Episodes
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Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo joins us for a conversation on unleashing potential in your employees! We discuss practices that have helped Duolingo create a meaningful path for hiring & developing engineers through their onboarding & internship programs. We also cover topics including scaling your eng org, upskilling recent grads / new hires, balancing meaningful work with measurable impact, communicating alignment within your org, formal & informal steps for building eng leadership capabilities, and essential skills for managers of all types.
ABOUT NATALIE GLANCENatalie is a lifelong learner and seasoned leader with extensive experience at startups and established companies. She’s currently the Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo.
At Duolingo, Natalie ensures engineers can help set product direction and strategy. She’s championed a culture of extensive A/B testing, and is excited about the ways generative AI can both build new features and accelerate content creation for these features. She oversees many of the efforts dedicated to scaling Duolingo’s technology to new subjects, like Math and Music.
Natalie is passionate about mentorship and education. She co-founded the Int’l AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), which offers an annual Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award for a promising young independent researcher in the field of computational social science in the early stage of their career.
SHOW NOTES:Natalie’s eng leadership background & journey scaling Duolingo (2:41)Duolingo’s approach to eng leadership & passion for unleashing potential (5:42)Implementing a mentoring program to improve eng development / retention (6:42)How the mentoring process changes as an org scales (8:51)Duolingo’s onboarding process & tips for building an onboarding program (10:12)Ways Duolingo has crafted a successful internship program (12:43)Frameworks for intern hosts to collect meaningful projects for interns (15:38)Behind the Thrive intern program (HootCamp) for rising juniors (17:44)How Duolingo’s guiding principles drive Duolingo University (21:08)Strategies for upskilling new grads into strong technical contributors (22:13)Best practices for unlocking potential & contributing to people’s growth (25:40)Natalie’s approach to balancing meaningful work with measurable impact (26:44)Practices for creating alignment within your org (28:30)Duolingo’s thought process for role training & growing leaders (30:44)Breaking down the formal & informal steps for building leaders within the org (32:41)Essential skills for role managers to develop (34:22)Addressing challenges faced by managers of managers (36:47)Rapid fire questions (38:24)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership - Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy.”This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, we explore building an AI-first company and engineering org with Rong Yan (CTO @ HeyGen)! We dive into the potential of HeyGen’s interactive avatars, imagining how they can help engineering leaders scale their impact, foster team alignment, coach effectively, and accelerate decision-making. Rong shares insights on the structure of an AI-first company and optimizing for AI teams with engineering capabilities. Plus what it means to “lead with speed” and balance product quality and velocity in an AI-first company and key leadership principles, like why it’s crucial to invest in your top performers and how to act as a productivity multiplier.
ABOUT RONG YANRong Yan is HeyGen’s Chief Technology Officer. He brings the company's technological mission of making visual storytelling accessible to everyone, to life. Rong has nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience from companies including IBM, Facebook, Square, Snap, and HubSpot.
Most recently, Rong was the VP of Engineering at Hubspot where he led the Data Intelligence and Automation product line and spearheaded the development of an intelligent CRM platform using data and AI. He was also the Director of Engineering turned Senior Director of Engineering at Snap, where he led a product engineering team of over 250 engineers across six locations, responsible for developing, optimizing, and maintaining core Snapchat features, including Camera, Messaging, Stories, Discover, Memories, and Identity.
He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Tsinghua University and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.
SHOW NOTES:Introducing HeyGen’s interactive avatar & what this means for eng leaders (3:40)How a visual layer for AI agents could scale your leadership & build alignment in your teams and orgs (5:58)The different levels of communication flow within a company (8:17)How interactive avatars can enable interactions and coaching at scale (10:46)The possibilities of interactive avatars for personalized coaching, habit building, and behavior change (14:02)Insights on building an AI-first company (20:29)What the structure of an AI-first company looks like (22:05)How leading with speed works within an AI-first company (24:10)Navigating the balance between product velocity & quality (27:23)The impact of the “leading with speed” paradigm on hiring (30:34)The role of an engineering leaders is to be a productivity multiplier (32:40)How AI impacts productivity as an eng leader (34:43)Where to start when it comes to improving productivity (36:38)AI’s role in blurring the lines between IC & management (39:48)Spend more time on your top people (42:45)Rapid fire questions (44:21)LINKS AND RESOURCESHeyGen - With HeyGen, businesses can simply write their script and generate their video. No camera, no budget, no headaches. We've helped over 45,000 companies and millions of people create, localize, and personalize videos at scale.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Missing episodes?
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In this episode, Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences @ Twilio) reflects on her experiences re-defining engineering’s relationship with the business throughout her career. We cover how the role of engineering varies across industries, why it’s paramount for engineering leaders to find their seat at the business table & rethink how engineering can drive the org’s strategic goals. Rajashree shares insights on how to unlock the creative side of product & business leaders, lessons learned from solving various customer problems, frameworks for eng orgs to combat & overcome learned helplessness, communication practices for framing decision-making, and adjusting from a “no, but” to a “yes, and” mindset.
ABOUT RAJASHREE PIMPALKHAREERajashree is the VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences - the world's most flexible customer engagement platform, that powers customer facing sales and service teams with the context, data, and channel flexibility they need to turn ordinary conversations into opportunities to drive repeat sales.
Previously, Rajashree led product development at Quizlet - the popular student application that helps over 60 million learners worldwide every month study, practice and become an expert in whatever they are learning. Prior to Quizlet, Rajashree led engineering for Intuit’s 3rd party Developer Platform and app store – enabling a thriving ecosystem of thousands of small business applications that connect to Intuit’s QuickBooks Platform. Prior to Intuit, she held several engineering leadership roles at PayPal building innovative global payment products for consumers and merchants. Rajashree started her career at Intel as a design engineer and subsequently worked on industry changing software solutions for semiconductor chip design at Synopsys.
