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

This episode features all things security with our guest, Laura Bell Main, CEO & Founder @ SafeStack. She shares valuable strategies for building your security team & tool stack. We cover why security is a human problem based on human motivations, prioritization conversations for assessing risks, considerations for early-stage security teams, how behavior change & decision making impact security, and considerations for companies in the “messy middle” phase. Laura also addresses communicating about security in terms of tech debt, recommendations for incorporating security monitoring tools, how to measure those tools’ ROI, and more.ABOUT LAURA BELL MAINWith over twenty years of experience in software development and information security, Laura Bell Main (@lady_nerd) specialises in bringing security into organisations of every shape and size.She is the co-founder and CEO of SafeStack, an online education platform offering flexible, high-quality, and people-focused secure development training for fast-moving companies, with a focus on building security skills, practices, and culture across the entire engineering team.Laura is an experienced conference speaker, trainer, and regular panel member, and has spoken at a range of events such as BlackHat USA, Velocity, and OSCON on the subjects of privacy, covert communications, agile security, and security mindset.She is also the co-author of Agile Application Security and Security for Everyone."The most important thing that we forget to tell folks when they're starting out in security is most of our tooling is about being more effective and efficient. It's not about doing something you can't do yourself. Security isn't about a magic box. I wish it was, it would be a lot easier if we could just buy a magic box. Done! Off we go to the beach, but what we have is a really human problem.”- Laura Bell Main    Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical proven strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:What to do about security if you don’t already have a security team (2:28)Security as a “human problem” in the scope of eng orgs (4:58)Why you need to understand human motivations (7:21)Prioritization frameworks & chaos engineering for assessing threats (9:14)Considerations for the early stages of forming a security org (11:47)Understanding security through a behavior change model (14:57)How to operationalize a security mindset within a software team (18:00)Examples of how decisions can flag security risks (20:50)Approaches for tracking & managing security as tech debt (23:20)Addressing security considerations as a “messy” middle-stage company (27:17)High friction aspects of security behavior change for eng orgs (30:51)Tips for knowing if you have the right security tool (34:41)How to evaluate the ROI of tools you’re considering (38:06)Methods for incorporating security monitoring into your current tool stack (39:32)Rapid fire questions (42:45)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Body Keeps The Score - The inspiring story of how a group of therapists and scientists— together with their courageous and memorable patients—has struggled to integrate recent advances in brain science, attachment research, and body awareness into treatments that can free trauma survivors from the tyranny of the past.Open source checklist for high-growth CTOsThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

In this episode, Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares her story as a serial founder and the lessons that can help you become a more impactful, strategic business contributor & eng leader. She reveals strategies for identifying your company’s ideal end state & the steps needed to achieve product-market fit, daily practices that help measure important metrics, business-building disciplines that need to be prioritized long term, and steps for creating positive collaboration between product, eng & design teams.For more episodes of Engineering Founders, subscribe here: https://engineering-founders.simplecast.com/ABOUT JESSICA MCKELLARJessica McKellar (@jessicamckellar) is a repeat founder and the CTO of fintech unicorn Pilot, an accounting firm powered by software.Previously, she was a founder and the VP of Engineering for Zulip, a real-time collaboration startup acquired by Dropbox, where she then served as a Director of Engineering. Before that, she was a computer nerd at MIT who joined her friends at Ksplice, a company building a service for rebootless kernel updates on Linux that was acquired by Oracle.Jessica is a former Director for the Python Software Foundation and PyCon North America Diversity Outreach Chair. For her outreach efforts in the Python community, she was awarded the O'Reilly Open Source Award.Open source meets criminal justice reform in Jessica’s work with The Last Mile, a job training and re-entry program that has implemented the first computer programming curriculum inside US prisons. She teaches Python at San Quentin State Prison in California, hires formerly incarcerated software engineers, and uses that bridge between the tech industry and prisons to get people activated and acting for decarceration."You need to be able to think about the business in a way where you have ideas that inflect the business. What is a gap in the product that needs to be addressed? What's an idea for a way to achieve a step function improvement in margin? How can we save the company money that it is spending via an engineering investment?- Jessica McKellar   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Jessica’s founder story @ Pilot (3:26)How founding Pilot is different from past experiences w/ Zulip & Ksplice (4:29)The story behind Pilot’s “power team” of founders (7:06)Distinctions between Jessica’s focus as CTO / founder & eng roles (11:36)How eng functions can help the exec team hit important metrics (14:40)Daily actions that help optimize & monitor metrics like margin (16:33)Frameworks for identifying business trajectory (19:46)What parts of business-building discipline need to be prioritized long-term (21:29)Use market fit & size of market to determine your company’s goal end state (22:48)Past lessons the founding team applied while starting Pilot (24:45)Things Jessica thinks she & her co-founders do right (25:23)Recommendations for exploring potential paths & aligning on the final decision (29:20)Steps for becoming a more impactful, strategic business contributor (30:55)How eng leaders can identify ideal end state & achieve product-market fit (35:15)Create collaboration between product, eng & design teams (37:28)Rapid fire questions (37:09)LINKS AND RESOURCESCool People Who Did Cool Stuff - This weekly podcast dives into history to drag up the wildest rebels, the most beautiful revolts, and all the people who long to be—and fight to be—free. It explores complex stories of resistance that offer lessons and inspiration for us today, focusing on the ensemble casts that make up each act of history.And Away… - Bob Mortimer’s life was trundling along happily until suddenly in 2015 he was diagnosed with a heart condition that required immediate surgery and forced him to cancel an upcoming tour. The episode unnerved him, but forced him to reflect on his life so far. This is the framework for his hilarious and moving memoir, And Away…This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Alamelu Radhakrishnan reveals her best frameworks for making great decisions quickly without fear in one of our favorite ELC Annual sessions last year. She covers her threefold approach to knowing when to make a decision, pitfalls & anti-patterns to avoid throughout the decision-making process, and strategies for delegating and avoiding decision fatigue, all while working around fear of failure & empowering other decision-makers to act with confidence. Alamelu also shares some interesting decision-making concepts including first principles, the 40% to 70% guide, and more.