger self; and skills that make a great eng leader today vs. 20 years ago. Thuan also shares stories from his upbringing and how his experience as a refugee & immigrant impacted him as an eng leader today. ABOUT THUAN PHAM Thuan Pham served as Chief Technology Officer of Coupang from September 2020 until September 2022, and of Uber Technologies, Inc. from April 2013 to May 2020. From December 2004 to January 2013, Mr. Pham served in various Vice President roles at VMWare, Inc., a software and technology company, including as Vice President of R&D – Cloud Management Platform from June 2012 to January 2013. As an engineering leader, he is passionate about building talented, healthy, and motivated engineering organization and leading it to accomplish extraordinary things. He cares deeply about organizational health and principled leadership and believes these are the greatest drivers for any team to harness its maximum potential. Mr. Pham holds both B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Thuan's work and career contributions as an American immigrant were recognized by the Carnegie Foundation among its list of "2016 Great Immigrants: The Pride of America" honorees. ABOUT LI FAN Li Fan is CTO at Circle, a global fin-tech firm enabling business to harness the power of digital currencies and public blockchains (Circle is the principle operator of USD Coin). Prior to Circle, Li was CTO at Lime, an innovative technology company that connects and empowers urban living through mobility. Before Lime, Li was SVP of engineering at Pinterest leading all 600+ engineers to execute technology strategy and deliver company priorities. Li was a Senior Director of Engineering in Google, accountable for Google’s popular image search and was Vice President of Engineering at Baidu. We now have 10 local communities of engineering leaders hosting in-person meetups all over the world! Local communities are led by eng leaders just like you, who wanted to create a place to connect, share insights & tackle critical challenges in the job. New York City, Boston, Chicago, Seattle, Los Angeles, San Diego, San Francisco, London, Amsterdam, and Toronto in-person events are happening now! We’re launching local events all the time - get involved at elc.community! SHOW NOTES: Thuan’s immigrant / refugee background & its impact on him (2:19) The experience of resetting & starting from nothing as an eng leader (4:23) Pivotal moments during Thuan’s seven years @ Uber (6:59) How Thuan provided hands-on mentorship & teaching leading the eng org (8:21) Challenges faced & lessons learned through hypergrowth at scale (11:29) Scaling infrastructure / processes while scaling talent (13:44) What caused Thuan to stay with Uber & eventually lead him to leave (17:14) Ways in which Uber could have done better (19:48) Thuan’s reflections on what he could have done to change the situation (23:14) How & why Thuan transitioned from Uber to Coupang (26:01) Reflections on what makes a great eng leader 20 years ago & today (29:49) Audience Q&A: What are Thuan’s current motivations & goals? (34:56) Keeping your engineers motivated during times of crisis (36:53) Advice Thuan would give his younger self (38:42) Qualities of a great VP of Engineering & exec team (41:30) LINKS AND RESOURCES All of the Sessions from ELC Annual This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
The Disciplined Pursuit of Less: Using AI and Design to Maximize Customer Impact w/ Dheeraj Pandey #169 37:37

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37:37

In today’s episode, we’re resharing Dheeraj Pandey’s popular session from ELC Annual 2023 on the disciplined pursuit of less! As the Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman of DevRev.ai , he shares how AI tools can maximize customer impact & reduce information asymmetry between various teams, including eng, customer support, product, sales, etc., ultimately creating a more customer-centric mindset. He reveals how to leverage AI to tackle “verbs,” such as classifying, routing, attributing, summarizing and more, further streamlining productivity and empowering your org to focus on customer needs. ABOUT DHEERAJ PANDEY Dheeraj Pandey is the co-founder & CEO of DevRev.ai , one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, with over 70 million dollars in seed funding. He previously founded Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX), a global leader in enterprise cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and currently sits on the board of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) and is a member of their Audit Committee. Dheeraj co-founded Nutanix in 2009 and led as its CEO and Chairman for 11+ years. Boasting the largest software IPO in 2016, Nutanix is now a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees in over 60 countries. Pandey has been recognized with prestigious industry awards, including Dell's Founders 50 and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley. Before founding Nutanix, Pandey was the VP of engineering at Aster Data (now Teradata). His technology and enterprise software experience include engineering and leadership roles at Oracle, Zambeel and Trilogy Software. Pandey has been recognized with several prestigious industry awards, including Dell's Founders 50 and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley. Pandey holds a degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur, and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, he was a Graduate Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin Ph.D. program. "In my last company, we had brought almost 7,000 employees together. My biggest job was to really bring all the VPs together. What does it mean for them to work together, behave well together, and respect each other? And it's all because there were all these silos of departments. If you look at the power of AI, AI knows no boundaries. If anything, it needs the entire knowledge graph and the knowledge graph of customers and product and people and their work, not just people on the inside, but also users and their activities on the outside. That's a big problem that we all have to go and solve for.” - Dheeraj Pandey This episode is brought to you by testRigor ! testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation: It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers Low productivity building your own QA Automation Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain English To learn more, check out a case study on testRigor here Sign up for a free trial today at testrigor.com SHOW NOTES: The role of essentialism in software dev & company building (1:52) Dheeraj’s experience fostering a customer-centric approach in all teams (4:22) Commonly used tools & why they fall short for full eng functions (7:20) Why it’s important to connect AI, analytics & collaboration features (10:15) How AI can help solve information asymmetry (13:12) Using AI for analytics to help make teams more customer-centric (15:14) Audience Q&As: A day in the life of a PM using LLMs in an interactive discussion (18:03) Tips for educating users to provide better prompts when using GenAI (22:50) How would a company typically use the DevRev product? (24:38) DevRev’s object model of support (27:21) Is DevRev capable of answering arbitrary questions once data is uploaded? (28:36) Methods used to measure performance w/ DevRev (30:02) Creating multiple namespaces w/in the same index to host multi-tenant data (31:10) Qualitative & quantitative benefits DevRev offers to its customer base (33:39) LINKS AND RESOURCES Video Version of Episode All of the Sessions from ELC Annual This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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AI ethics/safety, applying AI to address societal challenges & becoming a board member w/ Lake Dai #168 51:30

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51:30

In this episode, we chat with Lake Dai (Founder & Managing Partner @ Sancus Ventures), who shares her career story & how to harness AI technology in a way that is both effective & compassionate. We cover the concept of “co-parenting AI”; why ethics in AI is non-negotiable; and how to create compassionate AI. Lake also reveals how she became a veteran at serving on boards & why it is something she is passionate about. We dissect ways current eng leaders who are interested in board service can gain the right experiences & demonstrate their value as a potential board member. ABOUT LAKE DAI Lake Dai is Founder and Managing Partner of Sancus Ventures, a VC firm focused on pre-seed to seed stage companies, investing in the next generation of software infrastructure for applications, such as distributed computing, AI model management, platform scalability, data privacy & safety, cybersecurity and more. Lake has been an Adjunct Professor of Applied AI at Carnegie Mellon University since 2016. She was a keynote speaker on AI ethics, data privacy, real-world applications, and AI education topics at the UN, UK Parliament, California State, and leading tech conferences such as the MIT conference and VentureBeat. "Students ask, 'Why do I have to study AI ethics? Why can't I just jump into how do I build this model?' If you imagine AI as a very powerful tool, there is no difference between teaching building AI tools from teaching people how to use a weapon. If you ever take any weapon training classes, the first thing people teach you is safety, which is really understanding how the weapon works and how much impact both on the positive and negative side to people surround you. That part is missing for a lot of AI technical training these days.” - Lake Dai This episode is brought to you by testRigor ! testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation: It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers Low productivity building your own QA Automation Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain English To learn more, check out a case study on testRigor here Sign up for a free trial today at testrigor.com SHOW NOTES: Why VC fundraising is set to thrive in 2024 & beyond (2:14) Eng leaders should focus on AI ethics (6:09) The importance of starting with a safety check before implementing technology (8:14) Lake’s recommendations for eng leaders to guide current & future AI dev (9:46) Third-party involvement with internal building processes (12:22) Strategies for helping engineers address AI dev in a mid or late-stage roadmap (14:06) The concept of co-parenting AI & its implication for eng leaders (15:40) Benevolent AI & feeding AI compassion information / data (18:50) How to harness AI to address societal challenges & create positive outcomes (22:42) Examples of AI addressing climate change & education-related issues (24:44) Three reasons why Lake is passionate about serving on boards (28:33) The positive impact of serving as a board member (31:40) How to gain the right experience & demonstrate value to get on a board (33:21) Why it’s important to let others know you’re looking for a board role (35:17) Rapid fire questions (40:51) LINKS AND RESOURCES Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health. The All-In Podcast - Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social, and poker. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Software Dev in 2033 w/ Tara Hernandez, Erik Meijer, and Jocelyn Goldfein #167 42:46

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42:46

In this episode, we’re resharing one of the most popular & exciting sessions from ELC Annual 2023, featuring a panel of experts discussing what software dev will look like in the decades to come! This conversation features Tara Hernandez, VP Developer Productivity @ MongoDB; Erik Meijer, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Meta; and Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners. They debate & dissect how AI is changing what software dev looks like, what capabilities future eng leaders will need to build upon, where AI technology will need to improve moving forward, and more. ABOUT TARA HERNANDEZ Tara Hernandez has spent nearly thirty years evolving ways for companies to develop and ship software. She helped launch Mozilla.org and has been a firm proponent of open source ever since. She also thinks smart companies understand the business value of having a diverse employee base. Tara currently works at MongoDB, is a member of the board for Women Who Code, and a member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation. "What was so amazing about Da Vinci? Da Vinci was an artist, he was a painter, he was a sculptor, he was an engineer. Breadth, more than depth, is increasingly going to be critical.” - Tara Hernandez ABOUT ERIK MEIJER Erik Meijer is a Dutch Computer Scientist, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast. In his long career, he has democratized many academic concepts such as functional programming, reactive programming, and language-integrated query by introducing these concepts into mainstream languages such as C#, Visual Basic, Dart, and Hack, as well as through his startup Apllied Duality Inc. As an educator, Erik has shared his knowledge through platforms like Channel 9, Coursera, and edX, enlightening learners worldwide with his courses on reactive and functional programming. As the founder of the Probability team at Meta in 2016, he is one of the pioneers in applying AI to programmer productivity and systems efficiency. Most recently, Erik is working on providing every knowledge worker with a personal assistant that supercharges their productivity and boosts job satisfaction. "I think the engineer of the future will be more like an English major or a music major. Somebody that can really explain their thoughts very well. If you have kids, I would not send them to do computer science. Send them to a liberal arts.” - Erik Meijer ABOUT JOCELYN GOLDFEIN Jocelyn Goldfein ( @jgoldfein ) is a Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners, where she invests seed capital in AI-native startups with B2B business models. Jocelyn is a widely recognized industry expert on product strategy, infrastructure, and organizational scale. Her career as an engineering leader spans from early-stage startups to high-growth years at Facebook and VMware. During her tenure at Facebook, she helped convert News Feed to Machine Learning and spearheaded the transition to a ‘mobile first' product organization. As an early engineer at VMware, she built core virtualization technology and ultimately created and led VMware’s Desktop Business Unit. Jocelyn also held engineering and leadership roles at startups Datify, MessageOne, and Trilogy/pcOrder. Jocelyn has a passion for STEM Education. She currently lectures at Stanford University where she received her BS in Computer Science. "Part of me finds it almost insane to think about what if there's never a new programming language? What if we're at the end of history for new programming languages and the next and last programming language is Hindi?” - Jocelyn Goldfein This episode is brought to you by testRigor ! testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation: It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers Low productivity building your own QA Automation Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain English To learn more, check out a case study on testRigor here Sign up for a free trial today at testrigor.com SHOW NOTES: Introducing Jocelyn, Tara, and Erik & their interest in the future of software dev (2:31) Ensuring AI accuracy / confidence as a key inflection point (5:06) What the next generation of building software will look like (7:09) Why engineers will always be needed for understanding machine capabilities (10:51) Erik & Tara’s perspectives on the future of AI & engineer interaction in software dev (13:19) Great engineers of the future need to have well-rounded skills (16:38) Why flow will (or will not) be as necessary in the future (19:06) How AI will augment human creativity & the engineering role (21:06) Will AI replace the need for cross-collaborative teams? (23:30) Jocelyn’s theory that today’s best QA folks will be the best engineers in 2033 (26:14) Audience Q&A: What logical & cognitive skills will still be needed as AI progresses? (28:24) Challenging the current definition of software development (31:45) What is the potential for a future dialogue system? (34:17) Will the change in eng skills also impact other degrees like mathematics? (36:46) How will the industry navigate workforce loss as AI replaces certain roles? (38:01) LINKS AND RESOURCES Video Version of Episode All of the Sessions from ELC Annual This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Career visualization, creating a pre-transition thesis & expanding your leadership to lead an entire business unit w/ Prashanthi Padmanabhan #166 45:11

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45:11

We discuss expanding your leadership capabilities to support total business growth & career visualization with Prashanthi Padmanabhan, Head of Engineering @ LinkedIn Premium and Global Women in Tech Lead @ LinkedIn. Prashanthi dissects her career journey & leadership growth practices like creating a half-pager to visualize your potential career path, developing value-based leadership skills, identifying the micro & macro transformation opportunities for your professional growth, and ways to employ empathy within your team & toward customers. We also cover the vital skills & capabilities you’ll need to expand your eng leadership to work in a more cross-functional role and directly impact the growth of your business. Prashanthi also dives into how she lead LinkedIn Premium as it adopts generative AI-based features. ABOUT PRASHANTHI PADMANABHAN Prashanthi is a seasoned technologist and product builder with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Currently, she leads Engineering for LinkedIn Premium, building a world-class subscription platform, helping deliver customer value for millions of members, and growing LinkedIn’s online subscription business line. Prior to joining LinkedIn, she led engineering for large-scale consumer products at Yahoo and Verizon Media. She excels at operating at the intersection of Business, Technology, and People, and her leadership style is rooted in compassion - for her teams and her customers. Prashanthi also leads the global Women In Tech community at LinkedIn and routinely mentors emerging women leaders inside and outside LinkedIn. She writes on LinkedIn on topics spanning engineering, leadership, organizational culture, well-being, etc.. Outside work, she is passionate about maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle. "I wrote a half pager about how I'm looking at my career at LinkedIn, what am I passionate about, and these things that I'm passionate about needs to continue to be ingredients in my journey. And then I wrote like, short term micro-transformations that I want to go through. And then, like, longer term, what is the macro transformation that I want to experience? And that macro transformation was I want to lead as an engineering leader, or maybe even a product leader, a line of business.” - Prashanthi Padmanabhan This episode is brought to you by testRigor ! testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation: It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers Low productivity building your own QA Automation Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain English To learn more, check out a case study on testRigor here Sign up for a free trial today at testrigor.com SHOW NOTES: Prashanthi’s early career days to leading LinkedIn Premium (3:12) Deeply understand who you are building a product for (5:10) The pivotal moment that drove Prashanthi’s involvement w/ LinkedIn Premium (8:23) Strategies for creating a career half-pager to think about what’s next (11:49) An example of DEI for micro & macro transformation opportunities (13:35) Steps to ensure your team embodies your values day-to-day (16:05) Creating a pre-transition thesis before stepping into a new role (19:11) Using other leaders as a sounding board for your thesis (21:48) Important skills / capabilities to learn when shifting to a new role (24:13) Employing empathy within a cross-functional leadership team (27:09) Challenges faced & lessons learned during Prashanthi’s leadership evolution (30:06) Demystifying the business (32:07) Why eng teams need to hear from customers & empathize with them (33:06) What gave Prashanthi’s team the confidence to reimagine LinkedIn Premium’s roadmap (35:49) Use cases for generative AI in the business model (37:44) Rapid fire questions (40:31) LINKS AND RESOURCES Possible - a new podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way? Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with a visionary from a different field: climate science, media, criminal justice, and more. The conversation also features another kind of guest: GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest and most powerful language model to date. Each episode has a companion story, generated by GPT-4, which will serve as a jumping-off point for a hopeful, speculative discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Reinforcing consensus-driven culture, deploying the “inverse Conway maneuver” & the unique principles behind Two Sigma’s engineering culture w/ Matt Greenwood #165 38:53

