The Engineering Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Cal Henderson (Co-Founder & CTO @ Slack) and Maria Kazandjieva (Co-Founder @ Graft) discuss strategies for how to be a force multiplier within your organization! They cover Cal’s leadership journey & the early days of Slack, how to identify lateral inflection points, aligning your people throughout periods of change, tips for personal retrospectives on where you invest your time, and more. Additionally, Cal & Maria share plenty of frameworks for both identifying if you are currently a force multiplier & how to identify opportunities to inspire productivity in others.This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022 - check out all of the sessions here: elc.community/public/contentABOUT CAL HENDERSONCal Henderson (@iamcal) is the co-founder and CTO of Slack. He oversees Slack’s world-class engineering team and sets the technical vision for the company.In 2019, he was named a Fortune 40 Under 40 honoree and recognized by the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader.Previously, Cal built and led the engineering teams at Flickr, through its acquisition by Yahoo. An experienced technology leader and a popular speaker on engineering scalability, he authored the best-selling O’Reilly Media book Building Scalable Websites. Cal was also a pioneer in the use of web APIs, and created the basis for OAuth and oEmbed, now used by YouTube, Twitter and many others.Cal was involved in London’s early online network through his work with digital creative communities and the blogosphere. He has a BS in Computer Science and has received an Honorary Doctorate from Birmingham City University. He now resides in San Francisco."What every leader needs to do is recognize when the things that you are spending your time on aren't aligned with what's really important or what's the most value that you can get out of your time. I think it's very easy to fall into the trap of having a very full calendar, feeling very busy, feeling like there's so many things to do and the things that you do don't move the needle in any way.”- Cal Henderson ABOUT MARIA KAZANDJIEVAMaria (@stranger_quark) 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.Looking for ways to support the show?Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcastsIf 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 [email protected] 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Cal describes the early days & founding of Slack (2:24)The many hats an eng leader wears during a company’s early stages (4:20)How Cal identified key inflection points as Slack evolved (6:31)Essential frameworks for successful reorgs (8:31)Tips for getting more comfortable with delegating (10:49)Why you should spend time & resources on developer productivity (13:31)Defining the leadership version of dev tools (16:52)Strategies for quickly aligning organizations through periods of change (20:04)How to align your calendar with what is most important as an eng leader (22:01)Cal and Maria’s tips for personal retrospectives on where you invest your time (24:54)Audience Q&As: why Cal no longer codes for Slack (25:56)Questions to help you identify opportunities to be a force multiplier (27:20)How to measure the success of developer productivity (30:58)Tips for handling force multiplier “killers” (34:33)Why the most brilliant engineers are not only individually productive but also inspire productivity in others (36:50) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As eng leaders, there are many things outside of our control – however, Megan Kacholia (VP of Eng @ Google) believes being deliberate can help you realize the many factors you DO have control of. Megan provides real-life lessons from her own leadership journey on how to take ownership of your time/calendar, tips for saying “yes” & knowing when to say “no,” and strategies for communicating with authenticity. Megan also covers why it’s important as an eng leader to feel comfortable with feeling uncomfortable, frameworks for having difficult conversations, communicating with empathy, and how she balances her role in a part-time capacity.This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022 - check out all of the sessions here:https://hubs.la/Q01wHBrS0ABOUT MEGAN KACHOLIAMegan 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's of Science in Computer Science from UIUC.“They ask you, 'Okay! You know, we need to get this thing really done by Friday!'Okay, fine. So I send my manager note, 'I'm taking care of that. But however... this, and this will not get done this week. Or I'm gonna delegate them to so-and-so. This is the trade-off I've made. Speak now or forever hold your peace. Here's what I'm doing.'And we move forward. People seem very surprised by this sometimes, but this has been one of the best ways I have found in engaging with not only my managers but my peers. In terms of making very clear, what's on MY plate.”- Megan Kacholia Looking for ways to support the show?Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcastsIf 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 [email protected] 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Megan’s leadership journey with Google & how she balances her role in a part-time capacity (02:39)Questions to determine how to best spend your time (5:07)Frameworks for saying “yes” – and why that also means saying “no” (8:40)Be wary of situations where one person is the “lynchpin” (13:04)Advice on providing honest, authentic feedback (14:27)Strategies for having difficult conversations & knowing when to take a step back (16:25)Embrace different perspectives (19:45)Why it’s important as an eng leader to get used to discomfort (21:44)Final thoughts on how to make deliberate decisions (24:23)Audience Q&As: judging the quality of a decision separately from its outcome (26:07)Examples of how saying “yes” helped fuel Megan’s career growth (27:44)Techniques for communicating with empathy (30:30)How to decide between the safe vs. difficult choice (31:44)Megan’s advice on giving peer-to-peer feedback (33:10)Tips for communicating appropriately & speaking out in the moment (35:50)How Megan navigated a traditionally non-linear career move (38:33)What to do if “no” in an unacceptable answer (41:36) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Reorgs are never easy, often impacting eng teams – and that’s why they should always be a last resort. However, sometimes they are necessary for an org’s success! Mike Tria (Head of Eng @ Atlassian) joins Aaron Erickson (Co-Founder & CEO @ Orgspace) to discuss frameworks & strategies for implementing a successful reorg, why eng leaders should be involved throughout the entire reorg process, alternative solutions to reorgs, who is accountable when a reorg goes poorly, how to improve communication channels throughout a reorg, and implementing smooth transitions.This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022 - check out all of the sessions here: https://hubs.la/Q01wHBrS0ABOUT AARON ERICKSONAaron Erickson (@AaronErickson) is Co-Founder and CEO at Orgspace. Before Orgspace, he spent 30 years working in leadership roles, most recently as VP Engineering at New Relic. Over the course of his entire career, he has been an advocate for building better software. He spent a decade at ThoughtWorks, where he drove digital transformation via application of agile and continuous delivery. Aaron lives and works in San Francisco."As managers when we've gone through reorgs they tend to be so painful and difficult to pull off that by the time we finish the reorg, all we wanna do is wipe our hands of it and be like, 'All right, I wanna move on to the next thing. Reorgs over!'How do you know it's successful? 'The changes are made in Workday. We sent the email. The reorg therefore is successful.'No, it is not! You have inserted an organ into the patient. You do not know if the organ will be accepted.- Mike Tria ABOUT MIKE TRIAMike Tria is the Head of Engineering for Platform at Atlassian. Mike oversees Atlassian's global cloud infrastructure, identity & front-end platforms, enterprise offerings, and our third-party developer ecosystem. Mike has 15+ years of experience as a software engineer and leader, ranging from work at cloud-native startups to larger companies. He's built and run all facets of product development, including product management, design, engineering, QA, and SCM/release, but has mostly focused on SaaS, e-commerce, and building communities. As a former comedian, Mike also brings high energy and a sense of humor to the tough challenges he faces. He holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Georgia Institute of Technology.Looking for ways to support the show?Send a link to the show to your marketing team! https://sfelc.com/podcastsIf 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 [email protected] 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Aaron & Mike’s experiences with good & bad reorgs (2:39)Types of reorgs – starting with the quota reorg (5:03)Defining the trend-chaser & its challenges (6:16)The zombie reorg & why only 20% of reorgs find success (7:20)How management by rumor reorgs can hurt your product & org (9:10)The best reorg framework: strategy, organization, then people last (10:37)Two major qualities of a successful reorg (13:58)Involve your eng leaders early in the reorg process (18:02)Traits of a reorg in wartime vs. peacetime (20:28)Defining the reverse Conway maneuver (23:24)Who should be held accountable when a reorg goes poorly? (25:04)Audience Q&As: entering a reorg with a KPI thesis (28:08)Improving the chain of communication & involvement during a reorg (30:19)Alternatives to reorgs (32:39)Strategies for setting your org up for success throughout continuous pivots (34:39)Aaron & Mike’s views on functional vs. mission team structures (37:04)How to support a reorg as an eng leader (39:35)Tips for implementing smooth transitions throughout a reorg (41:32)LINKS AND RESOURCES“The Re-org Rag” - video by Forrest Brazeal (@forrestbrazeal) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a special episode from our new show “Engineering Founders” - Should you build B2C or B2B? What about implementing a top-down or a bottoms up sales strategy? How do you think about pricing? These are many of the dilemmas early founders face in the early stages. We sit down with Abi Noda to explore his experiences co-founding DX and Pull Panda and examine the differences, trade-offs and considerations behind building for consumer vs. B2B, pricing, early sales and product adoption strategies! For more episodes of Engineering Founders, subscribe here: https://engineering-founders.simplecast.com/P.S. The Engineering Leadership Podcast will return after the winter holidays on January 3rd!ABOUT ABI NODAAbi Noda is the CEO and co-founder of DX, the world's first developer experience management platform. He was previously the CEO and founder of Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub in 2019. At GitHub he led research collaborations with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, McKinsey, and Microsoft Research, which was the impetus for founding DX."It's really good to try to sell starting on day one. That's probably, in my opinion, the best way to validate an idea, a B2B idea, is to try and go sell it and by sell it I mean literally go get money for like pre-committed customers. So it really de-risks a huge component of, I think, why these types of businesses fail, which is they just aren't able even identify, reach and successfully convert buyers.”- Abi Noda ABOUT DXDX is the world’s first developer experience management platform, helping organizations measure and improve top drivers of developer productivity and engagement.DX is designed by leading software engineering researchers, providing science-backed metrics, workflows, and education that empower teams to improve.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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Abi's journey founding DX and Pull Panda (3:07)Building your business as a side-project for consumers vs. enterprise software (6:07)If you just got laid off and want to start a business, you need to hear this (10:02)The best way to validate a B2B idea (12:44)Differences with how you talk about your product in a competitive vs. uncompetitive market (15:58)How to think about pricing for bottoms-up or top-down sales motion (17:17)Choosing the right persona to pursue as customers (20:58)How experience at large companies can help you understand how to approach enterprise product adoption (24:44)Investor expectations with bottoms-up/top-down sales and identifying ICPs (32:06)Incentivizing users to adopt new features (34:12)Closing deals and getting to the implementation stage (37:51)How Abi maximized advisor relationships (40:04)Rapid fire questions (45:27)LINKS AND RESOURCESLenny Rachitsky’s Newsletter - a weekly advice column about product, growth, and your career.7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Helmer’s comprehensive business strategy guide centered around power and the conditions that create the potential for persistent differential returns.Nail It Then Scale It - Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom’s guide to increasing success and reducing risk when launching a high-growth company. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We cover building community & digital transformation with Yvette Pasqua, CTO @ Exos! She shares her leadership journey from MeetUp to Exos and how her experiences shaped her views on the importance of community and effective networking. We also discuss principles for creating authentic meetup experiences, how Yvette navigated her Head of Eng search without a recruiter, the importance of asking others for help, and how Exos navigated the opportunities & challenges through their digital transformation.ABOUT YVETTE PASQUAYvette (@lolarobot) is the CTO of Exos where she leads the product and engineering teams with a focus on continuous improvement, iteration, and using data to launch products that help our members become healthier and achieve their wellness, life, and work goals.Prior to joining Exos, Yvette led Product and Engineering at Haven, a health tech startup, and was the CTO at Meetup. Yvette’s career has included leadership roles at startups and product development firms building products like Grindr and the Olympics video player. She’s on the Board at Chloe Capital, a VC firm that invests in women-led seed-stage companies.Yvette lives in Brooklyn and Rhinebeck, NY with her wife, daughter, and wheaten terrier.“Yeah, of course during the conversation I will bring up, ‘Hey, I'm looking for a head of engineering. do you know anything? Do you have any advice? What have you thought of are the best characteristics for someone in that role?”It's a long-term play, but I think the important thing is to be really upfront with your intention for the chat. And to deliver on that in an authentic way. And to not BS someone and say, ‘Hey, I wanna network!’ And then throw a job in their face and a job description.-Yvette PasquaInterested 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Building technology with community in mind at MeetUp and Exos (2:20) (0:07)How community and in-person experiences inspire Yvette’s career decisions (5:40)What Yvette learned about networking / community building from MeetUp (7:10)Principles for creating meaningful, authentic gatherings (10:54)Why setting boundaries & expectations encourages group psychological safety (12:38)How Yvette successfully navigated her Head of Eng search without a recruiter (14:32)Strategies for targeting potential hires that you haven’t met before (17:40)Ask others for advice (21:31)Tactics for reaching out to people in an authentic way (23:40)Prioritizing time for networking conversations (27:55)Behind the digital transformation at Exos from a primarily coaching model (32:37)How Exos continuously models growth mindset (37:42)When digital transformation reaches a turning point (39:44)Rapid fire questions (42:38)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz (blog/newsletter) - The #1 technology newsletter on Substack. Highly relevant for software engineers and engineering managers, useful for those working in tech. Written by engineering manager and software engineer Gergely Orosz who was previously at Uber, Skype/Microsoft, and at high-growth startups. (follow Gergely on Twitter @GergelyOrosz)Software Lead Weekly by Oren Ellenbogen (newsletter) - A weekly email for busy people who care about people, culture and leadership.Level Up by Patrick Kua (newsletter) - Level Up delivers a curated newsletter for leaders in tech. Ideal for busy people such as Tech Leads, Engineering Managers, VPs of Engineering, CTOs and more.Lenny’s Newsletter by Lenny Rachitsky - A weekly advice column about product, growth, and your career.The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker (book) - Priya argues that the gatherings in our lives are lackluster and unproductive — and they don't have to be. At a time when coming together is more important than ever, Parker sets forth a human-centered approach to gathering that will help everyone create meaningful, memorable experiences, large and small, for work and for play. (Patrick’s most gifted book) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we discuss frameworks & strategies for building a “startup-within-a-startup” with Heidi Williams, Head of Engineering for Grammarly Business @ Grammarly! She shares stories about her leadership style while revealing the benefits of & considerations for creating a startup-within-a-startup, sourcing ideas & hosting knowledge-sharing meetings, identifying adjacencies in your user base, communicating challenges between individuals & teams, developing leading indicators, and more.ABOUT HEIDI WILLIAMSHeidi Williams (@Heidivt73) is Head of Engineering for Grammarly Business, our product offering for professional teams and organizations.At Grammarly, Heidi is inspired by the potential impact the product can have as a platform, with the opportunity to help reduce conflicts and misunderstandings in communication and educate people on how to be more inclusive and equitable.Before coming to Grammarly, Heidi served as VP of Platform Engineering at Box, founded WEST Diversity and Inclusion, and was co-founder and CTO of tEQuitable, a confidential platform addressing issues of bias, discrimination, and harassment in the workplace. Heidi was at Adobe for 17 years and most notably was a founding engineer on Dreamweaver, which democratized web development in the late 1990s.Heidi volunteers as a technical advisor for PaymentWorks and Raise For Good. Her expertise and perspective have been featured in Built In SF and the podcasts Stayin’ alive in Technology, Dev Interrupted, and CTO Connection.As a lifelong soccer player, Heidi’s often on the pitch; she’s also an avid hiker, bicyclist, and kayaker. She once hiked with her husband across England, 192 miles coast to coast (with B&Bs and pub stops along the way).Heidi studied at Brown University, where she earned a BS in computer science. She also attended Stanford University’s Executive Institute.And so now you have this chasm where we'd have these weird conversations around what machine learning features should we build for Grammarly business? And neither side could understand what the other person's context was to come up with an idea.We struggled with that for a little bit until we really just put people in a room and, and it did exactly that. We said, "Here is the user research, five critical communication challenges within a company. You know what technology you have. You know how organizations work. Get together and just talk about, you know, your peanut butter, your chocolate. What can we make here? Let's have a Reese Peanut butter cup...!"