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT ALAMELU RADHAKRISHNANAlamelu is a technology leader, operator, and advisor with experience at scale and in high-growth environments across eCommerce, energy, and professional services. She's excited to start her next chapter with Homebase as VP, Engineering leading Product Delivery, helping small and medium businesses maximize their potential.Previously, she was Chief of Staff to the CTO at Shopify, supporting the Engineering organization, leading the teams responsible for building the systems, technology, and technical programs that power Shopify. Prior to Shopify, Alamelu has worked with some of Canada’s most innovative product and consulting agencies, leading engineering and delivery teams and helping organizations leverage technology to create maximum impact.Alamelu finds joy in solving business problems through technology, strives for organizational excellence, and is passionate about supporting and sponsoring underrepresented folks in the industry. Alamelu lives in Toronto, and loves food, travel, the outdoors, and horror movies."Any decision you make is better than not making a decision. Most of the decisions that we make in our job are reversible decisions, but the time that we lose by not making a decisionis irreversible. The opportunity cost of that time, you're never gonna get that back.”- Alamelu Radhakrishnan   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical proven strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Alamelu @ Shopify (2:54)Why we make decisions as eng leaders (4:11)Understand your top priority & its influence on decision-making (11:05)Common pitfalls & anti-patterns to avoid in the decision-making process (12:28)Tips for making a successful decision stick (16:20)Avoiding decision fatigue & learning to delegate when possible (19:51)Decision-making, autonomy, & navigating fear of failure (22:41)Audience Q&A: decision-making artifacts & organizational aspects (25:39)When your gut feeling contradicts your framework / decision (28:39)Examples of Alamelu’s first principles concept (30:15)Approach for knowing if you’re not delegating enough (31:49)Decision-making in remote environments (33:20)How to delegate without being perceived as disengaged (34:54)The “40% to 70%” guide & knowing when to make a decision (36:40)Alignment vs. consensus (37:32)Techniques for gaining team / individual buy-in (39:59)When you’re on the receiving end of an overly abstracted problem (41:30)Strategies for empowering decision-makers as an eng leader (43:31)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Prachi Gupta, VP of Engineering @ Discord, shares her best strategies for growing your career & leadership skills through transitions, moderated by Chris Chiu, Director of Engineering - Collaboration @ Figma. Prachi and Chris also cover what tactics work well for building community & leading in a remote / hybrid environment, frameworks for operating during wartime, recruiting with the whole person in mind, and why you need to “give away their legos” in order to grow as an eng leader.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT PRACHI GUPTAPrachi Gupta heads engineering at Discord. With close to two decades of experience in consumer technology companies, she is responsible for leading the strategy and execution of a highly scalable and distributed technology stack that powers millions of conversations. Prachi enjoys building engineering teams and defining culture and processes that enable teams to grow and succeed in a repeatable and predictable manner. As an entrepreneurial engineer at heart, she enjoys prototyping ideas and conceptualizing, designing, and delivering impactful software. Prachi is an active supporter of diversity in STEM, co-founded LinkedIn's Women in Technology initiative, and is an alumnus board member of Women's Audio Mission.Prachi holds a Master's in Computer Science and has significant experience in working with startups to explore innovative solutions to real-world problems, from socially-driven consumer websites to enterprise business intelligence & analytics software."You have to learn how to build something, get it to a point that's satisfactory enough to you and be okay handing it off to someone else so they can run with it. That's essentially beenhow I've operated in my career, not because I had this like grand vision in my mind of this is how I get to like the thing I want to get to, but because I was just hungry to learn. I just gained this reputation of, 'Oh, like if something's broken or something needs fixing or something needs figuring out, here's a flexible person that we can throw at it.'”- Prachi Gupta   ABOUT CHRIS CHIUChris Chiu is a Director of Engineering at Figma. Figma is a web-based design tool, and Chris’s teams work on Collaboration & Community as well as Figma’s mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms. Before Figma, Chris led product engineering and platform teams at Flexport and OpenGov.Chris was born in Brazil and has lived in the Bay Area for 14 years. He loves e-bike rides with his kids and reading fantasy & sci-fi novels.Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:What doesn’t work in a remote / hybrid work environment (2:42)Tactics Discord utilizes to enhance the remote / hybrid workspace (4:39)Strategies for building teams w/ a strong sense of community & belonging (7:13)Defining what it means to assess the whole person (10:58)How Discord applies the “whole person” assessment to recruiting (12:42)Prachi’s advice for operating / executing during wartime (14:54)Why understanding the “giving away your legos” philosophy is important (18:09)Prachi’s defining inflection points in her leadership journey (21:15)Balancing your career & parenthood (23:43)The best career advice Prachi has ever received (26:21)Audience Q&A: building trust w/ a new team that is more technically proficient than you are in their domain (28:55)Tips for empowering individuals to their full potential (31:12)How senior eng leaders can help frontline EMs handle their tasks (32:42)Strategies for being the unseen hand vs. seen hand in an org (35:50)Practices Prachi kept & discarded during her pivotal transitions (38:35)Navigating where to allocate your time w/ direct reports (41:50)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