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Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer & Head of Investment Management Engineering @ Two Sigma shares some of the most unique and valuable cultural practices behind how the engineering org operates at Two Sigma. We discuss strategies that prepare you for scaling (like intentional relationship-building with your front-line managers); examples of how Two Sigma successfully deployed the “Inverse Conway Maneuver,” how to reinforce a consensus-driven culture from early-days to 1000+, how to navigate both large & small reorgs; and why Two Sigma made the intentional decision to rebrand their R&D org as M&E (modeling & engineering)! Plus, Matt’s approach to full-bodied problem-solving. ABOUT MATT GREENWOOD Matt is Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Investment Management Engineering at Two Sigma. He joined Two Sigma in 2003 and since then has led a number of company-wide efforts in both engineering and modeling. Matt is also an Advisor at Two Sigma Ventures and works closely with the business’ portfolio companies as a board member and advisor. Matt began his career at Bell Labs and later moved to IBM Research, where he was responsible for a number of early efforts in tablet computing and distributed computing. In 2000, Matt was lead developer and manager for Entrisphere, Inc., where he helped create a product providing access equipment for broadband service providers. Matt earned a BA and MA in Math from Oxford University, and a Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He also holds a PhD in Mathematics from Columbia University, where he taught for many years. "We came to New York in 2003, nothing was happening in New York. Silicon Alley, as they called it back then was just kaput. Then one day, I was browsing Craigslist, because that's what you did in 2003, and there was a little ad, ‘Hedge fund, looking for excellent engineers.’ So I was like, 'All right, maybe.' I said to my wife, 'This is either the sketchiest thing ever or the best decision of my life. It's one of those two things.' On Craigslist, there's no other way you can be, right? And it was probably the best decision of my life.” - Matt Greenwood This episode is brought to you by incident.io incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com , Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization. Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.io Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Matt’s eng leadership journey & discovering Two Sigma on Craigslist (3:34) Key moments of Two Sigma’s evolution as an org that sparked excitement (7:26) Lessons learned on keeping your work exciting by focusing on “human problems” (10:25) Create a culture of investing in people’s growth across longer timelines (12:22) How Sigma Two intentionally structures its R&D org (15:18) An unexpected way to prepare for scaling your org - intentional relationship-building strategies for your first-line managers (18:10) Frameworks for deploying the inverse Conway maneuver (20:56) The right people / conversations for small & large reorgs (23:30) Consensus-driven culture at 1000+, approaches to create buy-in & ownership with organizational change (26:02) Two Sigma’s approach to full-bodied problem solving (30:26) Rapid fire questions (34:06) LINKS AND RESOURCES Whalefall - A scientifically accurate thriller from Daniel Kraus about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Unlocking Empowered, Self-Sufficient Teams: A Deep Dive into 'First Team' Strategies w/ Monica Bajaj #164 36:34

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In this episode, we are deconstructing the “first team approach” with Monica Bajaj, VPE @ Okta. We cover how to apply “first team" across your org, within different team functions (including architecture, quality, security, etc.) and across all levels. She also shares real-life examples from her experience with “first teams” in scenarios like onboarding new teams after M&As, developing new products, and more. Monica provides tactical steps for implementing the first team concept within your org & why it encourages bottoms-up initiatives / self sufficient teams. ABOUT MONICA BAJAJ Monica is currently VP of Engineering at Okta where she leads the Developer Experience portfolio for Customer Identity Cloud (CIAM). She is responsible for building a frictionless developer experience for Consumer and SaaS Apps thus securing billions of logins every month. Her expertise spans technology, operations, global expansion, and product launch in areas such as Consumer/Enterprise, Infrastructure, Business Intelligence, DevOps, and Security. She has taken products into the global market by launching localization and globalization programs delivering multi-million dollar growth. Previously she has held senior engineering leadership positions at Workday, Perforce, Network Appliance, and UKG. She holds a Masters in Computer Science from IIT Mumbai. Monica is an active supporter of diversity in STEM, has launched several Women in Technology initiatives, and is now an exec sponsor for Women at Okta. When not obsessing over technology, she can be found spending time with Boy Scouts, enjoying hiking, and supporting the cause of mentorship and uplifting women and young girls. "The first team concept was launched at my level and then I went through this journey and I realized like, 'Oh, this is very powerful.' First, it was confusing that I need to put my team aside and take my peers as my first priority, but then I became more curious and then I was intrigued by the results and I'm like, 'Oh, this is so powerful. I need to put this in my own organization.' So I started with my directs like, 'Hey, we have studied about this. We did a whole session and walk them through some real examples. That's where it was like, 'Oh, we need to implement this and see it.'” - Monica Bajaj This episode is brought to you by incident.io incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com , Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization. Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.io Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Defining the “first team” concept & three characteristics that lead to success (3:22) How applying a first team approach impacts relationships (6:05) Why adopting these principles improved the quality, trust & maturity of eng teams (8:30) What conditions were met to set up the relationship between teams (12:09) Nuances of incorporating a first team approach at different levels of your org (13:48) How the first team facilitates faster pivoting as new priorities arise (16:31) First team frameworks for successfully & quickly onboarding new teams (19:08) An example of this concept applied to an architecture context (20:20) Why “first teams” support / encourage bottoms-up initiatives (23:47) Strategies for leadership to implement first teams @ different levels of their org (27:38) Recommendations for regaining cohesiveness as a first team (29:17) Rapid fire questions (31:28) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Habit of Winning: Stories to Inspire, Motivate and Unleash the Winner within This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Building a culture of experimentation & innovation at massive scale w/ Kristian Lindwall, Pooja Dave & Mark Grey @ Spotify #163 1:03:03

hace 1 year1:03:03

1:03:03

In one of our most anticipated conversations of the year, we got the chance to sit down with three of Spotify’s eng leaders: Krisitan Lindwall, Director of Engineering, Data, Insights, Experimentation, & ML Infrastructure; Mark Grey, Senior Staff Engineer; and Pooja Dave, Director of Engineering, Music Promotion. They share insights from their experience building a culture of experimentation & innovation at a massive scale and what elements are necessary for experimentation at scale. They share the origin story of Spotify’s experimentation platform, how to develop eng leaders to think strategically & execute effectively, mistakes to avoid while scaling your experimentation capabilities, and navigating the balance between structured processes vs. unstructured time to ideate. ABOUT KRISTIAN LINDWALL Kristian ( @klindwall ) is an engineering leader at Spotify. He has over 10 years of experience managing and coaching a broad variety of engineering and product teams. He is currently based in New York where he manages the engineering teams working on the company’s data, insights, and machine learning platforms. Prior to that, he led parts of the agile coach practice at Spotify for a few years and has been very active in supporting the growth of a strong agile and lean approach in the company. Before Spotify, Kristian spent 8 years in fintech in Stockholm where he built and grew the engineering team at the largest online broker company in Sweden. "How we behave in the organization is really what reinforces and drives the culture and I think there's a few things driving that culture of innovation. Connecting hands to heads, meaning give people an opportunity to engage in ideation and make sure people are involved in strategy work and in the full process of figuring out where we're heading.” - Kristian Lindwall ABOUT POOJA DAVE With over a decade of experience building and leading several R&D organizations in ad tech, marketing tech, and platforms servicing those, Pooja currently runs the organization at Spotify that helps artists engage and grow their fanbase. Prior to Spotify, she worked at Microsoft on several products including Devices, Browser Rendering Engine, and Advertising/MarTech SDKs. This diversity in experiences has given her a well-rounded exposure to engineer solutions and lead teams with strong backend architecture, client, machine learning, and data practices. “For Spotify, failure is the paradox to success.” - Pooja Dave ABOUT MARK GREY Mark is a Senior Staff Engineer at Spotify, where for a decade he has worked on a broad range of distributed systems related to experimentation, data processing, and analytics. Having operated and scaled solutions at all stages of growth, his primary focus is on technical strategy and platformization. Prior to Spotify, Mark worked at the New York Times on personalization infrastructure such as near-realtime article recommendations. "We want to ideally maximize the throughput on those things that we see pan out or don't pan out. So kind of a fail faster, double down model and there's all kinds of practices and tools that we put in place that Confidence is just one among many that allow us to increase that throughput. So try and derive insights from a small experiment, validate your hypothesis quickly, and then proceed and scale up from there.” - Mark Grey This episode is brought to you by incident.io incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com , Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization. Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.io Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: About Spotify’s experimentation platform, Confidence (3:46) Why Spotify decided to offer Confidence externally (5:43) What experimentation without a platform looked like in the early days @ Spotify (6:24) Understanding the scale of the Confidence platform (8:58) Challenges eng leaders face when scaling testing / experimentation processes (10:51) Strategies for determining which experiments & features are most impactful (13:23) How to build a stronger culture of innovation / experimentation at scale (15:47) Frameworks to help develop eng leaders to be both thinkers & doers (19:11) Facilitating conversations around data ideation (23:13) An example of how Spotify ideates around data (26:10) Mistakes to avoid when scaling up & defining the experiment (28:36) How to prioritize experiments when there are conflicts (32:22) Recommendations for capturing ideas & turning them into features (35:32) Create breathing space within eng teams to help bolster innovation (40:10) Why it’s also key to implement structured processes for experimentation (42:57) What good coaching looks like when orgs are scaling their experiments (45:24) Knowing when you need to platformize something (48:55) How generalizing platform capabilities can enable greater speed (51:27) Learn to think outside the box & don’t get in the way of experimentation (55:11) Rapid fire questions (57:10) LINKS AND RESOURCES Becoming - In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address. Unsolicited Feedback - A new podcast by Reforge that invites you into closed-door conversations between growth and product leaders. Brian Balfour (Reforge, HubSpot), Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack), and friends give targeted feedback around recent features and releases across the product and growth multiverse. Lenny’s Podcast - Lenny Rachitsky (author of #1 business newsletter on Substack with 500k+ subscribers) interviews world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Move beyond measurement & inspire developer productivity w/ Laura Tacho #162 41:14

hace 1 year41:14

41:14

Laura Tacho, CTO @ DX, joins us to discuss why changing what you measure doesn’t necessarily lead to improved productivity (and what to do about it)! How to define and measure productivity in your eng org is one of the hottest topics for eng leaders… We cover best practices for identifying what productivity looks like in your org, what motivates your team to reach those goals, how to harness behavioral psychology, and antipatterns to avoid when you focus on productivity. Plus Laura shares some of her favorite practices to identify your skill gaps, and how define what success looks like for yourself and your teams on your productivity journey. ABOUT LAURA TACHO Laura Tacho is CTO at DX, a developer experience company. She previously led teams at companies like CloudBees, Aula Education, and Nova Credit. She’s an expert in building world-class engineering organizations that consistently deliver outstanding results. Laura has coached CTOs and other engineering leaders from startups to the Fortune 500, and also facilitates a popular course on metrics and engineering team performance. "That is just a ripe environment for the rapid degradation of trust within an organization and has immeasurable consequences when it comes to degrading the culture of a team. I think the temptation is there, understandably, and I think from good intentions of, ‘I want to try to measure unobtrusively. I want to get this data about my team without them knowing about it or minimally knowing about it so that I'm not bothering them.’ That is a trap because we don't need to treat people the same way we treat distributed systems with dashboards and dashboards of telemetry data. People can talk. Just ask them.” - Laura Tacho This episode is brought to you by incident.io incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com , Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization. Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.io Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Why people care so much about measuring productivity in engineering (3:25) Antipatterns to avoid when tightening focus on productivity (5:08) The role of behavioral psychology with engineering productivity (7:04) What the ideal consulting relationship looks like structurally (8:58) Ensure you’re incentivizing the behavior you want to achieve (12:20) How to cultivate the skill of influencing without feeling too “salesy” (13:59) Understanding the different facets / types of motivation (17:08) Strategies for developing resiliency in “do more with less” environments (19:14) Behaviors that prevent eng orgs & leaders from achieving their goals (23:55) How to identify areas of personal development & closing the skill gap (27:00) Areas that are the most ripe for setting the right expectations / outcomes (29:40) Best practices for eng leaders to gain clarity & define what success looks like (32:01) Rapid fire questions (35:52) LINKS AND RESOURCES Remarkably Bright Creatures -Shelby Van Pelt’s exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus. This Podcast Will Kill You - Grad students studying disease ecology, Erin and Erin found themselves disenchanted with the insular world of academia. They wanted a way to share their love of epidemics and weird medical mysteries with the world, not just colleagues. lauratacho.com - Laura’s website where you can find more information about her courses, coaching, and management program. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating 2024: Engineering management principles to tackle the unknowns & challenges ahead w/ Andrew Lau #161 36:27

hace 1 year36:27

36:27

Andrew Lau, CEO & Co-founder @ Jellyfish, shares the engineering management principles that eng leaders will most want to develop and invest in as we transition from 2023 into 2024. We cover year-end reflection techniques, how eng leaders can become more resilient / adaptable, why honing financial acumen is key, and how eng leaders can better plan ahead to face upcoming technology & industry challenges. We also preview Andrew’s new podcast called 5 to 9, aimed to identify meaningful ways eng leaders spend their time outside of the office. Check out Andrew’s new podcast 5 to 9 here: https://jellyfish.co/5-to-9-podcast ABOUT ANDREW LAU Andrew Lau is a Co-Founder and CEO of Jellyfish, where he helps leaders use data to align their engineering teams with business strategy. He was trained as an engineer and grew to VP of Engineering at Oracle acquired company, Endeca. He is also a multi-time entrepreneur and co-founder. At every company, Andrew saw the challenges of leading engineering teams at scale. He co-founded Jellyfish to give engineering executives the tools they need to be great leaders. Andrew holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Originally from Oakland, CA, he's a devoted fan of the Oakland A's, despite residing in Red Sox territory for more than two decades. Andrew currently calls Cambridge, MA his home, where he lives with his wife Elsie and their two adorable young children, Callie and Mira. “As a leader, your job is to know the context and translate the context. You have the benefit of seeing more things, but less deeply and your job is to kind of gather these informations and help other people understand it. People forget, you think you're an engineering leader. You think it's actually about making things. It is, but it's also about translating, especially at scale. You're not making anything anymore. You're enabling other people to make, and in order to do that, you've actually got to be translating and providing context.” - Andrew Lau This episode is brought to you by incident.io incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com , Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization. Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.io Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Andrew’s observations on how the tech industry is evolving from 2023 to 2024 (3:40) Questions to help you reflect at year-end about family, team & business (5:03) How eng leaders can build adaptability & resiliency (7:16) Skills / focus areas eng leaders should hone heading into 2024 (10:51) Developing better financial acumen (13:15) Bridging the gap between engineering strategy & business alignment (16:40) Why it’s important for businesses to build a plan for a year or two out (19:50) How this relates back to eng leadership development & financial acumen (23:00) Tips for identifying skill gaps in financial expertise (24:07) Knowing what metrics to measure your company against (26:07) About Andrew’s new podcast, 5 to 9 (28:42) How eng leaders make it work in business & outside of work (31:35) Where to follow & listen to 5 to 9 (34:40) LINKS AND RESOURCES 5 to 9 Podcast - By day, engineering leaders craft innovative solutions with elegant strings of code. But when the work day ends, who do these keyboard warriors and people managers become? Tune in to 5 to 9 to explore this question and others with Jellyfish CEO, Andrew Lau. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building data engineering teams from scratch & transitioning to a full-scale data function w/ Colleen Tartow #160 42:37

