We share the most critical perspectives, habits & examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry. Join our community of software engineering leaders @ www.sfelc.com!
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From architect to AI exec: Scaling leadership, maintaining credibility & effective communication to non-technical execs w/ Prashant Ramarao #222
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43:37ABOUT PRASHANT RAMARAO Prashant is a hands-on technology executive with extensive experience in software engineering, leading large organizations, specializing in AI / ML, and large-scale systems architecture. With advanced degrees in computer science and engineering leadership, he excels at defining technical strategies that align with business go…
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The Startup Epoch: Rethinking Company Building & Defensibility in an AI World w/ Craig McLuckie #221
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42:38AI is reshaping the fundamental economics of startups—lowering product development costs, compressing GTM cycles, and rewriting the rules of competition. In this episode, Craig McLuckie (Co-Founder & CEO @ Stacklok, co-creator of Kubernetes) unpacks “the epoch of the startup,” a moment of massive disruption where fast-moving founders have a unique …
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AMD’s unified hardware + software strategy & building an open-source AI ecosystem w/ Anush Elangovan #220
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36:55ABOUT ANUSH ELANGOVAN Anush Elangovan leads the Artificial Intelligence Group (AIG) as Corporate Vice President of AI software and solutions. Anush has 23 years of industry experience in AI, computer science, compilers, network security, operating systems, math, and its materialization on complex hardware systems. This co-founder and Chief Executiv…
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Lessons Leading EPD: Mindset, decision-making, 80/20 product strategy & pivoting for leverage/speed w/ Farnaz Azmoodeh #219
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43:12ABOUT FARNAZ AZMOODEH Farnaz is the CTO at Linktree, the leading social platform for creators and small businesses. Linktree enables its users to unify, curate, and monetize their online presence. Farnaz started her career at Google, focusing on the ad tech space. Farnaz then joined Snap, leading Snap's AR monetization team before scaling to run Sn…
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Empowering Teams & Cultivating True Ownership in Engineering Orgs w/ Wade Chambers #218
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44:55ABOUT WADE CHAMBERS Wade Chambers will be leading Engineering at Amplitude. Amplitude is the leading digital analytics platform that helps companies unlock the power of their products. Wade has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Included Hea…
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Building partnerships w/ complex stakeholders, aligning tech debt w/ business value & decisive vs. thoughtful decision-making #217
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49:24ABOUT FUNMI OLUDAIYE Funmi is a Managing Director and the Head of the Digital Risk Office for Enterprise Partnerships at Goldman Sachs, where she is pioneering a first-of-its-kind global initiative to embed critical business, security, and engineering risk practices within the engineering organization. With nearly 15 years of experience as a softwa…
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Recalibrating leadership priorities, leveraging your time & empowering senior leaders w/ Vinod Marur #216
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40:19ABOUT VINOD MARUR Vinod 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 …
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From early days to IPO: Scaling leadership, enterprise growth, product ownership, & outgrowing your failure modes w/ Jon Hyman #215
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57:14ABOUT JON HYMAN Jon Hyman is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Braze, the customer engagement platform that delivers messaging experiences across push, email, in-app, and more. He leads the charge for building the platform’s technical systems and infrastructure as well as overseeing the company’s technical operations and engineering te…
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Essential questions & leadership principles to navigate change, fear & uncertainty w/ Rukmini Reddy #214
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45:38ABOUT RUKMINI REDDY Rukmini Reddy is the Senior Vice President of Engineering, responsible for managing product and platform delivery, infrastructure, and data science. Reddy joins PagerDuty from Slack where she guided the vision, strategy, and execution of a comprehensive re-architecture, transforming the messaging software into an automation plat…
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Building platforms, ecosystems & open-source communities: Lessons from Viam & MongoDB w/ Eliot Horowitz @ Viam #213
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42:54ABOUT ELIOT HOROWITZ Eliot Horowitz is the Founder and CEO of Viam, an engineering platform unlocking AI, automation, and data for devices in the physical world. With a deep commitment to advancing technology, Eliot leads Viam in helping companies build solutions across robotics, food and beverage, climate, marine, industrial manufacturing, and mor…
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Leading transformation, inspiring vision & empowering teams to operate autonomously w/ Kevin Stewart #212
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47:33ABOUT KEVIN STEWART Kevin Stewart is an engineering executive focused on building teams to build products. He has helped shape the engineering culture at a number of startups, digital agencies and cloud companies. Kevin is particularly experienced in leading remote and distributed teams to consistently deliver quality products. Although he currentl…
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Accelerating & upskilling your AI learning journey w/ Maher Hanafi #211
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46:44ABOUT MAHER HANAFI Maher Hanafi is a seasoned technology engineering leader, driving digital transformation and delivering impactful SaaS solutions. As Senior Vice President of Engineering at Betterworks, he leads the AI vision and applications for their AI-powered performance management software, overseeing the integration of AI tools that enhance…