Rajashree is passionate about building purpose-driven teams that exhibit engineering excellence, customer-first thinking and an inclusive culture. She is a strong advocate for women and under-represented minorities in technology; and takes a personal interest in coaching and mentoring talent at all levels to balance the playing field and help them grow in their careers.
Rajashree received a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore.
SHOW NOTES:Why engineering’s role in the business varies across industries (2:21)Finding a seat at the business table & elevating the strategic role of engineering (5:32)How Rajashree’s experiences shape her approach as an eng leader (8:54)Strategies for unlocking product / business leaders’ creativity (11:53)Shifting from a “no, that won’t work” to “yes, and here’s how” mindset (14:13)Rajashree’s experience in her global services role (16:46)Lessons learned on solving problems for different customers (19:52)Insights on scaling & productizing (21:17)Deconstructing the concept of learned helplessness in eng orgs (23:13)Frameworks for helping overcome learned helplessness (26:29)Communication practices for eng leaders to frame their decision-making (28:53)Improve your ability to ask better questions & improve dialogue bandwidth (32:16)Rapid fire questions (35:20)LINKS AND RESOURCESWorking Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon - Colin Bryar started at Amazon in 1998; Bill Carr joined in 1999. These two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration between product & engineering, and how to achieve greater productivity.
ABOUT GOKUL RAJARAMGokul Rajaram is an investor and company helper. He serves on the boards on Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Most recently, he was an executive at DoorDash, a food ordering platform. Prior to DoorDash, he worked at Block as Product Engineering Lead, where he led several product development teams and served on Block’s executive team. Prior to Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul is also on the board of The Trade Desk and Coinbase. Gokul holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being class valedictorian. He also holds an M.B.A. from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship.
SHOW NOTES:Why it’s critical for eng leaders to drive business outcomes (2:04)How to shift your leadership to impact organizational changes (4:18)Facilitating conversations around setting numerical / time-driven goals (6:56)Navigating the shift to a customer-centric structure & approach (9:18)Recommendations for building around this customer-oriented model (12:04)Decision-making strategies when approaching customer outcomes (13:25)Understand the role of confidence in the decision-making process (15:40)Challenges faced by eng leaders when making this customer-centric shift (18:06)How eng leaders can introduce / reinforce accountability in eng orgs (20:11)Bridging the gap between PMs & eng leaders (23:07)Challenges / dysfunctions that prevent product & engineering alignment (25:01)Establishing trust, open dialogue, and mutual respect from the get-go (26:39)Communication frameworks that increase alignment between product & eng (32:39)How eng leaders can better approach “move fast & break things” demand (35:37)Rapid fire questions (40:19)LINKS AND RESOURCESGokul’s website - Contains a collection of Gokul’s writing that covers a wide range of topics related to product development, hiring, strategy, leadership, and more!The Mistborn Saga - Brandon Sanderson’s high fantasy saga which chronicles the efforts of a secret group of Allomancers who attempt to overthrow a dystopian empire and establish themselves in a world covered by ash.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Ryan Fox, CTO @ Super.com, joins us to dissect his leadership transition from Vice President of Engineering to CTO. He shares how he created his own job description and – perhaps most importantly – identified & found buy-in around his “not do” list. We also cover Ryan’s favorite strategies for coaching department heads, why it’s important to focus on strategic thinking as an eng leader, tips for instilling accountability & autonomy, and defining different levels of situational leadership. Patrick and Ryan also dissect Super.com’s MAT leadership approach and how it is incorporated into their engineering functions.
ABOUT RYAN FOXRyan Fox is the CTO at Super.com, an all-in-one app that has helped millions of customers save, earn and put over $150 million back in their pockets. Previously, Ryan worked as both a SWE and SRE at Google.
SHOW NOTES:Ryan’s background / experience with Super.com (2:04)What sparked his transition from VP of Engineering to CTO (3:40)How Ryan tackled creating his own job description (5:50)Strategies for prioritizing responsibilities & developing a “not to do” list (8:20)Process for defining what not to do (9:32)Examples of building buy in for a “not to do” responsibility (11:45)Insights on prioritizing company wide outcomes vs. departmental outcomes (13:33)Transitioning from a department head to coaching other department leaders (15:26)Components of a successful coaching conversation about strategic thinking (18:48)Frameworks for instilling accountability & autonomy in department heads (21:25)Understanding situational leadership & S3 / S4 definitions (23:08)Incorporating mission-aligned teams into the engineering organization (25:37)Why the MAT leader focuses on business, not people aspects (27:52)Elements that contribute to the MAT model’s success (29:32)The intersection of MAT & functional leadership (32:04)Ryan’s advice to leaders new to the MAT approach (34:20)Rapid fire questions (36:29)LINKS AND RESOURCESMAT Resource Guide - A guide to understand the Mission-Aligned Team organizational structure, how Super.com rolled out MATs, and how such a structure may be able to help your organization.All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, the show features insider takes on business, technology, and society and interviews with the world's most influential thinkers.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In this episode, we’re bringing listeners into the final conversations from the pop-up podcast booth at ELC Annual 2024! Patrick sat down with a few eng leaders attending the event to discuss takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 & eng leadership insights they want to share with others in the community. He chatted with Nick Hurlburt (Executive Director of the Aselo program @ Tech Matters), Manju Abraham (Vice President of Engineering, Primary Storage @ HPE), and Bhupesh Bansal (Head of Engineering - Product Server @ Square). These leaders share some of the guiding principles of their eng leadership careers, highlights from ELC Annual 2024, advice for first timers attending these types of events, and more.