-Heidi WilliamsInterested 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:Heidi’s favorite “startup-within-a-startup” moments with Grammarly & Grammarly Business (1:56)What you can learn from the “PDF as MVP” approach (4:36)How early conversations impacted the final product & eng team functions (5:40)The benefits of building a startup-within-a-startup (9:21)Considerations when making the decision to become a multi-product company (11:19)Identifying the adjacencies within your current user base (13:24)The difference between discovering a new market & building the next feature (14:32)How to source new ideas & encourage innovation in your eng team (15:31)Frameworks for communicating challenges across different teams / individuals (21:02)Strategies for facilitating knowledge-sharing meetings (24:55)Fostering a culture of healthy, positive idea jams (26:50)Heidi’s advice on the cadence of idea jams for a startup-within-a-startup (28:15)What the execution / maturity pathway process looks like (29:49)Heidi’s hypothesis behind merging a product with the greater business (33:04)How to navigate dependencies when your product is in the incubator phase (35:51)Keys for determining the end game of a product – pathway to success or time to wind down? (40:09)Why it’s important to develop leading indicators to determine your product’s success (42:16)Rapid fire questions (43:40)LINKS AND RESOURCES99% Invisible - 99% Invisible is a sound-rich, narrative podcast hosted by Roman Mars about all the thought that goes into the things we don’t think about — the unnoticed architecture and design that shape our world.Code Switch - This podcast tackles the subject of race with empathy and humor. They explore how race affects every part of society — from politics and pop culture to history, food and everything in between.Freakonomics Radio - Discover the hidden side of everything with host Stephen J. Dubner , co-author of the Freakonomics books. Each week, Freakonomics Radio tells you things you always thought you knew (but didn’t) and things you never thought you wanted to know (but do) — from the economics of sleep to how to become great at just about anything, plus the true stories of minimum wage, rent c

We cover how to sustain long-term transformational projects with Paul Dix, CTO & Founder @ InfluxData! This high-energy conversation reveals the history behind InfluxDB and its multi-phase, long-term transformation over the past 10 years. Plus we discuss how to know when it’s time to take your company to the next level, identifying the right people for your eng teams, integrating multiple teams into an org re-architecture, and building open-source products/communities!ABOUT PAUL DIXPaul (@PaulDix) is the creator of InfluxDB. He has helped build software for startups, large companies, and organizations like Microsoft, Google, McAfee, Thomson Reuters, and Air Force Space Command. He is the series editor for Addison Wesley’s Data & Analytics book and video series. In 2010 Paul wrote the book Service Oriented Design with Ruby and Rails. In 2009 he started the NYC Machine Learning Meetup. Paul holds a degree in computer science from Columbia University."What I need is a small team of focused people who are on board, who can be focused on getting this done and we'll prove it out as we go.And I think the mistake I made with the 2.0 cloud product was we got way too many of people involved way too quickly, right? I think for the initial phases of project, it's actually advantageous to have a smaller team.- Paul Dix 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/peerGroupsSHOW NOTES:The history behind InfluxDB & its multi-phase, long-term transformation (1:53)InfluxDB’s first transformational phase featuring time series data (5:48)Phase 2.0 & shifting to a cloud-first delivery model (7:50)Challenges & opportunities faced in the current phase of InfluxDB (9:31)How Paul decided it was time to take the company to the next level (11:38)Making a bet on Rust (14:25)Why making an early announcement helped push Phase 3.0 forward (16:02)Strategies for identifying the right people for your eng team (19:06)How to optimize community insights when tailoring your vision (21:56)Tips for resolving disagreements between eng team members (24:45)Frameworks for executing long-term vision & achieving alignment (26:21)Processes for integrating other teams into an org’s re-architecture (29:55)The impact of Conway’s Law on team structure & open-source software (32:07)Considerations for managing large, open-source projects (36:40)Rapid fire questions (37:56)LINKS AND RESOURCES“The Happiness Hypothesis” by Jonathan Haidt - Each chapter is an attempt to savor one idea that has been discovered by several of the world’s civilizations -­ to question it in light of what we now know from scientific research, and to extract from it the lessons that still apply to our modern lives.“The Fate of Rome” by Kyle Harper - How devastating viruses, pandemics, and other natural catastrophes swept through the far-flung Roman Empire and helped to bring down one of the mightiest civilizations of the ancient world Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We cover how to uplevel your eng team with Elaine Zhou, CTO @ Change.org! She shares some of her favorite frameworks and strategies for creating self-sufficient teams, amplifying high-performers, performing self-assessments, and hosting prioritization conversations. Plus Elaine shares the story behind how she got involved with Change.org, navigating different operating constraints in your business model (from non-profit to VC-funded contexts), and what it’s like investing in high-impact areas with no revenue expectation.ABOUT ELAINE ZHOUChange.org CTO Elaine Zhou joined the platform for change in 2020. Prior to Change.org, she was at Vidado as CTO, and has held leadership positions for over a decade at companies including HomeStore, PlanetOut, IAC and more. She’s been a longtime mentor at Upwardly Global. Follow her on Twitter at @softwired."High performance need to be in that fail safe environment so they're willing to explore and to iterate. So really help them to do that, the way that I solve the problem with them is not just that, “You are good, you're good.” Just pump them up. No, it's actually, “Let's look at a problem. I actually agree with your solution and this is why I like your solution.”Help them to gain the confidence and give them that kind of hard opportunity to try that and you know they will build their confidence so much.”- Elaine Zhou SHOW NOTES:Why Elaine got involved with Change.org (2:24)The importance of understanding the business / non-profit model for eng leaders (6:29)How business, technology, & financial constraints impact business decisions (9:44)Investing in impact with no revenue expectation (14:42)Strategies for creating self-sufficiency within teams & traps eng leaders fall into when leveling up their team (18:06)Questions to ask yourself during self-assessments to determine priorities (22:05)What you should do as an eng leader after transitioning your team to be self-sufficient (28:10)Frameworks for prioritization conversations (29:14)The technical area Elaine is most focused on growing right now (32:23)Strategies for amplifying & supporting your best performers (33:58)Rapid fire questions (38:35)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses - Eric Reis’ book outlining his strategy for building a start-up that he developed during his time as a founder and start-up advisor.Measure What Matters - John Doerr’s collection of first-person accounts that demonstrates the focus, growth, and explosive growth that OKRs have spurred in many great organizations. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We sat down with Claus Moberg to discuss his career trajectory, from meteorology student and hardware CEO to current VP of Eng @ Roblox! We also cover how to overcome obstacles when scaling leadership, leading teams outside of your technical depth/knowledge, attracting & recruiting top talent, finding “diamonds in the rough,” and how to communicate effectively between business functions & eng teams. Claus also shares his best frameworks for navigating complex conversations and taking measured risks while scaling eng functions.ABOUT CLAUS MOBERGClaus Moberg leads engineering for the Roblox User Group. His teams are responsible for the applications and experiences through which over 58.5 million users explore and experience the Roblox Metaverse every day. Claus has worked at Roblox since the summer of 2016, leading teams across multiple engineering and product disciplines (VR, Consoles, Mobile, Social, Personalization) and geographies (San Mateo, CA and Shenzhen, CN).“The key mistake to avoid is to think that a lack of domain experience is an excuse to not engage at that level of depth, right? It's not.It's actually an obligation to engage at the maximum level of depth that's necessary to solve the problem, but it's an opportunity to engage, avoiding buzz words, and using plain English, and sort of doing it in a way that makes communication more clear as opposed to less clear throughout the organization.”- Claus Moberg SHOW NOTES:How Claus transitioned from meteorology student to VP of Eng at Roblox (2:17)Utilizing a maximization function for career strategy & decision-making (6:25)Claus’s early days at Roblox (9:03)Looking to the team & product space when facing uncertainties (12:56)Strategies for scaling leadership & building eng teams (14:52)The correlation between an amazing team & an amazing product (17:48)Techniques for building technical depth within eng leadership (19:09)Frameworks for effective communication between eng teams & business functions (21:24)Best practices for navigating complex conversations (25:37)Learn to delegate & let go of responsibilities (26:45)How Roblox recruits/attracts talent outside of typical hiring patterns (29:24)Claus’s advice on identifying competitive advantages in order to attract talent (34:46)Why you should take measured risks while building out eng teams (36:33)How to weigh trade-offs/concessions during the start-up phase (38:57)Lean into asking “stupid” questions & aim to participate in conversations at the deepest level possible (41:33)Rapid fire questions (42:44)LINKS AND RESOURCESSkunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed - Leo Janos and Ben R. Rich’s memoir detailing their nearly two decades of work in Lockheed Martin’s legendary Skunk Works program. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

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 to regularly releasing episodes November 15th with a couple great guests! Claus Moberg, VP of Engineering @ Roblox joins to discuss his journey scaling his leadership impact & org size 10x in 6 years! Elaine Zhou CTO @ Change.org joins to discuss upleveling your team and helping them become more self-sufficient. Plus we’re launching new episodes of Engineering Founders! Email us at [email protected] to stay involved, join the community at elc.community! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We sit down with Kit Colbert (SVP and CTO @ VMWare) and discuss his experiences, lessons, and approaches to leading across different orders of magnitude PLUS his approach to high leverage, high ROI communication at different scales. We cover his perspectives on lessening execution risk and creating stability through change, letting go of being a “technologist,” navigating the dilemma between macro and micro granularity in leadership, and building an innovation system.ABOUT KIT COLBERTKit Colbert joined VMware in September 2003 (following an internship in 2002) and currently serves as senior vice president and chief technology officer. He is responsible for ensuring VMware’s long-term technology leadership through research and innovation programs, with the primary goal of positively impacting and shaping the future of VMware, its ecosystem, and its customers. As CTO, Colbert will shape the technical vision for the company, and the transformation to a cloud and subscription-centric R&D organization. His oversight includes advancing research and development efforts, overseeing the VMware Engineering Services team, the Design/UX team and the company’s ESG commitments.Prior to September 2021, Colbert served in multiple roles, including VMware’s Cloud CTO, General Manager of VMware’s Cloud-Native Apps business, CTO for VMware’s End-User Computing Business, and as the lead architect for the VMware vRealize Operations Suite. Colbert joined VMware as the technical lead behind the creation, development and delivery of the vMotion and Storage vMotion features in VMware vSphere."What I try to focus on is, what's the outcome or the benefit that I'm looking for? And, you know, leaving the “how” as much as possible up to them. But I'm also open to being challenged and I find oftentimes that I don't really fully understand the space and the way that they do. And so I'm saying, ‘Here's kinda what we want and here's how I think we should do it.’ But then they'll say, ‘No, that doesn't make sense here. You know, here's how we should be really be thinking about.’ And so that back and forth actually creates a better solution in the end.”- Kit Colbert Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Kit's Leadership Leap from 150 to 2300 People (2:05)How guardrails lessen risks and create stability through change (4:24)How to prepare to increase your scope and lead larger teams (8:21)Identifying existential opportunities and getting ahead of foundational industry changes (12:38)Letting go of being a “technologist” & relying on others for technical insight (16:08)How clear communication is one of the highest leverage, highest ROI things you can do as a leader (18:27)Framework to prepare your communication plan at big team moments (21:56)Balancing the dilemma of micro and macro granularity in leadership (26:11)Strategies to guide and influence people to your desired outcomes (28:18)How to operationalize innovation and build an innovation system (33:23)Rapid fire questions (37:53)LINKS AND RESOURCESAtomic Habits - This breakthrough book from James Clear is the most comprehensive guide on how to change your habits and get 1% better every day. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We cover reinventing your role and refocusing your eng team in the face of the unknown with Maher Saba, Head of Remote Presence and Engineering @ Meta! He discusses his leadership history from IBM to Microsoft to Meta and how he took on IC roles to gain credibility as an eng leader. We also cover how to productively channel & embrace emotions to drive improvement, frameworks for motivating eng orgs, how to incorporate personal feedback into your product, how the pandemic offered opportunities to pivot into the unknown, refocusing eng teams after challenges/periods of uncertainty, and more!ABOUT MAHER SABAMaher Saba is the Head of Remote Presence and Engineering at Meta and is responsible for creating rich social, real-time video and audio experiences that connect people while they’re physically apart. Saba has held numerous Engineering leadership roles at Meta, and during his time at the company he launched Video on Newsfeed, Facebook Live, Facebook Watch, Messenger Rooms and Live Audio Rooms. Before Meta, Saba worked at IBM and Microsoft as a developer and software engineering lead, eventually becoming a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. Saba has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.“He goes, ‘Have you ever written an endpoint?’ I said, ‘I'm actually curious to know what an endpoint is.’ And he goes, ‘Have you written anything in Ruby?’ I'm like, ‘No, I've never seen the language before.’ He goes, ‘How about Go Language?’ I'm like, Rob Pike just came up with Go Language. Nobody knows it.’ And he's like, ‘So, you know nothing.’ I'm like, ‘I know nothing. I just wanna be in a place where either I sink or swim and the best way for me to know this is to jump with both feet into the deep end.’”- Maher Saba Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Maher Saba’s transition from Microsoft to Meta (01:54)Why Maher restarted as an IC to gain credibility before moving back into eng management (7:08)Embrace emotions in order to gain focus & drive improvement (12:14)How Maher refocused his work at the start of the pandemic & what it’s like jumping into the unknown (16:48)Frameworks for motivating eng teams to focus on execution (22:28)Maher’s favorite experiences from his team’s show-and-tell sessions (26:59)Incorporating feedback into your product from personal sources – like your mother! (28:29)Post-pandemic challenges & how to address them (31:27)How to refocus eng teams after periods of uncertainty (36:16)Do’s and don'ts for inspiring teams to be part of a turnaround (39:35)Why Maher is excited for the unknowns surrounding the metaverse (42:00)Rapid fire questions (43:51)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Swerve - Stephen Greenblatt’s book on how the discovery of an Ancient Greek poem changed the course of human thought and shaped the world as we know it today. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss product innovation with Saumya Bhatnagar (CPO & Co-Founder @ involve.ai), who shares her passion for the product trio and how it enriches problem-solving! We cover how to best optimize the product trio, implementing empathy into your communication practices, the importance of the value priority score, frameworks for healthy & energetic discourse between the product trio, and improving the experience of telling users “no” while pursuing potential “yes” opportunities.ABOUT SAUMYA BHATNAGARSaumya Bhatnagar is the CPO and Co-founder of involve.ai, an AI-driven Early warning system that helps companies predict churn and revenue growth opportunities using customer data.Before starting involve.ai, Saumya co-founded a startup right out of high school in New Delhi which focussed on using technology to reduce gender-based abortions in India. She did her undergrad in Computer Science and went on to earn her Masters's in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on Natural Language Processing.She is a Forbes 30 under 30 alum, winner of the Stevie Gold Entrepreneur of the Year award, recognized as the 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech by the National Diversity Council, and is on the list of Top 100 Women in Technology by AI Technology magazine.Saumya is a strong advocate of more representation for women in tech and is the founder of a nonprofit in India for women empowerment.When not working, Saumya enjoys binge-watching Netflix, photography, and traveling."A good relationship is not about how well you work with each other, but how well you fight with each other and how well can you disagree with each other. That's the entire goal of a product trio. They shouldn't agree. They should look at it from different lenses, but then how do you have that argument and come to a consensus is like the hardest part of managing it."- Saumya Bhatnagar Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Why it’s valuable to always consider the context of a problem first (2:07)How Saumya became passionate about the product trio (5:47)Optimize the product trio by exercising empathy & good communication (10:39)Why designers & front-end eng should be connected from the start (14:36)The five components of the value priority score framework (16:59)Improving the experience of telling users “no” (20:16)The role of recency bias in prioritization conversations & how to get to “yes” (24:16)Determine a product’s success by measuring what will impact the outcome (26:36)How the product trio gained alignment regarding the trust score feature (30:54)Saumya’s tips for knowing when the product trio is working well (34:20)Frameworks for healthy discourse within your product trio (36:17)Incorporating a bottom-up decision-making process (39:28)Rapid fire questions (42:43)LINKS AND RESOURCESCompetitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors - Michael E. Porter's book that has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world.Dopamine Nation - Dr. Anna Lembke’s book that explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Customer narratives are a transformative tool to help you build successful products! Marco Argenti (CIO @ Goldman Sachs) explains how to develop these narratives as your team’s guiding vision and help eng orgs better understand “the business” side of software. Plus we cover best practices for investing in developer experience, Goldman Sachs’ transition to prioritize external developers, and the signs, signals and trends Marco’s used to navigate his career across tons of different emerging technology fields.ABOUT MARCO ARGENTIMarco Argenti is the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs. He is a member of the Management Committee, the Firmwide Technology Risk Committee, the Client Business Standards Committee, the Enterprise Risk Committee and the Global Inclusion and Diversity Committee. Mr. Argenti joined the firm as a Partner in 2019.Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Argenti served as Vice President of technology of Amazon Web Services (AWS) since 2013, overseeing all aspects of the product lifecycle of Cloud Services, including strategy, business planning and developer engagement, and leading several AWS technology areas, such as mobile, serverless, Internet of Things, messaging, and augmented and virtual reality. Before that, Mr. Argenti spent several years at Nokia Corporation, where he was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Developer Experience and Marketplace from 2011 to 2013, with responsibility for Nokia’s developer ecosystem and app store across the company’s entire product portfolio.Earlier in his career, Mr. Argenti was a board member and Chief Executive Officer of internet and mobile company Dada S.p.A., as well as a board member, executive vice president of strategy development and chief technology officer of Canadian e-commerce solutions provider Microforum Inc., where he founded Internet Frontier Inc., an internet publisher and e-commerce retailer. He previously founded and sold Dreamware S.r.l., a software development firm, to Microforum Inc.Mr. Argenti serves on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, also known as PanCan. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall."Today, the world is so complex that it's almost like an asteroid field and when you navigate an asteroid field, if you don't turn often, you're gonna be having some surprises and so that's why iteration is so important. You need to release sometimes multiple times a day because the world is changing in front of you and there are opportunities and obstacles that come all the time."- Marco Argenti Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Marco’s leadership journey – as a CTO, VP of Tech, and beyond (2:39)Questioning biases & observing signals when predicting opportunities (8:41)How Marco used intuition & data when deciding to work with Goldman Sachs (10:10)Why engineers must understand business principles (13:46)Using customer narratives to create a guiding vision for eng teams (17:47)How to help eng orgs better understand the business metrics of software (22:01)Why Goldman Sachs transitioned to prioritizing its developer clients (25:39)Shifting the focus from internal developers to external developers (31:34)How the tech team navigated challenges during this transition (33:34)Rapid fire questions (36:43) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Today’s episode marks a special occasion – 100 episodes of The Engineering Leadership Podcast! To celebrate, we’ve compiled some of our favorite moments from the past hundred episodes, featuring a wide range of high-energy guests and compelling topics. We cover tension points while scaling eng & product orgs, why you should seek existential issues, how to get unstuck in your career, helping engineers outgrow their positions, hyper-growing your eng org/career, identifying burnout, understanding workplace injustice, confronting your fear of failure, and much more!Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:How to focus on what really matters... seek the "existential issues" & find where there's "Room AND Attention" - Will Larson (3:23)The Portfolio of Time Management - Jean-Denis Greze (8:50)How to get unstuck in your career - Wade Chambers (13:04)“Crashing” your way to a seat at the table - Melody Hildebrandt (15:51)The fundamentals of managing up - Jan Chong (17:12)Common tension points while scaling engineering and product organizations - Jeremy Henrickson (19:31)The story of Amazon Apollo, solving the right problem & pitching the right stakeholders - Melissa Binde (24:43)"Hero Developers don't scale" - Andrew Lau & Eli Daniel (30:09)How to increase your pool of potential candidates - Farhan Thawar (34:48)Why you should help engineers outgrow their positions & how to discuss career growth with your team members - Tara Ellis (39:45)How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth - Samir Naik (43:32)Move as fast as long as - Richard Wong (47:41)Lessons from leading large-scale, complex, strategic projects - Wendy Sheppard (49:38)How to operationalize your approach to leadership - Sri Viswanath (52:55)How to detect & identify the early signs of burnout in your engineering team - Erica Lockheimer, Sabry Tozin & Lori Allen (55:50)The root causes of workplace injustice & the roles we can play to prevent it - Kim Scott & Trier Bryan (59:29)Conflict optimizations vs. conflict resolution & why eng leaders need to embrace conflict - Jordan Adler (1:04:14)How to get over the fear of silence - Alexis Rask (1:07:22)Leading through uncertainty - David Silverman (1:13:50)"Rage-fixing" & Eddie's breakthrough moment confronting fear of failure at Gusto - Eddie Kim (1:20:05)LINKS AND RESOURCESEpisode 30 - Spend Time On What Matter w/ Will LarsonEpisode 18 - Building a Successfully "Spiky" Org (Part 2) w/ Jean-Denis GrezeEpisode 21 - Conscious Career Growth (part 2) w/ Wade ChambersEpisode 72 - Why Engineering Needs a Seat at the Negotiating Table w/ Melody HildebrandtEpisode 43 - Managing Up w/ Jan ChongEpisode 38 - Align & Scale Engineering AND Product w/ Jeremy HenricksonEpisode 47 - Building Technology That Endures w/ Melissa BindeEpisode 79 - Translating engineering to the CEO w/ Andrew Lau and Eli DanielEpisode 10 - Speed & Creativity in Recruiting w/ Farhan ThawarEpisode 75 - A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Career Growth & Internal Mobility w/ Tara EllisEpisode 77 - How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth w/ Samir NaikEpisode 63 - Speed vs. Quality w/ Richard WongEpisode 31 - How to Lead Large Scale Projects w/ Wendy ShepperdEpisode 65 - Building Autonomous Teams & Engineering Career Ladders w/ Sri ViswanathEpisode 66 - Addressing Burnout in Your Engineering Org w/ Erica Lockheimer, Sabry Tozin & Lori AllenEpisode 44 - “Just Work” w/ Kim Scott & Trier BryantEpisode 74 - Conflict Optimization w/ Jordan AdlerEpisode 32 - Ask Powerful Questions w/ Alexis RaskEpisode 12 - Leading Through Uncertainty w/ David SilvermanEpisode 29 - Remove Fear of Failure From Your Org w/ Edward KimSPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR PRODUCTION TEAMNoah Olberding, ProducerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding-49138a19b/Have strong movie opinions? Send Noah a message with your hot cinema takes!Dan Overheim, Audio EngineerIG: @doverheimAre you also an avid 3D printer? Check out Dan’s 3D printing work here: bnd3d.comEllie Coggins Angus, CopywriterLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliecoggins/Love books? Check out Ellie’s bookstagram: @ellieturnsthepage Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We speak with Vinay Hiremath, Co-Founder & CTO @ Loom, about his experience balancing three high-level exec roles and living out his personal values at work while prioritizing his mental & physical health! Scaling up is never easy, but Vinay shares tips and systems that have worked for him, including utilizing timetables, building good habits despite emotions, and triply verifying decisions. We also cover the stigma surrounding paternity / parental leave in the tech industry, how knowing your values inspires better health, and journaling frameworks for identifying values & goals.ABOUT VINAY HIREMATHVinay Hiremath (@vhmth) is Co-Founder & CTO at Loom - Check out Vinay’s video bio on Loom here"I'd lost a sense of direction because I just took on so much work. Direction became something that was a luxury for me to think about which is an incredibly dangerous place to be as an executive and it's really easy to fall into it especially when there's a fire hose of work that's coming at you all the time.And then I had morphed my life around work versus around my health and I realized the thing that had led me to have so much mental clarity before was my health. And so I started taking health incredibly seriously again.”- Vinay Hiremath Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Vinay’s experience taking on three exec roles at Loom (3:51)Why creating a daily timetable is crucial for busy eng leaders (6:02)The intersection between mental health & living by your values (9:14)What Vinay’s personal values are & ways he identified them (10:35)Incorporating the value of freedom within your eng org (11:35)How your goals & competencies act as gatekeepers to your values (16:25)Tips for building out your schedule to expand your working capacity (19:02)The importance of understanding your systems (20:11)As you scale your eng functions, set up delegation systems (21:49)Why eng teams should utilize budgets & triple verification (25:48)How triple verification works in people systems (27:07)What the CEO role taught Vinay about leading engineering (31:40)How Loom tackles the stigma surrounding parental leave (33:40)Prioritize mental & physical health to live out your values (35:48)Journaling frameworks to contemplate values (40:28)Vinay’s process for building – and keeping – new habits (43:03)Recognize your emotions & act despite them (47:07)Rapid fire questions (48:28) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We cover how psychology, neuroscience & mindfulness tools can help eng leaders overcome challenges, communicate successfully, and foster a culture of empathy! Our guest is Luther Kitahata, an Innovative Executive Leadership Coach & Interim CTO/VP of Eng – he’s also described by Chip Conley as the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of Silicon Valley.” We also chat about identifying personality types, uncovering unconscious traits/patterns, shifting from the comfort zone to the growth zone, and how to be a transformative leader!ABOUT LUTHER KITAHATALuther Kitahata is an Executive Leadership Coach known for his expertise in innovation, C-Suite roles leading global organizations, and as an entrepreneur building companies from the ground up. Luther draws on his deep understanding of the patterns that drive human behavior as well as his own corporate leadership experience to provide individuals and organizations with a transformative and pragmatic approach to their most complex challenges. He is described as a "Silicon Valley Obi-Wan Kenobi" in Chip Conley's bestselling book Wisdom at Work.Luther works with high-growth companies led by senior executives who are committed to their own growth and transformation. Having been a C-level executive himself, he knows their challenges from the inside out. His methodology is designed to uncover hidden strengths and blind spots. He encourages leaders to experiment with new behaviors and actions. This results in transformations at the individual, team, and organizational levels.Luther draws on his 20+ years as a C-level operating executive, as well as entrepreneurial expertise starting 8 companies, enabling him to bring practical and actionable guidance to his clients. He has grown new teams from 0 to 100+, taken over large existing teams, and successfully handled turnaround situations. Luther also serves as a Fractional CTO or VP of Engineering to fill a recruiting gap; mentor founders growing into their leadership roles; or upgrade product development methodologies to drive agility, maturity, and scalability.“We make these patterns for ourselves all the time and particularly early in life, we learn patterns of how to navigate the world. The problem is that the modern-day world has a lot of stimulus and input that can throw us into that survival state, that fight flight freeze state very easily. So if you understand that that's what's happening, that we have all these patterns and they're mostly unconscious or barely conscious, then you start to think, ‘Well, okay… What are the patterns that are serving me and what are the patterns that aren't?'"- Luther Kitahata Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Luther’s journey from eng leader to executive coach (02:33)The relationship dynamics between executive coach & fractional CTO (4:58)Using Enneagram results to assess eng leader’s response to challenges (6:16)Why you should be self-aware of your personality type (8:54)How to coach eng leaders to talk in ways that others will listen (10:58)Mindfulness techniques to foster a state of empathy & curiosity (12:32)What unconscious traits & patterns hold eng leaders back at work (15:42)How to recognize & address unconscious patterns (20:03)Tools to help you uncover areas where you experience resistance (21:43)Overcoming unconscious patterns by identifying your tendencies (22:49)Shift from the comfort zone to the growth zone (25:28)How to transition away from the high-stress zone (27:38)Transformative leadership starts with self-awareness & a growth mindset (30:10)Rapid fire questions (33:56)Luther’s method for tackling to-do lists with tools like Trello (35:51)Rapid fire questions continued (38:38) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you’ve ever wrestled with technology choices & navigated the consequences of the wrong path… this conversation is for you! Lisa Dusseault (CTO @ Compaas) defines the dilemma of the “aspirational mismatch” & shares real-life examples of how it affects a tech org’s processes, architecture, and metrics. She dives into the frameworks & tools that have helped her work through mismatches, her golden rule regarding “innovation tokens,” choosing the right sized technology for your company, and why tech companies are prone to aspirational mismatch in the first place.ABOUT LISA DUSSEAULTLisa Dusseault is the Chief Technology Officer at Compaas. She has built her career solving complex technology problems. After Microsoft, she led internet standards groups at the IETF, and engineering teams at Linden Lab and Stubhub. She founded tech startups Cathy Labs, Klutch, and ShareTheVisit. Lisa holds a B.S. in systems design engineering from University of Waterloo."The conversation should have been about when and why this company needed a particular technology choice, not whether a technology choice was good in and of itself."- Lisa Dusseault Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishFor insights into where engineering teams are investing their time and resources, how they’re operating and performing, and the way in which leaders are managing today…Download “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE:jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry and gain data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Learn More About Jellyfish Benchmarks @ jellyfish.co/benchmarksSHOW NOTES:Defining aspirational mismatch & its detrimental impact on eng orgs (02:10)What “cargo culting” is & why it’s a decision-making flaw (4:18)How aspirational mismatch manifests in eng orgs (5:48)The importance of tech companies asking the questions “when” & “why” (7:39)Examples of how eng orgs experience aspirational mismatch in their tech choices (9:08)Framework for tying your metrics to your org’s business objectives (12:33)How metrics can inform frontline decisions (14:15)Choose a technology that’s the correct size for your org (16:19)The cost of merging & compounding mismatches (19:28)Lisa’s golden rule regarding “innovation tokens” for tech start-ups (21:07)Why eng orgs need a unified vision to avoid aspirational mismatch in processes (23:52)Using epics to communicate company vision (26:37)Where aspirational mismatches come from & why eng teams experience them (29:10)Recommendations for withstanding aspirational technology pressure (32:11)Additional frameworks for working through mismatches (34:33)How to host conversations around realistically planning for future aspirations (37:02)Rapid fire questions (39:55) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We’re taking a few weeks off to celebrate Patrick’s wedding! We’re going to be mostly unplugged in the mountains… but when we return, we have some fantastic conversations planned with folks like… Lisa Dusseault (CTO @ Compaas), Luther Kitahata (Founder, Executive Leadership Coach & Fractional CTO/VPE @ Integral Response), Vinay HIremath (CTO @ Loom), Maher Saba (Head of Remote Presence and Engineering @ Meta) & more!Email us if you have ideas for episode 100 at [email protected] for ways to get involved? Join the conversation in our virtual home at elc.community! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss how to intentionally select & create new career opportunities, both external and internal! Our guests Ali Irturk (VP of Engineering @ CommerceHub) and Ali Littman (Interim Head of Eng @ Modern Health) share their favorite frameworks around eng leadership plus tips on prioritizing your opportunities, building great relationships, making tough decisions, and identifying your values. They also reveal recommendations on filtering / assessing decisions & their go-to leadership styles!ABOUT ALI LITTMANAli Littman is the Director of Engineering at Modern Health, where she leads product engineering teams that make it possible for people to receive online mental health services the moment they need and at no cost to the individual. Prior to her current role, she served as the Director of Engineering at Omada Health. Outside of her role, she is also a champion for diversity and inclusion, most notably leading a Women's ERG, serving on company-wide belonging councils, and providing imposter syndrome coaching.Ali Littman is a passionate engineering leader specializing in healthcare technology both in traditional and digital healthcare settings. She currently serves as Head of Engineering at Modern Health where she gets to lead engineering teams on the exciting journey of evolving how people access and receive mental health care treatment around the world. Ali enjoys taking startups through their scale phase and has been an engineering leader on hypergrowth journeys at both Omada Health and Modern Health - leading them through organizational, market, and product expansion. Her background in business from Haas at UC Berkeley helps navigate these business challenges with the philosophy of having business strategy inform the engineering strategy.At the end of the day, she cares most about being a great people leader who creates inclusive cultures and teaches managers how to be great managers for their teams. She also goes a step beyond her usual management duties to serve on Belonging Councils, lead ERGs, provides imposter syndrome coaching, and mentor individuals from under-represented groups in tech. Additionally, Ali's led external talks on navigating career growth, imposter syndrome, challenging leadership scenarios, and more!"I view my relationship to people that I work with or people that I manage right now, as actually like a lifelong commitment and I think because of that, I end up with these really strong connections even beyond past opportunities."- Ali Littman ABOUT ALI IRTURKAli's day-to-day passion is creating and being part of efficient and effective engineering organizations that are firing on all cylinders where team members can achieve autonomy, mastery, and purpose in a psychologically safe environment. He will continue to realize this passion by working at CommerceHub as their Vice President of Engineering.He previously worked at rocketship start-ups funded by some of the top VCs in the world including a16z, SoftBank, Microsoft Ventures, and Lightspeed Ventures to name a few. Ali was the Vice President of Engineering at WorkBoard, a strategy and results enterprise SaaS platform helping large organizations align quickly for results, leading product delivery as well as accessibility, application security, release engineering, platform, and infrastructure teams. Previously, he was the Vice President of Engineering at ALICE Technologies working on revolutionizing the construction industry with an artificial intelligence-powered enterprise SaaS product.Ali also created and managed the advanced products group at Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX) for 8 years while working as an adjunct professor at UC San Diego. His team worked on creating innovative industrial vision systems and software to help companies improve their product quality, eliminate production errors, and lower manufacturing costs. Examples of the products he worked on were the world's first vision system on chip and the world's fastest 3D scanning system to name a few.Where Ali is today is quite different from where his journey began. Born and raised in Istanbul, I graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy and served as an officer in the Turkish Navy. After leaving the Navy, he earned Master's degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics at UC Santa Barbara, a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego, and an MBA at UC Berkeley."In a grander scheme, I think people should be always looking for opportunities at all times. There's a famous saying... 'The best time to eat hors d'oeuvres are... they're being passed around. The moment that if you're not ready to eat, now you're gonna miss that!’"- Ali Irturk Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part

We discuss the challenges with leading eng orgs through unpredictable global events (like the covid-19 pandemic) & pivoting product strategy with Bridget Frey (CTO @ Redfin). We also cover the challenges & successes of building out AI/ ML products in your engineering org, creating an “uncertainty” algorithm, incorporating mental health best practices in your teams, and addressing data bias & systemic racism in your product’s features! Featuring guest co-host Ali Littman (Interim Head of Eng @ Modern Health).ABOUT BRIDGET FREYAs Redfin’s Chief Technology Officer, Bridget Frey (@SVBridget) leads the software engineering and analytics teams. Her mission is to build technology that makes the process of buying and selling a home less complicated and less stressful. She is a leader on issues facing traditionally underrepresented people in technology, and 36% of Redfin’s technology team are women while 10% are Black or Latinx. Prior to Redfin, Frey was the director of analytics and business applications at Lithium Technologies. In addition, she has held management positions at IntrinsiQ Research, IMlogic and Plumtree Software. Since 2019, she has served on the board of directors for Premera Blue Cross. Bridget holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She was recently recognized as a Seattle CIO of The Year award winner."One of the things we built was this concept of virtual touring. So you could stay on your couch, but have an agent visit a home, but we could only get a very small number of people to hit that button. Despite all of our trying, we only had 1% of our tours happening virtually and then the pandemic hit and almost overnight, it jumped to about a third of our tours being virtual."- Bridget Frey Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishFor insights into where engineering teams are investing their time and resources, how they’re operating and performing, and the way in which leaders are managing today…Download “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE:jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry and gain data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Learn More About Jellyfish Benchmarks @ jellyfish.co/benchmarksCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:How Bridget lead a real estate tech org through a pandemic & tumultuous housing market (1:05)COVID-19’s impact on the healthcare tech space (2:02)How to adapt product strategy based on customer patterns (5:02)Leading with transparency & decisiveness in uncertain times (7:20)Redfin’s transition to digitizing traditionally in-person experiences (10:58)The pandemic’s unexpected influence on employee mental health & burnout (16:14)How your org can implement a company-wide “no meeting” / wellness week (19:43)Set your org up for faster decision making & implementation (23:52)Challenges & solutions when building out AI/ML home buying products (25:06)Incorporating human needs, desires & perspectives in automated recommendation products (27:40)Engineering best practices for uncovering deeper customer needs (30:06)The inside scoop on modeling an “uncertainty” algorithm (31:12)Prioritization conversations & product strategy at Redfin (34:31)Addressing data bias & systemic racism within product features (36:33)How hiring diversely leads to reduced data bias (39:06)A framework for reducing biased data outputs (40:20)What hiring practices lead to a more diverse team (43:43)How tech orgs can cultivate a culture of inclusivity & diversity (46:08)Rapid fire questions (48:51) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We cover why locked-in cloud commitments are bad for eng teams & how your org can take advantage of elastic pricing models instead! Leon Kuperman (CTO @ Cast.ai) explains the dilemma of locked-in cloud spend, cost planning strategies for SaaS orgs, how to minimize egregious cloud egress cost and drive better cloud utilization through consistent analysis & debates in your eng org. Also learn why Leon is betting on container deployment as the future of software delivery & what that means for Cast.ai!ABOUT LEON KUPERMANFormerly Vice President of Security Products OCI at Oracle, Leon’s professional experience spans across tech companies such as IBM, Truition, and HostedPCI. He founded and served as the CTO of Zenedge (acquired by Oracle). Leon has 20+ years of experience in product management, software design, and development, all the way through to production deployment. He is an authority on cloud computing, web application security, and Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)."So you're literally committing to a three year deal where you know, in those next three years, the probability of computing power increasing is VERY high and the probability of cost decreasing for those same computers is very high. So you're not really getting the 30, 40, 50% discount. So I call these reservations or these look forward commitments a necessary evil because... customers HAVE to do it in many cases. They don't have an alternative. But at the same time, it's not good for the business!”- Leon Kuperman Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishWant to learn where engineering teams are investing their time and resources? Or how they’re operating, performing, and managing today?Check out “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE: jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry, data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Check out Jellyfish Benchmarks at jellyfish.co/benchmarksThis episode is brought to you by our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Why Leon cares about cutting cloud costs (3:05)Economic & financial models for eng leaders (6:56)Cloud economics & its impact on cloud cost (8:18)The dilemma of locked-in cloud commitments (11:35)Why eng companies opt for locked-in cloud services (14:47)How container deployment will impact the current cloud model (16:01)Moving from a locked-in model to an elastic pricing model (19:39)What eng teams need to take advantage of an elastic cloud pricing model (22:07)Cost planning opportunities for SaaS companies (24:57)The best utilization debates for evaluating cloud spend (28:40)Three architectural planning principles to keep in mind (30:26)Drive better cloud utilization through consistent cost analysis & recurring debates (31:59)Defining egress & its cost for eng teams (33:05)Healthy methods for escaping egress costs (35:27)What “cloud-flation” means for eng leaders & cloud macro-economics (38:55)Rapid fire questions (43:06)LINKS AND RESOURCES(article) “Why Your Cloud Expenses Are Rising: Blame Cloud-flation” by Leon Kuperman(article) “Snapchat Earnings and the Case of Runaway Cloud Costs” by Leon Kuperman Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss the dynamics & challenges behind building out your data engineering function with Taylor Murphy (Head of Product & Data @ Meltano). Taylor also shares his recommendations for collaborating in multi-stakeholder environments, the relationship between the data team & engineering, why you should run your data team like a product team, gaining buy-in around the ROI of data, and what it’s like being a company’s first data eng hire. Featuring guest co-host/community member John Wang (Director of Engineering @ Petal)!ABOUT TAYLOR MURPHYTaylor Murphy (@tayloramurphy) is the Head of Product and Data of Meltano, an open-source data platform that enables collaboration, efficiency, and visibility. Taylor has been deeply involved in leading and building data-informed teams his entire career. At Concert Genetics he scaled the Data Operations team to enable the management of hundreds of thousands of genetic tests and millions of claims records. At GitLab, he was the first data hire where he focused on building and scaling the data organization as the company headed towards its IPO. Taylor has been involved with Meltano since its inception, acting as the primary customer with whom the team engaged to understand the needs of modern data professionals."What next? I put this in a dashboard. What are you gonna do with this? I think a lot of people are like, ‘I wanna be more data-informed and I wanna build up a robust data organization.’ And that's where they stop. They think, ‘Okay, I'm gonna get the data, and then I'm gonna make a decision.’ And that's not good enough because there's always gonna be more work to do than you can accomplish. And every time you deliver a dashboard, they're gonna go, ‘Oh, this is great. What if we did this, this, and this?’ And that's fun for data people and you enjoy that, but you kind of wanna help them think through these things.”- Taylor Murphy Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Taylor’s early days at GitLab as its first data eng hire (2:23)How Meltano evolved out of a GitLab business intelligence project (4:21)Using data eng to discover problems & iterate solutions (6:01)Why having data teams under finance can be detrimental to product strategy (7:22)The importance of data eng representation at the VP level (10:01)The ideal time to build your data eng team (12:57)Communicating the ROI of data eng functions (14:53)How to gain stakeholder buy-in (17:04)Prioritizing qualitative data in a solution’s early stages (18:54)Taylor’s recommendations for the early stages of building your data org (20:05)Roadblocks when building data teams – and solutions for success (22:42)The “run your data team like a product team” thesis (25:52)Best practices for applying product team principles to your data eng functions (27:57)The hand-off between data engineering & the broader engineering org (29:08)Navigating company politics from a data eng perspective (33:02)Prioritization conversations between data eng & other stakeholders (36:25)Rapid-Fire Questions (38:31)LINKS AND RESOURCES(blog) “Run Your Data Team Like Product Team” by Emilie Schario & Taylor Murphy(follow) @josh_wills - https://twitter.com/josh_wills Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Building growth & mobile eng teams from the ground up is never easy – but the right frameworks, guardrails, & strategic conversations will set your org up for success! We cover the intersection of growth & mobile engineering with Atish Das Sarma (Head of Growth Engineering @ Patreon ) & Shannon Ma (Director of Engineering, Mobile @ Patreon) discussing how to balance short & long-term growth demands, strategically aligning new features & growth, and what it’s like making the transition into an established company with room for impact!ABOUT ATISH DAS SARMAAtish (@atishdassarma) leads the Growth Engineering team at Patreon. The Growth team at Patreon is responsible for holistically improving the product surface to help creators build and grow their businesses. Specific areas of focus include working across the full funnel to drive member acquisition, member retention, and creator acquisition.Previously, Atish led iCloud subscriptions growth initiatives which is part of the broader Services organization at Apple. In addition to accelerating revenue growth for iCloud, Atish was also responsible for various data and ML initiatives across Cloud Services. He also held roles at Twitter and Google. Atish is passionate about working in areas with a broad opportunity & scope from the early stages, defining long-lasting themes, and building the corresponding teams to execute on them. He particularly enjoys leading organizations that are directly accountable for key business outcomes."For growth, you need to sort of think holistically in Patreon’s world, both from creators’ and potential members’ side and truly understand what is perhaps preventing some creators from getting started. So how do you sort of think about that holistically and then start building solutions that will empower them longer term.”- Atish Das Sarma ABOUT SHANNON MAShannon (@shannonma) is the Director of Engineering for Mobile at Patreon. Shannon and the entire team are diving in to create a world-class mobile experience built to best serve creators, so they can showcase what they do best. He previously supported consumer product teams at Instagram and Facebook for nine years. Prior to this, he got started in mobile at Apple helping build iOS."Our goal as a company is to be the best memberships product for creator. Our hypothesis about how we can get there is by really kind of like coupling content around community. In order for us to do this really well, the community almost has to feel like it's part of the content, like it helps kind of like elevate the content.