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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) đ and nowadays is focusing on scaling tech startups(1 to 100). Outside of work, Mehmet has a diverse set of hobbies đ±đâïžđ„œđđčđ€č 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 & Mehmetâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Weâre 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, Anuragâs 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 Healthâs CareStudio project aimed to help clinicians get a comprehensive view of patientâs health information.
Anurag spent his childhood in Delhi, India and now resides in the Bay Area with his family.
"âOne 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.â
- 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:Anuragâs career at Google & what heâs 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 Anuragâs leadership has evolved through technology transformations (18:07)Strategies for helping teams accomplish tasks & be continuously learning (20:33)Anuragâs favorite rituals / changes from this transition (24:09)Audience Q&A: What has been your biggest challenge shipping AI? (25:26)Defining Workspaceâs 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)Quotientâs 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 & Lizzieâs key takeaways (38:28)This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 teamâs ability to collaborate â but it can also be one of the most challenging parts. In this episode, weâre 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 â 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, âI got this algorithm to go like .005 percent faster,â 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.â
- 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:Marcelâs definition of effective team collaboration (2:36)How Figmaâs dev mode is reducing collaborative tension (5:42)Processes & rituals that increase productivity early on (7:12)Marcel & Arquayâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 â an immersive 3D platform with more than 77 million daily active users â 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?'â
- 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 youâre 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)Anupamâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Weâre taking a quick break from releasing episodes for a few weeks while we wrap up everything for ELC Annual. Weâll 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 companiesâ 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 Daveâs recent report, âEvery Experience Countsâ 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 companyâs revenue from $160M to $640M (4x growth) and navigated its public market debut in 2020. He then created and oversaw Unityâs 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, youâre 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)Daveâs 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 businessâs 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 âEvery Experience Countsâ 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 Labsâ 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 lifeâdistilled by Arnold Schwarzenegger from his own journey of ceaseless reinvention and extraordinary achievement, and available for absolutely anyone.This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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, weâre coming to you live from Config 2024, Figmaâs 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. Weâre joined by Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering @ Figma. In our conversation, we dive into topics including highlights from Config 2024 & reactions to Figmaâs latest feature demos (like Dev Mode), how Figmaâs eng teams are involved in product design iterations, why product support teams help preserve Figmaâs 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, youâre 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 âCoachella for designers and creativesâ (3:47)Marcelâs favorite conference moments that represent the Config community (5:04)Reactions to the latest Figma feature demos (7:18)Defining Dev Mode & why itâs a highlight for Figma @ Config (13:00)Figmaâs 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 Figmaâs âheavy lifting approachâ (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)Figmaâs 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 Marcelâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 itâs fitting that heâs 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 orgâs 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, youâre 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)Farhanâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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, weâre addressing the biggest org-level challenges that eng leaders face. Weâve 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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, weâre 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, weâve 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 usersâ 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 itâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 todayâs episode, weâre 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, weâre 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 weâve 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 teamâs 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 âFlowâ and Sustained Productivity with Preeti Kota and Dan KadorThis episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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, weâve 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Todayâs 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 â 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. âWe'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.â 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?â
- Stephen Poletto
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Stephenâs 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)Stephenâs 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 taxesâa detailed reference, including hundreds of resources, explained from the ground up, for both employees and managers.Steve Bartelâs 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 wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 todayâs episode, weâre highlighting one of our favorite past conversations, featuring Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Included Health. We cover tools for increasing your capacity to win as an eng leader, getting unstuck in your career / moving forward, and applying âconscious growthâ and neuroplasticity principles to the career. Wade shares stories of success â and failure â as an eng manager, best practices to measure success as an eng leader, and how to increase your teamâs performance & potential.
ABOUT WADE CHAMBERSWade Chambers (@wadechambers) is the CTO and SVP of Engineering at IncludedHealth, a company that provides technology solutions to improve the way patients get healthcare matched to their needs. He has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, Proofpoint, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth.