ABOUT NICK HURLBURTNick Hurlburt is the Executive Director of the Aselo program at Tech Matters, a nonprofit with a mission to bring the benefits of technology to all of humanity. Aselo is an open source contact center platform used by crisis helplines in over 15 countries. After completing an MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Nick began his career developing early, large-scale AI software at Amazon. He then spent six years overseas working on conflict relief efforts in Burma and South Sudan before returning to the U.S., where he managed software teams at a San Francisco machine learning startup before building the initial version of Aselo as Tech Matters’ first engineer. He gets excited about systems thinking, understanding different cultures, and walking through forests reminiscent of his rural Wisconsin childhood.
ABOUT MANJU ABRAHAMManju Abraham was VP of Engineering for Primary Storage products at HPE. She has over 25 years of experience leading Engineering organizations to deliver enterprise products of high quality, building, scaling and leading transformation, as an effective change catalyst, across companies like HPE, Delphix, NetApp, HP etc.
ABOUT BHUPESH BANSALEntrepreneur and technical leader passionate about making a positive impact in the world. 18+ years track record of building teams, large-scale distributed systems, and consumer products scaling to 100M+ users.
SHOW NOTES:Why it’s important to incorporate non-eng principles into engineering (1:52)Don't run if the people can't run (4:20)The importance of iterating & identifying patterns that work (5:57)Nick’s ELC Annual 2024 highlights (7:35)Advice for first-time attendees to get the most out of ELC Annual (8:10)Challenges around cultural transformations (9:33)How transformations incorporate structure & order (11:35)Manju’s experience at / takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 (15:14)Advice for folks on how to get the most out of an experience like this (18:19)Bhupesh’s roundtable on managing yourself & learning to let go (20:17)When Bhupesh started to embody the principle of managing yourself (21:52)Frameworks for making the shift to identifying yourself as a leader (24:17)Top ways you can invest in yourself & final takeaways (26:27)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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We’re back with another episode live from ELC Annual 2024’s podcast booth! Patrick discusses the practices and rituals around effective hiring & recruiting with a few speakers and roundtable hosts from ELC Annual 2024, including Lawrence Bruhmuller (SVP of Engineering @ Great Expectations), Eric Fettner (Co-Founder @ Job Sauce), and Scott Swedberg (CEO & Co-Founder @ Job Sauce). Scott shares insights & takeaways from his roundtable conversation on assessing career growth & determining next steps during this trend of eng orgs continuing to become flatter. Eric and Lawrence also stop by the booth to share about their unique partnership, hiring best practices, ensuring candidates maintain your org’s engineering culture, and more.
ABOUT SCOTT SWEDBERGScott Swedberg is CEO & Founder of The Job Sauce, a boutique recruiting firm for high-growth companies. He founded The Job Sauce as a career coaching company, and partners with ELC to support engineering leaders in their careers and talent acquisition. He and his wife, Lauryn, live in Denver with their daughter and cat.
ABOUT ERIC FETTNEREric Fettner is co-founder of The Job Sauce, a high-touch recruiting firm serving Seed through pre-IPO startups. After helping launch the most successful vertical at Eventbrite (IPO September 2018), Eric was ready to take on something new. He began by building The Job Sauce as the premier provider of career services for tech workers. This focus on candidate experience revealed the horrible experience most recruiting firms provide, leading to the birth and success of The Job Sauce Recruiting, trusted by top startups funded by top VCs.
ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMULLERLawrence Bruhmuller is currently the SVP of Engineering at Great Expectations, the open-source data quality solution used by thousands of data engineers in the industry. He has over 12 years of experience as an overall head of engineering, mostly focused on growth-stage startups. Previous roles include CTO roles at Pave and Optimizely, and VPE roles at WeWork, ClearSlide, and Symantec.
Lawrence has been a part of small startups and also larger companies, and has developed products for individual users and also the world’s largest enterprises. In particular, he has focused on delivering cloud-first products in the B2B application and developer tooling spaces.
Lawrence is passionate about the intersection of engineering management and the growth stage of startups. He has written extensively on engineering leadership (https://lbruhmuller.medium.com/), including how to best evolve and mature engineering organizations before, during and after these growth phases. He enjoys advising and mentoring other engineering leaders in his spare time.
Lawrence holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Amy, and their three daughters.
SHOW NOTES:What brought Scott Swedberg to ELC Annual 2024 & how he supports eng leaders (3:12)Summarizing Scott’s ELC Annual roundtable discussion on career growth (5:39)Understanding how trends shift as technology evolves & investor priorities pivot (9:01)Final takeaways on exploring career growth & next steps (11:26)Eric Fettner & Lawrence Bruhmuller explain their recent partnership (14:19)Questions eng leaders should ask to aid calibration / alignment between partners (17:21)Ensuring new candidates reinforce the eng culture you’re aiming to build (18:29)Strategies for adopting / adapting cultural practices while hiring & onboarding (20:33)Effective communication between eng leaders & talent partners (22:49)Lawrence explains Great Expectations’ team structure (25:04)Recommendations for providing feedback between partners (26:37)The importance of timing when it comes to the hiring process (28:00)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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This episode came live from ELC Annual 2024! Local ELC chapter leaders from across the globe share some of their favorite leadership principles, covering topics like how to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior leaders, how to manage yourself and your regulate emotions, how to leverage curiosity in tough conversations, how to build psychological safety and more! Thank you Ali Littman (VP of Engineering @ Modern Health), Mehmet Sencer Kardayi (CTO @ Dexter Energy), Tarik Kilick (Engineering Manager @ Booking.com), and Liz Sink (Director of Engineering @ Amount) for sharing your insights + a huge thank you to all of our local leaders for what you do to make community happen across the world! Check out all of our local chapters & get involved here: elc.community/home/clubs
ABOUT ALI LITTMANAli Littman is the Vice President of Engineering at Modern Health, a mental health technology company with a global workforce of both full-time and contracted staff. She has 15 years of experience in health tech and a business degree from Haas at Berkeley. She specializes in scaling organizations and has a track record in taking companies through hypergrowth, navigating major strategic product development pivots, as well as running major department reorganizations to optimize for current delivery and future-state architecture needs.
