Trailer: Our 2022 Season Launches Next Week!

Harnessing Professional Strategies & Tech Performance Tools for Personal Growth w/ Chris Cravens #177: Chris Cravens (Former VPE @ Splunk and CIO @ Uber) shares practical tips for applying professional strategies / tech performance tools into our personal lives - to increase intentionality, goal setting, and habit formation in all aspects of our lives. He shares why it’s so easy to dedicate 90% of your time & attention to work while only dedicating 10% to your personal life and reveals from his own experience how he discovered a better work-life balance by applying OKRs, goal setting, postmortems, and deep reflection. We also cover frameworks for identifying feeling-based goals, building habits & accountability within your personal life, combating negative self-talk, and rewiring your brain to focus on the present & not dwell on past failures. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

54 min listen

Cold outreach & strategically expanding your business model into services w/ Jon Perl & Scott Wilson @ QA Wolf #176: This is a special episode from our show “Engineering Founders” - Jon Perl & Scott Wilson share the origin story of QA Wolf & deconstruct their best practices (and what to avoid) for early-stage cold outreach, how to add value to your cold email communications, and why experimenting with your cold outreach is important to early sales! We also dive in to the story behind QA Wolf’s strategic move to incorporate services into their business strategy & tangible ways to add accountability measures that will help drive growth in the early days of your company. Check out Engineering Founders - https://hubs.la/Q02tq5ym0 by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

54 min listen

Building & leading a combined engineering & security org w/ Mike Hanley #175: Mike Hanley, Chief Security Officer and SVP of Engineering @ GitHub, joins us to discuss how GitHub has successfully combined its engineering & security orgs and shares recommendations for how other orgs can pivot to this model. We cover why it’s so important for eng orgs to collaborate with security early on in the product development cycle and tips for educating your engineers on security best practices. We also discuss how the rise of AI tools / usage is changing how companies need to think about & practice security, why AI is providing opportunities for increased safety & security within product development, and strategies for encouraging your org to adopt AI tooling within engineering, security, and beyond. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

46 min listen

Adaptability in engineering orgs: how management systems, executive priorities & career transitions evolve w/ Cosmin Nicolaescu #174: In this episode, we are talking about adaptability in engineering orgs, building out impactful management systems, and navigating complex transitions as eng leaders with Cosmin Nicolaescu, CTO @ Brex. He shares how his experience moving from Romania to the United States taught him vital lessons in adaptability that he has applied throughout his eng leadership career. We also discuss how to define what success as a manager looks like, Cosmin’s approach to putting out fires (and deciding which ones to prioritize), why you should restructure your meetings to focus on output vs. review, and how to implement a succession plan. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

42 min listen

“The Third Act” & exploring career paths beyond operational roles w/ Nidhi Gupta #173: Have you ever wondered what to do in the “third act” of your career & beyond when it comes to opportunities outside traditional eng leadership / operational roles? In this episode, Nidhi Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder @ SheTO, joins us to share her perspectives on identifying new pathways, taking time for self-discovery, and deciding which career opportunity you’re most passionate about. She defines what the “third act” of your career is & explains roles, such as fractional roles, coaching, serving on boards, advising, etc. Plus Nidhi explains how her passion for supporting women in CTO roles led her to found SheTO, how to give yourself permission to explore new paths, and validate your next steps. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

38 min listen

$“The Third Act” & exploring career paths beyond operational roles w/ Nidhi Gupta #173: Have you ever wondered what to do in the “third act” of your career & beyond when it comes to opportunities outside traditional eng leadership / operational roles? In this episode, Nidhi Gupta, CEO & Co-Founder @ SheTO, joins us to share her perspectives on identifying new pathways, taking time for self-discovery, and deciding which career opportunity you’re most passionate about. She defines what the “third act” of your career is & explains roles, such as fractional roles, coaching, serving on boards, advising, etc. Plus Nidhi explains how her passion for supporting women in CTO roles led her to found SheTO, how to give yourself permission to explore new paths, and validate your next steps.$