hace 1 year42:37

42:37

As the Field CTO & Head of Strategy @ VAST Data, Colleen Tartow, Ph.D., has a vast resume of building data engineering teams from scratch and beyond. Colleen discusses the necessary components for developing new or reorienting existing data programs, strategies for effective communication & collaboration between data & eng functions, the implications of AI technology on data engineering, and integrating cross-functional partners into the data eng planning process & road map. Plus Colleen shares about building the hiring process for data eng functions, when the “data engineering” term or role didn’t exist yet, and how you can apply that to other emerging or undefined functions! ABOUT COLLEEN TARTOW Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and diversity leadership makes her a trusted senior advisor among executives. An experienced speaker, author, valued mentor and startup advisor, Colleen holds degrees in astrophysics and lives in Massachusetts. "Everyone wants to be data driven, right? Like no one's going to say, 'No, we don't want data. We just want to function with opinions.' Like nobody's actually going to say that. But that said, getting started on that can be really challenging... With anything, you have to go back to what does the business really need. Going back to the revenue drivers and the business pain points that you're going to help solve, whether it's monetizing your data directly or using data as an enablement function to actually help in other areas and so I think getting the organization to understand that data is a product of the business and then sort of working back from there into what does that specifically mean.” - Colleen Tartow Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Colleen’s experience building a data program from scratch (2:25) What it used to be like building a data engineering team (4:43) Narrowing to first principles when hiring for / building a data eng team (6:44) Frameworks to advocate for more resources to build your org’s data function (7:53) Knowing when you need to transition your data side project to a full data program (10:11) Building data teams from a zero to one perspective (13:05) What “onboarding as discovery” conversations look like (14:38) Joining an existing team to implement a defined data-focused function (16:14) How to have effective conversations & collaborate with other eng functions (19:19) Prioritization strategies when refocusing / creating the data eng org roadmap (21:20) How to integrate cross-functional partners into the data eng planning process (22:51) The implication of AI on data teams & its intersection with eng teams (24:09) Colleen’s decision-making framework (27:54) Recommendations for tackling complex data pipelines in different ways (29:27) Navigating the paradigm of AI & data eng’s impact on other eng orgs (31:31) What the ideal collaboration between data & eng looks like (34:01) Recommendations for dealing with points of friction (35:21) Steps for aligning data & eng under the same goals (37:16) Rapid fire questions (39:04) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Lioness of Boston - Emily Franklin’s deeply evocative novel of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Organizing eng by strategic themes / complete units of value & consensus building to drive velocity w/ Emad Elwany #159 44:43

hace 1 year44:43

44:43

In this episode, Emad Elwany, CTO & Co-founder @ Lexion, joins us to discuss navigating the messy “in-between” phase startups face as they scale up! We talk about the dilemma between optimizing for vertical or horizontal teams. And we cover his approach for aligning teams based on strategic themes / “complete units of value” on the company’s product roadmap and navigating trade-offs when choosing your approach to scaling. Emad also shares strategies for successful interpersonal facilitation and how to build consensus effectively as an approach to sustain your org’s internal velocity. ABOUT EMAD ELWANY Emad Elwany is the CTO and co-founder of Lexion. Lexion is a powerfully simple operations workflow and contracting platform that helps teams get deals done faster. Lexion streamlines and centralizes the end-to-end contract lifecycle with intuitive email-driven intake and workflows, simple no-code automation, best-in-class AI, and more. Lexion was one of the first AI companies to leverage LLMs in building production-quality applications. The company was founded in 2018 at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is backed by an iconic Silicon Valley law firm, and recently raised a $20M Series B with support from top-tier VC firms. Prior to co-founding Lexion, Emad held principal engineering roles at Microsoft Research, working on Microsoft's core AI products, specifically as founding and lead engineer on their core conversational AI and NLP platform as well as their AI scheduling assistant. Emad holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Alexandria University and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He’s an active member of special interest groups in machine learning and artificial intelligence and has published research papers in major computer science conferences like CHI, NeurIPS, and KDD. "We said, 'We're not going to do the vertical. We're not going to do horizontal. Instead, let's be roadmap driven.' If you review our roadmap document, there's a section on key learnings from the past, and then there's a section on the three or four strategic areas we're investing in in the next quarter. So we thought, 'Okay, these strategic themes are very coherent. A lot of the projects on them are kind of homogenous but they span the full stack. They also span different functional areas. Why don't we try that? Why don't we have teams aligned to themes?'” - Emad Elwany Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group? ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers. Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups SHOW NOTES: Emad’s observations around scaling up @ Lexion (2:50) Strategies for dividing teams / products horizontally or vertically (5:17) Navigating trade-offs when deciding the right approach for scaling up (7:39) How to decide what areas to optimize vs. sacrifice (10:47) Using your product roadmap to drive decision making / optimization (12:59) Emad’s process for forming new teams, identifying strategies & executing vision (15:48) Fitting the trade-off discussion into this organization model (18:51) Determining your org’s specific “budget of problems” (22:21) Balancing the timing of problems vs. the quantity of problems (24:01) Recommendations for interpersonal facilitation & building consensus (27:01) How these actions can help improve & sustain your org’s internal velocity (31:16) Why velocity – or lack of it – impacts speedy, efficient decision-making (33:51) Emad’s favorite examples of his team finding consensus (35:37) Rapid fire questions (38:17) LINKS AND RESOURCES Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building -Claire Hughes Johnson’s practical and empathetic guide to being an effective leader and manager in a high-growth environment. The tactical information it puts forward—including guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms—can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry. Scaling People includes dozens of pages of worksheets, templates, exercises, and example documents to help founders, leaders, and company builders create scalable operating systems and lightweight processes that really work. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Rapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models w/ Scott Woody #158 47:53

hace 1 year47:53

47:53

Scott Woody, co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares the story of how Metronome, a small startup, made the transition to quickly operate at a global scale while working with complex, public companies. He shares the origin story of Metronome and the roadmap of how they went from early-stage engineering to creating highly specialized teams & in-house experts. Additionally, we cover how to navigate the tension between infrastructure & product eng teams, creating a healthy relationship between finance & eng orgs, and recommendations for strategically considering pivoting business models. ABOUT SCOTT WOODY Scott ( @l3amm ) is currently co-founder and CTO of Metronome, the usage-based billing platform built to help software companies accelerate their revenue. Prior to Metronome, Scott was a Director of Engineering at Dropbox where he led the growth and monetization team. He previously co-founded Foundry Hiring, an ATS system, that was later acquired by Dropbox. "When we were smaller, we had one giant engineering team. What we realized about nine months ago, especially as we started working with these more public companies, was that the needs of the specific personas were so specific that this concept of engineers being able to fit the entire product and need space in their head was impossible. We had to create those experts and decided to have PMs specialize and embed with these teams to become experts on the workflows.” - Scott Woody SHOW NOTES: The origin story of Metronome & Scott’s transition from Dropbox (3:14) How Metronome gained & maintained its first customers (5:36) Metronome’s two products / distinct user personas (7:58) Challenges from multiple complex stakeholders and users (10:17) The difficulty in solving & prioritizing user problems (12:23) Navigating the tension between product eng & infrastructure sides (15:41) How Metronome created experts in house & built a retainer of consultants (19:29) Roadmap for going from early-stage engineering to specialized teams (21:10) Processes for standardizing the knowledge base & communicating the info (23:16) Using brown bag talks to onboard new hires (26:16) Implications of a usage-based business model for eng leaders (28:26) Lessons learned when changing your business model (30:22) Making the shift to a consumption-based model (32:45) Strategies for rationalizing which pricing model to follow & knowing when to pivot (36:23) Developing & testing a value hypothesis (38:19) Lead with customer value in mind & communicate that value factor (40:59) Rapid fire questions (42:21) LINKS AND RESOURCES Elon Musk - From Walter Isaacson, this is the astonishingly intimate story of the most fascinating and controversial innovator of our era—a rule-breaking visionary who helped to lead the world into the era of electric vehicles, private space exploration, and artificial intelligence. Oh, and took over Twitter. Foundation - The first novel in Isaac Asimov's classic science-fiction masterpiece, the Foundation series. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Becoming a great coach: Practices & principles to help you make a bigger impact on your teams w/ Jill Wetzler #157 48:10

hace 1 year48:10

48:10

In this episode, Jill Wetzler shares practices and principles to help you become a great coach! As an Executive Coach & former VP of Engineering, Jill shares how attending her first coaching workshop impacted her career trajectory and the frameworks she uses to help create a mindset of possibility, foster positive relationships, cultivate trust, navigate threats, and help people think about the future. She shares her own experiences working through these frameworks & how it helped guide her career decisions. Plus we discuss tools for implementing a peer coaching structure into your org & how to make the most of peer group discussions! ABOUT JILL WETZLER Jill Wetzler is a leadership coach, consultant, and former VP of Engineering with more than 15 years of experience leading engineering teams at some of Silicon Valley's fastest-growing companies. She works with organizations who want to strengthen and uplevel their management teams, and she coaches leaders at all levels to help them advance their skills and find fulfillment at work and in life. Jill has built and scaled engineering orgs at companies like Salesforce, Twitter, Lyft, and Pilot through periods of high growth. Find out more at www.jillwetzler.com "Imagine yourself five years from now. You're completely happy, you're completely fulfilled in your job. What are you spending your day doing? So not what is your job? What's your job title? But literally, what is the day to day activity? You get up at nine o'clock, you walk into a meeting, what are you doing in that meeting? Once I had all of that in sort of like a three paragraph form, I actually started to write my ideal job description.” - Jill Wetzler SHOW NOTES: The story of Jill’s first coaching workshop & its impact on her as an eng leader (3:29) Questions & topics to focus on to be a better coach (6:27) Asking questions related to vision that inspire a possibility mindset (8:49) Frameworks for helping people shift into a creative brain space (10:26) How to navigate the topic of fairness & what elements threaten it (14:33) Identifying what you want your day-to-day to look like in the future (17:25) Jill’s decision to create her own role @ Lyft working w/ L&D (20:42) Her biggest takeaways & recommendations for managers (26:05) Tips for breaking out of your pre-established identity (30:10) Implementing a “team roadshow” practice in your org (32:06) Jill’s approach for introducing a peer coaching structure into their team (34:30) Talk from your own experience & avoid simply giving advice (36:39) Rapid fire questions (40:45) LINKS AND RESOURCES Finding Me - Viola Davis’ story, in her own words, that spans her incredible, inspiring life, from her coming-of-age in Rhode Island to her present day. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Closing Executive Leadership Skill Gaps: A Portfolio Approach to Career Growth w/ Kathleen Vignos #156 50:47

hace 1 year50:47

50:47

Kathleen Vignos, VP of Software Engineering @ Capital One, shares how to overcome executive leadership gaps that prevent eng leaders from advancing to the next level in their career. She covers how she applies a portfolio approach to career growth, how that helped her build exec skills in a way, and tips for people who are reorienting their approach to career growth. We also cover how to bridge essential executive skill gaps like facilitation, negotiation, and influencing! Plus strategies for exceptional facilitation, balancing option limiting & option exploration, dealing with conflict / reframing, and negotiation strategies to aid in decision making. ABOUT KATHLEEN VIGNOS Kathleen Vignos is a VP of software engineering at Capital One. Her organization, Customer Resiliency, builds web, mobile, and backend applications to meet customer needs in times of financial hardship so they can resolve their debt and get back on track. These applications run on a modern stack with ML decisioning and serverless components hosted on AWS. Previously in her 6 years at Twitter, Kathleen worked on promoted tweet review, tweet translation, abuse tooling, and infrastructure automation across on-prem, Google Cloud, and AWS environments. She also ran Twitter’s development programs for engineering managers, personally training 300+ managers across the topics of people management, hiring, technical skills development, and project execution/delivery. Outside of strategic technology work, Kathleen is a distance runner and loves travel. She lives with her husband in San Francisco. They have 2 adult children and are working on plans to visit their sixth continent. "I was hearing this message, 'You need to be more strategic.' I realized my definition of strategy in my head was not actually strategy and I needed to reframe strategy as being willing to completely blow everything up because there's a bigger, better thing you need to do and I think that if you are very organized and very goal oriented, you don't want to blow up your plan. You want to execute your plan. You're a great executor and that will get you to a certain level. So I think that's inflection point number one, at least it was for me and I think that's true for a lot of people. I see it over and over again.” - Kathleen Vignos SHOW NOTES: How the career portfolio concept strategically drives career growth (2:33) Surprising discoveries in Kathleen’s transition to tech (5:07) Parallels between Kathleen’s early work & current eng leadership (7:12) The impact of a career portfolio on acquiring skills in a nonlinear way (10:47) Kathleen’s tips for someone reorienting their approach to career growth (15:18) Common gaps / blocks people encounter on their career growth journey (17:08) Understanding your audience & the reach of your influence (20:13) Navigating the shift between being a great executor to a great strategist (22:23) Key principles of influencing & facilitation (24:49) Strategies for option limiting as a facilitator (27:01) How to facilitate to achieve time efficiency & positive option exploration (30:01) Applying facilitation strategies during the candidate hiring process (32:39) Examples of “polite interruption” phrases to use (35:31) Approaches for dealing with conflict & reframing (36:49) Recommendations for negotiating & decision making (39:47) Rapid fire questions (44:13) LINKS AND RESOURCES Getting More: How to Negotiate to Achieve Your Goals in the Real World - Based on Professor Stuart Diamond’s award-winning course at the Wharton Business School, Getting More concludes that finding and valuing the other party’s emotions and perceptions creates far more value than the conventional wisdom of power and logic. It is intended to provide better agreements for everyone no matter what they negotiate – from jobs to kids to billion-dollar deals to shopping. Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works - A.G. Lafley, former CEO of Procter & Gamble, in close partnership with strategic adviser Roger Martin, doubled P&G’s sales, quadrupled its profits, and increased its market value by more than $100 billion in just ten years. Now, drawn from their years of experience at P&G and the Rotman School of Management, where Martin is dean, this book shows how leaders in organizations of all sizes can guide everyday actions with larger strategic goals built around the clear, essential elements that determine business success— where to play and how to win. The Storyteller: Tales of Life and Music - Dave Grohl’s memoir chronicling his early days growing up in the suburbs of Washington, DC, to hitting the road at the age of 18, and all the music that followed. Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts - Annie Duke, a former World Series of Poker champion turned business consultant, draws on examples from business, sports, politics, and (of course) poker to share tools anyone can use to embrace uncertainty and make better decisions. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Scaling yourself ‘down’ as an engineering leader w/ James Everingham #155 44:07

hace 1 year44:07

44:07

James Everingham, co-founder and VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, joins our podcast to share his best tools for scaling yourself down – not up – as an engineering leader. He discusses his latest career move shifting down in scale and how that impacts your risk tolerance as a leader. We also cover some of James’ favorite leadership methods, including the Socratic method, principle-based decision-making, and creating narratives as a product / eng org goal-setting tool, plus how he’s employed those tools effectively throughout his career. We also address navigating the balance between process & anti-process, approaches to product planning & finding PMF, and adapting your communication style to work within a smaller vs. large org. ABOUT JAMES EVERINGHAM James Everingham ( @jevering ) is co-founder and VP of Engineering at Lightspark. Lightspark is building core infrastructure on the Lightning Network. Most recently he was Vice President of Engineering for Novi (Meta) and co-creator of Diem. Previously, James was the Head of Engineering at Instagram. James has led many world-class engineering teams throughout his 35-year career as a manager, entrepreneur, and technology developer. At Yahoo, he was Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo media properties after acquiring Luminate, an interactive image technology company he founded. Other previous roles include CTO and founding team member of LiveOps, Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft), and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications, where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International. "We had a great story in our head of like if we can simply make money flow or value flow fast and free frictionlessly around the world like a lot of good is going to happen but then that's the ending. That's the happy ending. Like, what are the chapters that we're going to write in between to get there? The first one was, 'Well, we're going to build this new infrastructure. Let's start getting it out there and getting it quickened in an area where it's already accepted.' And that's what we did. You know, that was the first one and we worked backwards from that. They're trying to make the story happen. They're not trying to make a list of tasks happen. And I think that's a really important distinction.” - James Everingham SHOW NOTES: James’ latest experience scaling down in his career (2:44) Increasing your risk tolerance as an eng leader (5:15) Surprising ways eng leaders operate in a smaller org vs. a larger org (7:16) Optimizing communicating patterns when scaling down as a leader (10:23) Strategies for creating high-impact conversations within teams at a small org (12:12) How to use the Socratic method effectively as an eng leader (14:04) James’ framework for anchoring decision-making principles (17:05) Why focusing on customer problems before business problems is a key principle (19:30) Layering the Socratic method approach & principle-based decision making (21:43) Tips for implementing these approaches early on & scaling them up (24:31) The trap of “process” & knowing when / where to introduce processes (25:41) Navigating the balance between complete process & anti-process (27:59) Deconstructing James’ approach to product planning & goal setting (29:51) How James introduced the product planning narrative @ Lightspark (34:15) Advice for newcomers looking to identify & share a product narrative (36:38) Rapid fire questions (38:31) LINKS AND RESOURCES How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader - An article outlining the narrative goal setting framework that James discusses in the episode. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - Adam Grant’s book about the benefit of doubt and how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating complex stakeholders, competing interests & gaining buy-in w/ Pete Peterson #154 47:59