ABOUT TARIK KILICTarik is an engineering leader who loves building products and teams that love building products. Currently @Booking.com, previously at SurveyMonkey and Heineken.
ABOUT MEHMET SENCER KARADAYIWith 15+ years of experience in the tech industry, Mehmet has worked both as an individual contributor and a manager in big-tech(Booking, Meta) and as a software consultant in both the private and public sector. He likes to call himself a "failed serial-entrepreneur"(0 to 1) 😅 and nowadays is focusing on scaling tech startups(1 to 100). Outside of work, Mehmet has a diverse set of hobbies 🎱🏀♟️🥽🏓🛹🤹 and likes adding new ones to the set every now and then.
ABOUT LIZ SINKLiz Sink is currently a Director of Engineering at Amount, a digital origination and decisioning SaaS platform for deposits and lending. Liz also spearheaded the ELC Local Chapter initiative, collaborating with ELC to establish the inaugural chapter in Chicago, where she is working to build a community and leadership culture. Drawing on her diverse background in software engineering, education, and social work, Liz focuses on building cohesive, empowered teams, developing high-quality products, and driving progress and innovation in engineering leadership.
SHOW NOTES:How to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior eng leaders (1:37)Strategies to help someone start building this skillset (3:05)Why building ELC San Diego is meaningful to Ali (6:58)How to discover which metrics are most relevant for direct-to-consumer (8:26)Learn to manage yourself as a leader (10:21)Leveraging curiosity to make tough conversations collaborative (12:14)Tarik & Mehmet’s perspective on the Amsterdam ELC community (14:09)Creating psychological safety & trust for eng leaders (18:42)Why this topic is important for employee retention, satisfaction & innovation (19:19)An invitation to ELC Chicago (22:29)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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We’re back with another session from ELC Annual 2024! This episode features an engaging session on collaboration & innovation in the time of AI with Anurag Agarwal, VPE, Google Workspace @ Google, and Lizzie Matusov, Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient! In this conversation, they dissect how AI is transforming not only the products engineering teams are building but also how teams work together internally. They cover how Google / Google Workplace specifically use AI both internally & externally, strategies for creating & maintaining alignment across a large org, how Anurag addressed challenges during this transitional period, and more.
ABOUT ANURAG AGARWALAnurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create and build together.
With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wide range of consumer and enterprise products and technologies. His career began in the Display Ads team, where he played a pivotal role in developing publisher ad-serving products from the ground up. He then worked on the Search Ads team driving a number of large-scale infrastructure improvements and leading initiatives such as online-to-offline measurement and monetization of surfaces like Maps and Discover. Prior to his role in Workspace, he spearheaded some early stage incubation projects at Google like Google Health’s CareStudio project aimed to help clinicians get a comprehensive view of patient’s health information.
Anurag spent his childhood in Delhi, India and now resides in the Bay Area with his family.
" One of the things we sort of tried to do from very early on is to make sure teams see their success in terms of overall workspace success, in terms of more users actually being able to accomplish their work more effectively using all of Workspace's tools, right? It's not about the individual tools, it's really about the whole together.”
- Anurag Agarwal
ABOUT LIZZIE MATUSOVLizzie Matusov is the co-founder and CEO of Quotient, a developer tool that surfaces the friction slowing down engineering teams and resolves it directly. Her team also co-authors Research Driven Engineering Leadership, a newsletter that uses research to answer interesting questions on engineering leadership and strategy. She previously worked in various engineering roles at Red Hat and Invitae, and has an MS in Engineering Sciences and MBA from Harvard.
SHOW NOTES:Anurag’s career at Google & what he’s currently working on (2:38)The evolution of Google Workspace & incorporating GenAI (4:31)Diving into internal AI use within Google / across teams (6:37)Challenges faced while creating alignment (9:47)Frameworks for setting goals & aligning KPIs more effectively (11:57)How Google ensures its team feel safe to fail & allow autonomy (14:03)Strategies for maintaining alignment across a large org (16:09)How Anurag’s leadership has evolved through technology transformations (18:07)Strategies for helping teams accomplish tasks & be continuously learning (20:33)Anurag’s favorite rituals / changes from this transition (24:09)Audience Q&A: What has been your biggest challenge shipping AI? (25:26)Defining Workspace’s corpus for the individual vs. the enterprise (27:29)How do you ensure content moderation when using AI features? (28:13)Build guardrails for LLMs depending on the context (29:18)How the center of excellence team distributed its knowledge across various orgs (30:48)Strategies for drawing a line where Gemini responds & ensuring determinism in the response (32:15)Quotient’s processes for QA & automation (34:02)Understanding the ethics / responsibilities behind AI usage (35:11)The evolution of developmental practices with deterministic code vs. apps written with AI (36:43)Anurag & Lizzie’s key takeaways (38:28)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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One of the most important aspects of success is a team’s ability to collaborate – but it can also be one of the most challenging parts. In this episode, we’re highlighting a popular session ELC Annual 2024 on how to encourage collaboration, ultimately increasing productivity and creating more likely outcomes of success. This conversation features Marcel Weekes, VP of Product Engineering @ Figma, and Arquay Harris, former VP of Engineering @ Webflow. This conversation also features a robust Q&A session from ELC Annual attendees on their most pressing collaboration questions – including diagnosing teams that are struggling to collaborate, how to measure the success of collaborative tools, strategies for building rituals / processes around collaboration, and much more.