In this week’s episode, we’re featuring another of our most popular, inspiring sessions from ELC Annual 2022. Oksana Kubushyna, former VP of Entertainment Operations @ Riot Games, shares her best strategies for turning your career into a rocket, along with plenty of inspiring stories from her eight years and multiple promotions within Riot Games. She reveals why your mindset is the most important driver of career success, the importance of prioritizing your team, customers, & company over yourself when it comes to getting ahead, and tips for getting feedback, asking for help, prioritizing relationships, showing initiative, and much more. This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022. Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT OSKANA KUBUSHYNAAs VP of Entertainment Operations, Oksana Kubushyna (@GLHF2U) oversees operations of Riot’s Entertainment division with a goal to imagine and develop bespoke IP experiences and products - animation, film, interactive narratives, music, consumer products and beyond - that deepen players’ and fans’ connections to the universe Riot has created in League of Legends.After joining Riot in 2014, she quickly rose through the ranks, holding positions including Head of Infrastructure, Development Director for League of Legends, founder and Head of Riot Platform Group, and VP of Game Studios Operations, helping build the foundation for, launch and operate Riot’s new games globally.She has also been a leader of Diversity and Inclusion efforts within Riot. Her passion for the advancement of women in games and tech reaches beyond Riot, and she has been honored by groups such as Girls Inc. and Wonder Women Tech."If you're asking, 'How can I get ahead?', I'm here to tell you also that you gotta flip that. That's exactly the wrong question to ask because the more you ask questions like this, the more people will perceive you as self-serving. There is no quicker way to lose somebody's trust than for them to believe you are acting in your best interests and not in theirs, not in your company's, not in your customer's. Focusing on your customer, focusing on your manager's needs, on your company's needs, on your team needs is a much more effective way to move forward.”- Oksana Kubushyna   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Oksana & her roles within Riot Games over the past eight years (2:37)Secondary drivers impacting career success (5:53)Why your mindset is the primary driver of success (7:52)Always prioritize the company & customers over your own self-interests (9:57)Strategies for becoming non-reactive & showing initiative (12:53)The importance of prioritizing relationships (15:12)How to incorporate feedback to improve your leadership skills (16:38)Be in the right place so you’re not a $10 watch (19:09)Audience Q&A: tips for going about getting feedback & asking for help (20:48)How to tell stories & adapting the skill for a remote environment (22:52)Tips for recognizing your value & overcoming imposter syndrome (25:10)Knowing you’re not the right “watch” in your company / team (27:37)Defining anti-fragility & its impact on career success (29:14)Serve your team by managing up (30:32)Making the best use of your time in a one-on-one w/ high-level leadership (31:58)Why you should create time to think strategically (33:15)Frameworks for driving change within a larger organization (34:48)Oksana’s advice for moving forward instead of retreating into your comfort zone (36:10)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

What's helped you succeed in the larger company you are at (or left), seldom translates in the new smaller company you find yourself in. This conversation covers strategies for finding the next opportunity, tips for making your transition smooth, frameworks for being a successful leader at a smaller org, what skills / attributes you’ll need to succeed, and how to integrate teams that consist of original startup members & hires from larger companies Featuring Vinod Marur, SVP of Engineering @ Databricks & moderated by Ali Irturk, Vice President of Engineering @ CommerceHub. This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT VINOD MARURVinod Marur is the SVP of Engineering at Databricks. He was previously at Rubrik where he served as SVP Engineering and established a mature engineering organization geared for rapid product development and innovation with a deep focus on product quality and organizational development. Prior to that, Vinod spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles across some of Google’s most critical business units, including Search, Ads, and Payments as well as tapping into his passion for developer platforms to create and lead the Actions on Google platform, used by third parties to develop for Google Assistant and other Google products."You've got to want to build houses, not paint walls. Painting walls is fine and it's totally good, but if you do not like to build houses, actually don't make that transition because you're literally gonna go like, 'Oh my God, there is no wall here.' And you're gonna have to build it from scratch. Everything you need to be able to do yourself.”- Vinod Marur   ABOUT ALI IRTURKAli's day-to-day passion is creating and being part of efficient and effective engineering organizations that are firing on all cylinders where team members can achieve autonomy, mastery, and purpose in a psychologically safe environment. Ali is currently realizing this passion by working at CommerceHub as their Vice President of Engineering.He previously worked at rocketship start-ups funded by some of the top VCs in the world including a16z, SoftBank, Microsoft Ventures, and Lightspeed Ventures to name a few. He was the Vice President of Engineering at WorkBoard, a strategy and results enterprise SaaS platform helping large organizations align quickly for results, leading product delivery as well as accessibility, application security, release engineering, platform, and infrastructure teams. Previously, Ali was the Vice President of Engineering at ALICE Technologies working on revolutionizing the construction industry with an artificial intelligence-powered enterprise SaaS product.Ali also created and managed the advanced products group at Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX) for 8 years while working as an adjunct professor at UC San Diego. His team worked on creating innovative industrial vision systems and software to help companies improve their product quality, eliminate production errors, and lower manufacturing costs. Examples of the products I worked on were the world's first vision system on chip and the world's fastest 3D scanning system to name a few.Where he is today is quite different from where his journey began. Born and raised in Istanbul, Ali graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy and served as an officer in the Turkish Navy. After leaving the Navy, he earned Master's degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics at UC Santa Barbara, a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego, and an MBA at UC Berkeley.Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Vinod & Ali (3:17)Vinod’s experience @ Google & the motivation to move to smaller startups (3:23)Strategies for searching for the next opportunity (7:07)Taking action vs. stagnation mode (9:31)Know your role within a smaller organization (10:27)Recommendations to make transitioning to a small org smoother (13:11)How long the transition period typically lasts (17:35)Frameworks for being an effective leader at a smaller org (18:42)Eng leadership skills & attributes that matter the most (23:25)Use coaches / mentors to help support your transition (25:55)Things Vinod says he would do differently in his earlier transitions (28:13)Audience Q&A: how leading at a small vs. large company is like working out (30:55)Switching your mindset from top-down to bottom-up (32:37)Navigating the balance between celebrating new features & operational wins at startups (34:44)Tips for integrating your startup between original team & newer hires from large orgs (39:19)Coaching individuals & organizations to accept change on both sides (42:35)Know what problems to focus on & calibrate w/ the right folks (45:12)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