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47:59

Pete Peterson, CTO @ Riviera Partners, joins our podcast to discuss strategies for gaining stakeholder buy-in in complex stakeholder environments. He shares his experience working as the CIO for the City of Oakland & how he navigated implementing change across 30+ departments & stakeholders. We cover how to find collaborators who share your vision, why quick wins are important for gaining stakeholder buy-in, balancing competing interests from stakeholders, introducing change to your tech team when there’s resistance, and more. Pete also shares his favorite leadership practices & tips for eng leaders who are presenting to stakeholders. ABOUT PETE PETERSON Andrew (Pete) Peterson is the Chief Technology Officer of Riviera Partners, a leading executive search firm for engineering, product, and design leadership roles. With over 30 years of experience in cloud/SaaS platform and solution development, Peterson oversees Riviera's technology vision, direction, and development by leading the engineering, product, and data science teams. Prior to Riviera Partners, Pete served as the Chief Information Technology Officer for the City of Oakland and held various leadership roles in technology and operations at Up Communications, Xtiva Financial Systems, and CallidusCloud Software. Pete holds an M.B.A. from the University of San Francisco and a B.S. in Computer Science from Purdue University. "You have 30, 40 different fiefdoms. Everyone's doing whatever they want to do to a degree. How do you convince these 30 different directors or whatever that we do have common objectives? We do have some things in common. There are places where we can collaborate. There are places where we can have sort of economies of scale if we pool all of our resources together and we can all benefit from these things.” - Pete Peterson We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8! We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city. Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation! We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE: Europe West Coast & MidWest East Coast SHOW NOTES: Pete’s experience as CIO for the City of Oakland (3:19) Lessons learned in this CIO role & how it differed from traditional tech roles (7:08) Navigating a complex stakeholder environment from a technology perspective (9:15) Finding collaborators with a shared sense of vision (10:54) Why a quick win & great results can make later conversations easier (13:10) How past work w/ stakeholders impacted Pete’s current initiatives @ Riviera (15:13) Tips for balancing different / competing interests from stakeholders (21:27) Tapping into stakeholders’ motivations to create a unified front (25:17) How to bring your team along when there’s resistance to change (29:09) Breaking down Pete’s two main leadership practices (34:49) Pete’s favorite tips for eng leaders presenting to various stakeholders (38:13) Rapid fire questions (40:50) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Wisdom Of Finance: Discovering Humanity in the World of Risk and Return -Mihir Desai’s lucid exploration of the ideas of finance as seen through the unusual prism of the humanities. Through this novel, creative approach, Desai shows that outsiders can access the underlying ideas easily and insiders can reacquaint themselves with the core humanity of their profession. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Self-advocacy & how to coach your team to be better self-advocates w/ Shailvi Wakhlu #153 47:40

hace 1 year47:40

47:40

Data leader and author of Self Advocacy: Your Guide to Getting What You Deserve at Work , Shailvi Wakhlu, joins us to discuss practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate & skills to help you improve negative self-talk and prioritize your happiness. Shailvi also reveals the different types of self-advocacy and how eng leaders can empower/coach their teams to become better self-advocates, plus recommendations for incorporating self-advocacy into key workplace scenarios, including job promotions, negotiating a job offer, and more. ABOUT SHAILVI WAKHLU Shailvi Wakhlu is a data leader, International Keynote Speaker, and author of Self Advocacy: Your Guide to Getting What You Deserve at Work . She is the former Head of Data & Analytics at Strava and Komodo Health. Her sixteen-year data and engineering career has included companies such as Salesforce, Fitbit, and a software startup she co-founded. Shailvi’s self-advocacy expertise comes from being a practitioner at tech startups and large companies across three continents. Annually, Wakhlu speaks at twenty-five or more global conferences and corporate events hosted by Fortune 500 companies on Self-Advocacy and Data. She also teaches online courses on these subjects to a global audience. Wakhlu offers individual and group coaching. She has helped hundreds of people grow their self-advocacy skills and reach important career milestones faster. She is also an investor and advisor to several high-growth startups. Wakhlu grew up in India and studied Computer Engineering at Illinois Tech in Chicago. She loves to travel and has visited thirty-two countries. She lives in San Francisco with her husband, Govind, and their sixty plants. "I believe that advocating for yourself is also advocating for the needs of the people that you care about. So if you consider yourself as part of a team, part of a community, part of a group, and if you know their happiness matters to you, if their comfort matters to you, advocating for them is advocating for yourself because if they're happier, you're happier. So I feel that for leaders who want their teams to be successful, this is something you do for yourself too because you want them to be successful. - Shailvi Wakhlu We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8! We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city. Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation! We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE: Europe West Coast & MidWest East Coast SHOW NOTES: How Shailvi became passionate about self-advocacy as a data leader (2:21) The inspiration that ignited Shailvi’s need for a self-advocacy talk (4:36) Advice for reflecting on experiences & sharing your story in a meaningful way (7:25) Defining self-advocacy in an eng leadership context (9:12) Examples of proactive & reactive self-advocacy in the workplace (11:15) Why self-advocacy can be so hard for people (13:52) Strategies for identifying opportunities for self-advocacy (15:42) Frameworks for changing your self-talk / perception of self (18:13) How to encourage eng leaders to proactively share their stories / experiences (21:26) Practices to help embrace opportunities for self-advocacy (23:11) Why eng leaders need to help their teams cultivate self-advocacy skills (27:00) The benefit of recognizing & embracing what you’re most proud of (30:34) What successful self-advocacy within the job promotion conversation (32:37) Self-advocating while negotiating a job offer (36:57) The importance of prioritizing happiness along with self-advocacy (39:35) Rapid fire questions (43:49) LINKS AND RESOURCES Self-Advocacy - Shailvi’s book that presents a practical guide that anyone can use to master self-advocacy and equips leaders with tools to train others effectively. More from Shailvi on self-advocacy! The Speaker Author: Sell More Books and Book More Speeches - Lois Creamer and Cathy Fyock have teamed to help you become a Speaker Author and ramp up your impact to build your business. Whether you are a coach, consultant, or other expert who benefits by positioning your intellectual property, you will benefit from this idea-packed book. TickTick - a to-do list app for freelancers or small businesses that want to stay on top of tasks. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Using GenAI to address cross-functional collaboration challenges & enhance engineering leadership w/ Clemens Mewald #152 45:32

hace 1 year45:32

45:32

Clemens Mewald, Head of Product @ Instabase, joins our podcast to share his insights on how to embrace generative AI tools to enhance engineering leadership, productivity, and problem-solving. We also chat about creative ways to implement GenAI beyond simply chatbots, questions to ask when deciding how to leverage GenAI capabilities, rethinking the productivity aspect of generative AI, and how to use it to address cross-functional collaboration challenges within your org. Additionally, Clemens reveals how he translates his deep technical / research knowledge on generative AI into meaningful business & product outcomes. ABOUT CLEMENS MEWALD Clemens Mewald is the Head of Product at Instabase. With over 15 years of experience in the industry, Clemens Mewald has built a successful track record as a product and technology leader in the AI and machine learning space. Previously Clemens held leadership positions at Databricks, where he spent more than three years leading the product team for Machine Learning and Data Science. Before Databricks, Clemens served on the Google Brain Team building AI infrastructure for Alphabet, where his product portfolio included TensorFlow and TensorFlow Extended (TFX). Clemens holds an MSc in computer science from UAS Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and an MBA from MIT Sloan. "Whenever a new technique or like innovation comes out. It's not the product, right? So like AI is not the product. LLMs are not the product. A lot of people get caught up in the innovation, like the technology if you will, but people don't buy AI. People don't buy LLMs. They buy tools and products that like solve their own problems in the world. So really what you gained is like a new tool in your tool belt to solve your customer's problems, not a new thing that you can sell.” - Clemens Mewald We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8! We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city. Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation! We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE: Europe West Coast & MidWest East Coast SHOW NOTES: Why Clemens got involved with Instabase & the GenAI space (2:08) Clemens’ observations on how eng leaders are applying GenAI tools (4:56) Where GenAI tools can fit the needs of an executive leader (7:00) The impact of generative AI on product building (9:04) Creative ways to apply GenAI beyond a chatbot (12:41) Strategies for better framing questions to leverage different GenAI capabilities (17:37) Understanding the unreliable aspects of generative AI tools (20:52) Leveraging these tools to tackle eng leadership-specific challenges (24:25) Rethink the productivity aspect of GenAI tools (25:59) Using GenAI tools to address cross-functional collaboration challenges (28:32) How to align / educate different stakeholders around new generative AI capabilities (32:24) Translating technical research on GenAI into business outcomes or products (35:22) The “identify, verify, amplify” framework (36:46) Clemens’ favorite methods for verifying in a lightweight way (39:35) Rapid fire questions (40:46) LINKS AND RESOURCES AI Will Save The World with Marc Andreessen and Martin Casado - In this timely one-on-one conversation with a16z General Partner Martin Casado, Marc discusses how this technology will maximize human potential, why the future of AI should be decided by the free market, and most importantly, why AI won’t destroy the world. In fact, it may save it. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building teams and culture to navigate catastrophe w/ Ken Pickering #151 43:18

hace 2 years43:18

43:18

Navigating catastrophes is never easy for eng leaders, but it’s an essential leadership skill in the startup world. Ken Pickering, SVP of Engineering @ Starburst Data, discusses navigating catastrophe, and uncertainty and building a culture of resiliency within startups & eng teams. We cover how to embrace challenges / failure, and cultivate centralized beliefs within your org. Plus the challenges behind finding PMF for a second product, and how to leverage first-principles to avoid a failed second product. ABOUT KEN PICKERING Ken Pickering is the SVP of Engineering at Starburst Data, where he is privileged to work alongside some of the best product and engineering humans in the world. Prior to his role here, he held leadership roles at large-scale consumer SaaS and enterprise security companies. "Communication and context are some of the things that are most successful in feeding an engineering organization because engineers are generalized problem solvers. We all want to be engaged with the problem and then apply a methodology to that problem. Even in high stakes situations, articulate the problem clearly, give people the timeline, give people the constraints, and let them rip. The people that can do that and perform in different kinds of environments and be flexible and adaptable are really key to driving that kind of culture.” - Ken Pickering We’re hosting the first ELC Annual Watch Party on 11/8! We’re livestreaming the most popular sessions from the ELC Annual 2023 conference + hosting virtual roundtable discussions to connect you with eng leaders around the globe AND in your city. Our first topic covers Generative AI & engineering leadership with Wade Chambers… no this isn’t about the tech - it’s about the leadership skills and competencies you need to evolve and adapt to lead in this next generation! We have different events for Europe, East Coast & West Coast! To RSVP, find your location HERE: Europe West Coast & MidWest East Coast SHOW NOTES: Why the right team / culture can successfully navigate catastrophes (2:30) Ken’s leadership approach to tackling challenges & embracing risk (3:52) How Ken navigated an unexpected catastrophe @ Rue La La (5:58) Practices that can prepare a team for handling obstacles well (8:12) The “Travel Deal Tuesday” story @ Hopper (10:24) Hiring leaders & creating teams built to endure challenges (12:58) How a startup’s centralized beliefs impact leadership styles / decision-making (15:09) Ken’s perspective on cultivating shared beliefs within eng teams (17:01) Tips for preparing people to better endure catastrophe during downtime (19:10) Key takeaways / follow-ups from practice disaster drills (21:14) Strategies for coaching people through their first failure (22:38) Sharing examples of resilient eng leadership (24:44) Balancing the reality of an unknown future vs. the demand to execute now (27:05) Why communication & context are key for navigating uncertainty (30:11) Challenges that come with finding PMF for a second product (33:34) Ken’s examples of enduring through repeated failures / iterations (35:46) Facilitating conversation on first principles while working on a second product (38:09) Rapid fire questions (39:53) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Destroyer of Worlds: A Return to Lovecraft Country - In this thrilling adventure, a blend of enthralling historical fiction and fantastical horror, Matt Ruff returns to the world of Lovecraft Country and explores the meaning of death, the hold of the past on the present, and the power of hope in the face of uncertainty. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Strategies for creating efficient orgs & getting the most out of your eng team w/ Jamie Tischart #150 51:18