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Data governance, adversarial testing & more - Essential strategies to scale AI responsibly in a shifting regulatory environment w/ Jim Palmer #210
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48:58ABOUT JIM PALMER Jim Palmer is the Chief AI Officer at Dialpad. Previously he was CTO and Co-Founder of TalkIQ, a conversational intelligence start-up with expertise in real-time speech recognition and natural language processing, acquired by Dialpad in May of 2018. Prior to TalkIQ, he was the founding engineer on the eBay Now local delivery servic…
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Capturing & synthesizing unbiased insights from users, your open source community & yourself w/ James Campbell #209
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43:59ABOUT JAMES CAMPBELL James Campbell is the co-founder and CTO at Great Expectations, the leading open-source data quality product. Prior to his life at a startup, James spent nearly 15 years working across a variety of quantitative and qualitative analytic roles in the US intelligence community, ultimately serving as Chief Data Scientist at CIA. He…
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Upskilling: practices to improve hiring, storytelling & structuring personal/leadership problems with engineering principles #208
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43:39ABOUT COLLEEN TARTOW Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of c…
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GTM Insights from Top DevTool companies w/ David Mytton #207
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51:20ABOUT DAVID MYTTON A dynamic approach to tech innovation, security, sustainability, and developer empowerment can be seen in everything David Mytton touches. As co-founder of Console and host of the Console DevTools Podcast, he delights in keeping developers ahead of the curve with the tools they need the most. As the founder of Server Density (acq…
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Navigating Rapid Change: Skills to Cultivate Resilience, Adaptability & Creativity in Engineering Teams w/ Melody Meckfessel #206
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41:17ABOUT MELODY MECKFESSEL Melody Meckfessel is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Jasper.ai, the world’s leading AI marketing platform. In her role, Melody shapes the technical vision of the company, oversees product delivery, and spearheads AI research to develop new capabilities that accelerate business outcomes for enterprise marketers. Before …
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Building Trust: Strategic humor, bridging communication gaps & enabling your team to do more #205
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36:36ABOUT ANDY KORTZ Andy Kortz is currently the Chief Technology Officer at Integra Testing, where he leads technology transformation and drives operational efficiency in aggressive growth organizations. Andy also is a co-lead for the ELC Local Chapter initiative in Chicago. With over 20 years of experience in enterprise architecture and software deve…
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Faster iteration & execution: Insights from Google Workspace’s AI product experience journey w/ Anurag Agarwal #204
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44:56ABOUT ANURAG AGARWAL Anurag Agarwal leads the Google Workspace engineering organization, overseeing products such as Gmail, Calendar, Chat, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Slides, and Meet that help billions of users and customers across the world to connect, create, and build together. With over 18 years of experience at Google, Anurag’s expertise spans a wi…
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Winning Hearts & Minds: Effective Strategies for Leading Through Change from IC to EM, post M&A and more w/ Kathryn Vandiver #203
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42:35Kathryn Vandiver (Former VP of Engineering @ Quanata) shares insights on providing new leadership during significant organizational change. First, we dissect what transitioning from an individual contributor to engineering manager is like. Then, we discuss what it’s like stepping into an EM role informally vs. formally; how to host conversations th…
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The four modes of coaching & navigating career growth in expanding or contracting companies w/ James Birchler #202
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49:03We discuss the four modes of coaching and navigate career growth in expanding / contracting companies with James Birchler. James shares highlights from the recent coaching / mentoring workshop he facilitated, and breaks down how each mode of coaching differs tactically. We also cover the dilemma of linear career/leadership growth vs. exponential co…
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Unleashing potential in your employees & strategies to grow leadership skills in your org w/ Natalie Glance #201
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41:51Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo joins us for a conversation on unleashing potential in your employees! We discuss practices that have helped Duolingo create a meaningful path for hiring & developing engineers through their onboarding & internship programs. We also cover topics including scaling your eng org, upskilling recent g…
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Building an AI-first company & interactive AI avatar leadership use-cases w/ Rong Yan #200
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47:56In this episode, we explore building an AI-first company and engineering org with Rong Yan (CTO @ HeyGen)! We dive into the potential of HeyGen’s interactive avatars, imagining how they can help engineering leaders scale their impact, foster team alignment, coach effectively, and accelerate decision-making. Rong shares insights on the structure of …
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Re-defining & elevating engineering’s strategic role with the business w/ Rajashree Pimpalkhare #199
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41:41In this episode, Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences @ Twilio) reflects on her experiences re-defining engineering’s relationship with the business throughout her career. We cover how the role of engineering varies across industries, why it’s paramount for engineering leaders to find their sea…