- Shannon Ma Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Patreon’s major strategic transformation (2:30)The role mobile plays in Patreon’s vision (5:27)Integrating a growth strategy holistically throughout your product (6:11)What it’s like transitioning into an already well-established company (7:48)Defining a framework for an early-growth organization (11:41)Guardrails to balance short-term and long-term growth demands (14:16)Habits & rituals to inspire strategy-focused conversations in your team (18:00)Shannon’s decision-making process – and why the focus is on mobile (19:22)The intersection of growth and mobile engineering (22:07)Why being a “ruthless” prioritizer is key (24:28)Prioritization conversations between mobile and engineering (27:05)A sneak-peek into Patreon’s next big bets (28:32)The implications of new features on growth engineering (32:07)Start with targeting your high-intent users (34:08)Rapid-Fire Questions (35:05) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Greg Czajkowski (SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake) shares some of the secrets he’s learned about great teams! We discuss the power of eliminating hierarchy, “going direct,” reducing energy dissipation in your team, removing friction in your org, and creating “higher innovation per time unit.” Plus dilemmas balancing velocity & quality, what to do when team size is used as proxy for power, and how to know your eng org is operating at peak output!ABOUT GREG CZAJKOWSKIGrzegorz (Greg) Czajkowski, a distributed systems and organizations scaling expert, is Senior Vice President of Engineering and Support at Snowflake. Prior to Snowflake, Greg spent 13 years at Google, where he was VP of Engineering responsible for a broad portfolio of Google Cloud data analytics and machine learning products and for internal services addressing data analytics needs of all of Google’s businesses. Before Google, Greg spent six years at Sun Microsystems, working on Java runtime environments and operating systems. Greg has a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University, an MBA from UC Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from AGH Krakow, Poland. He holds over 50 patents."What I learned at Snowflake is really practicing "Go Direct." If there's something you don't like, you'd like to fix, you have to go to the person who made the decision.Usually you learn much more about the decision. There's a good conversation. Sometimes you convince the owner of the decision to do something different.I think nothing beats going direct, because any other means of trying to change a certain decision, certain point of view indirectly, is ineffective causes, frictions, and ultimately energy gets dissipated.- Greg Czajkowski Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Qualities and characteristics Greg's observed in great teams (2:02)Why Greg joined Snowflake (3:46)“Go direct” and other secrets to great teams (5:27)Balancing "go direct" and the chain of command (7:35)Eliminating hierarchy (9:21)Creating higher innovation per time unit in engineering teams (11:21)How do you know your eng org is operating at peak output? (13:41)Balancing business expectations and removing the dilemma between velocity & quality (15:36)Energy dissipation (18:21)Removing team friction at scale (21:20)How Snowflake’s small team units optimize for intimacy, learning & dev happiness (23:50)How small teams scale up & interact across the eng org (25:56)How to address when team size is used as proxy for power & career progression (28:35)Rapid Fire Questions (30:37) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss why alignment is key to delivering great digital products & team outcomes, how to recognize & navigate misalignment, and create better alignment with Jonathon Hensley (CEO @ EMERGE, Author of "Alignment"). We cover a couple of community case studies exploring dilemmas like navigating misaligned product vision & executive conflict, transforming grand product visions into clear execution, AND shifting toward a customer-centric engineering culture!ABOUT JONATHON HENSLEYJonathon Hensley (@jonathonhensley) is co-founder and CEO of Emerge, a digital product consulting firm that works with companies to improve operational agility and customer experience. For more than two decades, Jonathon has helped startups, Fortune 100 brands, technology leaders, large regional health networks, non-profit organizations, and more, transform their businesses by turning strategy, user needs, and new technologies into valuable digital products and services. Jonathon writes and speaks about his experiences and insights from his career, and regularly hosts in-depth interviews with business leaders and industry insiders. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two boys.Originally from Silicon Valley, Jonathon got into the digital product space inspired by the incredible people developing new technologies all around him and the possibilities they unlocked. This fueled his curiosity to understand how technology transforms the ways in which people live and work.Today that curiosity continues to drive him, as he works to help businesses harness technology. His work focuses on alignment, helping leaders define the value they want to create in a succinct and tangible way; where to focus, why, and what it will take to achieve that outcome. His favorite part is going beyond the idea but reimagining how you bring together people, data, and processes so that a client can succeed."We hear a lot of times about the execution gap - This gap that, you know, we have this idea, or we have this outcome we want to achieve… We start building something and then it doesn't have the outcome we intended.And that execution gap is because no bridge was ever built. You're making a leap of faith that somehow if we do this, that this will happen. And it's not grounded, most often, in its execution and process.And so, without a clear direction how do you know what resources, or people, or process, are even needed to achieve the intended outcome that you're working towards?- (Jonathon Hensley) Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcThis episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Why alignment is the key to deliver great products & outcomes (2:22)What does alignment actually mean? (4:10)How do you recognize when you're misaligned? (7:51)How do you create alignment? (10:48)Navigating misaligned product vision & executive conflict (15:09)Transforming your grand product vision into clear actions (18:58)Making a shift to a more customer-centric engineering culture (23:27)Operationalizing customer empathy within your engineering org (28:05)How to gain clarity on the right intended outcomes (30:32)Measuring alignment (36:04)Rapid Fire QuestionsTakeawaysLINKS AND RESOURCES(Jonathon’s book) Alignment: Overcoming internal sabotage and digital product failure Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss operational & organizational innovation with Zhichun Li (Director of Engineering @ Scale AI)! We explore the early days of Rapid at Scale AI, different organizational design experiments Zhi’s tested, and many of the principles behind their operational practices. You’ll hear about merging engineering & ops, designing orgs for autonomy, scaling into multiple products, and leveraging different org structures for innovation.ABOUT ZHICHUN LIZhichun Li (@zhichun_li) is Director of Engineering @ Scale AI. She built the Rapid team from scratch with a focus on providing the fastest way to production-level quality labels within a day, with no data minimums. As an early employee of the company, she built up the infrastructure for Scale’s supply ops system and scaled up Scale’s 3D Sensor Fusion product.Before Scale, Zhi worked at Lightspeed China Partners, Facebook, Microsoft and Airbnb with roles in investment and software engineering. She was a producer of VC Pulse, a podcast spotlighting venture capitalists in China. Zhichun was the youngest ever admit to the Yale MBA program, and studied computer science at CMU."We tried to basically brand it as like black ops, i.e. the special kind of ops where you get to do 10x work and build a lot of product out of it. And that actually, in a lot of ways attracted very entrepreneurial individuals to want to join. So I think a lot of it is shaping the brand of the program, helping people understand how important it is and the things that I'll learn.- Zhichun Li This episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success. Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:The early days of scale & why engineering runs operations (1:44)What is ops engineering (3:48)Why engineering first got involved in ops (6:29)How to brand ops engineering to attract top engineers (8:51)Merging ops & engineering to eliminate silos (10:07)How to merge ops & engineering for the first time (11:39)How team composition evolved at Rapid (12:46)Designing your org for autonomy & customer empathy (17:07)Rapid’s operating principles (18:53)Generating Rapid’s operating principles (23:18)Painful short-term decisions that yielded better long-term outcomes (24:57)Scale AI’s evolution into multiple products (28:04)Behind the scenes of Scale’s multi-product moment (31:04)Leveraging general managers & org structures to drive product innovation (32:43)When to invest in, or shut down a project (36:21)Rapid Fire Questions (37:47)Takeaways (40:41) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We explore the career journey of Technologist & Technical Advisor William A. Adams. We cover how he identifies his next career challenges, the technical advisor role and how you can build your skills to grow into the role. Plus we get into the “people challenges” of the job, how the “human work” is the secret to unlocking creativity, and why building the social fabric of work matters.ABOUT WILLIAM A. ADAMSWilliam A. Adams (@LeapToTech) is an award-winning D&I innovator, engineering trailblazer, and philanthropist. He was named the first Technical Advisor to Microsoft’s CTO, Kevin Scott.As co-founder of the LEAP apprenticeship program – Microsoft’s D&I Program of the Year in 2020 – he helped launch the training of more than 26 cohorts around the world. His most recent collaboration with the U.S. Virgin Islands aims to train technical talent and build critical technical infrastructure.Early in his 30-year career, William was one of the first Black entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. He developed mission-critical custom enterprise apps for NeXT computers and pioneered an instant messaging service purchased by the CIA.Today, in addition to his role as Technical Advisor at Microsoft, William is the philanthropic founder of The Event, a collaborative, community-based hackathon. When he’s not tinkering with code, the husband and father of three builds cabinets, knits, and rides a motorcycle."The predictive part of it, it's just pattern matching. You have to see it and go, 'What is that going to lead to? Let's play this out. Let's say AMD IS right. And this thing does come to pass. What will that mean?Let's say cloud computing IS going to be the thing... What is THAT going to mean for the (micro)chips? It's gotta be optimized 'power for efficiency.'So whoever can do that best is going to be the winner in that game.”- William A. Adams Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcThis episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcSHOW NOTES:William’s career journey from developer to Technical Advisor to the CTO @ Microsoft (1:55)Identifying your next career challenge & why William conducts a career assessment every 2 years (4:36)What is a Technical Advisor & how do you grow into the role? (9:21)How to gain buy-in and build influencing skills (13:02)Becoming a better synthesizer (15:21)Making long term predictions about technology (21:53)People challenges & solving the human equation (24:02)How to create shared understanding by listing assumptions (28:23)Why the "human work" is the secret to unlocking creativity in remote facilitation (30:42)Building the Microsoft LEAP Apprenticeship Program (33:01)Why creating the social fabric of work matters (42:16)Rapid Fire Questions (44:22)Takeaways (52:15) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Culture is the social contract you have with your team. Self-compassion is the social contract you have with yourself! We explore practices to cultivate compassion with Kevin Eyres (Executive Coach & Former MD LinkedIn Europe). We cover practices to eliminate negative self-talk, self-doubt, and increase compassion in your team. Plus bridging the gap from aspirational culture to reality, and how to identify the top 3 behaviors that help you succeed as a leader.ABOUT KEVIN EYRESAn engineer by background, Kevin Eyres (@kevineyres) spent his early career leading engineering and product development teams for the likes of Compaq, Shopping.com and Alta Vista. Kevin has also been responsible for leading the European divisions of three Silicon Valley companies. He was the General Manager of Alta Vista International spanning 14 countries from 2001. He joined SideStep, now Kayak, as first employee and Managing Director in 2005 and in 2007 was appointed Managing Director for LinkedIn. Starting from his spare bedroom to IPO four years later Kevin lead the global movement at LinkedIn into five countries and the global Irish HQ.Kevin ranked 22nd in Wired Magazine’s "The Wired 100" in 2010, a listing that features the most influential people shaping the UK’s digital landscape.Today, Kevin lives in Los Altos and is now enjoying a plural career as an exec coach/board member/ investor / Hoffman Process Teacher."If you continue with the negative talk, it just reinforces itself. So stop. Acknowledge it, and stop. And the drop is you drop into your breath.And the self-compassion mantra is, 'This is a moment of pain. Everybody feels pain. I'm not alone. And may I be kind and gentle to myself.’- Kevin Eyres Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Kevin’s journey to engineering leadership (1:36)What prepared Kevin to become a general manager (4:45)Kevin’s transition to executive coaching (6:53)Why culture and self-compassion are important themes in Kevin’s career (9:34)How to eliminate negative head talk (12:52)“Stop, drop & roll” to overcome self-doubt (16:24)How to create space from automatic responses of anxiety or shame (19:14)Bridging the gap between aspirational company culture and reality (20:54)How self-compassion and culture are connected (23:25)Increasing self-compassion in your team (24:44)How peer groups increase compassion and bring relief (26:24)Making self-compassion a habit (29:03)How to cultivate the patience to be compassionate (31:02)Identifying the top three behaviors that help you succeed as a leader (33:01)Rapid Fire Questions (35:13)Takeaways (39:10) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you ever find yourself staring at a screen not knowing how to even start an important presentation this episode is for you! Arquay Harris (VP Engineering @ Webflow) underscores the importance of storytelling in public speaking, and shares valuable tips on how to craft a narrative and get your point across in a way that feels natural for you.For Arquay’s slides & original presentation from our 2022 Spring Virtual Summit - check out the full video here: https://bit.ly/3GxMjT3ABOUT ARQUAY HARRISArquay is the VP of Engineering at Webflow. Prior to Webflow, she 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. When not working she can be found cooking, stumbling over guitar and piano chords, or watching Seinfeld."And so if you were using this to give an actual presentation, you might say something like, ‘Imagine a world where deploys only take two seconds? Or what if tests only took 30 seconds to write?’So you're taking this undesirable thing and you're contrasting it with this idealistic future to really bring in that emotionality to get the audience hooked.- Arquay Harris This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:What Arquay starts every presentation with (2:03)Message, tone, and audience (3:17)The hero’s journey (7:17)The mountain story structure (8:42)Nested loops (9:33)Sparklines (11:28)In medias res (13:14)Converging ideas (14:22)False start (15:16)The petal structure (16:27)Focus on the purpose (21:13)LINKS AND RESOURCES(Full video from 2022 Spring Summit) Storytelling & the art of public speaking with Arquay Harris - https://elc.community/public/videos/storytelling-and-the-art-of-public-speaking Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Sri Shivananda (EVP, CTO @ Paypal) and Joel Beasley (host of Modern CTO! podcast and CTO @ Leaderbits) discuss some of the principles and frameworks that have made the greatest impacts on Sri’s career as an engineering leader. They cover Sri’s approach to organizational transformation, a framework for choosing new technologies, areas to look for when you’re building a pipeline of leadership, and recognition and disruption of patterns through self-reflection.ABOUT SRI SHIVANANDASri Shivananda (@srishivananda) serves as PayPal’s Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Sri oversees Technology Platforms & Experiences, leading teams responsible for the company’s secure, reliable and scalable global infrastructure and strategic core platform, the foundation that enables PayPal to deliver innovative services to global consumers and merchants.Sri has played a critical role in helping PayPal remain at the forefront of innovation since joining the company in 2015. Prior to his appointment as EVP and CTO, Sri was Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure, directing his team of technologists to drive massive growth at scale across a disruptive payments platform. Sri was responsible for all core technologies covering PayPal’s data centers, internal private cloud, online and offline data infrastructure, internal developer frameworks and tools, and various platform services.Before PayPal, Sri was with eBay for 12 years, working his way up from a software engineer to Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure. As VP, he was responsible for the company’s technology infrastructure that powered the eBay Inc. businesses, including eBay’s hundreds of millions of listings and PayPal’s millions of daily payments. Sri found his way to eBay via the acquisition of Deja.com.Sri has served on the board of F5 Networks since 2020.He received his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University and holds a Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharal Nehru Technological University."The most important thing here is that the human fabric in any organization, any team, any ecosystem is the most important one. When you align people to an outcome or a purpose, they'll figure out all the techniques that are necessary to do it. Sometimes they'll pull off magic when they are called the action.- Sri Shivananda ABOUT JOEL BEASLEYJoel Beasley (@moderncto_io) is the host of the #1 leadership and technology podcast in the world, Modern CTO. Modern CTO is focused on interviewing high-profile executives in the leadership and technology space with over 150k active listeners. Joel is an MIT-educated CTO of Leaderbits with clients from Startups up to Billion dollar companies. He is also the founder of The Beasley Foundation, a charity that designs STEM-related children’s books that are then donated to orphanages, homeless pregnant women, and children in need.