âThe more that you can recognize that, âOh, I feel uncomfortable...â and you can just sit with it a minute. As opposed to react to it. There's always a feedback mechanism in that. That willingness to be in the discomfort a little bit longer. You're actually going to learn so much about yourself in that moment. And if you can act on that, that's what unlocks you to move forward.â
- Wade Chambers
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Wadeâs background in building a habit of conscious growth & digging deeper (4:14)Overcoming early failures as a first-time manager (8:11)Why itâs hard to unhear the truth & how to incorporate feedback as a manager (13:08)How understanding neuroplasticity impacts career development (18:11)Moving along the spectrum of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence (19:30)Align your growth to impact your company AND move your career forward (24:37)Why eng leaders need to truly understand their orgâs business needs (29:49)Strategies for both winning & increasing your capacity to win (35:30)How to increase the potential of individuals & your overall team (40:52)Factors that are keeping you stuck in career growth (44:39)Turning to books to maximize learning / growth (52:11)How to identify core principles & why they drive your behavior (55:37)Final thoughts on closing the gap between where you are & where you want to be (58:54)This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 revisit an episode from the podcast archives â Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ Fox) shares her experience representing the tech org during the biggest deal in entertainment history! We cover Melodyâs most important lessons negotiating on behalf of the tech org plus how they leveraged the M&A event to accelerate innovation and productivity.
Melody will be joining us as one of our featured speakers @ ELC Annual 2024 (our two-day conference on 8/27-8/28! Check out our incredible line up of speakers, other conference experiences & tickets at sfelc.com/annual2024 Use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount.
ABOUT MELODY HILDEBRANDTMelody Hildebrandt (@mhil) is Chief Technology Officer for Fox Corporation, where sets set the comprehensive technology strategy for the Company. She previous served as the companyâs Chief Information Security Officer and as the President of its research and development subsidiary, Blockchain Creative Labs.
In her current role, Hildebrandt leads the development, design and implementation of emerging technologies across the FOX enterprise, spanning FOX Sports, FOX News, FOX Entertainment, FOX Television Stations, and Tubi Media Group. Her current focus is on future planning, including developments in artificial intelligence and authenticating and monetizing premium content via blockchain technology. She also continues to oversee the cyber-security posture of the business and leads technology M&A efforts, identifying areas for investment and growth.
Prior to FOX, Hildebrandt held the role of Global Chief Information Security Officer at 21st Century Fox, where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of 21CF businesses, including 20th Century Fox, FOX Networks Group, National Geographic Partners, FOX News, Star India and others.
Before 21CF, she was Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, where she helped start its commercial work and led Palantirâs business in cyber security, anti-money laundering and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted US and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she designed military and strategy wargames.
Hildebrandt is the Executive Sponsor of Women in Technology at FOX.
"One thing that we intervened on very quickly because we were AT the table for (the conversation), "How should we structure the deal?" Was to do something that was quite counter-intuitive I think, and very controversial... Which was to say âLet's essentially value all of our current technology assets at near-zero... And make them part of the deal.â"
- Melody Hildebrandt
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Background on the Fox Disney âmega-dealâ (03:39)How to structure an M&A to accelerate your tech roadmap (06:01)Motivating engineering teams with forcing functions (10:14)What it was like representing a tech org in deal structuring (13:13)How to develop an engineering orgâs merger strategy (17:36)M&A negotiation tips for engineering leaders (20:07)A critical skill for eng leaders: converting tech pains into business goals (22:59)How to get executive buy-in on engineering initiatives (27:58)âCrashingâ your way to a seat at the table (31:05)Melodyâs process for setting the strategic direction of an engineering org (32:19)Managing engineering teams from high and low â the middle is death (34:35)Why this M&A event continues to accelerate innovation (37:37)Rapid-Fire Questions (42:26)LINKS AND RESOURCES(article) A super-powered approach to tech transformation - Melody Hildebrandt& Paul Cheesboroughâs article on the untold story of the 21st Century Fox & Disney transaction(podcast) Conversations with Tyler esteemed economist Tyler Cowen engages with todayâs 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 -
We discuss how to navigate the delicate balance between meeting current customer needs while also preparing for future tech trends & opportunities with Evan Welbourne, Head of AI and Data @ Samsara. Evan dissects the rapidly transforming pace of developing AI/ML products, sharing strategies for merging conversations around differing product-building processes, tips for moving seamlessly / gaining approval between product development stages, defining what customer success looks like, methods for working backward from problems, and best practices for avoiding friction throughout the product development process. He also shares frameworks for envisioning & working toward future tech possibilities while simultaneously developing hypotheses that inform future direction, creating diverse AI/ML team composition, and effectively communicating with stakeholders.