This episode features one of our most fascinating sessions from ELC Annual 2022 – we explore how businesses, creators, and researchers are building the “generative generation” & harnessing generative AI’s potential  – featuring Mira Murati, CTO @ OpenAI, Naveen Gavini, SVP, Products @ Pinterest & moderated by Vijay Karunamurthy Head of Engineering @ Scale AI. This session covers the current state & future of generative AI, its potential impacts, what is being done to mitigate potential risks, how smaller companies can take advantage of open-source generative AI technology, and the factors impacting future generative AI innovation.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT MIRA MURATIMira Murati (@miramurati) is the CTO of OpenAI. Mira and her teams are pushing the frontiers of what neural networks can do, seeking to better understand the behavior of powerful AI systems and make them safer, and align them with human intentions and human values. Prior to joining OpenAI, she led the product and engineering teams at Leap Motion (VR/AR startup), and led the design, development, and launch of vehicle products at Tesla, including Model X."We've always wanted human helpers. We've always tried to build tools like since the beginning of life we've created tools. They're just such a natural thing and now this is different because it extends the range of our mental capabilities, of our creativity and intuition and imagination. So we are sort of exploring this new era where tools are helping us extend the range of our minds.”- Mira Murati   ABOUT NAVEEN GAVININaveen Gavini (@ngavini) is the SVP of Products at Pinterest, where he oversees all design and product efforts for both consumer and advertiser products. He is incredibly passionate about building great user experiences and creating environments that stimulate creativity and innovative thinking. Prior to this role Naveen led both the design and engineering functions and was one of Pinterest's earliest engineers, joining in 2012. Since then, he played a critical role in scaling the engineering team, and was involved in almost every major new product initiative the company has developed for users.ABOUT VIJAY KARUNAMURTHYVijay Karunamurthy (@vjkaruna) is Scale’s Head of Engineering. He was the Director of Engineering at Apple for 5 years. He was the Co-Founder and CEO of Nom Labs, a community for food lovers to create, share and watch their favorite stories in real-time, and Co-Founder of AVOS Systems.Additionally, he was an Engineering Manager at Google and Youtube.Vijay is an expert in data-centric AI and building Machine Learning teams. He believes that the next decade of AI achievement is going to be built by teams that take on outsized ambitions, and understand that it is not always a straight line to get there.Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Mira, Naveen & Vijay (3:33)Mira discusses the current state & future of generative AI (3:51)Naveen’s perspective on how these changes impact curation (7:12)How engineering teams can bring generative AI into their own practice (10:27)Strategies for smaller companies to incorporate this technology into their work (12:54)Marketing & creative industries’ views on generative AI & its potential impact (14:32)Naveen shares his experience with guided search @ Pinterest & generative AI’s role w/ the act of discovery (17:05)The intersection of art & generative AI (19:57)Mira & Naveen’s opinions on if generative AI will replace or enhance current jobs (21:47)How generative AI is being used in highly skilled industries (25:55)Risks of generative AI, such as perceived generation of misinformation (28:13)Mira explains how OpenAI mitigates risks & spread of misinformation (31:14)Three pillars of future innovation for generative AI (33:39)Naveen answers what he sees “next week” in generative AI development (35:04)What’s in store for OpenAI (37:32)What’s next for Pinterest & ML (39:25)Audience Q&A: how to democratize AI & make it beneficial for humanity (40:11)Quantum computing / other computing considerations @ OpenAI (42:31)Weighing the pros & cons of generative AI adoption (43:49)The future of ML & mathematical / scientific discovery (46:42)4This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

In this episode, we cover compassionate accountability & facing difficulties head-on with Marc Lesser, author of Finding Clarity. He shares what it was like living in a Zen monastery for 10 years and the leadership lessons he learned while working in their kitchen. We also address strategies for conversations around high standards, accountability, agreements, and alignment; models for correcting negative self-talk; closing the gap between seemingly combative standards, such as speed vs. quality; and how to transition from avoiding conflicts to accepting them. Lastly, we close with a three-minute meditation that can help bring much-needed well-being into your workspace.ABOUT MARC LESSERMarc Lesser (@marclesser) is a CEO, executive coach, and Zen teacher. He founded and was CEO of 3 companies, and helped develop a mindfulness program inside of Google's headquarters. Marc was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the western world. He is the author of Finding Clarity."So to me it's really maybe about high standards and aligning around those standards. Avoiding those conversations is the problem and this is where I think the whole realm of emotions and emotional intelligence and self-awareness comes into play. Five emotionally intelligent engineers working together will produce much, much greater outcomes than people who are not really aligned, not really having those real conversations.”- Marc Lesser   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Marc’s experience working / living in a zen monastery for 10 years (3:30)Leadership lessons learned from the monastery’s kitchen (6:09)Exploring accountability & confronting conflict (8:37)Frameworks for conversations around high standards / accountability (10:26)How to incorporate compassionate accountability (13:53)Practices that help teams develop greater alignment (17:04)When leaders practice accountability w/ kindness (19:53)Model for correcting negative self-talk & how it impacts team alignment (21:23)Closing the gap between speed vs. quality, or other combative standards (24:22)Curiosity & flexibility as core values (26:49)Best practices for forming agreements (27:50)How to move from avoiding difficulties / conflicts to accepting them (29:57)Rapid fire questions (32:28)Marc’s three-minute closing meditation (35:27)LINKS AND RESOURCESFinding Clarity - Marc Lesser’s book that shows how, together, compassion and accountability play an absolutely critical role in transforming how we communicate in our work and family relationships.Think Again - Adam Grant, the bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people’s minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life.Peace Is Every Step - In this book Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations in our daily life that usually pressure and antagonise us. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next conscious breath and the smile we can form right now.These Truths: A History of the United States - Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Ludo Antonov, VP of Engineering @ WhatNot, shares how eng leaders can better operate from their organization’s first principles. He defines the concept & what that looks like for WhatNot through their values of listening to customers, moving uncomfortably fast, and more – plus what happens when optimizing for one principle conflicts with another! We also cover Ludo’s leadership journey, how he navigated the transition from a business model focused on discovery & matching to two-sided marketplaces, and challenges / lessons learned from working within the social, community, & marketplace space.ABOUT LUDO ANTONOVLudo (@ludo_antonov) is the Vice President of Engineering at Whatnot. He has an extensive background in building engineering teams at fast-growing startups including Hulu, Pinterest, and Lyft. He led the Pinterest Growth team as the company was going through hyper-growth up to IPO. Prior to joining Whatnot, he served as an engineering executive at Lyft, overseeing the company’s core rideshare products including the rider, driver, marketplace, and growth organizations."That's one of the important parts is it allows for common language to fall back to whenever these problems actually happen because they tend to be more and more complex and take more and more nuance in order to get right and sometimes, especially like it's very powerful to take it back to first principles and say, 'How would we do this if we have to be ruthlessly prioritizing? Are we moving comfortably fast in thinking of our approach?' And then everyone understands because it's part of our vocabulary and it takes repetition to build that.”- Ludo Antonov   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Ludo provides a status update on recent milestones @ WhatNot (2:40)What operating from first principles looks like within an eng org (4:08)Strategies for going back to your founding leadership principles (6:35)Overcoming product challenges by leading through listening to your customers (8:34)How the eng team pivoted their approach based on that first principle (9:40)Deconstructing “moving uncomfortably fast” & its impact on operating systems (12:13)Incorporating first principles with WhatNot’s international strategy (13:35)When optimizing for one value is in conflict with another (15:32)Frameworks that aid in ruthless prioritization (16:41)Assess impact, likelihood of success & effort during prioritization conversations (19:05)Lessons learned from building Pinterest that Ludo applied to WhatNot (19:57)Ludo’s transition from discovery / matching to a two-sided marketplace (23:40)How Ludo applied two-sided marketplace elements to WhatNot (24:53)Working business model aspects into an engineering context (26:23)Ludo’s favorite seller experiences (28:30)Engineering approaches to & impact on two-sided marketplaces (30:18)Recommendations for eng leaders operating in a new business model (31:57)Rapid fire questions (33:39)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Upside of Stress - Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits.Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore’s bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets—now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Sarah Milstein, VPE @ Daily, joins us to discuss the most surprising aspect of remote teams – the opportunity for higher trust teams. She covers counterintuitive perspectives & non-obvious practices that can benefit distributed orgs, including why hard conversations can be easier when done remotely and how remote teams are less political & more productive than co-located teams. Sarah also dives into Daily’s unique salary & promotion process and how eng leaders could implement this method into their teams. Lastly, we cover “swift trust” and Sarah’s recommendations for creating the optimal conditions for it to thrive.ABOUT SARAH MILSTEINSarah (@SarahM) joined Daily as VP of Engineering, bringing 25 years of deep experience developing products, setting strategy, and leading teams at startups. Most recently, Sarah was VP of Engineering at ConvertKit. Prior to that, she was Senior Director of Engineering at Mailchimp. Sarah has extensive experience in media as a producer and author, having programmed, co-hosted, and managed conferences and trade shows, including the Web 2.0 Expo. Sarah holds an M.B.A. from University of California, Berkeley."Swift Trust is an idea from workplace psychology about teams that come together quickly counterintuitively often build higher levels of trust and do it with very little structure, and it turns out that actually the coming together quickly and the less structure are themselves some of the conditions that can help. It turns out that those are the kind of conditions that are often true in software development. Those conditions of it's clear what you're working on, everyone has a role, there's time involved, like some sense of timing. A lot of times those conditions are available to you but maybe not being used.”- Sarah Milstein   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:The most surprising aspect of working remotely: higher trust (3:24)Sarah’s Slack experiment & how it revealed team dynamics (6:15)Additional benefits & accommodations provided by remote work (8:26)Non-obvious communication practices that benefit remote orgs (11:18)Strategies for having hard conversations one-on-one in a remote setting (13:52)Recommendations for facilitating big group conversations remotely (16:34)Why distributed teams are less political & more productive than co-located teams (18:58)Internal practices to reduce politics (21:48)How Daily’s salary & promotion process works (23:40)Frameworks for aligning projects toward peoples’ strengths within a remote team (27:04)Process for implementing a new salary & promotion model (30:28)Defining “swift trust” & creating conditions for it to be present (34:20)Benefits of creating agreements on how you’re going to work as a team (37:04)Rapid fire questions (40:28)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Staff Engineer's Path - For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well--or the engineer. Tanya O’Reilly’s staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills.Rethinking levels, promotions and salaries - Sarah’s blog post on Daily’s restructuring of levels, promotions, salaries, and how Daily approaches career compensation.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

We’re taking this week off for a short summer holiday. Until then, here are a few episodes from the backlog we highly recommend, for a little fun summer listening... Leveraging OODA Loops in Leadership with Oksana Kubushyna #118 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/building-platforms-vs-products-and-leveraging-ooda-loops-in-leadership-oksana-kubushnya-riotgames Navigating Multiproduct Expansion + other eadership & career insights from Kris Rasmussen #124 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/navigating-multi-product-expansion-leadership-and-career-insights-kris-rasmussen-figma Alignment is the key to delivering great product & team outcomes w/ Jonathon Hensley #90 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/alignment-is-the-key-to-delivering-great-products-and-outcomes And a deep cut from the archives… Conscious Career Growth parts 1 & 2 with Wade Chambers!! #20 & #21- https://elc.community/home/podcasts/conscious-career-growth-wade-chambers-part-1 Want to get involved with ELC? Visit elc.community sign up with your email for membership (it’s free) and we’ll include you on the events & programs we have coming up! Join us at our flagship conference for eng leaders, ELC Annual on 8/30-31! sfelc.com/elcannual2023 Thanks for listening to the engineering leadership podcast. We’ll see you next week!