ABOUT MARCEL WEEKESMarcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, where he oversees product and growth engineering efforts across Figma's entire platform. Marcel brings decades of experience and previously served as the VP of Engineering at Slack where he led the teams building Messaging features and Slack Connect.
"A trait of product engineers that I have found to be successful in predicting positive outcomes is they view code as a tool to get something done. Engineers on the other end of the spectrum who might be more elite code engineers or more like, ‘I got this algorithm to go like .005 percent faster,’ frankly that's not what's going to get your product to product market fit. If you're not focused on the end goal here, you're going to make suboptimal decisions the whole way.”
- Marcel Weekes
ABOUT ARQUAY HARRISArquay has held Engineering leadership positions at Slack, Google and CBS Interactive. A developer who also has a Masters in Design, Arquay loves the marriage of form and function. Following her most recent role as VP of Engineering at Webflow, Arquay is currently enjoying retirement. She fills her days with occasional mentoring and speaking engagements as well as pursuing her many hobbies.
SHOW NOTES:Marcel’s definition of effective team collaboration (2:36)How Figma’s dev mode is reducing collaborative tension (5:42)Processes & rituals that increase productivity early on (7:12)Marcel & Arquay’s collaboration example: success with Slack Connect (9:44)Why collaborative teams are ultimately more productive teams (13:21)Audience Q&A: Frameworks for diagnosing teams that are struggling to collaborate (14:25)How to avoid over collaboration / communication (17:09)Strategies for creating collaboration standards early on in a project (19:33)Navigating the balance between collaboration & preserving autonomous teams (22:23)Encouraging engineers to care about broader outcomes & collaboration (26:54)Tips for measuring the success & productivity of collaborative tools (29:11)How to foster cross-collaborative respect between design & engineering (32:19)Building relationships across teams / functions to promote smooth operation (34:27)Recommendations to help developers & design to share more work in progress (36:52)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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We had a blast at ELC Annual 2024, so we wanted to bring our podcast listeners some of the best highlights from popular sessions! This episode features one of the ELC Annual sessions with Anupam Singh (VP of AI & Growth Engineering @ Roblox) & Maria Kazandjieva (Co-Founder @ Graft), as they discuss building AI/ML models at a massive scale. Anupam shares how Roblox – an immersive 3D platform with more than 77 million daily active users – scaled from zero to nearly 200 different AI models. They discuss strategies for deciding when to use open source vs. creating proprietary models; how to operationalize your models for 24/7 use; the importance of data pipelines; current and future challenges to keep in mind when creating / scaling AI models; and answer some questions from the live Q&A.
ABOUT ANUPAM SINGHAnupam leads Roblox's AI & Growth engineering teams, which provide the infrastructure for high throughput AI services for safety, recommendations, and assistants. Before Roblox, Anupam was chief customer officer at Cloudera, where he led product, engineering, and field teams for Data Warehousing products. Anupam has co-founded two companies in the Big Data space, acquired by Cloudera and Marketshare, respectively. Anupam built his database expertise on the SQL Query Optimizer teams at Oracle, Sybase (now SAP), and Informix (now IBM). He graduated from Pune University in India and holds patents in the areas of automatic SQL performance tuning, object databases, and resilient query execution.
"The journey always starts with, 'Let's pick a model and first decide whether we want to build our own model or we want to use one of the open source ones.' The next step is, 'Do you want to do it on public cloud?' Roblox has 24 data centers worldwide and two massive data centers in America. We have hundreds of thousands of CPUs that we could use and so for us, it's very important to decide, 'Do we really need a large model? Can you take the 700 billion model, make it into a 7 billion parameter model, and magically get it to run on the CPU?'”
- Anupam Singh
ABOUT MARIA KAZANDJIEVAMaria is a co-founder and an engineering leader at Graft, an early-stage AI startup. Prior to that, Maria worked at Netflix, where her team earned two Emmy awards for technical achievement. She holds a PhD in Computer Science from Stanford University. Outside of work, you can find Maria kickboxing & trail running, baking & eating carbs, or relaxing with a non-fiction book and her two feline supurrvisors, Foosball and Gemma.
SHOW NOTES:How Roblox is being powered by AI (00:30)The process of scaling AI models from zero to 200 @ Roblox (2:34)Examples of Roblox starting with open source vs. building its own model (5:06)What AI models are doing in terms of safety for children (7:12)Strategies for deciding to use open source vs. building a proprietary model (11:19)Why Roblox is choosing to open source some of their own models (13:06)How to operationalize / engineer AI models for 24/7 use at scale (14:20)The importance of data pipelines in the AI journey (16:18)Current / future challenges as Roblox continues to scale its models (19:52)Tips for identifying use cases where implementing & scaling AI can be helpful (22:21)Audience Q&A: How do you make decisions when you’re lacking specific measurements / quantities? (24:29)When you deploy a model, how do you ensure confidence in its performance? (27:36)Recommendations for allocating / estimating the budget for a model (29:03)Anupam’s insights on maintaining so many models effectively (31:03)How do you imagine the multimodality of your 3D models moving forward? (33:11)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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We’re taking a quick break from releasing episodes for a few weeks while we wrap up everything for ELC Annual. We’ll be back in late September with new guests! We have some excellent sessions at the conference - check out the agenda here: https://sfelc.com/annual2024#agenda
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Dave Rhodes, CEO @ Sauce Labs, joins the pod to discuss the value of great digital experiences & how/why quality issues affect companies’ bottom lines, and how to connect bugs to the business! Dave dissects strategies for addressing quality issues, examples connecting quality with the bottom line, best practices for quality testing strategies, and incorporating the philosophy of embracing the impossible within your eng teams. We also cover highlights of Dave’s recent report, “Every Experience Counts” exploring the relationship between broken experiences, lost consumer trust, and topline revenue. And to set the stage & magnify the stakes, the Crowdstrike & Microsoft outage coincidentally happened the day we hit record.