ABOUT EVAN WELBOURNEEvan Welbourne is the Head of AI and Data and Samsara, leading the organizationâs machine learning, computer vision, data science, and data analytics teams â as well as data engineering and data platform for the company. He has a long-standing career in both machine learning and IoT. Before Samsara, Evan held various roles at Amazon, including the Head of Machine Learning for Alexa Smart Home and Manager of the Computer Vision Research Group. He also led research teams at Samsung and Nokia.
Evan earned his Ph.D and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto.
"With AI, there's something new every week. You could stay in those stages forever. You can just keep iterating and trying new things, but at some point you have to kind of cut it off. You've got to time box it and just go with something that you know will work. You're constantly also calibrating between the quality of what you're delivering and the time it takes you to deliver it. A lot of that problem backs into this early stage of the process. We do want to do a good job of understanding opportunity but there's analysis paralysis. We don't want to just get stuck there.â
- Evan Welbourne
Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
SHOW NOTES:Staying customer-focused while working toward the future @ Samsara (3:22)Merging forward-looking technology & customer-problem-focused product-building conversations (5:54)Defining customer success & working backwards from winning (8:38)How stage gates can confirm / assess feature accuracy & maturity (10:58)What the approval moment looks like while moving from stage to stage (15:29)Understanding what stages offer the greatest opportunity for risk / friction (17:11)Signals to watch for that allow you to move forward with confidence (19:30)Best practices for anticipating & preparing for future possibilities (21:13)Using smaller-scale projects to inform future direction of larger-scale products (23:12)Communication strategies for working with less technical stakeholders (25:22)Methods for effectively communicating complex, technical information (27:59)AI / ML team composition at Samsara (30:04)Frameworks for aligning & motivating folks to focus on customer needs (32:59)Strategies for introducing new technologies & scientific research into your teams (35:06)Introducing AI into mission-critical internal tools (36:34)Rapid fire questions (39:17)LINKS AND RESOURCESHuman Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control - Stuart Russell lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines.This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Welcome to a special episode highlighting ELC Annual 2024, our annual conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world! Tune in to hear how we built this 2-day experience to be the ultimate accelerator of leadership and professional growth. We cover how the conference will expand your perspectives with curated peer-led roundtables and expert-led sessions with people like Thuan Pham (former CTO @ Uber & Coupang), Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ FOX), James Everingham (VPE @ Meta) Marcel Weekes (VPE @ Figma), Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VPE @ Twilio) and 40+ more speakers! We promise that you will walk away from the event with meaningful connections and actionable strategies that will empower your career and leadership growth.
Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!
Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024
And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount
This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Lakshmi Baskaran shares insights on impromptu communication, why itâs important, and a framework for successfully navigating these tricky situations! We also cover team topology and why itâs so important to have the right composition of product-minded vs. technical-minded engineers within any eng team. Lakshmi shares how prioritizing team topology will impact hiring, influence engineering culture, and aid in eng team reorgs / restructures. She also discusses what the future of AI looks like for executive eng leaders & what to consider when adopting AI practices / technologies. And to bring it all together, we dissect how Lakshmiâs Triple-A impromptu communication framework operates in the context of both team topology & AI adoption.