Barbara Nelson, VP of Engineering @ InfluxData, joins us to share her eng leadership philosophies on career adaptation and helping teams adapt to meet both business needs & individual interests / strengths. We cover how her leadership journey has shaped her perspective on adapting to new career opportunities, implementing boundaries within eng teams to foster creativity, approaching problem sets with eng teams, and building a healthy relationship between product & eng orgs. Additionally, Barbara shares strategies for adapting a team based on personality dynamics, meeting developers where they are, and why she’s built her career on building products with purpose.ABOUT BARBARA NELSONBarbara leads the engineering team at InfluxData. She has extensive experience leading globally distributed teams in designing, developing, deploying, and supporting products and services that are delivered on a cloud-based service platform and on a range of client platforms. Prior to InfluxData, Barbara had a variety of engineering and technical leadership roles, including VP of Engineering at iPass, CTO at Cirrent, and Principal Architect at eBay. Barbara has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from University College Dublin, Ireland."There was an assumption that we had more shared context than we really had. So the engineers kind of thought, 'Well, it'll be obvious to the operations folks that this thing is deployed correctly or incorrectly.' There was no reason for it to be obvious to the operation folks. What would've made it obvious to the operations folks?”- Barbara Nelson   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Barbara’s favorite leadership dilemma – job efficiency vs. enjoyment (1:57)How Barbara has adapted to various roles throughout her leadership journey (3:42)Lessons learned from diving into the role of Interim VP of Operations (6:19)Formal & informal frameworks for making / communicating adjustments (9:03)Barbara’s perspective on pursuing new opportunities & the “career ladder” (11:33)Advice for those who feel stuck on that ladder (13:25)How Barbara’s experience at General Magic impacted her leadership philosophy (15:07)Why boundaries help foster creativity (17:30)Barbara’s approach to introducing problem sets to eng teams (19:14)Strategies for aligning eng teams to reach an intended output (21:55)Driving a healthy relationship between product & eng teams (23:58)Recommendations for bridging the gap between product & engineering (26:02)Adapt a team based on personality dynamics & what gets them excited (28:49)The power of building a product with purpose (36:31)How AI trends will impact eng team adaptation & alignment (38:12)Rapid fire questions (39:45)LINKS AND RESOURCESBuild: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making - Written for anyone who wants to grow at work—from young grads navigating their first jobs to CEOs deciding whether to sell their company—Tony Fadell’s Build is full of personal stories, practical advice, and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

We discuss rapid prototyping & how eng leaders can develop better product instincts with David Crawshaw, CTO & Co-Founder @ Tailscale! He shares his leadership journey from Google to Tailscale and how the early product development days at his startup lead to incorporating rapid prototyping principles within their eng org. We also cover strategies and recommendations for those who are new to rapid prototyping, how to work with design & product teams while quickly iterating, navigating the tension between speed & quality, and how to avoid common pitfalls while implementing the process.ABOUT DAVID CRAWSHAWDavid Crawshaw (@davidcrawshaw) is co-founder and CTO of Tailscale. Previously he was a staff engineer at Google, where he specialized in petabyte-scale logs processing. He implemented TCP/IP networking for Fuchsia, as well as ported the Go language platform to iOS and Android."If you're a pre-seed startup in the Bay Area and you are trying to ship something to your first few customers and you ship with 40-something languages, then you've made a mistake, but it's not necessarily true that a large company has made that mistake. For larger companies with more total requirements, I think the big question is can you construct environments where you can experiment without all of these requirements?”- David Crawshaw   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:David’s background at Google & the transition to founding Tailscale (1:51)Early-day challenges at Tailscale w/ prototyping (4:03)How Tailscale discovered & employed rapid prototyping during its early days (6:41)Paradigm shifts around the product-building process & feedback loop (8:37)Recommendations for those new to rapid prototyping (11:20)Shifting your org’s culture toward accelerated iteration cycles w/ arbitrary limits (13:36)Frameworks for getting to a faster prototype (16:52)How to work w/ design & product throughout rapid prototyping process (19:26)Navigating the tension between doing things quickly vs. working well (21:51)Where large companies try to rapid prototype & things go wrong (26:29)Trains vs. EVs in the Bay area – a metaphor for rapid iteration (28:46)Bringing that metaphor to software development (31:37)David’s perspective on widespread adoption of OpenAI (34:31)Rapid fire questions (39:19)LINKS AND RESOURCESTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - In this exhilarating novel from Gabrielle Zevin, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Matt Spitz joins our latest podcast to discuss leading beyond domain expertise! As Head of Engineering @ Vanta, Matt shares his experience managing & developing a security program in the early days of Vanta before hiring for a specialized skillset. We also cover strategies on maximizing security at your organization as it grows, developing a company culture that invests in security, identifying when your org is ready to hire a domain expert, and how to effectively communicate with & lead domain experts within your org. In addition, Matt reveals what qualities he believes a security culture expert should possess & how eng leaders (who aren’t domain experts in security) can help set the org’s right technical direction.ABOUT MATT SPITZMatt Spitz is the Head of Engineering at Trust Management Platform provider, Vanta, where he helps companies practice better security. Previously, he co-founded and led Dropbox's NYC office, started a company, and has built and scaled diverse engineering teams solving complex product and infrastructure challenges. He lives in San Francisco and rides his bike to work."The value that I can provide to all these departments is visibility and context. The perfect strategy for support or something like security doesn't exist. It's contextual, right? And the things that we are trying to do as a business, the things that are happening outside of those departments that maybe I have visibility into, that is value that I can provide to those people in shifting their strategy and setting the right strategy that's contextually appropriate.”- Matt Spitz   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Matt’s observations around leading beyond your expertise (2:45)Leadership tactics to employ when transitioning to a role outside your expertise (5:02)Matt's transition from Dropbox to Vanta (7:31)Paradigm shifts when transitioning between large & small orgs (9:01)How to improve in leading teams beyond your skill set (11:01)Recommendations for probing / gathering information from experts (13:19)Matt’s experience leading a successful security program before hiring an expert (15:27)Strategies to maximize the area of security as an individual (18:27)How to lay the foundational elements of an early-stage security program (22:14)Knowing when your org is ready for a domain-specific expert (24:05)Indicators to identify when seeking an expert (25:12)Frameworks for hiring / managing an expert beyond your domain (27:03)Evaluating culture fit in hiring security experts (28:54)Effective communication strategies when working with various domain experts (31:44)Setting the right technical direction when you’re not the expert (34:40)Rapid fire questions (36:22)LINKS AND RESOURCESLost Dogs - Matt’s Pearl Jam cover bandThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Han Yuan, Founder of Post-PC Labs, joins us to discuss some of the biggest converging trends hitting our industry – the rise of AI along with the tech bubble that’s poised to burst at any time. We cover not only these trends’ impact on eng leaders, but we also cover how technology trends can drive opportunities for eng leaders to become key strategic partners toward their orgs’ business strategy. Han shares advice for how to evaluate business needs, align your attitude / work toward those goals, earn a seat at the leadership table, build credibility, and use that credibility to implement strategic changes.ABOUT HAN YUANHan Yuan is the founder of Post-PC Labs, LLC.  