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Changing mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets in times of transformation (2:16)Creating clarity and alignment in eng orgs (5:24)Getting skeptical team members to buy into mindset shifts (7:53)Sri's framework for choosing new technologies (10:33)Why engineering leaders need substance, depth, and hunger (14:40)How PayPal is democratizing financial services (19:43)The curiosity quotient (21:44) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital, Former SVP Engineering @ Google) and Melody Meckfessel (Co-Founder & CEO @ Observable) discuss ways to make your engineering org a strategic advantage to your company. They cover how to leverage feature/system “simplicity,” how to implement product instrumentation, when to bring in SREs, and how to balance tech debt and refactor work.ABOUT BILL COUGHRANBill Coughran (@BillCoughran) works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security."If a leader comes in and talks about, 'I did this and I did that' rather than talking about the teams that they worked with in the past... The reality is the work got done by others.And so, I think it's critical for more senior people to recognize the importance of an overall team. And part of their job is to help mentor and develop people on the team.- Bill Coughran ABOUT MELODY MECKFESSELMelody (@mmeckf) is the CEO / Co-founder of Observable, where she is building the future of data collaboration. She is passionate about helping humans thrive through collaboration, inclusion, and insights. Before Observable, she was a VP of Engineering at Google, leading systems with a team of 1,000+ where she created the DevOps practice for Google Cloud.Melody was responsible for large-scale systems delivering successful outcomes for millions of users. Melody instills passion around data innovation - improving exploration and insights from data. She is an expert in tools and systems for productive teams to thrive, and that's exactly what she is bringing to the future of data collaboration on Observable.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:The challenge of keeping enterprise engineers close to the end user (3:26)Product instrumentation vs product intuition (8:22)Why it’s critical for eng teams to interact with customers as a company scales (11:31)How long should dev teams handle site reliability before bringing in dedicated SRE (12:35)What attributes Bill looks for in eng leaders (18:13)Why a tolerance for failure is key to innovation (22:01)Should early stage companies deal with tech debt? (24:17)The value of mentor-first engineering leaders (31:15) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What does it take to build a tech org from the ground up? Khawaja Shams (Co-Founder & CEO @ Momento) sits down with Anshu Narula (VP Digital Technology @ Rivian) to discuss how Anshu went from larger companies like PayPal and eBay to scaling Rivian’s digital tech org from scratch. They discuss critical cultural values, early guiding principles and processes for the org, Anshu’s approach to scaling the engineering teams, and a starting point if you’re building from 0.ABOUT ANSHU NARULAAt Rivian, Anshu is responsible for the strategic development of Rivian’s digital ecosystem. She leads teams building products and architecting systems across the technology stack, which has her overseeing a wide range of initiatives from rivian.com to charging software, in order to best serve Rivian B2C and B2B customers. With more than 20 years of experience in product development, technical management and software architecture, Anshu is passionate about technology and building products that are simple, scalable and engaging."I started with my leadership team first. Next approach we took, was to go after hiring those engineers underneath them. Because I really needed coders to get through the aggressive growth phase. So those teams then hired all those engineers, once we had the architecture in place.Then we started layering the managers to help. And started calling out the sub-functional areas. And that's when we started to add in the layer of senior managers...- Anshu Narula ABOUT KHAWAJA SHAMSKhawaja (@ksshams) is a technical hands-on leader, passionate about investing in people, setting a bold vision, and execution with his team. At AWS, he owned DynamoDB, a highly available fully managed database service serving at extreme scales! It powers much of Amazon retail, Amazon Video, and control planes of critical AWS Services. Khawaja subsequently owned product and engineering for all 7 of the AWS Media Services, responsible for streaming some of the most visible events in the world, including the Super Bowl and the world’s first Live 4K Stream from Space. He was awarded the prestigious NASA Early Career Medal for his contributions to the Mars Rovers.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company.Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster?Learn more at coderpad.io/elcCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Being the first digital tech hire at Rivian (1:58)Shaping Rivian’s tech org from scratch (4:42)Anshu’s approach to establishing processes (6:00)Adapting the hiring strategy to the pandemic (8:15)Creating culture in a remote-first environment (9:41)How to build an organization from the ground up (11:06)Deciding how to structure the tech org (13:31)Anshu’s strategy for scaling engineering teams (15:17)Identifying the right candidate for something that’s never been done before (17:56)Prioritizing teamwork in the leadership layer of the eng org (19:36)How to assess teamwork as an attribute in candidates (21:01)Balancing pace of innovation with quality (22:33)Advice for any eng leader building an org from scratch (24:15)Ashu’s takeaways from scaling Rivian (24:57) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

To grow your engineering team from 200 to 1,200+ you can expect many phase changes in your org. How might your role change and what can you anticipate? Ryan King (CTO @ Chime) and Clarence Chio (Co-founder & CTO @ Unit21) explore how Ryan’s role has evolved across Chime’s different phases of growth over the last 10 years! You’ll hear how team topologies changed, how they hire senior leaders/VPEs for different phases of the company, how goal setting changes, and other great insights to help you scale your org to the next level!ABOUT RYAN KINGRyan King (@ryanking) is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Chime. Ryan was previously VP of engineering at Plaxo, an early professional social networking pioneer that was acquired by Comcast Interactive Media. Ryan also held senior engineering roles at Liberate Technologies and Microsoft. Ryan earned a BS in computer science & engineering from UCLA, and an MS in computer science from Stanford University."There are a few things that I have come to have strong opinions about... One is, teams should own their own domains, services and data. You got to own full-stack your domain. You want to minimize coordination between teams and dependencies on teams. And then something that gets often overlooked as you scale is... aligning the organization with the architecture. The organization's growing, the architecture is evolving, but you have to consciously align those two things if you want to maintain a highly functioning engineering team as you grow...”- Ryan KingABOUT CLARENCE CHIOClarence Chio (@cchio) is the co-founder and CTO at Unit21, a Google-funded startup in San Francisco building tools to fight fraud, money laundering, and online abuse. He authored the O’Reilly Book “Machine Learning & Security” and is also an adjunct lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, teaching a graduate course on the same topic.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company!Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster? Learn more at coderpad.io/elcSHOW NOTES:Ryan’s story of how Chime first started (2:00)How Ryan’s role as CTO changed over time (4:17)How Chime’s engineering org structure & team topologies evolved (6:37)When should you deviate from your existing team structure? (9:06)When do you know you need to bring in a VP of Engineering? (10:23)How did new VPEs build trust and credibility when first starting? (14:32)How does Chime set goals today? (16:14)How do you measure engineering team and org performance? (19:22)What Chime does different to hire great engineers (23:03)Final advice for engineering leaders running teams who have yet to find product-market fit (27:20) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is a special episode from our new series Engineering Founders - We deconstruct the recently closed pre-seed fundraising experience of our friends Brian Guthrie & Aaron Erickson (co-founders of Orgspace). Brian & Aaron share their experience finding a co-founder and making the decision to leave their engineering leadership positions at big companies. Plus they share great advice on navigating the fundraising experience and dealing with rejection! Check out Engineering Founders - https://bit.ly/3KnIfFILearn more about Orgspace & check out their new beta HERE: http://orgspace.io/elcABOUT BRIAN GUTHRIEBrian Guthrie (@bguthrie) is Co-Founder and CTO at Orgspace. His career spansr 20 years, leading teams at everything from global enterprises to seed-stage startups. Prior to founding Orgspace, he was VPE at Meetup, where he led the organization through their transition out of WeWork. He’s worked in software domains as diverse as agile coaching, music hosting and pizza procurement and is a recognized thought leader in continuous integration and delivery. Brian lives and works in Brooklyn.ABOUT AARON ERICKSONAaron Erickson (@AaronErickson) is Co-Founder and CEO at Orgspace. Before Orgspace, he spent 30 years working in leadership roles, most recently as VP of Engineering at New Relic. Over the course of his entire career, he has been an advocate for building better software. He spent a decade at ThoughtWorks, where he drove digital transformation via application of agile and continuous delivery. Aaron lives and works in San Francisco.Aaron: “I remember one person in particular, saw our slide deck and said, 'Literally, I wouldn't even give you a reference to somebody with this slide deck.’ It was so bad...Tough to hear! Right? You know, very, very tough to hear... But was very, very valuable! I mean, it really honed our message and it was precisely the thing we needed to hear, to actually make our pitch a lot better...”Brian: I actually, I didn't find it that tough to hear. I always presumptively assume that whatever I'm doing is awful so to hear some of the reflected back, I'm like, 'Yes! It is terrible! Tell us more. Give us the worst.'I really, I love that actually.”Aaron: “Hence why I'm always the optimistic one and Brian always dragged me back to reality.”Brian: “He was so wounded by it! I'm like, 'Yeah, it's a terrible deck!'”ABOUT ORGSPACEOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. You can easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.If you want to learn more (or sign up for their JUST launched beta!) check them out at orgspace.io/elcCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company!Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster? Learn more at coderpad.io/elcSHOW NOTES:Closing a Pre-Seed round of funding (3:21)Brian’s decision to leave Meetup (5:53)Aaron’s decision to leave Salesforce (10:09)How to choose a co-founder (13:21)Questions to ask potential co-founders (15:50)How to choose an idea (20:30)Navigating the fundraise (25:27)Filtering the feedback you get on your startup (28:16)How to communicate your idea to investors (32:19)Dealing with rejection (35:37)Product > pitch deck (39:31)How to balance building a business and fundraising (42:23)Rapid Fire Questions (45:19) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to our first ever LIVE recording of the show! This is a special behind-the-scenes preview of the upcoming 2022 ELC Virtual Summit (4/20-4/22)! We cover speaker sessions we’re excited about, why we’re excited for community-led round tables, how they’ll help you harness community & build your support network! Plus we showcase 4x round table discussions covering performance management, courageous leadership, hiring vs. buying, and helping women thrive not just survive in tech!Learn more & register for the 2022 ELC Virtual Summit HERE: www.sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTESWelcome to our first ever LIVE recording of the Engineering Leadership podcast! (1:39)What is the ELC Virtual Summit all about? (4:08)Preview of a few speaker sessions we’re excited about (5:54)Why we’re excited for community-led roundtables & how they’ll help you harness community & build your support network (9:02)What are “round-tables” & why are they valuable to engineering leaders?Introducing roundtable hosts Joy, Andrei, Wen & Keng (plus why they’re most excited about their discussion topic) (12:46)Performance management roundtable preview (18:28)What unexpected feedback have you received from your team during performance reviews? (22:31)Courageous leadership roundtable preview (27:51)If you saw “courageous leadership” what would you want to gain from a roundtable? (34:55)Hire vs. Buy roundtable preview (38:38)Helping women thrive, not just survive in tech - roundtable preview (47:11)Wrap Up! Register for the ELC Summit @ www.sfelc.com/summit2022 (56:52) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Communication between engineering leadership and the CEO is crucial, and not without its challenges. In this special episode Andrew Lau (Co-Founder & CEO @ Jellyfish) and Eli Daniel (Head Of Engineering @ Jellyfish) give us an inside look into their own working relationship and share tips for optimal collaboration between engineering leaders, CEOs and "the business."ABOUT ANDREW LAUAndrew Man-Hon Lau (@amlau) is Co-Founder and CEO of Jellyfish, the leading Engineering Management Platform (EMP) that provides complete visibility into engineering organizations, the work they do, and how they operate.Prior to Jellyfish, Andrew was the Chief Strategy Officer for ad-tech leader Nanigans after his social retail-tech company LoopIt was acquired. He also previously helped create companies at Redstar Ventures. Andrew was VP Engineering and founding technology team member of Endeca Technologies, an enterprise search software company that was acquired by Oracle Technologies for over $1B. He also has experience at companies such as Microsoft and IBM.Andrew holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a certified barbecue judge for the Kansas City Barbecue Society. He hails from Oakland, CA and is still an avid fan of the Oakland Athletics despite living in Red Sox country for over 20 years. He lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife Elsie and two young children Callie and Mira."There's a game of distrust already happening here, or at least his satisfaction.And dissatisfaction could be why is it something else coming out faster? Like I thought this has been done? Or this thing didn't come out good. Or my favorite person isn't working on this thing.The supposition in the set person's head is that something's wrong with the work assignment, patterns slash it's the wrong matching of people to work or they're doing some stuff is wasting time.Use the act of sharing it and their critique on the specific things to try to suss out what their discontent with...- Andrew Lau ABOUT ELI DANIELEli Daniel is Head of Engineering at Jellyfish, where he leads the efforts to develop our software products. He comes to Jellyfish by way of 20+ years in the Boston tech scene, having seen both successful exits and smoldering craters, which have led to a keen interest in what makes successful product development teams go.Eli holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale. He lives with his family and labrador retriever in Somerville, MA, and looks forward to returning to his regular bike-commute to work."I would try hard to head that thing off at the pass and be like, ‘Whoa! whoa! whoa! Like what... Help me understand, what are you trying to do with this information? How can I help you get what you actually want?Because I don't think it's a list of tasks you haven't heard of that the junior person is working on over there.’”- Eli Daniel Check out our friends at Jellyfish.Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Translating engineering to the CEO (2:50)The tension between CEO and Head of Engineering (3:54)1:1’s with the CEO (7:01)The disconnect between CEO and engineering leaders (8:22)How to navigate mistrust from the CEO (12:44)Maintaining clarity with the CEO (17:15)Reporting hiring challenges for engineering (19:50)Hero developers don’t scale (27:02)What level of business insight do engineering leaders need? (36:40)Should engineering teams adopt trending frameworks? (39:10)Managing release expectations (45:11)How engineering leaders can stay in tune with business priorities (53:01)Takeaways (59:18) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Joy Dixon (Sr Manager, Engineering @ Salesforce) walks us through a unique goal-setting framework: Next Level Goals - to help you harness group accountability & accelerate their growth. Joy breaks down the process of getting buy-in from skeptical engineers, the power of peer accountability stand-ups, and why embodying your goals can be more effective than moving towards them.ABOUT JOY DIXONJoy Dixon (@JoyD1x0n) is a people-first, innovative, daring, JEDI Leader with strong technical prowess and deep business acumen. Joy has worked in the tech industry for 20+ years as a people leader, software engineer, technical trainer, and network administrator. Joy holds a Bachelor’s degree in African-American Studies, a Master’s degree in Software Engineering, and several professional certifications in software development and Agile methodologies.In the course of a diverse career, Joy has… Led and grown development teams to deliver engineering excellence in code, collaboration, and commitment all while modeling collective genius and having fun. Designed and developed applications using several programming languages and in various environments. In addition, she has configured and administered networks for global companies. Designed and delivered online and in-person, web, animation, and game development courses. Started a software development training company, Mosaic Presence to expand opportunities, cultivate community, and promote the Mosaic.As a self-described sunflower in a bed of roses, Joy conceives and constructs new paths that inspire innovation and transform cultures. She gives 100%+ to herself, team, and work modeling care, creativity, and excellence. Joy is a courageous communicator whose authenticity and integrity are valued and admired. Along with the above, Joy connects people and ideas in a heartfelt effort to support the success of everyone.Additionally, Joy loves music, animation, women's basketball, the Golden State Warriors, and motorcycles. Joy lives by the following quote from the world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon, Wilma Rudolph: "'I can't' are two words that have never been in my vocabulary. I believe in me more than anything in this world.""Don't tell people 'I like to run.' Tell them 'I'm a runner!'It makes a world of difference! So you are embodying that person or those attributes that you want to have. And then from there, you move forward.Because if you say 'I'm moving towards my goal.' Then you're also saying 'I'm not there yet.' But if you embody the end, ‘I'm already there!’ Right?We know you're not holy already there, but you embody the end and then, act as if! And it makes a world of difference. You make so much more progress.- Joy Dixon Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Team building happens in the in-between moments (2:07)Get the right things done with smaller goals (5:52)Help eng team members make realistic business impacts (8:59)How to implement the Next Level framework with your eng teams (12:07)The magic wand: monthly accountability check-ins (16:42)Leverage peers for accountability, not just managers (18:52)The network effects of group accountability (19:47)Embodying your goals vs. moving towards them (25:01)Getting buy-in from skeptical engineers (29:03)How to measure and track abstract goals (31:46)Apply BRAVING to engineering leadership (34:34)Rapid Fire Questions (37:40)LINKS AND RESOURCES(book) Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins - book Joy referenced talking about “constant and never-ending improvement(book) The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker - book referenced by Patrick discussing facilitation principles(book) Dare to Lead by Brene Brown - book referenced by Joy discussing BRAVING framework applied within her engineering team meetings(book) Linchpin by Seth Godin - what Joy is reading now Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth w/ Samir Naik #77Samir Naik (Head of Engineering, Core Products @ Plaid) shares how Plaid’s engineering org has evolved over the last 10 years & the many unexpected ways his own career has transformed alongside Plaid. Samir deconstructs 3 different growth phases at Plaid, the indicators that your company is ready for the next growth stage, and how to choose an emerging tech city to expand to! Plus critical questions that helped guide Samir’s career within Plaid.ABOUT SAMIR NAIKSamir Naik (@samirnaik) is Head of Engineering for Plaid’s Core Products, overseeing a cross-functional team of product managers, engineers, designers, marketers building and scaling our core APIs. Having worn many hats throughout his years at Plaid, he’s managed teams large and small and as the first external engineering manager hire, he’s been instrumental in building Plaid’s engineering function from the ground up. Previously, Samir led teams at Dropbox, Zynga, and Disney."I made the comment... I was like, 'I don't think a lot of this is really engineering focused, right? It doesn't seem super relevant to the engineering team..."And he kind of just paused and looked at me and was like, 'That is your job! Doesn't matter if it's engineering or not, you need to fix these problems.'And I think it was a mindset shift for me, and it was really helpful feedback. But I think it kind of framed that there's a bunch of seams in an organization. Doesn't matter whether they're engineering or not, but I really need to look for those seams and those opportunities and make sure they're addressed, whether that's in my job description or not.- Samir Naik Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcThe ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:What was Plaid like in 2017? (2:56)Approaching Eng Mgmt as a business within a business (6:47)The three growth phases of Plaid (7:55)Deciding the sequence of scaling for an engineering organization (13:10)Relying on Eng Managers for project management (14:56)How to attract Sr Engineers during hyper-growth (16:55)Maturing from a single product to multiple business units (18:35)Org maturity as a lagging indicator of success (20:08)Indicators that your company is ready for growth stage 2 (21:10)How scaling turned Samir’s role into a more business-focused function (24:04)How to choose an emerging tech city to expand to (27:32)The need for “2nd communities” in remote organizations (31:58)Indicators that your company is ready for growth stage 3 (34:48)How long should you delay growth stage 3? (38:29)Evolving company culture as the organization scales (40:10)Handing off easy tasks that can be growth opportunities for others (43:40)Rapid Fire Questions (46:23)Takeaways (50:00) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Hypergrowth, Scaling & Org Design w/ Surabhi Gupta #76Discerning what to prioritize is key to success for any organization, and even more critical during hypergrowth. Surabhi Gupta (Head of Engineering @ Robinhood) shares how she identified current and future priorities as their eng org scaled from 300 to 1,000+ engineers. Plus her approach to org design, how to set up new hires for success during hypergrowth, and a framework for predicting future personnel requirements.ABOUT SURABHI GUPTASurabhi Gupta is the VP of Product Engineering at Robinhood, where she oversees the company's growing engineering organization. Prior to Robinhood, Surabhi spent seven years at Airbnb where she was Head of Engineering for Airbnb's Homes business. During her tenure at Airbnb, she led a variety of teams such as Search, Growth, Guest and Host. Before Airbnb, she was a Software Engineer at Google, where she worked on web search ranking, and the Google Now team on predictive search. Surabhi holds a M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford."These are not insurmountable problems. So when you make that case to other leaders, especially outside of engineering, I think it's important that...‘Hey, we're not going for this ideal world of no technical debt. It's just that here's the impact of not focusing on it. The impact of not focusing on this technical debt is that we are going to see outages and there will be this false sense of progress because every time the engineers try to focus on some product work, they're going to have to go on this outage and solve that.’I think the best way to put it really is you are treading water at that point.”- Surabhi Gupta Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elc The ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:Joining Robinhood in the pandemic (2:23)How new leaders can eliminate bottlenecks (6:59)How to amend decisions previously made by Executive Team Members (8:58)Robinhood’s growth from 300 engineers to 1,000 (11:49)The 3 aspects of scaling (12:46)Why process makes people happy (14:45)The effects of scaling on team structure (17:33)How to approach org design (19:23)Why flatter org structures are better for hypergrowth (21:36)How to perform org alignment check-ups (24:37)Forming the executive engineering team (25:55)A framework for predicting future personnel requirements (29:26)How to set up new hires for success during hypergrowth (32:42)Successfully onboarding senior leaders during hypergrowth (34:25)Cultivating a sense of belonging in the present “future of work” (36:03)Finding the right engineering teams for new hires (39:18)Rapid Fire Questions (41:07)Takeaways (45:47) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In today’s hiring environment, it’s unreasonable to expect someone to stay on your team forever. So how do you prioritize both the success of your team/company AND support the career growth of folks on your team? Tara Ellis (Engineering Leader, Animation Content Engineering @ Netflix) shares her approach to career growth & why she encourages her team to outgrow their roles! Plus, how to help someone understand if management is the right next step and how other leaders can begin facilitating a growth mentality in their organizations.ABOUT TARA ELLISTara Ellis (@maverick_mind) is an avid tinkerer and has been since the early days of the world wide web. As a critical and creative thinker, she is a relentless problem-solver skilled in applying analysis, technical knowledge, and strong interpersonal skills in her leadership style. Tara is a strong believer in “Peopleware” and because of that has a keen understanding of building and leading teams that deliver.As a leader at Netflix, Tara has led diverse engineering teams including continuously improving the Payments and Non-Member Experience to bring in new Netflix members globally. Currently, she leads teams in Animation Studio and Production Engineering in building products that power the Netflix Animation Studio ecosystem. Prior to joining Netflix, she led engineering teams at Disney Parks; if you’ve been to Disneyland or Disneyworld in the last decade, you’ve interacted with some of her teams’ software. She honed her engineering skills in the fast-paced, ever-changing environment at Amazon, learning lessons she still uses today.Outside of work, Tara loves to spend time with her family, cooking and traveling. She is a passionate collector and player of board games and a music aficionado.“When someone joins my team, I try to spend a fair bit of time with the expectation that you are not going to be here forever. I hope you are here as long as I can keep you. As long as our journeys kind of go together.But at some point, whether that be a year, three years, five years... you're going to outgrow this. That's just the nature of work. And so I like to be really upfront about that. And then I also like to prepare for that!”- Tara Ellis The ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:Why should you help engineers outgrow their positions? (1:46)How to discuss career growth with your team members ( 4:15)Be a multiplier for the people you’re leading (5:53)A framework for managers to facilitate growth (9:02)Supporting skills acquisition for engineering contributors (12:44)Helping someone understand whether they should be manager (16:12)How to help first-time managers make less mistakes (25:09)Communicating with compassionate directness (28:52)Netflix’s pivot to growing people internally (32:45)How managers can begin facilitating a growth mentality for their teams (42:41)Rapid Fire Questions (45:21)Takeaways (51:35)LINKS AND RESOURCES(article) “When your manager isn’t supporting you, build a Voltron” by Lara Hogan(video) “How I learned to stop worrying, and grow high performing teams” by Tara Ellis(book rec) “Repairman Jack” by F. Paul Wilson, Nina Abbott Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Conflict is a necessary part of the job. So how can you transform conflict to be collaborative, not competitive? Jordan Adler (Head of Dev Eng @ OneSignal) previews his conflict optimization workshop taking place at our 2022 Spring Virtual Summit! Jordan shares some of the main sources of conflict in eng teams, how to uncover underlying needs, shift people from entrenched positions & other frameworks to create an optimal environment for healthy conflict.ABOUT JORDAN ADLERJordan M. Adler (@jordanmadler) is the Head of Developer Engineering at OneSignal, where he drives the cutting edge of cross-platform customer engagement messaging APIs & SDKs. Previously, Jordan evolved Engineering Productivity at Cruise, led API Platform engineering at Pinterest, and was a Strategic Partner Engineer and Developer Advocate at Google, where he managed technical partnerships between major organizations and Google.“Looking at the conflict in particular, how do we switch from 'positions' to 'interests?'Right. So how do we take away from... ‘Hey, this is what I want, this is what you want.’To... ‘This is the reason that I have a particular want. And this is the reason that you have a particular want. And if we have clarity together, collectively on what those interests are, then we can collaboratively work towards a solution.’"- Jordan Adler The ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022 SHOW NOTES:Conflict optimization vs. conflict resolution (2:33)Engineering leaders need to embrace conflict (4:34)Conflict is necessary for collaboration (5:52)What creates conflict in engineering teams? (8:32)A real example of conflict optimization (10:31)How conflict optimization leads to better decisions (13:21)Using conflict as constraints to produce better solutions (15:24)How to optimize a conflict (17:38)Switching from "positions" to "interests" (20:26)Uncovering the underlying emotional needs in a conflict (23:24)How to use words that convey curiosity and not emotional violence (25:58)Why video calls are key to conflict resolution in remote work (28:55)How to practice conflict optimization - a preview of Jordan’s workshop during ELC’s Spring Summit 2022 (35:27)Ways to avoid conflict in the first place (37:15)Rapid Fire Questions (38:49)Takeaways (42:24)LINKS AND RESOURCESJordan’s website: https://jmadler.dev/(book) Conscious Business by Fred Kofman - Jerry’s favorite book(link) David Anderson Hooker - conflict transformation source Jordan referenced(link) Diana Francis - conflict transformation source Jordan referenced(link) Non-violent communication & Dr. Marshall Roseberg Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Belonging and business results are not opposing priorities! Lucius DiPhillips (CIO @ AirBnB) shares how every team member's sense of belonging is the first principle that paves the way for all other business goals. You’ll hear how Airbnb designed programs & policies to enhance belonging, support critical employee challenges, and create industry-leading retention during the height of the covid-19 pandemic & ‘great resignation’ABOUT LUCIUS DIPHILLIPSLucius DiPhillips is the Chief Information Officer (CIO) at Airbnb, where he shares the company mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. He has over 20 years of experience that spans Product Development, Information Technology, Customer Service, Financial Services, Payments, eCommerce, and Trust & Safety.Prior to joining Airbnb, Lucius held multiple Technology & Operations leadership roles at eBay, PayPal, Bank of America, and General Electric. He is originally from upstate New York where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Management Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Management Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and serves as the executive sponsor for several diversity and belonging groups and initiatives across the company. Through his sponsorship, Lucius has been instrumental in helping to improve the ways in which Airbnb attracts and retains diverse technical talent.Lucius has 2 children, a lovely wife, and a new puppy in the family! He is based in Silicon Valley, but also enjoys spending as much time as he can in the Tahoe area."And that's what the survey told us... People are missing that sense of community, people are missing flexibility, people are missing warmth and acknowledgment... That was really it!Ask people, 'what do they need?' And then deliver what they need.And it's really about being in tune and listening and learning and then delivering on what those things are gonna look like for the people."- Lucius DiPhillips The ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:Why engineering leaders need to create a sense of belonging (2:34)How (and why) Airbnb measures belonging (4:16)Re-inventing the coffee-chat, coordinated no-meeting-days, and other wellness practices that work (7:31)Creating a culture of idea sharing and support for employee-led initiatives (11:17)The impact of implementing the Native Genius framework for all 500 of Airbnb’s team members (12:43)Using a framework for career conversations as a belonging and engagement strategy (15:45)Lucius’ template for career conversations (17:29)Achieving some of the lowest turnover rates, in a company with some of the lowest turnover rates in the industry… during the great resignation! (25:04)Lucius’ mentoring story on the impact of career conversations on burnout & retention (25:45)You CAN balance career development conversations with business goals (28:54)How to be a “multiplier” and facilitate the best work from your team members (33:09)Effective retention strategies during the “Great Resignation”(37:21)How leaders can use an Airbnb “host” mindset to tune into their people's needs (44:50)Investing in the tools for the future of work (48:51)Rapid-fire questions (56:44)Takeaways (1:03:08)LINKS AND RESOURCES(tool) Topia.io - AR/VR virtual meetup & community tool Lucius experimented with his team(book) “Multipliers” by Liz Wiseman(coaching/workshop) "Native Genius" - workshop & consulting to activate innate intelligence with Kristen Wheeler (resource) Native Genius - workbook from Liz Wiseman to understand your team’s Native Genius Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

M&As can be a major disruption for engineering orgs… so how can eng leaders strategically approach deal structuring in a way that benefits instead of distracts? Melody Hildebrandt (EVP Eng / CISO @ Fox Corporation & COO @ Blockchain Creative Labs) shares her experience representing the tech org during the biggest deal in entertainment history, what she learned negotiating on behalf of the tech org, and how they were able to use the event to accelerate innovation and productivity.ABOUT MELODY HILDEBRANDTMelody Hildebrandt (@mhil) is the Chief Information Security Officer at FOX and Chief Operating Officer of its subsidiary Blockchain Creative Labs (BCL). She is responsible for the cyber security posture of the entire business, spanning Fox Sports, Fox News, and Fox Entertainment. She also leads technology Merger & Acquisition efforts, identifying areas for investment of the company, leading to her current operating leadership role of FOX’s expansion into NFT and other blockchain technologies through the $100m creative fund of BCL.Previously, she ran product and engineering for all digital experiences across web, mobile, and living room applications within the FOX brands, notably leading the platform architecture to stream Super Bowl 2020, which broke all previous national video concurrency records while also setting a new quality bar with 4K/HDR. She is the Executive Sponsor of FOX Women in Technology and on the FOX Technology Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council.She previously was the 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. She moved into a larger role at FOX following the announcement of the spin-off of many assets to Disney.Before joining 21CF, she was an executive vice president of Palantir Technologies. An early employee of the company, she helped start Palantir’s Commercial work, opened its New York Office, and led Palantir’s sales, product and field execution in cyber security, anti-money laundering, and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted to US and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton where she designed military and strategy wargames."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 SHOW NOTES:Background on the Fox Disney “mega-deal” (3:14)How to structure an M&A to accelerate your tech roadmap (5:45)Motivating engineering teams with forcing functions (10:07)What it was like representing a tech org in deal structuring (13:22)How to develop an engineering org’s merger strategy (18:00)M&A negotiation tips for engineering leaders (20:41)A critical skill for eng leaders: converting tech pains into business goals (23:45)How to get executive buy-in on engineering initiatives (29:01)“Crashing” your way to a seat at the table (32:18)Melody’s process for setting the strategic direction of an engineering org (33:37)Managing engineering teams from high and low — the middle is death (36:02)Why this M&A event continues to accelerate innovation (39:10)Rapid-Fire Questions (44:18)Takeaways (49:10)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 Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