hace 2 years51:18

51:18

Jamie Tischart, CTO @ Bettercloud, discusses how to identify inefficiencies within your eng org & strategies for creating more efficient teams! He shares his experience at Bettercloud as one of several concurrent senior hires & why he discovered that coordination is key when hiring multiple new senior hires at once. We also chat about strategies for identifying / removing barriers that are getting in the way of your eng team’s success, making / communicating meaningful decisions, identifying inefficiencies that come up within cross-functional relationships, and frameworks for turning communication from your org’s greatest area of inefficiency to an asset. ABOUT JAMIE TISCHART Jamie Tischart serves as the Chief Technology Officer, where he is responsible for the broader technology strategy of the business as well as the day-to-day leadership of development, quality and architecture teams for the BetterCloud product suite. Jamie brings nearly three decades of experience leading technology and product teams through periods of rapid growth and product transformation. Most recently, he served as GM and VP, Software Engineering of the Marketing & Growth BU at Twilio where he was responsible for defining the product and technical strategy while focusing on the customer experience and driving highly reliable solutions for Twilio’s customers. Previously, Tischart was VP, Technical Operations at SendGrid where he led the company’s Global Data Center and DevOps strategies across the business. Prior to that, he served as CTO of the Security-as-a-Service business at McAfee where he led the creation of Intel Security's future generation Cloud solutions. He has also held leadership roles at a number of other prominent technology companies including Intel. Jamie holds an MBA from Aspen University and B.A from St. Lawrence College. "The biggest value for us is to move purposely and slowly and hear what is going on before we make decisions. The second was, what is the biggest problem that we are coming in to solve? Like why were each of us hired? It came down to, and this was difficult for a couple of the department heads was, 'Look, the biggest problem isn't in your area. I'm sorry. Yes. Let's put together a plan of how do we improve and what do we focus on in your group? But quite frankly, the focus is going to be in this area.' That was difficult for people to accept.” - Jamie Tischart Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development! With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner , you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines! To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elc SHOW NOTES: Strategies for creating efficient orgs & getting the most out of your eng team (3:00) How the “refine, remove, reduce” framework plays out in Bettercloud (5:41) Balancing involving the right people & achieving an efficient outcome (8:06) Most beneficial structures for enabling your eng team to be high impact (10:04) Jamie’s framework for self-assessing inefficiencies (12:26) Inviting new hires to share their perspectives right away (15:42) Neuro-leadership principles to help remove barriers for eng teams (18:16) Practices for better assessing what’s getting in the way of eng teams (22:20) Identifying inefficiencies that come up between cross-functional relationships (25:37) Why coordination is key when bringing on new senior eng leaders (27:45) Jamie’s approach to making & communicating meaningful decisions (30:08) Navigating the balance between onboarding & executing defined priorities (33:28) Define your team’s core principles early on together (36:13) Strategy for mapping out your org’s changes (38:08) Practices that changed Jamie as a leader & he still leverages today (40:50) Why communication can be an eng org’s greatest area of inefficiency (43:42) Rapid fire questions (45:57) LINKS AND RESOURCES Grit - Angela Duckworth shows anyone striving to succeed—be it parents, students, educators, athletes, or business people—that the secret to outstanding achievement is not talent but a special blend of passion and persistence she calls “grit.” The Speed Of Trust - Collaboration is the foundation of the standard of living we enjoy today. Trust is the glue. This is the first book that teaches the ‘whats’ and the ‘hows’ of trust. Gwendy's Button Box - Stephen King teams up with long-time friend and award-winning author Richard Chizmar for the first time in this original, chilling novella that revisits the mysterious town of Castle Rock. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Reduce friction & create better alignment between product & engineering w/ Hubert Palan #149 45:00

hace 2 years45:00

45:00

Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ Product Board, discusses how to achieve successful collaboration between product and eng teams! He addresses the elements that make up healthy collaboration, common areas of tension between product & eng, and steps for aligning the teams on product vision, tooling, and processes. We also cover strategies for engineering leaders who want to contribute more to their business’s product vision, facilitation frameworks to improve communication between product management & eng teams, and how to best advocate for engineering’s most important considerations. ABOUT HUBERT PALAN Hubert Palan is Founder and CEO of Productboard. Driven by a passion for building truly excellent products, he started the company when he saw a hole in the market for a dedicated product management platform. Before Productboard, Hubert was VP of Product Management at GoodData and a management consultant at Accenture. Hubert mentors and advises startups and judges teams at entrepreneurship competitions and frequently speaks at his two alma maters – UC Berkeley, where he got his MBA, and the Czech Technical University, where he received an MSc. in Computer Science. "When the engineering partner would come to the conversation talking about how other products that are successful have approached that and what choices they made, as opposed to just talking about the technology in the abstract, the business aspect of it, how it helped drive business results for other companies that are in similar markets or adjacent spaces, t hat's something that's super valuable because it shows that you are thinking about the technology, just not for the love of technology, but in the business context and in the appreciation of how the technology decisions drive the business outcomes.” - Hubert Palan Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development! With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner , you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines! To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elc SHOW NOTES: Elements that contribute to successful collaboration between product & eng (2:34) Tools for understanding customer demographics & behavior (4:50) Greatest areas of friction between engineering and product (8:11) How to determine who is driving what initiative (11:03) Tactics for splitting responsibilities between EMs, PMs, tech leads, etc. (13:03) Hubert’s favorite tooling techniques (15:39) Strategies for aligning eng & product management processes (17:51) Frameworks for developing product vision & breaking it down into steps (19:27) Solving friction points between existing & new customers (23:16) How eng leaders can get involved with the product vision side of the business (24:28) Handling conflicting priorities & misalignment between teams (27:42) Tips for successful communication between product & eng (29:16) Advocate for engineering’s most important considerations (31:32) Specific conversations for facilitating communication between eng & PM teams (34:32) Steps to ensure engineers are involved in defining product vision / strategy (37:27) Rapid fire questions (40:55) LINKS AND RESOURCES Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Operating in a high-stakes, high-scale environment & implementing “secure by design” w/ Bhawna Singh #148 41:42

hace 2 years41:42

41:42

In this episode, Bhawna Singh, CTO @ Okta, deconstructs lessons learned from her experience operating in a high-stakes, high-scale environment. She shares strategies for re-architecting your product roadmap, collaborating with customers, first setting up guardrails while scaling, and communicating throughout the prioritization conversation process. We also cover the important principle of “secure by design” & how that process is implemented successfully at Okta. We cover challenges faced & lessons learned from the secure by design application & high-stakes scaling process. ABOUT BHAWNA SINGH Bhawna Singh is a senior technology executive with 20+ years of experience in successfully transforming products and scaling technology for a global user base. In her career as an executive leader, advisory board member, and investor, Bhawna has worked across multiple high-growth companies to grow & scale platforms from 0 to 100+ million monthly users, led global expansion of products, steered multiple acquisitions and spearheaded innovation to drive user growth and engagement, delivering multi-million dollar revenue growth. As CTO at Okta, Bhawna leads tech strategy and vision for its Customer Identity product. Bhawna frequently connects with senior executives of Okta’s global customer base, to build deep trust by delivering highly scalable, stable, and secure products serving billions of logins per month. Bhawna sits on the Advisory board of early-stage startups and VC groups. Bhawna’s deep expertise in the area of high-growth, enterprise SaaS, and cybersecurity is frequently published in the press and podcasts. Okta's annual in-person and online gathering Oktane kicks off on 10/3! Oktane discusses the latest innovations in authentication and authorization and reveals new products. Online tickets are FREE - check it out here https://www.okta.com/oktane/ "Plan for 10x and build for 3x, which is, ‘Think big, but build for what is needed.’ As you know, many of the AI companies saw a big, big growth in their space and the space we operate in, we are offering them the logging capability. So we sit at the front door of their business, you can say, which means we have to scale faster than them so that we are never a blocker and this time it wasn't plan for 10x and build for 3x. It was build for 10x right away and with absolute urgency.” - Bhawna Singh Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development! With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner , you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines! To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elc SHOW NOTES: Bhawna’s experience shifting to a high-scale focus @ Okta (2:01) What it was like adjusting priorities & rearchitecting (6:08) Strategies for collaborating with customers in shaping a product roadmap (9:30) Challenges faced when making the shift for scale (11:54) Factors that contribute to building trust & respect with peers (13:47) Bhawna’s approach to prioritization conversations with stakeholders (16:06) Ensuring the right guardrails are in place while scaling (20:29) How Okta’s balanced portfolio & engineering radar guardrails works (22:15) Frameworks for first setting up / building a guardrail within an org (24:48) Defining the “secure by design” principle & how it’s applied @ Okta (27:15) Challenges of implementing a secure by design process (30:28) How to gain buy-in / universal adoption of a new process (31:44) The role of security leaders working directly w/ customers (35:18) Rapid fire questions (37:56) LINKS AND RESOURCES The 6 Types of Working Genius - New York Times best-selling author Patrick Lencioni unveils a truly groundbreaking new model that will change the way we think about work and teams forever. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating conflict in large-scale orgs w/ competing priorities w/ Ritu Bhargava #147 38:17

hace 2 years38:17

38:17

In this episode, Ritu Bhargava, Chief Product Officer, CX/CRM @ SAP, joins us to discuss collaboration, relationship building, and navigating conflicts in large-scale organizations with competing priorities. We cover Ritu’s philosophy regarding building bridges between people, how to gain buy-in toward your priorities, unlocking support from fellow exec leaders, and how to address conflicts & competing interests across a massive org. Ritu also shares her strategies for minimizing ego & generating curiosity as an eng leader, her most valuable prioritization tool & how it works for SAP, and identifying / managing conflicts before they become an issue. ABOUT RITU BHARGAVA Ritu Bhargava ( @ritubhargava ) is the Chief Product Officer of SAP Customer Experience (CX). In her role, she heads product, engineering, user experience, strategy, and operations for the entire CX portfolio and recently has been appointed to the Qualtrics Board of Directors. Before joining SAP at the end of 2021, Ritu held various technology leadership positions and most recently came from Salesforce as the Senior Vice President of Engineering for Sales Cloud, Salesforce’s flagship product suite. Having started her career as an SAP developer, Ritu went on to work at Oracle for ten years and was responsible for financial applications in various roles. With extensive experience in enterprise applications and the CX space, Ritu brings a strong market focus, both from a business and engineering perspective. Ritu holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and Psychology from Lady Shri Ram College, Delhi University, and an M.B.A. in Finance and IT from the University of Lincolnshire, U.K. She recently joined the Qualtrics Board of Directors and co-chairs the West Coast Advisory Board for Asian University for Women. AUW is a Bangladesh-based nonprofit dedicated to women’s education and leadership development. She also enjoys supporting cricketing initiatives in America, having played on the U.S.A. Women’s Cricket team. "If we were to rely purely on just having to re-org for every business requirement that we need to deliver to or a customer need that we need to execute to, we would endlessly be re-orging and it's just not possible, which means that we have to and we must operate in matrix words, which also then further means that we have to be okay with working with each other in a way that is not just, 'Hey, if I don't report to you or you're not on my team is only when I will make you successful.' - Ritu Bhargava Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development! With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner , you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines! To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elc SHOW NOTES: How to maximize time & attention of senior leaders at massive scale (2:13) Tactics for building bridges across a large-scale organization (4:52) Gaining buy-in toward prioritizing dependencies over feature work (7:23) How to unlock greater support / influence from another exec leader (9:01) Frameworks for better communicating intentions & removing misconceptions (12:05) Strategies for approaching progress updates in a massive scope (14:14) Cultivate positive relationships with peers by navigating conflicts (17:08) Acting with compromise & humility while working toward a shared goal (18:55) Questions to ask to minimize ego & generate curiosity around learning (20:46) Examples of navigating conflicting priorities within a large-scale org (21:55) Ritu’s prioritization tool: vision, values, themes, and KPIs (23:41) How to address conflicts between cross-functional partners (26:06) Tips for managing conflicts before they happen (28:38) Why you should identify how much time to invest in a decision (31:35) Rapid fire questions (34:04) LINKS AND RESOURCES Mindset: The New Psychology of Success - After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how success in school, work, sports, the arts, and almost every area of human endeavor can be dramatically influenced by how we think about our talents and abilities. The Light We Carry - There may be no tidy solutions or pithy answers to life’s big challenges, but Michelle Obama believes that we can all locate and lean on a set of tools to help us better navigate change and remain steady within flux. In The Light We Carry, she opens a frank and honest dialogue with readers, considering the questions many of us wrestle with. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building your security team & tool stack w/ Laura Bell Main #146 48:10

hace 2 years48:10

48:10

This episode features all things security with our guest, Laura Bell Main, CEO & Founder @ SafeStack. She shares valuable strategies for building your security team & tool stack. We cover why security is a human problem based on human motivations, prioritization conversations for assessing risks, considerations for early-stage security teams, how behavior change & decision making impact security, and considerations for companies in the “messy middle” phase. Laura also addresses communicating about security in terms of tech debt, recommendations for incorporating security monitoring tools, how to measure those tools’ ROI, and more. ABOUT LAURA BELL MAIN With over twenty years of experience in software development and information security, Laura Bell Main ( @lady_nerd ) specialises in bringing security into organisations of every shape and size. She is the co-founder and CEO of SafeStack, an online education platform offering flexible, high-quality, and people-focused secure development training for fast-moving companies, with a focus on building security skills, practices, and culture across the entire engineering team. Laura is an experienced conference speaker, trainer, and regular panel member, and has spoken at a range of events such as BlackHat USA, Velocity, and OSCON on the subjects of privacy, covert communications, agile security, and security mindset. She is also the co-author of Agile Application Security and Security for Everyone. "The most important thing that we forget to tell folks when they're starting out in security is most of our tooling is about being more effective and efficient. It's not about doing something you can't do yourself. Security isn't about a magic box. I wish it was, it would be a lot easier if we could just buy a magic box. Done! Off we go to the beach, but what we have is a really human problem.” - Laura Bell Main Join us at ELC Annual 2023! ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical proven strategies. Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco For tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023 SHOW NOTES: What to do about security if you don’t already have a security team (2:28) Security as a “human problem” in the scope of eng orgs (4:58) Why you need to understand human motivations (7:21) Prioritization frameworks & chaos engineering for assessing threats (9:14) Considerations for the early stages of forming a security org (11:47) Understanding security through a behavior change model (14:57) How to operationalize a security mindset within a software team (18:00) Examples of how decisions can flag security risks (20:50) Approaches for tracking & managing security as tech debt (23:20) Addressing security considerations as a “messy” middle-stage company (27:17) High friction aspects of security behavior change for eng orgs (30:51) Tips for knowing if you have the right security tool (34:41) How to evaluate the ROI of tools you’re considering (38:06) Methods for incorporating security monitoring into your current tool stack (39:32) Rapid fire questions (42:45) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Body Keeps The Score - The inspiring story of how a group of therapists and scientists— together with their courageous and memorable patients—has struggled to integrate recent advances in brain science, attachment research, and body awareness into treatments that can free trauma survivors from the tyranny of the past. Open source checklist for high-growth CTOs This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Becoming a better strategic contributor & business leader w/ Jessica McKellar #145 43:12

hace 2 years43:12

43:12

In this episode, Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares her story as a serial founder and the lessons that can help you become a more impactful, strategic business contributor & eng leader. She reveals strategies for identifying your company’s ideal end state & the steps needed to achieve product-market fit, daily practices that help measure important metrics, business-building disciplines that need to be prioritized long term, and steps for creating positive collaboration between product, eng & design teams. For more episodes of Engineering Founders, subscribe here: https://engineering-founders.simplecast.com/ ABOUT JESSICA MCKELLAR Jessica McKellar ( @jessicamckellar ) is a repeat founder and the CTO of fintech unicorn Pilot, an accounting firm powered by software. Previously, she was a founder and the VP of Engineering for Zulip, a real-time collaboration startup acquired by Dropbox, where she then served as a Director of Engineering. Before that, she was a computer nerd at MIT who joined her friends at Ksplice, a company building a service for rebootless kernel updates on Linux that was acquired by Oracle. Jessica is a former Director for the Python Software Foundation and PyCon North America Diversity Outreach Chair. For her outreach efforts in the Python community, she was awarded the O'Reilly Open Source Award. Open source meets criminal justice reform in Jessica’s work with The Last Mile, a job training and re-entry program that has implemented the first computer programming curriculum inside US prisons. She teaches Python at San Quentin State Prison in California, hires formerly incarcerated software engineers, and uses that bridge between the tech industry and prisons to get people activated and acting for decarceration. "You need to be able to think about the business in a way where you have ideas that inflect the business. What is a gap in the product that needs to be addressed? What's an idea for a way to achieve a step function improvement in margin? How can we save the company money that it is spending via an engineering investment? - Jessica McKellar Join us at ELC Annual 2023! ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies. Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco For tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023 SHOW NOTES: Jessica’s founder story @ Pilot (3:26) How founding Pilot is different from past experiences w/ Zulip & Ksplice (4:29) The story behind Pilot’s “power team” of founders (7:06) Distinctions between Jessica’s focus as CTO / founder & eng roles (11:36) How eng functions can help the exec team hit important metrics (14:40) Daily actions that help optimize & monitor metrics like margin (16:33) Frameworks for identifying business trajectory (19:46) What parts of business-building discipline need to be prioritized long-term (21:29) Use market fit & size of market to determine your company’s goal end state (22:48) Past lessons the founding team applied while starting Pilot (24:45) Things Jessica thinks she & her co-founders do right (25:23) Recommendations for exploring potential paths & aligning on the final decision (29:20) Steps for becoming a more impactful, strategic business contributor (30:55) How eng leaders can identify ideal end state & achieve product-market fit (35:15) Create collaboration between product, eng & design teams (37:28) Rapid fire questions (37:09) LINKS AND RESOURCES Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff - This weekly podcast dives into history to drag up the wildest rebels, the most beautiful revolts, and all the people who long to be—and fight to be—free. It explores complex stories of resistance that offer lessons and inspiration for us today, focusing on the ensemble casts that make up each act of history. And Away… - Bob Mortimer’s life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his hilarious and moving memoir, And Away… This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Maximizing the shift to engineering efficiency w/ Alamelu Radhakrishnan #130 42:22