Post-PC Labs is wholly-owned and funded by Han, powered by a global team of freelancers. The group's focus is building cash-flow breakeven projects with product-market fit.  Early investment themes include wellness and corporate productivity.Before Post-PC Labs, Han was SVP of Engineering at Upwork, where he led one of the world's most distributed engineering teams:  350+ engineers in 40 countries around the world.  In this role, Han was responsible for any function that had anything to do with a computer, including Information Security, IT, QA, Application Engineering, Cloud Engineering, Data Science, Infrastructure Engineering, and Program Management.  During his tenure at Upwork, Upwork's revenue doubled, and the company went public in 2018.In a previous life, Han was an influential mobile engineering leader, having incubated world-class teams for eBay and Netflix.  Han's early work in mobile proved that it was possible to sell billions of dollars of goods and entertain hundreds of millions of people globally using just a mobile phone.  Together with his teams, Han helped launch and scale the eBay and Netflix programs from small incubation teams.  At eBay, he was the first engineer on his team. When Apple announced its one billionth download in the app store and celebrated the top 25 apps in the store of all time, eBay and Netflix were both on the list.Han started his career in enterprise software specializing in the finance and human resources domains and was a co-founder of Buddystumbler.com.  Han has a B.S and M.S in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from U.C. Berkeley with a minor degree in Computer Science and a Management of Technology Certificate from the Haas School of Business."That's the language that you need to communicate with your colleagues, your peers. That's what everybody else understands. They're not going to understand, 'Oh, we need to migrate the data center to the cloud.' They're not going to understand that, 'Hey, these are all the technical reasons why a forklift could be very complicated.' You have to put it in terms that the business is going to understand. That is going to be the art, and along the way, I think if you use that framework, it helps your own teams understand why their work is relevant to the business.”- Han Yuan   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Converging industry trends that eng leaders should be aware of (2:45)The impact of these trends on tech leaders (6:54)“Opaque” technology & how it can drive innovation in eng leaders (9:48)Emerging opportunities that may intimidate, such as LLMs (11:34)Han’s litmus test to determine your risk of irrelevance as an eng leader (12:55)Framework for eng leaders to increase their value-add to business / product strategy (15:31)Evaluating the business’s needs & aligning your values toward those goals (18:02)How eng leaders can make strategic impact on the business (19:37)Key questions to help eng leaders identify strategic solutions (22:30)Tips for establishing (or reestablishing) your role as a strategic partner (24:00)How Han built credibility during his time @ Upwork (27:40)Using newfound credibility to implement strategic changes (29:54)Rapid fire questions (32:28)LINKS AND RESOURCESSapiens – A Brief History of Humankind - Sapiens, the book, takes us on a breath-taking ride through our entire human history, from its evolutionary roots to the age of capitalism and genetic engineering, to uncover why we are the way we are. Sapiens focuses on key processes that shaped humankind and the world around it, such as the advent of agriculture, the creation of money, the spread of religion and the rise of the nation-state. Unlike other books of its kind, Sapiens takes a multi-disciplinary approach that bridges the gaps between history, biology, philosophy and economics in a way never done before. Furthermore, taking both the macro and the micro view, Sapiens conveys not only what happened and why, but also how it felt for individuals.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

Abi Noda, Co-founder & CEO @ DX returns to the show to discuss his latest research on measuring & improving developer productivity, and provides a practical, developer-focused framework to give you clear, actionable insights into what to measure and where to focus in order to improve developer productivity. Abi reveals the inspiration behind his whitepaper / research, elements of their new DevEx framework, and how eng leaders can implement it into their org’s practice in order to increase developer productivity. We also cover the evolution of measuring developer experience (including output metrics, DORA & SPACE frameworks) and the benefits / shortcomings of each approach. In addition, learn not only the importance of having a dedicated DevEx team, but also how to implement these insights if your org isn’t ready to have a dedicated team yet.ABOUT ABI NODAAbi (@abinoda) is the CEO and co-founder of DX, the world's first developer experience management platform. He was previously the CEO and founder of Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub in 2019. At GitHub he led research collaborations with Dr. Nicole Forsgren, McKinsey, and Microsoft Research, which was the impetus for founding DX."Oftentimes, organizations that are larger that get started with these types of measurements in their framework, they're really surprised. They realize that, 'Oh man, there's all these opportunities we didn't even realize and developers are telling us these are the most important things. These aren't the things we're working on and we need to shift our focus.' So, I think there's a huge opportunity to refocus by getting a holistic picture of the developer experience.”- Abi Noda   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:The background behind Abi’s developer productivity research & why it matters (2:50)The evolution of measuring developer productivity (5:50)Moving beyond output metrics to DORA (and how that fell short of solving engineering measurement problems) (7:43)Challenges, drawbacks, and limitations to current measurement approaches (like DORA & SPACE) (11:51)What is the SPACE framework & how it manifests in eng orgs (15:14)Distinction between measuring the notion of productivity vs. focusing on measurements that improve productivity (17:07)Overview of Abi’s new DevEx framework & examples of it in use (19:52)Recommendations for frontline managers, ICs, engineers, etc. to apply the DevEx framework (22:26)How DevEx uncovers blind spots (like requirements quality) (24:21)When engineering orgs should consider separating out productivity (27:44)Strategies for broad-scope leaders to apply the DevEx framework (29:21)Using local teams to address specific DevEx issues (31:30)Why the VP of Eng / org leadership’s values drive developer experience (33:00)Tips for implementing the DevEx framework as a startup vs. mature company (35:06)How Abi is incorporating DevEx strategies into his own company @ DX (37:47)What positive developer experience looks like within an eng team (39:35)The most important step a team w/o a DevEx team can take (41:29)Rapid fire questions (43:17)LINKS AND RESOURCESAbi’s new DevEx whitepaper - “DevEx: What Actually Drives Productivity” by Abi Noda, DX, Margaret-Anne Storey, University of Victoria, Nicole Forsgren, Microsoft Research, Michaela Greiler, DXObviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It - Obviously Awesome goes beyond teaching you what positioning is and why you should care. It gives you a step-by-step process that any startup can follow to position their product, service or company. This book will teach you how to find your product’s “secret sauce” and then sell that sauce to those who crave it.Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind - The first book to deal with the problems of communicating to a skeptical, media-blitzed public, Positioning describes a revolutionary approach to creating a "position" in a prospective customer's mind-one that reflects a company's own strengths and weaknesses as well as those of its competitors.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