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How engineering leaders can better drive business outcomes & increase alignment between product and engineering w/ Gokul Rajaram #198
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43:36In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration betwe…
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From VPE to CTO - mission-aligned teams, prioritizing company over department outcomes & the power of a “not do” list w/ Ryan Fox #197
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40:56Ryan Fox, CTO @ Super.com, joins us to dissect his leadership transition from Vice President of Engineering to CTO. He shares how he created his own job description and – perhaps most importantly – identified & found buy-in around his “not do” list. We also cover Ryan’s favorite strategies for coaching department heads, why it’s important to focus …
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Leading change, navigating career growth & finding inspiration beyond engineering - Live from ELC Annual 2024! #196
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29:16In this episode, we’re bringing listeners into the final conversations from the pop-up podcast booth at ELC Annual 2024! Patrick sat down with a few eng leaders attending the event to discuss takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 & eng leadership insights they want to share with others in the community. He chatted with Nick Hurlburt (Executive Director of…
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Career growth in today’s market + effective partnerships between engineering & hiring partners - Live from ELC Annual 2024 #195
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29:58We’re back with another episode live from ELC Annual 2024’s podcast booth! Patrick discusses the practices and rituals around effective hiring & recruiting with a few speakers and roundtable hosts from ELC Annual 2024, including Lawrence Bruhmuller (SVP of Engineering @ Great Expectations), Eric Fettner (Co-Founder @ Job Sauce), and Scott Swedberg …
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Selling your ideas, leveraging curiosity in tough conversations, managing emotions & psychological safety - Live from ELC Annual 2024! #194
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24:05This episode came live from ELC Annual 2024! Local ELC chapter leaders from across the globe share some of their favorite leadership principles, covering topics like how to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior leaders, how to manage yourself and your regulate emotions, how to leverage curiosity in tough conversations, how to build psychologica…
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Collaboration & Innovation in the Time of AI w/ Anurag Agarwal & Lizzie Matusov #193
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40:30We’re back with another session from ELC Annual 2024! This episode features an engaging session on collaboration & innovation in the time of AI with Anurag Agarwal, VPE, Google Workspace @ Google, and Lizzie Matusov, Co-Founder & CEO @ Quotient! In this conversation, they dissect how AI is transforming not only the products engineering teams are bu…
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Collaborative Teams Are More Productive Teams w/ Marcel Weekes & Arquay Harris #192
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41:03One of the most important aspects of success is a team’s ability to collaborate – but it can also be one of the most challenging parts. In this episode, we’re highlighting a popular session ELC Annual 2024 on how to encourage collaboration, ultimately increasing productivity and creating more likely outcomes of success. This conversation features M…
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Scaling AI for an Immersive 3D Platform with 77 Million Daily Active Users w/ Anupam Singh & Maria Kazandjieva #191
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37:49We had a blast at ELC Annual 2024, so we wanted to bring our podcast listeners some of the best highlights from popular sessions! This episode features one of the ELC Annual sessions with Anupam Singh (VP of AI & Growth Engineering @ Roblox) & Maria Kazandjieva (Co-Founder @ Graft), as they discuss building AI/ML models at a massive scale. Anupam s…
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We’re taking a quick break from releasing episodes for a few weeks while we wrap up everything for ELC Annual. We’ll be back in late September with new guests! We have some excellent sessions at the conference - check out the agenda here: https://sfelc.com/annual2024#agenda Join us at ELC Annual 2024! ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing tog…
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Connecting bugs & quality to the business bottom line w/ Dave Rhodes #190
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48:40Dave Rhodes, CEO @ Sauce Labs, joins the pod to discuss the value of great digital experiences & how/why quality issues affect companies’ bottom lines, and how to connect bugs to the business! Dave dissects strategies for addressing quality issues, examples connecting quality with the bottom line, best practices for quality testing strategies, and …
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Live from Config 2024! Product-building, leadership & execution lessons behind the launch of Figma’s Dev Mode w/ Marcel Weekes #189
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39:57In our latest episode, we’re coming to you live from Config 2024, Figma’s annual design conference for people who build products! This is our first time ever doing a live interview from another conference, so we are excited to share it with you. We’re joined by Marcel Weekes, VP of Engineering @ Figma. In our conversation, we dive into topics inclu…
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Tackling All Top 10 Engineering Leadership Challenges w/ Farhan Thawar #188
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40:40Farhan Thawar, VP & Head of Engineering @ Shopify, was our first-ever ELC pod guest, so it’s fitting that he’s here to join us for this culmination of our series tackling the Top 10 challenges that engineering leaders face in a rapid-fire, high-energy format! Farhan shares insights into individual challenges, including motivating others after a reo…
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Strategic Thinking, Org Design & Aligning Engineering & Business Goals - Tackling the Top 10 Eng Leadership Challenges! #187