Healthy Tension: GTM & Product/Eng Collaboration at Hundreds of Millions ARR Scale w/ Tido Carriero & Joe Morrissey #172: We’re featuring another popular session from ELC Annual 2023 – welcome to “Healthy Tension: GTM & Product/Eng Collaboration at Hundreds of Millions ARR Scale” with Tido Carriero, (Co-Founder @ Koala and Former VPE @ Segment) and Joe Morrissey (General Partner @ a16z & Former CRO @ Segment)! Tido & Joe share stories from the beginning of their partnership at Segment, including their first cross-functional annual planning meeting. They highlight lessons learned from those early days and how others can implement annual planning session frameworks to develop value drivers for their org in order to better serve customers & create products with value. Joe & Tido also cover how to build a healthy, trusting relationship between product & eng when it comes to building / executing a successful GTM strategy. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

43 min listen

Driving innovation at large-scale orgs, translating leadership skills to successfully scale early-stage startups w/ Jeremy Burton #171: We dissect leadership lessons from across vastly different scales of eng orgs – ranging from 13,000-people companies to 10-person start-ups – with Jeremy Burton, CEO @ Observe. He shares how he effectively translated leadership skills from working at large-scale orgs to small, early-stage start-ups & addresses challenges faced when scaling at any point. Jeremy covers start-up strategies for bringing your eng teams closer to your customers & driving innovation at large-scale orgs; characteristics of eng leaders that promote successful scaling; gaining & communicating conviction; driving community engagement & building trust within developer communities; and more. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

49 min listen

Pivotal Leadership Moments & Career Decision-Making w/ Thuan Pham & Li Fan #170: We’re sharing a session from ELC Annual 2023 – Thuan Pham (Board Director, Advisor, former CTO of Uber & Coupang) shares pivotal moments from his life, leadership journey & career with Li Fan (CTO @ Circle). Thuan shares his best leadership lessons & strategies for scaling during hypergrowth from his time at Uber and how those skills impacted him in roles since then. He shares stories about working at Uber – including both the highs & lows – and reflects on what could have been done differently or better. Thuan also shares advice on how to keep your eng org motivated during crisis; advice he would give his younger self; and skills that make a great eng leader today vs. 20 years ago. Thuan also shares stories from his upbringing and how his experience as a refugee & immigrant impacted him as an eng leader today. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

44 min listen

The Disciplined Pursuit of Less: Using AI and Design to Maximize Customer Impact w/ Dheeraj Pandey #169: In today’s episode, we’re resharing Dheeraj Pandey’s popular session from ELC Annual 2023 on the disciplined pursuit of less! As the Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman of DevRev.ai, he shares how AI tools can maximize customer impact & reduce information asymmetry between various teams, including eng, customer support, product, sales, etc., ultimately creating a more customer-centric mindset. He reveals how to leverage AI to tackle “verbs,” such as classifying, routing, attributing, summarizing and more, further streamlining productivity and empowering your org to focus on customer needs. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

38 min listen

AI ethics/safety, applying AI to address societal challenges & becoming a board member w/ Lake Dai #168: In this episode, we chat with Lake Dai (Founder & Managing Partner @ Sancus Ventures), who shares her career story & how to harness AI technology in a way that is both effective & compassionate. We cover the concept of “co-parenting AI”; why ethics in AI is non-negotiable; and how to create compassionate AI. Lake also reveals how she became a veteran at serving on boards & why it is something she is passionate about. We dissect ways current eng leaders who are interested in board service can gain the right experiences & demonstrate their value as a potential board member. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

52 min listen

Software Dev in 2033 w/ Tara Hernandez, Erik Meijer, and Jocelyn Goldfein #167: In this episode, we’re resharing one of the most popular & exciting sessions from ELC Annual 2023, featuring a panel of experts discussing what software dev will look like in the decades to come! This conversation features Tara Hernandez, VP Developer Productivity @ MongoDB; Erik Meijer, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Meta; and Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners. They debate & dissect how AI is changing what software dev looks like, what capabilities future eng leaders will need to build upon, where AI technology will need to improve moving forward, and more. by The Engineering Leadership Podcast

43 min listen