ABOUT LAKSHMI BASKARANLakshmi Baskaran is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, and an angel investor with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. She has built and managed high-performing engineering teams for startups, scale-ups, and publicly listed companies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.
She is currently serving as the VP of Engineering at Metadata, a SaaS company that offers a Marketing Operating System to prominent brands and businesses worldwide.
Lakshmi is passionate about coaching and mentoring business leaders and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. With the right support, she firmly believes that any woman can unleash her potential and make a significant impact on the world, rising to the heights of a great leader, entrepreneur, and a board member.
Lakshmi shares her insights on leadership and technology through her writing on Medium and Thrive.
âImagine you're presenting it to your executive leadership team or to your board. As an engineering leader, you want to spice up that message with how it is interesting to your customers. The framework that I use in scenarios like this is called 'What If And So That' framework. If you're running an email platform, what if you're able to search through millions of emails in a sub millisecond so that your users can have faster search abilities compared to our competitors? Build a dream scenario and tell them how the technology can help them meet their dream scenario.â
- Lakshmi Baskaran
Weâre less than one week away from GLOW 2024 â Jellyfishâs virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Hereâs a preview of whatâs in store:An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazineâs Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lauâs keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Why the topic of effective impromptu communication is important (2:46)Dissecting frameworks & tools for impromptu conversations (7:16)An example of high-quality impromptu communication with a CEO (11:52)Implement the Triple-A framework (14:03)The impact of this communication method on peers (16:37)Lakshmiâs insights on team topologies & essential aspects of different eng teams (18:26)Considerations for eng team composition (20:56)How new hires play into assembling and/or reforming early-stage eng teams (23:44)Aligning with teams about what theyâre looking for in terms of hiring / composition (26:12)The impact of product & tech-minded eng leaders on engineering culture (29:19)Opportunities to employ impromptu comm skills in the context of team topology (31:42)Lakshmiâs observations on AI adoption (33:47)Frameworks for effectively communicating about AI considerations (37:11)How eng leaders should apply these AI areas into their decision-making (40:40)The role of impromptu communication in AI conversations (42:33)Rapid fire questions (45:00)LINKS AND RESOURCESLakshmiâs blog post on identifying product-minded and tech-minded engineersThe 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.âThis episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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 dissect one of the biggest challenges that eng leaders face in their day-to-day â navigating the balance between going deep in technical work & maintaining a high-level view of business strategy. Oded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer @ BigPanda, shares examples from his experience, covering strategies for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology, bringing technical expertise to the executive team, bridging the gap between marketing & technology, and aligning customer expectations with a productâs actual capabilities. Oded also shares frameworks for prioritization conversations, valuable questions to pose during executive decision-making conversations, and approaches to changing past technical decisions.
ABOUT ODED KEDEMOded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer at BigPanda, brings a wealth of experience in software from ground-up development to managing engineering teams and was also the founder of Zerto, a Cloud BC/DR company. Throughout his many years in the industry, Oded has developed a deep understanding of AIOps and the needs of customers. He recognizes that we are just scratching the surface with AI and automation.