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43:06In Part 3 of the Top 10 Challenges series, we’re addressing the biggest org-level challenges that eng leaders face. We’ve compiled conversations from past podcasts and conference sessions that cover org-related topics, such as aligning engineering & business goals, team topologies & org resourcing, and thinking strategically. This episode features …
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Speed v. Quality, Measuring Productivity & Cross-Functional Relationships - Tackling the Top 10 Eng Leadership Challenges! #186
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42:01This is Part 2 of our Top 10 Challenges series! In this episode, we’re focusing on three common team challenges that eng leaders face: how to increase velocity without losing quality, measure productivity & create meaningful metrics, and work cross-functionally with other teams. We identified these challenges based on conversations with hundreds of…
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Coaching, Influencing, Motivating & Managing Up - Tackling the Top 10 Engineering Leadership Challenges! #185
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42:32In today’s episode, we’re kicking off a four-part series on the Top 10 challenges eng leaders face based on feedback from hundreds of eng leaders. In Part 1 of this mini-series, we’re tackling the first four issues: developing & coaching team members, strategies for motivating & inspiring others, influencing / creating organizational buy-in, and ma…
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The Top 10 Challenges Engineering Leaders Face: A Sneak Peak
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2:00After surveying hundreds of engineering leaders, we’ve pinpointed the top 10 challenges engineering leaders face! Exciting news - next week marks the launch of our 4-part series, sharing some of the best insights from hundreds of ELC events, podcasts & conference sessions. The finale? A dynamic rapid-fire session with Shopify's VP of Engineering, F…
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Building scalable hiring processes & systems promoting operational excellence w/ Stephen Poletto #184
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48:52Today’s conversation focuses on building scalable hiring processes as your org grows and creating systems that promote operational excellence, featuring Stephen Poletto, CTO @ Lattice. He shares examples of how they introduced & scaled their hiring processes to better articulate employee value propositions, implement experience differentiators, and…
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Conscious Career Growth w/ Wade Chambers #183
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1:01:25In today’s episode, we’re highlighting one of our favorite past conversations, featuring Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Included Health. We cover tools for increasing your capacity to win as an eng leader, getting unstuck in your career / moving forward, and applying “conscious growth” and neuroplasticity principles to the career. Wade s…
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Why Engineering Needs a Seat at the Negotiating Table with Melody Hildebrandt #182
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50:25We revisit an episode from the podcast archives – Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ Fox) shares her experience representing the tech org during the biggest deal in entertainment history! We cover Melody’s most important lessons negotiating on behalf of the tech org plus how they leveraged the M&A event to accelerate innovation and productivity. Melody will…
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Working backward from winning & preparing for future tech innovation w/ Evan Welbourne #181
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43:44We discuss how to navigate the delicate balance between meeting current customer needs while also preparing for future tech trends & opportunities with Evan Welbourne, Head of AI and Data @ Samsara. Evan dissects the rapidly transforming pace of developing AI/ML products, sharing strategies for merging conversations around differing product-buildin…
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Inside ELC Annual 2024: 2 days to recharge, reconnect & empower your growth #180
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8:02Welcome to a special episode highlighting ELC Annual 2024, our annual conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world! Tune in to hear how we built this 2-day experience to be the ultimate accelerator of leadership and professional growth. We cover how the conference will expand your perspectives with curated peer-led roundta…
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Effective impromptu communication & harnessing team topologies w/ Lakshmi Baskaran #179
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50:20Lakshmi Baskaran shares insights on impromptu communication, why it’s important, and a framework for successfully navigating these tricky situations! We also cover team topology and why it’s so important to have the right composition of product-minded vs. technical-minded engineers within any eng team. Lakshmi shares how prioritizing team topology …
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Balancing technical depth & high-level business strategy w/ Oded Kedem #178
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40:31We dissect one of the biggest challenges that eng leaders face in their day-to-day – navigating the balance between going deep in technical work & maintaining a high-level view of business strategy. Oded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer @ BigPanda, shares examples from his experience, covering strategies for prioritizing where to go deep into the te…
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Harnessing Professional Strategies & Tech Performance Tools for Personal Growth w/ Chris Cravens #177
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53:49Chris 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 …
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Cold outreach & strategically expanding your business model into services w/ Jon Perl & Scott Wilson @ QA Wolf #176
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53:38This 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 i…
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Building & leading a combined engineering & security org w/ Mike Hanley #175
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45:44Mike 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 ti…
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