ABOUT DAVE RHODESDave Rhodes is CEO of Sauce Labs, a leading provider of continuous testing and software quality solutions to deliver digital confidence to enterprises. He has a proven track record as a strong operational leader with success in building and scaling growth businesses. Previously, Dave held key leadership roles at Unity, where as Chief Revenue Officer he grew the company’s revenue from $160M to $640M (4x growth) and navigated its public market debut in 2020. He then created and oversaw Unity’s AI-powered business, Digital Twins. He has also held leadership roles at Paradigm and Autodesk. Rhodes holds an MBA in marketing and finance from the University of San Diego and a bachelor of science degree in computer science from the University of California at San Diego.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode is brought to you by Revelo!Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide:A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fitA payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and complianceA team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hiresWith Revelo, you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team.
Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire.SHOW NOTES:The Crowdstrike / Microsoft news & how bugs affect the bottom line (2:31)Understanding the stakes & complexity of the Crowdstrike issue (5:05)Dave’s perspective on & passion for digital experiences (7:50)The impact of cloud computing, high-speed connectivity, AI / ML, and COVID on software innovation (10:10)Examples of how digital experiences drive a business’s bottom line (13:45)How the quality of a product impacts developer velocity & motivation (17:31)Connecting the bottom line with product quality / bugs (20:31)Strategies for communicating the business benefits of developing for scale (24:51)Addressing quality issues that impact top OKRs, like customer churn (26:48)Highlights of the “Every Experience Counts” report (31:51)Best practices for eng leaders looking to evolve their current testing strategy (35:13)What it means to think about the impossible & reverse engineer it (38:05)Frameworks for instilling this mindset into your eng teams (41:18)Rapid fire questions (44:17)LINKS AND RESOURCESEvery Experience Counts - Sauce Labs’ report exploring the relationship between broken experiences, lost consumer trust, and topline revenue.Be Useful: Seven Tools for Life - The seven rules to follow to realize your true purpose in life—distilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In our latest episode, we’re coming to you live from Config 2024, Figma’s annual design conference for people who build products! This is our first time ever doing a live interview from another conference, so we are excited to share it with you. We’re joined by Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering @ Figma. In our conversation, we dive into topics including highlights from Config 2024 & reactions to Figma’s latest feature demos (like Dev Mode), how Figma’s eng teams are involved in product design iterations, why product support teams help preserve Figma’s community, strategies for incorporating feedback into design / product roadmaps, best practices for prioritization conversations, and more. Marcel also shares a preview of what to expect from his session on collaboration @ ELC Annual 2024!
ABOUT MARCEL WEEKESMarcel Weekes is VP of Product Engineering at Figma, where he oversees product and growth engineering efforts across Figma's entire platform. Marcel brings decades of experience and previously served as the VP of Engineering at Slack where he led the teams building Messaging features and Slack Connect.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode is brought to you by Revelo!Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide:A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fitA payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and complianceA team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hiresWith Revelo, you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team.
Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire.SHOW NOTES:Config 2024 as the “Coachella for designers and creatives” (3:47)Marcel’s favorite conference moments that represent the Config community (5:04)Reactions to the latest Figma feature demos (7:18)Defining Dev Mode & why it’s a highlight for Figma @ Config (13:00)Figma’s approach to building Dev Mode as an eng org (16:05)How eng teams are becoming involved in product design iterations (18:58)What eng leaders can learn from Figma’s “heavy lifting approach” (20:22)Characteristics of product support teams that impact the Figma community (24:20)Processes for closing the loop between product support & engineering (26:02)Figma’s feedback process & how it gets incorporated into releases now (28:23)Prioritization conversations & how teams operate together (31:47)Understanding the timing of feedback on the product roadmap (34:38)Previewing Marcel’s ELC Annual 2024 session on collaboration (37:08)LINKS AND RESOURCESConfig 2024 in review - A recap from Dylan Field, Co-founder & Chief Executive Officer of Figma, that highlights all of the major news and releases from Config 2024.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Farhan Thawar, VP & Head of Engineering @ Shopify, was our first-ever ELC pod guest, so it’s fitting that he’s here to join us for this culmination of our series tackling the Top 10 challenges that engineering leaders face in a rapid-fire, high-energy format! Farhan shares insights into individual challenges, including motivating others after a reorg or period of uncertainty, why always being willing to learn & help is key for managing in any direction, strategies for creating buy-in, and best practices for coaching / mentoring. We cover team challenges, such as working cross-functionally to identify a shared truth and vision, using demos to measure dev productivity, and maintaining high velocity without losing quality. Farhan also dives into org-wide challenges, like understanding team topologies & building out your org’s resources.