âAs companies evolve, people change roles and the technology changes, the requirements change. We chose in the past, the product does it in method A. Let's ask, 'Okay, why did we choose A in the first place?' And once in a while, someone from engineering came up and said, 'Yeah, I have a great idea. Let's do B.' And I would always send them, 'Okay, go back to the documentation, because if you thought this through and you think that making these changes is worth our while and the risk and the instability it may bring, let's go, let's do it.'â
- Oded Kedem
Weâre less than one week away from GLOW 2024Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfishâs virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Hereâs a preview of whatâs in store:
An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazineâs Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lauâs keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Keeping a high-level view while diving deep into the technology (2:48)The story of how Oded first connected to this particular problem (5:03)Odedâs process for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology (7:20)Prioritization strategies & why itâs sometimes hard to say no to jumping in (9:40)How to bring technical expertise / value to the exec team (13:57)Best practices for tough conversations regarding org direction & capabilities (17:40)Types of questions to ask in executive conversations (19:58)Odedâs favorite question to pose (23:33)Bridging the gap between marketing & technology (24:26)How an eng perspective helps shape a productâs marketing outcome (27:12)Frameworks for aligning customer expectations with a productâs capabilities (29:33)Approaches to changing past technical decisions as an eng leader (31:21)Rapid fire questions (35:25)LINKS AND RESOURCESTalking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Donât Know - Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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Chris Cravens (Former VPE @ Splunk and CIO @ Uber) shares practical tips for applying professional strategies / tech performance tools into our personal lives - to increase intentionality, goal setting, and habit formation in all aspects of our lives. He shares why itâs so easy to dedicate 90% of your time & attention to work while only dedicating 10% to your personal life and reveals from his own experience how he discovered a better work-life balance by applying OKRs, goal setting, postmortems, and deep reflection. We also cover frameworks for identifying feeling-based goals, building habits & accountability within your personal life, combating negative self-talk, and rewiring your brain to focus on the present & not dwell on past failures.
ABOUT CHRIS CRAVENSChris Cravens is an industry veteran with a quarter century of successes delivering measurable value for high-growth enterprises in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. An avid change agent and catalyst for transformation, Mr. Cravens has led major global scale-up and transformation efforts for Software Engineering, Information Technology, Security, Facilities teams. As the first CIO at Zynga and Uber, he led critical functions that enabled scale from small startups to major global enterprises in record time. Mr. Cravens led digital transformation at Splunk, scaling revenue from $800M to $2.2BN in three years by reimagining and supercharging Go to Market capabilities with automation and high value software capabilities that drove greater deal size and velocity. Currently, Mr. Cravens provides expert consulting supporting Private Equity and Venture transactions and transformations and is an active Strategic Advisor, Coach, and Investor to startups delivering innovative, disruptive technologies to accelerate digital transformation.
âI would just keep doing things like that because of that philosophy of in the absence of clear leadership, step in, be the one who is responsible and it goes back to that anxiety from childhood. There are people who have much healthier outlooks, and I've just never been wired that way. So I have to kind of question each decision I make as I go to do a new thing or take on more stuff. 'Is this the right thing for me to do right now, or am I making my life harder?'â
- Chris Cravens
Weâre less than one week away from GLOW 2024Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfishâs virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Hereâs a preview of whatâs in store:
An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazineâs Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lauâs keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Chrisâs experience of his first week @ Uber (2:02)Borrowing professional life tools & using them in your personal life (4:53)Why itâs easy to give 90% of time to work & only 10% to your personal life (8:26)How Chris navigated his own transition (14:34)Treat a sabbatical like a job (16:15)Adding OKRs to your personal life (19:36)Strategies for assessing feeling-oriented goals (22:05)Combating negative self-talk & treating yourself like you would a good friend (24:58)How Chrisâs frameworks have shifted over time when setting personal life goals (27:11)Reflection questions to help illuminate where to center your focus (29:35)Applying positive self-talk within a work context to your personal life (32:39)Incorporate blameless postmortems into a personal context (35:38)Strategies for better habit formation (37:00)How to overcome feeling a lack of motivation to start a new habit (38:08)The significance of having both clarity & accountability (40:56)Tips for rewiring the belief that you can accomplish a goal (45:27)Rapid fire questions (48:21)LINKS AND RESOURCESChrisâs Guide to Thinking ErrorsThe Satanic Verses - novel of Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie led Ruholla Khomeini, the ayatollah of Iran, to demand his execution and then forced him into hiding.This episode wouldnât 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, Danâs 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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