In this episode, we redefine what successful, productive engineering looks like with Tammarrian Rogers. As the former Inclusive Engineering Director @ Snap, Tammarrian shares her perspective on global relational healing and what pulled her away from her traditional eng leadership role to explore this topic further. We cover the importance of incorporating relational healing practices into eng leadership & product development, the importance of the “healing profit,” how technology can help manifest healing opportunities for users, and how to align eng teams on embracing relational healing as a practice. We also cover how individual eng leaders can build awareness around internal self-talk – critical & positive – and explore self-love / reflection practices daily.ABOUT TAMMARRIAN ROGERSTammarrian (@tammarrian) has enjoyed acquiring over 30 years of engineering leadership experience in both hardware and software at General Motors, Apple, Microsoft and Snap.  She has had the opportunity to lead cross-functional teams with a focus on inclusive product engineering, quality assurance, release management and product localization and globalization.  She has also served on community non-profit and for-profit organizations including Ada Developers Academy, NordVPN, Northwest Tech Equity Initiative (NWTEI) and OPTYVA, a social purpose organization with a business sustainability focus.In November 2021, Tammarrian left her position as Snap’s first Inclusive Engineering Director to redirect her energy to developing methodologies that promote and facilitate global relational healing; healing that will lead to a sustainable, healthy planet and future for us humans.  Ultimately, her goal is to systematically embed these successful methodologies into emerging and evolving technologies.As a solo nomad today, Tammarrian is enjoying meeting and connecting with people and land around our world. You’ll likely find her on an urban or nature hike, in some body of water or giving much love to a stranger’s dog."We really have to be aware of what is the impact of the product that we're building on our communities beyond the typical metrics that we use to say that we're being successful. So for example, we talk a lot about success being financial, right? It's a profit. How are we profiting? And that also hinges upon everything from our engagement metrics, the visits, the retention, the click-through rate. Whatever your product is, what is it that you're measuring to say that you're building and retaining a community of people and you're growing your business? We're all familiar with that, and I think what I'm inviting us to do as engineering leaders across our industry is to shift the currency of success and to bring in an entirely different currency.”- Tammarrian Rogers   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Tammarrian’s transition from eng leadership @ Snap (2:45)Redefining what a productive day means & focusing on global relational healing (5:09)How Tammarrian felt pulled to move away from traditional eng leadership (6:31)Exploring what global relationship healing means (10:03)Strategies for building awareness around critical internal talk (12:16)Frameworks for practicing self-love (13:47)Tammarrian’s strategies for diverting outward distractions & focusing inward (15:32)Using your physical space to impact your perspective & vice versa (18:15)Encouraging eng leaders to consider the “healing profit” (20:19)Technology / products that manifest healing opportunities (23:12)An example of how Snap’s technology helped users feel seen (25:19)Make sure your team is aligned on if healing is a value (28:06)Tammarrian’s approach to dissonance between perceived & actual lived-out values (31:25)Active ways someone can transition from surviving mode to thriving mode (35:32)The No. 1 practice to embody the thriving mindset (38:20)Rapid fire questions (39:49)LINKS AND RESOURCESProfit Without Oppression - Profit Without Oppression unapologetically identifies the systems, institutions, and policies that privilege the few while excluding and harming the many. This book charts an inclusionary strategic path forward that seeks to develop an economic ethos and series of business models that are supremacy, coercion, discrimination, and exploitation free.The Silent Patient - A shocking psychological thriller of a woman’s act of violence against her husband—and of the therapist obsessed with uncovering her motive.Humankind: A Hopeful History - International bestseller Rutger Bregman provides new perspective on the past 200,000 years of human history, setting out to prove that we are hardwired for kindness, geared toward cooperation rather than competition, and more inclined to trust rather than distrust one another.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/

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

Welcome to the ELC Annual Pop-Up Podcast Booth! This episode features behind-the-scenes conversations of engineering leaders who joined us at ELC Annual last October. These community members jumped into our recording studio to share their best strategies for good communication and providing critical feedback; using OKRs to realign your org; lessons learned from early leadership days; balancing speed vs. quality within your eng team; how technology shifts / bets impact your org; challenges with rapidly changing workspaces between remote, in-person & hybrid; creating a culture of pride & celebrating wins; and combining empathy with the best engineering qualities to determine what you really want.Our featured guests include:Nate Lee, CISO @ TradeshiftGaurav Nigam, VP of Engineering @ WorkBoardCynthia Tham, VP of Engineering @ GMG AmericasMitchell Arnett, Engineering Manager @ Life360Jeremy Eastwood (Head of Eng @ Drone Deploy) & Dobromir Montauk (VP of Engineering @ Doxel.AI)Lizzie Masutov, Co-Founder & CEO @ QuotientShweta Saraf, Director of Platform Engineering @ NetflixWen Hsu, Founder & CEO at Wen CoachingJoin us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoTo get early access to tickets - email us at annual@sfelc.comJoin Jellyfish's GLOW conference on 5/16 & 5/17 to maximize engineering impact!Learn from industry experts, connect and share challenges with peers as you learn effective strategies to expand your leadership!Register now at https://www.jellyfishglowsummit.com/SHOW NOTES:Why Nate Lee @ Tradeshift believes good communication is critical as an eng leader (7:06)Know your audience, meet them where they’re at & learn to communicate up (8:44)Strategies for delivering critical feedback (11:00)Gaurav Nigam @ WorkBoard: how OKRs can be used to resync your org (14:35)Tips for first-timers establishing realistic OKRs (17:56)Things Cynthia Tham @ GBG Americas wishes she knew when she started her eng leadership journey (20:21)Identifying & maintaining consistent behaviors as an eng leader (22:58)Mitchell Arnett @ Life360 discusses speed vs. quality (25:19)Components that lead to a culture of success around speed & quality (29:01)Jeremy Eastwood @ Drone Deploy & Dobromir Montauk @ Doxel.AI on how tech shifts impact eng orgs (32:41)Jeremy & Dobromir’s predictions for the next technology curve (37:14)Commit to change & don’t go in half-heartedly (39:55)How to navigate hybrid & remote work challenges w/ Lizzie Matusov @ Quotient (48:11)Lizzie’s advice for returning to in-person networking (50:42)Practices for navigating shifting work environments between remote, hybrid & in-person (53:07)Lizzie’s vision for successfully integrating teams & developing a sense of belonging (56:23)Tips for starting conversations around belonging within eng teams (1:02:10)Shweta Saraf @ Netflix reveals how her org has built a culture of celebration (1:04:11)Tips for building moments of self-recognition as an eng leader (1:08:11)Strategies for establishing goals & providing clarity (1:10:59)Create a safe space for experimentation (1:16:57)Wen Hsu on the most important question you can ask yourself (1:19:26)Recommendations for taking steps toward what you really want (1:22:33)How to prioritize making time to move toward your “north star” (1:25:13)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah 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/