ABOUT FARHAN THAWARFarhan Thawar (@fnthawar) is VP, and Head Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. Farhan is an avid investor and advisor to startups in Toronto and San Francisco, including being a mentor at yCombinator and First Round Capital. Previously, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode is brought to you by Revelo!Revelo helps you find, hire, and manage world-class remote developers in US time zones, pre-vetted for technical and soft skills. They provide:A talent network of 400,000+ pre-screened engineers, vetted for coding skills & English proficiency, making it fast and easy to find your perfect fitA payroll platform to pay developers in their preferred currencies, offer compelling local benefits, and handles taxes and complianceA team of staffing experts that help you find the best candidates and get the most from your hiresWith Revelo, you’re in complete control: you get to decide who to hire, you get to decide what to offer, and you get to decide how long to keep them on your team.
Visit Revelo.com/ELC today and save $2,500 off your first hire.SHOW NOTES:Strategies for motivating your team after reorgs, rifts, or other uncertain times (2:37)Farhan’s favorite quick wins & ways to re-engage with your team (4:48)Managing up & sideways by being transparent and always looking to help (7:31)Be dedicated to learning / bouncing ideas around with others (9:59)Frameworks for identifying the long-term, winning opportunities to pursue (12:13)How to influence & create buy-in around ideas (15:26)Navigating situations where your idea / perspective is facing resistance (18:18)Best practices for messaging a pitch when working cross-functionally (21:03)Utilizing individual frameworks when mentoring & coaching (23:10)Questions to ask when developing a personal career development framework (27:30)Approaching performance-related conversations (29:11)How to use demos to measure developer productivity (32:09)Methods for maintaining high velocity without losing quality (35:21)Insights on team topologies & identifying / building the needs of your org (37:14)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In Part 3 of the Top 10 Challenges series, we’re addressing the biggest org-level challenges that eng leaders face. We’ve compiled conversations from past podcasts and conference sessions that cover org-related topics, such as aligning engineering & business goals, team topologies & org resourcing, and thinking strategically. This episode features a slate of top eng leaders with valuable insight to share: Jessica McKellar @ Pilot, Andrew Lau @ Jellyfish, Samir Naik @ Plaid, Former VPE @ Robinhood Surabhi Gupta, Aaron Erickson @ NVIDIA, Mike Tria @ Gusto, Emad Elwany @ Docusign, and Scott Woody @ Metronome.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Aligning Engineering and Business Goals: Invest in tracking metrics to identify / meet long-term business-building goals w/ Jessica McKellar (00:43)How to align metrics with overall, long-term business strategy w/ Andrew Lau (4:56)Planning Team Topologies and Organizational Resources: the transition between PMF & scale-up w/ Samir Naik (12:12)Approaching org design & planning during periods of hypergrowth w/ Surabhi Gupta (18:45)How to do an effective reorg w/ Aaron Erickson and Mike Tria (24:41)Strategic Thinking: Organizing engineering by strategic themes & complete units of value w/ Emad Elwany (30:12)The transition from a large unified eng team to embedding experts and building specialized teams catered to specific customer personas w/ Scott Woody (37:26)LINKS AND RESOURCESBecoming a better strategic contributor & business leader with Jessica McKellarNavigating 2024: Engineering management principles to tackle the unknowns & challenges ahead with Andrew LauHow eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth with Samir NaikHypergrowth, Scaling & Org Design with Surabhi GuptaHow to Do an Effective Reorg with Aaron Erickson and Mike TriaOrganizing eng by strategic themes / complete units of value & consensus building to drive velocity with Emad ElwanyRapidly operating early-stage engineering at global scale, mapping eng workflows to personas & pivoting pricing / business models with Scott WoodyThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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This is Part 2 of our Top 10 Challenges series! In this episode, we’re focusing on three common team challenges that eng leaders face: how to increase velocity without losing quality, measure productivity & create meaningful metrics, and work cross-functionally with other teams. We identified these challenges based on conversations with hundreds of eng leaders from podcast episodes, ELC events, and more. For this ep, we’ve pulled insights from various eng leaders, including Richard Wong @ enrich, Fatemah Alavizadeh @ Notion, Andrew Fong @ Prodvana, Randall Koutnik @ Jellyfish, Abi Noda @ DX, Barbara Nelson @ InfluxDB, Laura Fay @ L Fay Associates, and Jeremy Henrickson @ Rippling.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Increasing Velocity (Without Losing Quality): Understanding the speed vs. quality dilemma w/ Richard Wong (0:58)Defining velocity & its impact on users’ ROI w/ Fatemah Alavizadeh & Andrew Fong (6:17)Measuring Productivity and Creating Meaningful Metrics: What drives productivity & makes for meaningful metrics w/ Randall Koutnik (11:31)The DevEx framework for improving developer productivity w/ Abi Noda (21:02)Working Cross-Functionally with Other Teams: Why it’s important to have cross-functional excellence between eng & product w/ Barbara Nelson & Laura Fay (26:28)Cross-functional communication strategies for addressing misaligned priorities w/ Jeremy Henrickson (37:13)LINKS AND RESOURCESSpeed vs. Quality with Richard WongHow to Create Sustainable Velocity in Your Team with Fatemeh Alavizadeh and Andrew FongBanish Bad Management with Metrics that Don't Suck with Randall KoutnikThe next evolution to measure & improve developer productivity & experience with Abi NodaBridging the Divide: Strategies for Cross-Functional Excellence between Engineering and Product Management with Barbara Nelson and Laura FayAlign & Scale Engineering AND Product with Jeremy HenricksonThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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In today’s episode, we’re kicking off a four-part series on the Top 10 challenges eng leaders face based on feedback from hundreds of eng leaders. In Part 1 of this mini-series, we’re tackling the first four issues: developing & coaching team members, strategies for motivating & inspiring others, influencing / creating organizational buy-in, and managing up & sideways. This episode compiles some of the best insight we’ve gained on these issues from a collection of past ELC episodes, ELC Annual sessions, events, and more, with insight from Tara Ellis @ Netflix, Elaine Zhou @ SageCXO, Pete Peterson @ Riviera Partners, Johnny Ray Austin @ Best Egg, Jan Chong @ Tally, Matt Spitz, Laura Tacho @ DX, and Preeti Kota @ Atlassian, and Dan Kador @ Abridge.