hace 2 years42:22

42:22

We tackle the trend toward engineering efficiency with Alamelu Radhakrishnan, Head of Engineering Operations @ Shopify. She reveals strategies to move your eng org toward greater efficiency while maintaining high levels of impact & creativity. We also share how eng leaders can identify opportunities for efficiency, giving engineering a seat at the leadership table during efficiency-focused conversations, frameworks for removing toil within your eng team, how to avoid burnout while optimizing for efficiency, and the role of decision-making in maximizing efficient eng orgs. ABOUT ALAMELU RADHAKRISHNAN Alamelu leads Engineering Operations at Shopify, leading the teams responsible for building the systems and technical programs that power Shopify RnD. Her mandate is to maximize the impact of engineers on Shopify’s Missions, and her role spans across team health, engineering craft excellence, strategic planning and prioritization, and successful business operations within RnD. Prior to Shopify, Alamelu has worked with some of Canada’s most innovative product and consulting agencies, leading software delivery teams and helping organizations leverage technology across a variety of industries. Alamelu finds joy in solving business problems through technology, strives for organizational excellence, and is passionate about supporting and sponsoring underrepresented folks in the industry. Alamelu lives in Toronto, and loves food, travel, the outdoors, and horror movies. "The thing that I've been telling my team is that this is not a time to get through. This is a time to lean in. Let's not treat it as, 'Oh my God, you focus on efficiency. Let's just do it, and then it'll be done. It'll be back to the fun times.' These are the fun times. They're just fun in a different way, but these constraints are making us even more creative, and these challenges are going to lead to us doing some of the best work of our lives. That's the exciting thing, and so I think the way through the fear is actually into excitement." - Alamelu Radhakrishnan Join us at ELC Annual 2023! ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies. Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco To get early access to tickets - email us at annual@sfelc.com Join Jellyfish's GLOW conference on 5/16 & 5/17 to maximize engineering impact! Learn from industry experts, connect and share challenges with peers as you learn effective strategies to expand your leadership! Register now at https://www.jellyfishglowsummit.com/ SHOW NOTES: How Alamelu’s role @ Shopify is like an extension of eng leadership (2:52) Working yourself out of a job & identifying blind spots in the eng org (5:23) Alamelu’s approach to building a new system from scratch (7:00) Prioritization strategies when developing new systems (10:34) Inside the industry trend toward optimizing for efficiency vs. experimentation (11:45) Recommendations for how managers can find opportunities / make adjustments (14:10) Frameworks for helping your eng team overcome fear & embrace creativity (16:50) How to communicate the impact of engineering on the business (19:44) Ensure engineering has a seat at the table during efficiency conversations (21:37) The value of ad hoc vs. planned meetings (24:08) Alamelu’s perspective on helping eng teams find time for flow (26:19) Why leadership should encourage eng teams to “remove the toil” (27:44) Areas of toil that Alamelu has identified & how to address them (29:51) How to alleviate burnout while shifting toward efficiency (33:04) Decision-making as an opportunity for greater efficiency (36:24) Rapid fire questions (39:06) LINKS AND RESOURCES Land of the Giants - Big tech is transforming every aspect of our world. But how? And at what cost? In Land of the Giants: Dating Games, The Verge and New York Magazine's The Cut trace the evolution of the multi-billion dollar dating app industry. Cloud Cuckoo Land - Five protagonists dwell in the heart of Cloud Cuckoo Land: Anna and Omeir, on opposite sides of the city walls during the 1453 siege of Constantinople; teenage idealist Seymour and octogenarian Zeno in an attack on a public library in present-day Idaho; and Konstance, on an interstellar ship bound for an exoplanet, decades from now. Anna, Omeir, Seymour, Zeno, and Konstance are dreamers and outsiders who find resourcefulness and hope in the midst of peril. A book written in ancient Greek—the story of Aethon, who longs to be turned into a bird so that he can fly to a utopian paradise in the sky—provides solace and mystery to these unforgettable characters. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Community insights from our Pop-Up Podcast Booth at ELC Annual! #129 1:31:00

hace 2 years1:31:00

1:31:00

Welcome to the ELC Annual Pop-Up Podcast Booth! This episode features behind-the-scenes conversations of engineering leaders who joined us at ELC Annual last October. These community members jumped into our recording studio to share their best strategies for good communication and providing critical feedback; using OKRs to realign your org; lessons learned from early leadership days; balancing speed vs. quality within your eng team; how technology shifts / bets impact your org; challenges with rapidly changing workspaces between remote, in-person & hybrid; creating a culture of pride & celebrating wins; and combining empathy with the best engineering qualities to determine what you really want. Our featured guests include: Nate Lee, CISO @ Tradeshift Gaurav Nigam, VP of Engineering @ WorkBoard Cynthia Tham, VP of Engineering @ GMG Americas Mitchell Arnett, Engineering Manager @ Life360 Jeremy Eastwood (Head of Eng @ Drone Deploy) & Dobromir Montauk (VP of Engineering @ Doxel.AI ) Lizzie Masutov, Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient Shweta Saraf, Director of Platform Engineering @ Netflix Wen Hsu, Founder & CEO at Wen Coaching Join us at ELC Annual 2023! ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies. Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San Francisco To get early access to tickets - email us at annual@sfelc.com Join Jellyfish's GLOW conference on 5/16 & 5/17 to maximize engineering impact! Learn from industry experts, connect and share challenges with peers as you learn effective strategies to expand your leadership! Register now at https://www.jellyfishglowsummit.com/ SHOW NOTES: Why Nate Lee @ Tradeshift believes good communication is critical as an eng leader (7:06) Know your audience, meet them where they’re at & learn to communicate up (8:44) Strategies for delivering critical feedback (11:00) Gaurav Nigam @ WorkBoard: how OKRs can be used to resync your org (14:35) Tips for first-timers establishing realistic OKRs (17:56) Things Cynthia Tham @ GBG Americas wishes she knew when she started her eng leadership journey (20:21) Identifying & maintaining consistent behaviors as an eng leader (22:58) Mitchell Arnett @ Life360 discusses speed vs. quality (25:19) Components that lead to a culture of success around speed & quality (29:01) Jeremy Eastwood @ Drone Deploy & Dobromir Montauk @ Doxel.AI on how tech shifts impact eng orgs (32:41) Jeremy & Dobromir’s predictions for the next technology curve (37:14) Commit to change & don’t go in half-heartedly (39:55) How to navigate hybrid & remote work challenges w/ Lizzie Matusov @ Quotient (48:11) Lizzie’s advice for returning to in-person networking (50:42) Practices for navigating shifting work environments between remote, hybrid & in-person (53:07) Lizzie’s vision for successfully integrating teams & developing a sense of belonging (56:23) Tips for starting conversations around belonging within eng teams (1:02:10) Shweta Saraf @ Netflix reveals how her org has built a culture of celebration (1:04:11) Tips for building moments of self-recognition as an eng leader (1:08:11) Strategies for establishing goals & providing clarity (1:10:59) Create a safe space for experimentation (1:16:57) Wen Hsu on the most important question you can ask yourself (1:19:26) Recommendations for taking steps toward what you really want (1:22:33) How to prioritize making time to move toward your “north star” (1:25:13) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Adopting a GM mindset & building a resilient business w/ Sandeep Chennakeshu #128 41:58

hace 2 years41:58

41:58

Sandeep Chennakeshu, Chief Operating Officer @ Uhnder Inc., joins us to discuss how eng leaders can adopt a GM mindset & strategies for building a resilient business. The author of Your Company Is Your Castle, Sandeep also reveals the key structural elements of all successful businesses, methods to improve your business’s financial fitness / cash flow, how to overcome operational inefficiencies, why strong decision-making matters when it comes to saving money, and much more. ABOUT SANDEEP CHENNAKESHU Sandeep has spent thirty-four years in three industries and led teams across the globe that pioneered amazing products in wireless (2G, 3G, 4G mobile phones, Bluetooth, Mobile-Satellite technology), semiconductors for consumer, automotive, and medical electronics, and safety-critical software for cars, medical equipment, nuclear power plants, high-speed rail, and industrial robots. Along the way, he transformed companies to grow profitably in a sustained manner using the principles outlined in his book “Your Company Is Your Castle”. He is a fellow of the IEEE and a named inventor on 180 issued patents. "The single metric that I use to say, 'Am I doing well?' Because how do I know that the cash I'm generating is a good or bad? I use a very simple metric. If you take the enterprise value and you multiply it by the cost of borrowing money, your free cash flow must be higher than that product. When I'm doing better than that metric, then I know that I have a future.” - Sandeep Chennakeshu Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Sandeep’s most significant career milestones (2:23) Why there is no difference between an eng leader & GM (6:39) Sandeep’s passion for & background of transforming business (9:18) Key structural elements of successful companies (12:17) How a successful business resembles a castle (13:59) Strategies to improve financial fitness & generate cash flow (15:17) Metrics to determine how well you’re optimizing your cash flow (17:54) Examples of how strong decision-making led to cost savings (19:45) Frameworks for overcoming operational inefficiencies (22:12) Sandeep’s tips for categorizing / prioritizing where the cashflow’s impact hits (24:21) Why it’s important to stay ahead of the “gorilla in the room” (26:33) Resilient business models utilize stickiness & have high operating leverage (28:23) Questions eng leaders can ask to adopt a more effective GM mindset (33:30) Rapid fire questions (36:02) LINKS AND RESOURCES Getting To Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In : This worldwide bestseller by William Ury provides a concise, step-by-step, proven strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating the Acquisition Journey: Insights on Transparent Communication, Team Integration, and Strategic / Operational Shifts w/ Johnny Ray Austin #127 47:10

hace 2 years47:10

47:10

Johnny Ray Austin, Head of Technology, Flexible Rent @ Best Egg, joins us to discuss Best Egg’s recent acquisition of Till and some of the strategic & operational shifts that happen post-acquisition. He shares reflections on integrating the team within the new company, communicating both within the leadership team and within the overall team, how product launch / development changes throughout the acquisition process, shifts in the org’s distribution model & its impact on eng functions, and what it’s like relearning your role in the scope of an acquisition. Additionally, Johnny reveals some of his greatest paradigm shifts throughout this period & how the acquisition is better supporting the flexible rent model. ABOUT JOHNNY RAY AUSTIN Johnny ( @recursivefunk ) is an experienced award-winning engineering executive focused on shipping world-class products while building high-performing engineering teams. He is also an international public speaker, speaking on engineering leadership, system design, and the JavaScript programming language. Johnny is the former Chief Technology Officer for Till, a company that built financial products to help renters pay, stay and thrive in their homes. After Best Egg acquired Till in late 2022, he transitioned to Best Egg's Head of Technology for Flexible Rent, where he continues to scale the flexible rent platform to service millions of units. "At the time, we were thinking about raising money and also in acquisition and we didn't really know exactly which route we were gonna go down. We shared that with the team. You know, we said, 'Hey, this is path number one. This is path two. Path three is a shutdown.' We were very open in talking about, 'This is a path. It's very unlikely, but this is a thing that could happen.' And so we chose transparency from the very beginning because one, we thought it was the right thing to do. Two, we knew the team could handle it, and three, it was really just one of those things where it was gonna make the process easier." - Johnny Ray Austin Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Johnny’s pop culture reflections & tips for protecting your energy (2:42) An inside look at Best Egg’s recent acquisition of Till (6:42) What it’s been like post-acquisition to integrate the team (10:12) How leadership communicated with their team throughout the acquisition (12:25) Lessons learned about communicating during early exploratory phase (15:54) Strategies for minimizing distractions resulting from uncertainty (18:08) Helpful conversations to host between leadership for effective coordination (19:18) Questions to help gain personal alignment (21:03) How product launch / development changed mid- and post-acquisition (23:11) Introducing a new methodology to the team (26:14) The new distribution model & its impact on eng functions (28:46) Differences between BNPL & Best Egg’s rent payment model (31:31) What it’s been like for Johnny to relearn his role as part of a broader eng org (34:56) Frameworks for navigating new dependencies (37:05) Johnny’s paradigm shift around planning for scale (39:21) Rapid fire questions (41:50) LINKS AND RESOURCES Dark Money: The Hidden History Of The Billionaires Behind The Rise Of The Radical Right - Jane Mayer discusses the results of the most recent election and Donald Trump’s victory, and how, despite much discussion to the contrary, this was a huge victory for the billionaires who have been pouring money in the American political system. Snowfall - Over the course of five seasons, FX’s Snowfall has chronicled how an off-the-books CIA operation contributed to the destruction rock cocaine leveled upon the vibrant community of South Central L.A. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Eng Founder’s Takeover: Navigating the new fundraising environment, idea-mazing and overcoming pattern-matching bias w/ Lizzie Matusov #126 50:37