The quest to “find flow” as an eng leader can be elusive! Rob Zuber (CTO @ CircleCI) shares about his personal quest to find flow, refining/refocusing responsibilities as CTO, and why he brought on an SVPE to support. Plus some of the personal discovery frameworks & executive-level delegation practices that may aid your own quest to find flow as an engineering leader.ABOUT ROB ZUBERRob Zuber is a 20-year veteran of software startups; a three-time founder, and five-time CTO. Since joining CircleCI, Rob has seen the company through its Series F funding and delivered on product innovation at scale while leading a team of 150+ engineers distributed worldwide.Before CircleCI, Rob was the CTO and Co-founder of Distiller, Continuous Integration and Deployment platform for mobile applications acquired by CircleCI in 2014. Before that, he cofounded Copious an online social marketplace. Rob was the CTO and Co-founder of Yoohoot, a technology company that enabled local businesses to connect with nearby consumers acquired by Appconomy in 2011.Rob holds a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, and lives in Oakland, California with his wife and two children."When you start a company or you end up leading a very small company, the decision about how many people you end up managing is external forces on the company. The company just grows and your team grows to support it. And no one is saying, ‘Hey, it looks like you're ready for this...’And so I think so often what you see is early leaders end up exiting because that transition happens faster than they were prepared for. To me, that's a really fascinating dynamic because a lot of people coming into organizations are both opting in and getting selected in for the stage of the organization that you have...”- Rob Zuber SHOW NOTESRob’s reflections on recapturing the “first-time coding” experience (3:08)On finding flow as an engineering leader (6:48)How Rob thinks about his role as CTO & why he brought on an SVPE to support (10:48)The “One Thing” moment & finding flow leading engineering teams (15:21)How do you intentionally protect maker-time (20:14)Balancing challenge & support to create flow (24:21)Frameworks for personal discovery or delegating executive responsibilities (29:35)On introducing resets & retro-ing your org (34:41)Rapid-Fire Questions (38:37)Takeaways (43:28)LINKS AND RESOURCES“The One Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results” by Gary Keller (book)First Team concept (definition)How CircleCI modeled it’s security training after DEF CON’s capture the flag (article) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This is the first episode of our new series “Engineering Founders” featuring software pioneer Anna Patterson (Founder & Managing Partner @ Gradient Ventures) who shares with us emerging trends & opportunities in AI/ML! We cover how to spot emerging trends, typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make, how product-market fit/scaling is different vs. traditional software companies AND how to test and validate ideas in the early stages. Plus long-time listener Theo Gervet (ML Lead @ Relyance AI) joins us as a guest co-host!ABOUT ANNA PATTERSONAnna is the Founder & Managing Partner at Gradient Ventures, overseeing the fund’s global activities.Anna is an accomplished leader in the field of artificial intelligence, a serial entrepreneur, with a long history at Google. Prior to starting Gradient Ventures, Anna was Google’s Vice President of Engineering in AI - integrating AI into products across Google. She also serves on the Board of Directors at Square, Inc.Early in her career at Google, she helped launch and scale Android to over a billion phones, launched Google Play, and led the search, infrastructure, and recommendations horizontals. Anna was the principal architect and inventor of TeraGoogle, Google’s search serving system, which increased the index size over 10X at the time of launch. She also helped lead search ranking efforts through Google’s IPO to determine the top ten search results.Anna co-founded Cuil, a clustering-based search engine, and wrote Recall.archive.org, the first keyword-based search engine and the largest index of the Internet Archive corpus. She wrote “Why writing your own search engine is hard” in the ACM Queue detailing this experience. Prior to that, Anna co-founded and co-authored a search engine Xift.Recognized for her technical contributions as well as her commitment to championing women in tech, Anna was awarded the Technical Leadership ABIE Award in 2016. Anna received her PhD in Computer Science from the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana. Then she became a Research Scientist at Stanford University in Artificial Intelligence, where she worked with Carolyn Talcott and one of the founders of AI, John McCarthy. For her undergrad, she double-majored in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Washington University in St Louis.Anna resides in the Bay Area, where she wrangles her 4 kids, 2 horses and her Irish husband."When you set out your plan, you can't miss all of your sales targets and make all of your hiring targets." Those kinds of things have to be inline.What people do is they just say, "Here's my plan. I'm going to march towards the plan. And it was super optimistic on the sales front and on the revenue front. And then maybe more realistic and achievable on the hiring front. And so they still kind of march ahead with the plan.I think that you need to constantly reevaluate where you are and on what direction you're going in and whether the growth is appropriate or even the plan was appropriate..."- Anna Patterson Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcAre you an eng leader interested in taking the leap to start your own company? Check out our brand new podcast series, Engineering Founders - Where we explore the transition from eng leader to founder!Subscribe on your preferred podcast platform HERE!SHOW NOTES:Anna’s background scaling complex systems (4:00)Emerging trends and opportunities in AI/ML (9:19)The biggest fallacy in AI/ML right now (15:03)The pendulum swing between model-first and data-first (16:14)What’s after deep learning? (18:14)Machine learning and source code (20:06)What will be the most valuable companies with ML as the core value proposition? (25:04)How to spot emerging trends in the AI/ML space (27:43)Typical mistakes AI/ML companies & founders make (31:16)How product-market fit is different for AI/ML companies (34:30)Differences in scaling between trad-software and AI/ML (35:20)How to test and validate ideas in the early-stages of an AI/ML company (37:49)Rapid-Fire Questions (39:38)LINKS AND RESOURCESGradient Ventures (Website)Streamlit.io (Website) - collaborative Python-based app-sharing platformBuilding Your AI A-Team (Link) - Anna and Adrien Treuille’s talk from the ELC 2020 Summit discussing how managing an AI team is different from traditional engineering teams & how to think about the collaboration between AI and engineering when scaling Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

What lessons can you learn from the strange and unfamiliar world of the sales team? Maulie Dass (Global Lead @ Cisco Innovation Labs) has experienced both worlds and joins to share what she’s learned! We cover questions to help you get to the root issues of your customer, design thinking strategies to generate customer empathy in your teams, how to balance product vision vs. feature requests from sales & more!ABOUT MAULIE DASSMaulie Dass (@mauliedass) is the Global Lead for Cisco's Innovation Labs, which works closely with local industries to create new technology solutions that solve common pain points and positively impact business, society, and the planet. She has been in the industry for over 20 years in a variety of tech, strategic, and customer-facing leadership roles. Maulie is passionate about her customers, innovation, technology, inclusivity, and cheese pizza."Even if a customer is very clear on a solution that they want... "I need an AI ML solution that does X, Y, Z." The question that I use often is "Tell me more about that? Like, what is instigating this need?" Think of the next question that'll kind of get you closer and closer to the source, or the root of the issue."- Maulie Dass SHOW NOTES:Maulie shares the “expensive lessons” she learned while designing her first microchip (2:00)How learning and curiosity guided Maulie’s career across engineering, sales, and innovation (6:19)What engineering leaders can learn from sales (11:07)“Seek to understand first” & questions Maulie uses to empathize (17:30)When should leaders stop asking questions? (21:57)How to use the design thinking tool “A Day in the Life” to cultivate customer empathy and communicate between engineering and product (23:05)How to navigate your product vision versus feature requests from sales (28:45)How to manage and sustain your personal energy long-term (32:40)The impact of changing your communication style & having cultural awareness (36:03)Rapid-Fire Questions (39:17)Takeaways (42:19)LINKS AND RESOURCESGet-Woke on Github - A tool to detect non-inclusive language in your source-codeMismatch: How Inclusion Shapes Design (Amazon) - Maulie’s book of choice for avoiding accidental exclusion in the world around us Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Lewis Tuff (VP of Engineering @ Blockchain.com) joins us to share his experience on building a career in the cryptocurrency space! We cover his transition from traditional finance/tech to crypto, how to shift your mindset from centralized to decentralized, qualities that lead to success, tactics to help you gain exposure and experience, AND why it’s not too late to start your career in crypto! ABOUT LEWIS TUFFLewis (@tuffleuk) is the Vice President of Engineering at Blockchain.com where he is responsible for the technology underpinning Blockchain.com’s services. As the 2nd engineering hire at Revolut, he scaled the team to 50+ and spearheaded the initiative to bring cryptocurrencies to Revolut. He built the first of its kind crypto offering within a challenger bank over the course of a couple of months and was responsible for bringing $300M+ trading revenue in due course. In March 2018 Lewis joined Blockchain.com as an engineering lead to be part of one of the most important companies in crypto infrastructure, rising to the Head of Platform Engineering as the company and industry grew. That same year he was included on Business Insider’s “35 under 35” in fintech. Lewis began his career building trading and risk technology systems at Goldman Sachs and UBS. He lives in London.SHOW NOTES:Patrick’s FOMO after learning his dad owned Doge-coin… (2:03)How Lewis went from traditional finance to a career in blockchain/crypto (3:35)One question to help you gain career perspective as an engineering leader (9:36)The principles behind blockchain technology that led Lewis to “go all in” (10:34)Are blockchain engineering challenges harder to solve? (13:03)Unprecedented (but not unsolvable) problems in blockchain (14:56)Staying lean & focused while balancing team size & scope (19:47)Making the transition from "centralized" to "decentralized" thinking (24:07)How to use Github to source great engineering candidates (28:07)Do engineering leaders need to be domain experts to manage teams in blockchain/crypto? (30:15)How engineering leadership is similar in blockchain companies & crypto’s ethos of “paying it forward” (33:29)Why it’s not too late to start a career in blockchain/crypto (36:14)How blockchain leverages the power of community (38:44)The first thing you should do to explore a career in blockchain: Try out the products & technology! (45:25)Where are the hottest markets/locations for cryptocurrency right now? (46:46)Rapid-Fire Questions (47:41)Takeaways (50:20)LINKS AND RESOURCESCryptocurrency on Github - Repositories, packages, and more for the budding engineers who want to get their feet wet.Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Jeremy King (SVP of Engineering @ Pinterest) discusses some of the challenges, principles & frameworks behind building inclusive products. We also cover filtering decisions through your company mission, investing in rest and emerging challenges around creating serendipity with ideas, onboarding, retaining talent and the hard logistics of workplace flexibility.ABOUT JEREMY KINGJeremy King is Senior Vice President of Engineering at Pinterest, where he leads the company’s technical direction and oversees the entire Engineering team building deeply technical products, platforms and machine learning systems. Previously, he was the CTO of Walmart, where he led the digital transformation effort of the company including customer technology, merchant technology and supply chain technology that covered all Walmart U.S. stores and eCommerce. Prior to that, King was Executive Vice President of technology at LiveOps, and Vice President of engineering and software development at eBay. He holds a bachelor’s degree in information technology from San Jose State University, and is an advisory board member for the CTO Forum, an organization that brings together senior leaders across the technology industry to collaborate on key issues and accelerate innovation across organizations.SHOW NOTES:Building inclusive products starts by having diverse data setsWhy your data is probably biased alreadyWhere to start with building inclusive productsThree principles to build inclusive productsHow Pinterest disrupts entrenched patterns of thinking & balances innovation and actionHow to decide which experiments to implementWhy ROI should not be the only metric of effectivenessHow to filter decisions through your company’s missionHow AR aligns with Pinterest’s mission & allows “Pinners” to explore & experiment with different identitiesCovid’s impact on retaining talentHow “investing in rest” & cultivating work-life balance can increase productivityHow to schedule a day off for your entire engineering orgUpcoming Industry Challenges: building in serendipity, onboarding in a remote-first workplace & the logistics of workplace flexibilityRapid-Fire QuestionsTakeawaysLINKS AND RESOURCESInclusive Search and Recommendations - Nadia Fawaz’s talk on How Inclusive Search, & AI works at PinterestCheck out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

This conversation is about BURNOUT! You’ll hear holistic perspectives to help you identify the causes, conditions, & early indicators of burnout. Plus organizational & individual practices to address & become resilient to burnout with Sabry Tozin (VPE @ LinkedIn), Lori Allen (VP HR @ LinkedIn), & Erica Lockheimer (VPE, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, LinkedIn Learning & Glint @ LinkedIn).About Erica LockheimerErica Lockheimer is VP of Engineering, Talent Solutions, Learning, and Glint @ LinkedIn. During her more than 10 years at the company, she built the Growth Engineering team into a high-performing 120-person team, focused on increasing membership, and deepening member engagement. In January 2018, she was promoted to Head of Engineering for the LinkedIn Learning team, formerly known as Lynda.com. She is also responsible for LinkedIn’s Women In Tech (WIT) initiative, which is focused on empowering women in technical roles at the company. Prior to LinkedIn, she worked at Good Technology as Director of Server Engineering to securely manage and synchronize e-mail and calendar data between Exchange and mobile devices. Erica loves the challenge of starting with something nascent and carving out the right strategy, hiring the best people, and plotting a course to drive results. In 2014 and 2015, Erica was recognized as one of the top 22 women engineers in the world by Business Insider.About Sabry TozinSabry Tozin is the Vice President of Enterprise Productivity Engineering at LinkedIn. In this capacity, Sabry leads the organization that powers the productivity of LinkedIn employees through innovative, scalable, and secure information technology solutions. Before joining LinkedIn, Sabry held engineering leadership roles at Netflix and IGN Entertainment. He’s a seasoned technology leader with over 20 years of experience in Silicon Valley.About Lori AllenLori is a Speaker and Coach and serves as VP of Human Resources, Engineering for LinkedIn. LinkedIn’s Mission is to create economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce which aligns to Lori’s personal goal of helping others reach their full potential. She has spent the last 20+ years as an HR Leader responsible for designing talent strategies and partnering with Executives to drive business results. Lori is passionate about Diversity Inclusion and belonging and was named in the 2018 list of women worth watching in the Profiles in Diversity Journal.Originally from Wichita, Kansas, she graduated from the University of Kansas with a BA and later received a master’s degree from Webster University. Lori has resided in the Bay area for the past 20+ years and has had the privilege of workingShownotesBurnout in Q1-2021 & what caused LinkedIn to take a company-wide week off (3:31)Are patterns of burnout repeating with the new covid variant? (7:59)What are the causes, conditions, & indicators of burnout in engineering orgs? (12:19)How to detect & identify the early signs of burnout in your engineering team (19:14)Favorite non-invasive "how are you doing" questions to get better signal from your engineering team (23:47)How to build resilience against burnout by leveraging Lencioni’s “First Team Concept” (31:01)Conversation framework for internal mobility (36:44)Erica, Lori & Sabry’s personal practices to prevent burnout (40:29)What do you admire most about working with each other? (42:31)Takeaways (44:59)Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com! Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.