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Developing and Coaching Team Members: Best practices for building & growing your team’s skills w/ Tara Ellis (0:59)Match your high performers with the right fit for their goals w/ Elaine Zhou (8:04)Influencing and Creating Buy-in: Generating & showcasing quick wins to gain buy-in w/ Pete Peterson (12:03)Communication strategies for eng leaders to create buy-in w/ Johnny Ray Austin (17:59)Managing Up and Sideways: Three key principles for effectively managing up w/ Jan Chong (23:13)Strategies for managing sideways w/ Matt Spitz (26:57)Motivating Others: Inspiring developer productivity as an eng leader w/ Laura Tacho (30:51)How leaders @ Atlassian addressed pain points & inspired developers to address them w/ Preeti Kota & Dan Kador (34:43)LINKS AND RESOURCESA Counter-Intuitive Approach to Career Growth & Internal Mobility with Tara EllisBuilding self-sufficient teams and operating in constrained funding environments with Elaine ZhouNavigating complex stakeholders, competing interests & gaining buy-in with Pete PetersonNavigating the Acquisition Journey: Insights on Transparent Communication, Team Integration, and Strategic / Operational Shifts with Johnny Ray AustinManaging Up with Jan ChongLeading beyond domain expertise & laying early-stage security program foundations with Matt SpitzMove beyond measurement & inspire developer productivity with Laura TachoDeveloper Joy: Maintaining “Flow” and Sustained Productivity with Preeti Kota and Dan KadorThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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After surveying hundreds of engineering leaders, we’ve pinpointed the top 10 challenges engineering leaders face! Exciting news - next week marks the launch of our 4-part series, sharing some of the best insights from hundreds of ELC events, podcasts & conference sessions. The finale? A dynamic rapid-fire session with Shopify's VP of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, tackling each challenge head-on.
Have solutions of your own? Share your strategies and help spread knowledge throughout our community. Reach out at [email protected] or tag ELC in a post/comment on LinkedIn.
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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Today’s conversation focuses on building scalable hiring processes as your org grows and creating systems that promote operational excellence, featuring Stephen Poletto, CTO @ Lattice. He shares examples of how they introduced & scaled their hiring processes to better articulate employee value propositions, implement experience differentiators, and created hiring rubrics & loop documentation. Stephen also reveals strategies for defining what operational excellence looks like within your org, how certain rituals impact company psychology / behavior, and steps for ending & replacing rituals that are no longer working. Additionally, we dissect frameworks for adding incentives within your eng org that improve organizational impact – and how to avoid bad incentives.
ABOUT STEPHEN POLETTOStephen Poletto is the Chief Technology Officer at Lattice, where he leads the company's product development, and where he scaled the engineering team from 20 to 150 team members. Stephen began his career at Apple before spending eight years building and growing technical teams at Dropbox. Stephen has had the opportunity to incubate new products such as Dropbox Carousel and Dropbox Paper, and also work on at-scale products such as the Dropbox mobile app and Dropbox's platform infrastructure. Stephen lives in San Francisco. In the winter, you can find him snowboarding in the mountains.
"Even very simple things like a candidate's been in back to back interviews. You hop on. 'Hey, how are you? Do you need a five minute break?' We would train interviewers on some of those tactics, right? At the beginning of the call, set the agenda. ‘We're going to spend this amount of time on these topics. We're going to spend this amount of time to give you space to ask questions of me.’ Now the candidate knows what to expect. They're put at ease. It's simple stuff but it really colors the way that people feel about the interview itself. What kind of feeling do they have about the company coming out of it?”
- Stephen Poletto
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
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SHOW NOTES:Stephen’s primary goal when he first joined Lattice (3:15)Steps for building out a systematic & repeatable hiring process (5:51)Defining & articulating employee value propositions during the hiring process (8:00)Strategies for presenting company culture via hiring / onboarding (10:21)Hiring experience differentiators & how to make them the norm (13:27)Training the engineering team on how to effectively hire (16:53)Stephen’s process for creating a hiring rubric & loop documentation (20:06)How hiring systems can be tweaked / evaluating current hiring needs (22:20)Identifying what operational excellence means for your org (24:22)Rituals / dilemmas to focus on that influence psychology & behavior (26:13)Examples of ending & replacing processes / operations (29:58)Signals that a ritual is no longer serving your needs (32:12)Frameworks for applying incentives / rewards within an eng org (34:57)Navigating the balance between output vs. input (38:57)First steps toward better organizational impact & avoiding bad incentives (41:07)Rapid fire questions (43:37)LINKS AND RESOURCESProduct-Led AI - Greylock partner and former product builder Seth Rosenberg talks with founders about their inspiration and process to build, test, and continually reimagine how AI and humans work together.The Holloway Guide to Equity Compensation - Stock options, RSUs, job offers, and taxes—a detailed reference, including hundreds of resources, explained from the ground up, for both employees and managers.Steve Bartel’s blog - Steve Bartel is the co-founder and CEO of Gem. Prior to founding Gem, Steve was an engineering leader at Dropbox where his experience working closely with the recruiting process allowed him to see the lack of technology in the space. This inspired him to co-found Gem, which allows recruiting teams of all sizes to source talent, engage with talent, and use data to improve recruiting processes.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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