hace 2 years50:37

50:37

This is a special episode from our new show “Engineering Founders” - Lizzie Matusov, CEO & Co-Founder @ Quotient, shares her unique founder journey – from Harvard’s dual-degree grad program & Innovation Lab to founding Quotient! She also reveals strategies for fundraising, including utilizing your relationship pipeline, incorporating story arcs into your pitch, overcoming pattern-matching bias, and how fundraising today is different than it used to be. We also cover Quotient’s major pivots, tips for not becoming too attached to your first idea & making space for new ideas, defining idea-mazing & its impact on your product, and developing clarity as a founder. For more episodes of Engineering Founders, subscribe here: https://engineering-founders.simplecast.com/ ABOUT LIZZIE MATUSOV Lizzie Matusov ( @lizziematusov ) is the co-founder and CEO of Quotient - a toolkit to supercharge engineering teams. Today, their first tool is an onboarding platform that leverages behavioral research best practices to ramp up engineers more effectively. Quotient’s mission is to democratize access to the best engineering cultures. Previously, Lizzie built software to improve access to medical-grade genetic testing at Invitae. She was also a software engineering consultant at Red Hat, where she built software applications for companies across various industries, including fintech and biotech. She holds a bachelor of science from UCLA, and an MBA and Masters of Engineering Sciences from Harvard. "Let's say in a four-month period, you check in with investors or founders that you're working with two or three times. Now what they have is not just one call to base their opinion on, but an entire story arc that they can use to say, 'All right, in August they were doing this and by October they already did this, and then by December they were here. I'm now seeing sort of a preview of what I'm backing.' I think that that really helps founders sort of help investors make decisions, right? You are de-risking for them, you are sharing more of the milestones as you're doing them.” - Lizzie Matusov ABOUT QUOTIENT Quotient is a toolkit to supercharge engineering teams. Their mission is to democratize access to the best engineering cultures. Today, their first tool is an onboarding platform that leverages behavioral research best practices to ramp up engineers more effectively. With Quotient you can build and deliver a high-quality, research-backed onboarding experience, and get data-driven insights into how your team changes and grows together. Check out Quotient and join the waitlist HERE - https://www.getquotient.com/waitlist Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com Check Out Engineering Founders! We cover the stories, pivotal moments and critical insights from former engineering leaders turned founders - that helped them take the earliest steps to launch! You can find it wherever you get your podcasts - Spotify / Apple / Google / Web SHOW NOTES: The backstory behind Quotient (3:01) Why the atomic unit is the team, not the individual & how that impacts Quotient (4:03) Lizzie’s leadership journey before Quotient (5:25) Why Lizzie chose Harvard’s dual-degree grad program as part of her founder’s journey (8:43) How Harvard’s program helped Lizzie accelerate founding Quotient (12:43) The community aspect of entrepreneurship & Harvard’s Innovation Lab (15:48) Lizzie’s favorite grad school hacks (17:58) Frameworks behind Quotient’s key pivots (20:12) How Quotient pivoted to better support companies & the onboarding process (23:02) Tips for making space for new ideas (25:59) Defining idea-mazing & how it impacts your product / solution (28:13) Where Quotient is in terms of fundraising (31:02) How assumptions & expectations around fundraising have changed (32:43) Collect data points that show your ability to execute, lead, & grow (34:06) Strategies to help overcome pattern matching bias (36:09) How Lizzie utilized story arcs while fundraising for Quotient (38:32) Why clarity as a founder is vital & frameworks for developing clarity (41:05) The renaming process & unveiling the new name “Quotient” (44:52) Rapid fire questions (46:38) LINKS AND RESOURCES Shantaram - Gregory David Roberts’ novel following an escaped convict with a false passport who flees maximum security prison in Australia for the teeming streets of Bombay, where he can disappear. Accompanied by his guide and faithful friend, the two enter the city’s hidden society of beggars and gangsters, prostitutes and holy men, soldiers and actors, and Indians and exiles from other countries, who seek in this remarkable place what they cannot find elsewhere. The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Michael Lewis documents the real story of the crash that began in bizarre feeder markets where the sun doesn't shine and the SEC doesn't dare, or bother, to tread: the bond and real estate derivative markets where geeks invent impenetrable securities to profit from the misery of lower- and middle-class Americans who can't pay their debts. The smart people who understood what was or might be happening were paralyzed by hope and fear; in any case, they weren't talking. The Long Way To A Small, Angry Planet - Becky Chambers’ novel following a motley crew on an exciting journey through space—and one adventurous young explorer who discovers the meaning of family in the far reaches of the universe. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Maximizing R&D spend, engineering efficiency & the journey from eng to operations w/ Madalina Tanasie #125 41:17

hace 2 years41:17

41:17

Madalina Tanasie joins us to share her unique leadership journey as she transitioned from eng to operations, then back to her current technical role as CTO @ Collibra. We also cover strategies to improve engineering efficiency within your organization, factors to consider when scaling eng teams, maximizing your ROI when it comes to R&D, dispelling concerns when implementing culture changes, frameworks for scaling up, and more. ABOUT MADALINA TANASIE Madalina Tanasie is the Chief Technology Officer and an Executive Committee member at Collibra, where she oversees and leads the Software Engineering, Architecture, Production Engineering, Test Engineering, and Security activities. Madalina has over 18 years of software engineering leadership experience and her expertise is in service-oriented architecture, cloud-native distributed systems, and product operations with a focus on engineering practices, scale, and operational excellence. Prior to joining Collibra in 2020, she was the Engineering VP for Medidata Solutions’ Unified Platform Organization, an organization she built from the ground up and led since 2010. She has been recognized as one of the Top 25 Software CTOs of 2023 by The Software Report. Additionally, she is a proud sponsor of Collibra’s Women in Technology, and an active member of CHIEF, a network focused on connecting and supporting women executive leaders. Ms. Tanasie earned her BS and Master’s in Computer Science at Polytechnics University of Bucharest. "The reality is that they need process and structure to eliminate the noise and to create a space for solving really, really deep challenging problems. They actually want the process for the part that is mundane and boring and disruptive. So as they discuss about what's making their life harder than it needs to be, we are coming back to a lack of process, a lack of uniformity, a lack of clear communication channels between themselves or between other departments.” - Madalina Tanasie Check out QA Wolf ! Looking for a way to increase end-to-end test coverage, speed up your release cycles and reduce bugs from shipping to production? QA Wolf will build, run and maintain your test suite - so that you don't have to. QA Wolf gets you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months - and keeps you there – So your team can stay focused on shipping! Learn more & schedule a 30 min demo at qawolf.com/elc Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Madalina’s unexpected career journey, beginning @ Medidata (2:13) How Madalina transitioned from engineering into operations @ Collibra (4:57) Qualities that make Collibra’s culture stand out (5:46) What opportunities stood out when Madalina was evaluating the Collibra role (7:35) Four considerations to keep in mind when scaling eng teams (9:07) The Spotify model vs. Agile model & what worked for Collibra (15:19) Challenges to adopting new management models (19:18) Strategies for navigating people’s expectations (20:58) Insights gained from Madalina’s “listening tour” (23:20) Frameworks for addressing concerns around culture while scaling (25:04) Madalina’s perspectives on improving engineering efficiency (26:51) The right balance between cost of ownership and R&D (30:07) Collibra’s new product introduction process & its impact on R&D (31:28) Questions to help guide teams throughout the new framework (33:11) Rapid fire questions (34:22) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Navigating Multi-Product Expansion: Leadership & Career Insights from Figma’s CTO, Kris Rasmussen #124 43:14

hace 2 years43:14

43:14

We cover making intentional career shifts and leadership challenges navigating multi-product expansion with Kris Rasmussen, CTO @ Figma. He shares his experience transitioning from contractor work with Figma to a full-time role & the benefits of joining an eng org during its early stages. We also address Figma’s transition from a one-product company to a two-product company, Kris’s process for determining the eng org’s core areas of focus, challenges faced when becoming a multi-product org, frameworks for determining solutions to challenging projects, and lessons learned around releasing products with heavy collaboration. ABOUT KRIS RASMUSSEN Kris Rasmussen is the Chief Technology Officer at Figma, where he leads the engineering, security, and data science teams. Prior to joining Figma in 2017, Kris served as engineering lead and a technical advisor at Asana, where he co-authored many aspects of the framework and infrastructure that powers the company's real-time collaborative features. Before Asana, Kris co-founded RivalSoft Inc., a web-based application that gives companies an internal hub for market information and served as Chief Architect at Aptana. "One of the things that's helped me is just really kind of focusing on the outcome that I'm trying to create and trying to think about the most effective way to do that. All of us want to feel respected. We want to feel valued. We want to feel heard, but at the end of the day, we also want to create something that's greater than ourselves. We want to work on something that kind of outlives us and if you really want to do that, it doesn't really matter whose idea it was or who said what. All that really matters is that you come to the right solution as a group.” - Kris Rasmussen Check out QA Wolf ! Looking for a way to increase end-to-end test coverage, speed up your release cycles and reduce bugs from shipping to production? QA Wolf will build, run and maintain your test suite - so that you don't have to. QA Wolf gets you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months - and keeps you there – So your team can stay focused on shipping! Learn more & schedule a 30 min demo at qawolf.com/elc Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Kris’s backstory with Figma & transitioning from contractor to CTO (1:02) What factors validated Kris’s decision to join Figma full-time (4:50) Leveraging the benefits of joining an eng org during its early stages (7:27) Figma’s recent milestone shifts & how Kris’s responsibilities changed in response (9:09) Transitioning from a one-product company to a two-product company (12:15) Kris’s process for identifying the most important problems (13:57) Strategies for determining core areas of focus (17:09) Knowing when to shift to become multi-product (19:12) How processes / org structure shifted in response to Figma’s second product (21:59) Defining Figma’s vertical product-related org structures (23:22) Challenges faced when getting to the multi-product moment (24:44) Frameworks for determining when an idea is validated enough to staff it (29:57) Kris’s process for determining a solution to a challenging R&D project (31:52) Lessons learned around releasing highly collaborative products (36:06) Strategies for letting go of your ego (39:46) Rapid fire questions (40:47) LINKS AND RESOURCES On Writing Well - On Writing Well , which grew out of a course that William Zinsser taught at Yale, has been praised for its sound advice, its clarity, and for the warmth of its style. It is a book for anybody who wants to learn how to write or who needs to do some writing to get through the day, as almost everybody does. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Rippling's Response to the SVB Collapse: A Story of Leadership, Crisis Management, Clarity and Communication w/ Albert Strasheim #123 45:11

hace 2 years45:11

45:11

Albert Strasheim, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Rippling, joins us to share the riveting story of how Rippling’s leadership navigated the recent collapse of Silicon Valley Bank. He reveals what was at stake for his company & the hundreds of millions of dollars at stake for customers & their employees, how Rippling’s core values influenced their critical decision-making, tips for communicating with clarity both internally & externally, and tactics that allowed the team to respond with precision during crisis. Additionally, Albert shares the pre-crisis strategies, habits & systems he is most thankful for that helped Rippling leadership respond successfully throughout this critical period. ABOUT ALBERT STRASHEIM Albert Strasheim is Rippling's CTO and SVP, Engineering. Albert leads the global engineering team as it continues to expand the capabilities of Rippling’s products and the platform itself. Prior to Rippling, Albert served as VP of Engineering at Segment, where he spent more than five years building and leading the infrastructure and product teams responsible for creating Segment’s market-leading Customer Data Platform product. He was born and raised in South Africa and earned a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Engineering from Stellenbosch University. Albert lives in the Bay Area and is an avid skier and surfer. "I think we had about $130 million on the way to employees of our clients. This was more than 50,000 people. They are not like rich Silicon Valley tech workers. It's everyday Americans making less than $55,000 a year. Some of them are living paycheck to paycheck and so missing a paycheck can have devastating consequences. We had to move really quickly to make sure these folks got paid. Basically, no matter what happened with SVB, those were the stakes. It's like people that critically needed money just wouldn't get it otherwise.” - Albert Strasheim Check out QA Wolf ! Looking for a way to increase end-to-end test coverage, speed up your release cycles and reduce bugs from shipping to production? QA Wolf will build, run and maintain your test suite - so that you don't have to. QA Wolf gets you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months - and keeps you there – So your team can stay focused on shipping! Learn more & schedule a 30 min demo at qawolf.com/elc Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: How Albert’s team @ Rippling responded to the Silicon Valley Bank collapse (2:56) Rippling’s SVB story & how payroll was impacted by its collapse (6:24) Identifying who was needed to coordinate Rippling’s response / decision making (9:49) Albert discusses the millions of dollars of payroll at stake on Thursday (11:47) How the SVB issue progressed into Thursday / Friday (13:07) Communicating with customers during crisis & how Rippling ultimately made the payments (15:47) Tactics that allow eng teams to respond with precision during crisis (19:57) How leadership determined the right step in the right order to achieve the intended outcome (21:56) Communicating context on how to think about a problem (23:21) What the weekend looked like & the half a billion dollars of payroll at stake (24:39) Internal communication systems that lead to Rippling’s success (26:34) Tips for communicating with absolute clarity (28:40) Albert’s SVB story: picking back up on Sunday going into the week (31:24) Implementing an external communication strategy (33:07) Pre-crisis habits & leadership systems that played a significant role in successfully navigating this issue (35:12) Reflecting on the impact of this effort externally & internally one week out (38:17) Rapid fire questions (40:27) LINKS AND RESOURCES Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building - Scaling People is a practical and empathetic guide to company building and scaling the most important resource a company has: its people. Drawing on nearly two decades of experience as a Google and Stripe executive, Claire Hughes Johnson offers actionable insights and tactical guidance on everything from crafting foundational documents to hiring and team development to feedback and performance mechanisms. An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management - Will Larson’s explores the specific challenges of engineering management—from sizing teams to handling technical debt to developing succession planning—and provides a guide to solving complex managerial problems. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Cost-effective scaling & engineering efficiency w/ Shailesh Kumar #122 43:34

hace 2 years43:34

43:34

Shailesh Kumar, Sr. Vice President of Engineering @ ClickUp, joins us to share his insights on scaling eng orgs efficiently & cost-effectively. He reveals his strategies for gaining customer insights, identifying areas to invest in, navigating cloud cost efficiency, and optimizing your software & performing a software audit. Additionally, we cover approaches to balancing headcount & team efficiency, creating clarity around a problem, increasing the net output of your eng org, identifying where / when to add headcount, and making your EPD flywheel run smoothly. ABOUT SHAILESH KUMAR Shailesh Kumar is the Sr. Vice President of Engineering at ClickUp, leading the Engineering, Security, and IT operations for the company. He has more than 18 years of experience in building large-scale organizations and cloud platforms for high-growth enterprise companies, including his role as VP of Engineering at Mulesoft (and Salesforce post-acquisition) and Head of Data Platform and Server teams at Tableau. "You have to force yourself in having a discipline of asking the hard questions about all those ideas. What's the impact? What's the revenue goals? What's the target market? How much time are we talking about? The ideas are plenty. There are a lot of great ideas. You have to figure out which great idea is gonna turn into the highest revenue and that's a very hard exercise. I've seen many leaders know that they have to do that, but not do that very diligently and in a very disciplined way.” - Shailesh Kumar Check out QA Wolf ! Looking for a way to increase end-to-end test coverage, speed up your release cycles and reduce bugs from shipping to production? QA Wolf will build, run and maintain your test suite - so that you don't have to. QA Wolf gets you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months - and keeps you there – So your team can stay focused on shipping! Learn more & schedule a 30 min demo at qawolf.com/elc Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Shailesh’s paradigm shift regarding scaling / eng org efficiency @ ClickUp (2:32) How Shailesh is navigating ClickUp through the current cost-sensitive market (4:46) Cost-effective areas that eng leaders should consider (6:55) Shailesh’s recent insights on how to better serve customers (8:43) Strategies for identifying areas to invest in & navigating difficult conversations with customers (10:02) Questions to assess challenging areas (16:44) Optimize your software & perform a software audit (18:49) Tips on building teams to optimize engineering efficiency (20:07) How to balance headcount and team efficiency (22:37) Shailesh’s approach to challenges around team efficiency (24:22) Frameworks for creating clarity of a problem / vision & refocusing a team (25:59) What makes an EDP flywheel run smoothly (27:39) Tactics to help increase the net output of your eng org (28:48) Strategies for hiring without losing efficiency & identifying where to add them (30:36) Frameworks Shailesh uses before adding a new function to the eng org (33:32) The story behind building out the TPM function (35:18) Rapid fire questions (38:24) LINKS AND RESOURCES Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity - Snowflake CEO Frank Slootman is one of the tech world’s most accomplished executives in enterprise growth, having led Snowflake to the largest software IPO ever after leading ServiceNow and Data Domain to exponential growth and the public market before that. In Amp It Up: Leading for Hypergrowth by Raising Expectations, Increasing Urgency, and Elevating Intensity , he shares his leadership approach for the first time. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Org specialization dilemmas & operating in regulatory environments w/ Kenny Shin #121 39:25

hace 2 years39:25

39:25

Kenny Shin, CTO @ Fundrise, joins us to discuss Fundrise’s journey, specialization dilemmas as an early-stage org, why specializing eng functions can help overcome plateaus in the business, plus other insights on operating in highly regulated environments like FinTech. He also reveals another dimension of the product design process – legal / regulators – and shares how regulatory environments impact the eng team’s developmental process. Plus Kenny dishes on Fundrise’s Innovation Fund, its impact on the engineering org, and how they’re re-applying tech in new sectors. ABOUT KENNY SHIN Kenneth J. Shin ( @kennyshin7 ) is Chief Technical Officer of Fundrise, America’s largest direct-to-investor alternatives investment manager. He has served in this role since the company’s inception in March 2012. Fundrise’s mission is to use technology to build a better financial system for the individual investor, one that is simpler, lower cost, more reliable and transparent. They build software that enables the company to develop and manage investments uniquely well-positioned to grow and preserve their clients’ capital in any economic environment. Since launching America’s first online real estate investment platform in 2012, Fundrise has now become the largest direct-to-investor alternatives investment manager with more than 1.6 million active users, more than $3.3 billion worth of equity under management, and $7 billion worth of real estate transacted. From private credit to real estate private equity to growth-stage venture capital, Fundrise offers investors exposure to some of the most prized asset classes in the world. Prior to Fundrise, Kenny has consulted for Fortune 500 clients in financial services and technology, including Fannie Mae, Oracle, Lockheed Martin and Computer Science Corporation. Kenny has also consulted for government clients including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Department of Defense and NATO. Kenny earned his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. "The entire industry generally has to try to abstract all of that complexity and regulation away from the end user and the companies that do that the best, that's one of their main value propositions. I think it's key to our operations because the opposite of it is you leave that complexity to a few subject matter experts in the organization and they become the bottleneck for everything.” - Kenny Shin Check out QA Wolf ! Looking for a way to increase end-to-end test coverage, speed up your release cycles and reduce bugs from shipping to production? QA Wolf will build, run and maintain your test suite - so that you don't have to. QA Wolf gets you to 80% automated end-to-end test coverage in 4 months - and keeps you there – So your team can stay focused on shipping! Learn more & schedule a 30 min demo at qawolf.com/elc Looking for ways to support the show? Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcasts If your company is looking to gain exposure to thousands of engineering leaders and key decision-makers, we have sponsorship opportunities available. To explore sponsor opportunities, email us at hello@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Kenny’s journey co-founding Fundrise (2:37) What Kenny’s early risk assessment looked like (4:58) Advice for young eng talent considering taking a riskier role (8:12) Fundrise’s evolution & key inflection points (9:45) How Fundrise tackled uncertainty during the pandemic’s early days (11:52) Addressing specialization dilemmas as an early-stage org (14:45) Why specializing eng functions helped Fundrise overcome its plateau (16:08) Kenny’s approach to identifying new opportunities around specialization (19:53) Challenges of operating in a constrained space, like Fintech (23:38) Why constrained industries require orgs to abstract away more complexities (25:03) How regulatory environments impact the eng team’s developmental process (26:46) Incorporating legal / regulators into your product design process (29:17) The Innovation Fund & its role within Fundrise’s overall strategy (31:52) Unexpected ways the Innovation Fund is impacting the engineering function (34:04) Rapid fire questions (36:47) LINKS AND RESOURCES Crying in H Mart - In this exquisite story of family, food, grief, and endurance, Michelle Zauner proves herself far more than a dazzling singer, songwriter, and guitarist. With humor and heart, she tells of growing up one of the few Asian American kids at her school in Eugene, Oregon; of struggling with her mother’s particular, high expectations of her; of a painful adolescence; of treasured months spent in her grandmother’s tiny apartment in Seoul, where she and her mother would bond, late at night, over heaping plates of food. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Resource advocacy, frameworks for saying yes / no, & removing critical points of failure w/ Megan Kacholia #120 46:10

hace 2 years46:10

46:10

As eng leaders, we’re often strapped for resources – so learning how to advocate for more support is vital. Megan Kacholia, VP of Engineering @ Google, reveals her best strategies when it comes to asking for more resources, removing linchpins / critical points of failure from your eng team, encouraging others to accept changes that will benefit them, knowing when to say “yes” vs. “no” to new responsibilities (and the trade-offs that come with that decision), and navigating challenging situations as a manager. ABOUT MEGAN KACHOLIA Megan Kacholia is a Vice President of Engineering within Google's Core organization. She is a leader in the Cross-Google Engineering (xGE) effort, which is responsible for company-wide technical coordination. Her passion is building effective teams and addressing barriers to help Googlers do their best work. Previously, Megan was and VP in Google’s Research organization, where her team’s work spanned machine learning in research as well as production, including products such as TensorFlow, and prior to that she had a long tenure in Google’s Ads organization, where she ran the serving system for Google’s DisplayAds business. Megan has a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from UIUC. "At the end of the day, we had to be able to explain it to the team. Right? And I can't go and tell the team and be like, 'Well, the opex costs are too high because you know of this reason with the headcount and this and that and I know so and so told you they love you, but really it didn't mean this thing.' In some ways, those details don't matter, right? What matters is these people are worried that their project's getting shut down. So when it came time to communicate that we actually were gonna shut it down. We have to do an official shutdown because we have to announce it externally. So that means we have to make sure people only have so many weeks to find a new project and all of these things. So the main thing I emphasize when I talked to them wasn't about like, 'Oh, I did all of this work to try and save your project, and I couldn't.' That was irrelevant. It couldn't be saved. The most important thing was about what's the impact for the people? Well, I've already lined up options and positions for every single one.” - Megan Kacholia Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish To learn more about Jellyfish and how they can help you increase engineering satisfaction and create happier, higher-performing engineering teams. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc Join us for one of our in-person community events! That's right! We're hosting in-person community events in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago! Break out of your comfort zone and join us in a casual environment to connect, problem-solve, and support each other in our engineering leadership journeys. Don't see your city on the list? No problem! Reach out to Tim at Tim@sfelc.com and let's bring ELC to you - and make it happen! TO GET INVOLVED, EMAIL OUR HEAD OF COMMUNITY TIM AT TIM@SFELC.COM SHOW NOTES: How Megan advocated for more resources / support at Google (3:07) Convincing direct reports to accept changes & understand benefits (6:07) Insights on how to drive change within your eng team (10:20) Balancing accuracy & simplicity when communicating with your team (12:29) Frameworks for saying “yes” vs. “no” to new responsibilities (16:41) What to do when the decision to say “yes” or “no” isn’t clear (19:46) Having the confidence to say “no” (20:53) Find ways to give your team control within the given situation (24:38) The hardest situations to say “no” to as an eng leader (25:54) Megan’s approach to managing people with more experience than you (28:57) How to navigate managing someone you have a pre-existing peer relationship with (31:09) Knowing when to help vs. fix as a manager (35:14) Tips for removing “linchpins” / critical points of failure from your eng team (37:34) Rapid fire questions (41:12) LINKS AND RESOURCES The Emperor of All Maladies - Physician, researcher, and award-winning science writer, Siddhartha Mukherjee examines cancer with a cellular biologist’s precision, a historian’s perspective, and a biographer’s passion. The result is an astonishingly lucid and eloquent chronicle of a disease humans have lived with—and perished from—for more than five thousand years. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Gaining cross-functional leadership at large & small scale companies & investing in org maturity w/ Bhavini Soneji #119 40:40

hace 2 years40:40

40:40

Bhavini Soneji, VP of Product Engineering @ Cruise, shares her leadership journey & how she gained cross-functional experience working at both large & small organizations. We cover how to gain product experience alongside engineering, deciding which elements of your org to mature/invest in, why you should examine the role of fear in your decision-making, and strategies for asking for more experience & opportunities to gain confidence. ABOUT BHAVINI SONEJI Bhavini loves using human-centered design with streamlined automation to create experiences that improve people’s lives. Previously, she has led teams through different growth stages at Microsoft, Snapchat, Headspace, and Heal. Additionally, she enjoys giving back to the community, advising C-level executives, mentoring at Techstars, First Round, and has also founded a group of Women Technology Executives in Los Angeles to support and foster this group while playing an active role in the LA CTO Forum. When she’s not working, she loves the outdoors and enjoys boogie boarding with her husband and twins. "Just knowing kind of the imposter syndrome that is holding you back. For me, it is like I'm always having a very high bar so am I hitting myself more and how do I be kind to myself? How do I support myself better? So I think that's one thing first, looking back and saying, 'No. I've done this, this, this. So my fears are not true, otherwise, I wouldn't be here.'” - Bhavini Soneji Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish To learn more about Jellyfish and how they can help you increase engineering satisfaction and create happier, higher-performing engineering teams. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc Join us for one of our in-person community events! That's right! We're hosting in-person community events in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago! Break out of your comfort zone and join us in a casual environment to connect, problem-solve, and support each other in our engineering leadership journeys. Don't see your city on the list? No problem! Reach out to Tim at Tim@sfelc.com and let's bring ELC to you - and make it happen! TO GET INVOLVED EMAIL OUR HEAD OF COMMUNITY TIM AT TIM@SFELC.COM SHOW NOTES: Bhavini’s leadership journey & gaining cross-functional experience (2:47) How Bhavini tactically transitioned from each role into the next (7:24) Watch for fears & biases throughout your decision-making (11:53) Frameworks for identifying fears that are holding you back (13:41) Examples of how cross-functional leadership differs at large vs. small orgs (16:32) Conversation tips for getting stakeholders back on track (20:08) Determining which elements of an org to mature/invest in (21:32) Questions to consider when investing in technology or processes (24:03) What to invest in when an organization’s scale starts picking up (26:06) Why investing in the people element can be trickier than processes or tooling (29:26) Strategies for asking for new experiences (32:03) Bhavini’s favorite question for identifying/clarifying what you want next (34:22) Rapid fire questions (35:52) LINKS AND RESOURCES Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall - an award-winning journalist uses ten maps of crucial regions to explain the geo-political strategies of the world powers. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Building platforms vs. products & leveraging OODA loops in leadership w/ Oksana Kubushyna #118 42:23

hace 2 years42:23

42:23

We discuss the differences between building a platform versus a product with Oksana Kubushyna, Head of Operations, Entertainment @ Riot Games! She shares about her leadership journey building the Riot Platform Group and transitioning from a technical lead to management role, tips for empowering your team, how to utilize cross-discipline thinking, the importance of internal measurement metrics, and how Oksana strategically utilizes OODA loops in her leadership style. ABOUT OKSANA KUBUSHYNA As VP of Entertainment Operations, Oksana Kubushyna oversees operations of Riot’s Entertainment division with a goal to imagine and develop bespoke IP experiences and products - animation, film, interactive narratives, music, consumer products and beyond - that deepen players’ and fans’ connections to the universe Riot has created in League of Legends. After joining Riot in 2014, she quickly rose through the ranks, holding positions including Head of Infrastructure, Development Director for League of Legends, founder and Head of Riot Platform Group, and VP of Game Studios Operations, helping build the foundation for, launch and operate Riot’s new games globally. After a few years working on establishing Riot Games' Entertainment division and releasing the award-winning Arcane animated TV series, Oksana has shifted her focus back to Riot's Game Studios where she recently took on managing Riot's Production, QA, and Creative departments. She has also been a leader of Diversity and Inclusion efforts within Riot. Her passion for the advancement of women in games and tech reaches beyond Riot, and she has been honored by groups such as Girls Inc. and Wonder Women Tech. "So for one decision of a CEO, the entire company can take months and months of work on observing, orienting, and deciding before that decision is settled throughout the organization. Now, imagine if CEO the very next day comes in and makes another decision of the same scope, and another one, because for CEO that decisions already done. He can move on or she can move on, but the team is still like wrangling. So it's very important for you as a leader to understand the speed at which your company or your team can process your decisions and act and settle in them before you make the next one. - Oksana Kubushyna Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish To learn more about Jellyfish and how they can help you increase engineering satisfaction and create happier, higher-performing engineering teams. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc SHOW NOTES: Oksana’s experience building & leading the Riot Platform Group (2:15) Lessons learned while transitioning from product to platform (4:23) How to utilize cross-discipline thinking when building out something new (7:30) Strategies for transitioning from single- to multiple-discipline thinking (11:14) The benefits of empowering the team around you (13:37) Differences between building a product vs. building a platform (17:08) Tactics for balancing building ahead of stakeholders with maintaining vision (20:32) Internal measurement metrics that are key to Oksana’s team (23:03) How Oksana utilizes OODA loops within her leadership style (25:55) Tips for reducing the pain of the decision-making process (29:27) What drawing a picture of decisions looks like (33:25) Rapid fire questions (36:04) This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Increasing capacity to win in an economic downturn, cultivating a founder’s mindset & product ownership in engineering w/ Shadi Rostami #117 50:38

hace 2 years50:38

50:38

Shadi Rostami, SVP of Engineering @ Amplitude, joins us to discuss key insights and strategies to increase your engineering orgs capacity to win in an economic downturn. We cover cultivating a founder’s mindset and increasing product ownership in engineering. Plus prioritization strategies, determining where to invest resources, and shifting your team’s perspective from skepticism to optimism. ABOUT SHADI ROSTAMI Shadi Rostami is SVP of engineering at Amplitude. She is a passionate, seasoned technology leader and architect experienced in building and managing highly proficient engineering teams. Prior to Amplitude, she was VP of Engineering at Palo Alto Networks. She has innovated and delivered several product lines and services specializing in distributed systems, cloud computing, big data, machine learning, and security. She has a Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of British Columbia and a B.Sc . from Sharif University of Technology. Shadi has published several peer-reviewed conference articles and journals as well as several patents. "Many, many years ago, I went to my VP and I asked him, ‘Rajiv, I don't know, shall I do A or B?’ And he told me, ‘if it was your own money and your own company, which decision you would've made?’ I said, ‘I'll do A,’ he says, ‘then you know the answer. You don't need to come and ask me. Right? Put your founder hat on and tell me what decision we should be making.’ Shall we do A or shall we do B? That is the ultimate sense of ownership.” - Shadi Rostami Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish To learn more about Jellyfish and how they can help you increase engineering satisfaction and create happier, higher-performing engineering teams. Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc Join us for one of our in-person community events! That's right! We're hosting in-person community events in San Francisco, New York City, Seattle, and Chicago! Break out of your comfort zone and join us in a casual environment to connect, problem-solve, and support each other in our engineering leadership journeys. Don't see your city on the list? No problem! Reach out to Tim at Tim@sfelc.com and let's bring ELC to you - and make it happen! To get involved email our Head of Community Tim at Tim@sfelc.com SHOW NOTES: Examples of how engineering increases an org’s capacity for winning (1:54) Strategies to drive product-led growth (4:58) Why product-led prioritization is key during an economic downturn (6:56) Balancing quantitative vs. qualitative data when determining where to invest resources in (9:12) Set the same goal for your eng team & the product (12:44) The importance of weekly learning users & other valuable metrics (15:58) How a founder mindset fosters a product ownership mentality in engineers (18:47) Practices to help cultivate a founder mentality (23:10) Shadi’s advice for better translation between the business & engineering (27:16) Tactics for reframing a conversation from skepticism to perpetual optimism (29:43) Owning the product experience within the restraints of an economic downturn (33:29) Signals to watch for that it’s time to pivot (36:17) How to increase opportunities for your team to find luck (41:46) Rapid fire questions (43:41) LINKS AND RESOURCES Fresh Air - Fresh Air from WHYY, the Peabody Award-winning weekday magazine of contemporary arts and issues, is one of public radio's most popular programs. Hosted by Terry Gross, the show features intimate conversations with today's biggest luminaries. All Things Considered - NPR’s flagship evening newsmagazine, delivering in-depth reporting that transforms the way listeners understand current events and view the world. All-In - Industry veterans, degenerate gamblers & besties Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks & David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social & poker. This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team: Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host Jerry Li - Co-Host Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/ Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/ Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/…

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

1
Resilience engineering, learning from incidents and unintuitive perspectives on incident analysis w/ John Allspaw #116 42:38

hace 2 years42:38