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Geeks Who Lead Podcast — Software How-To
Geeks Who Lead Podcast

Hear the inside stories of the “geeks who lead at scale” – Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.

I’m your host – Peter Bell, I’ve been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!

This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!

Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that’s before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.

Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/

Copyright: © 2020 CTO Connection, LLC

Latest Episodes:

Raffi Krikorian - Introducing Mission Driven Nov 03, 2022

Show notes

In this very special episode, I get to introduce and interview Raffi Krikorian about his new podcast series - mission driven - that we’ll be hosting and distributing on a regular basis.
From VP Engineering at Twitter and leading the self driving group at Uber to being the CTO of the Democratic National Committee and now the CTO at Emerson Collective, Raffi has had an impactful and varied career in tech.
The one common thread in his career has been a passion for mission driven work - whether trying to change the way the world communicated with each other back in 2009 at Twitter, or helping to solve the self driving problem to reduce the impact of automobile ownership, or more obviously in the political and then social good realms at the DNC and Emerson Collective respectively.
In the episode, Raffi shares what it’s like to move from tech centric companies to an organization that was not at all tech focused, talks about what “mission driven” means to him, and then shares some heuristics for identifying missions that might matter to you and finding ways to apply your engineering leadership skills towards those missions.

Short Byte: Ron Lichty - The multiple levels of engineering management Oct 27, 2022

Show notes

These days it’s quite possible to be hacking on an idea in a dorm room one week, and just a few weeks later to be the CTO of a venture backed startup. Unfortunately, jumping straight from college to the C suite can be problematic as the organization scales and the CTO needs to bring to bear various types of management that they may not have experienced or practiced before.
This week, our guest - Ron Lichty shares his experiences of working with engineering leaders to help them to think about the various types and levels of management - from managing individual contributors through managing managers, functional areas, and eventually an entire function like engineering. He also shares some thoughts on how the things that can make you successful at one level can stop you from succeeding at the next.
It’s a great model for decomposing the various kinds of management skills required by a CTO and much of it comes from the book “The Leadership Pipeline” which was designed as a book to help companies to grow their leaders but which also provides a very coherent framework for thinking about the various levels of management required as an organization scales.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Matt Powell - Aligning annual planning with agile teams Oct 20, 2022

Show notes

There is always a tension in a mature business between the need for certainty when engaging with the rest of the company and the need for flexibility and agility when dealing with the complexities of software development. In this episode, Matt Powell, CTO at FTD shares the details of exactly how he manages planning - from annual and quarterly planning down to the sprint. A great case study in aligning and prioritizing for a decent sized (250+) tech team in a mature org.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Matt Stephenson - Diversifying your engineering pipeline through internships Oct 13, 2022

Show notes

It can be hard to think about your long term engineering talent pipeline when you need to hit your quarterly recruiting and product delivery milestones. But if you don’t start to invest in a talent pipeline you’re going to be scrambling every quarter to meet your numbers. At Code2College, Matt Stephenson and his team help engineering leaders at startups and enterprises to diversify and improve their talent pipeline by investing in high school internships. In this week's episode, hear Matt explain their program and the quality of work and loyalty that their companies are getting by investing in relationships with top talent earlier.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Maher Saba - Remote Presence at Meta Oct 06, 2022

Show notes

In this week's interview, I get to chat with Maher Saba, VP of Remote Presence (and Head of Engineering) at Meta. Before Meta, Maher was a senior developer at IBM and a Dir Eng & Distinguished engineer at Microsoft. In our conversation, we discussed why he made the move to Meta, how he thinks about managing remote teams, and how his team at Meta is working on remote presence - for work and for play.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Francisco Larrain - Hiring multifaceted engineers Sep 29, 2022

Show notes

Francisco Larrain is the CTO and co-founder at Topsort - a company that provides auction-based ad infrastructure for multi-brand retailers and online marketplaces. Before that, he founded Zapped (payment tech) and ran local engineering at Groupon.
In this week's episode, we discuss what he looks for in hiring well rounded engineers for non-trivial domains, his approach to mentorship, and the value of provocations when interviewing engineers.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Steven Gaffney - Essential elements of a consistently high achieving team Sep 22, 2022

Show notes

From Amazon to Lockheed Martin, Steven Gaffney has helped a wide range of companies to improve the effectiveness of their teams. In this week's episode, we discuss the elements of a high achieving team - from having a clear north star purpose, goal, and strategy to promoting honest communications through emotional safety and improving cognitive empathy within the team.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Vidal Graupera - Challenges of being an engineering manager Sep 15, 2022

Show notes

Often, developers are just thrown into engineering management with little to no training. 'Congratulations, today you're the manager,' and they don't know what to do. It's a totally different job." Vidal Graupera has spent years gathering insights into and working through the challenges of being an engineering manager. Join us as we discuss lessons learned on transitioning into the role, methods to lessen the learning curve, and how he overcame some of his hardest challenges as an engineering manager.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Griffin Caprio - Career progression as an engineering leader Sep 08, 2022

Show notes

Griffin had a fairly traditional early career path, moving from sys admin and software development into engineering leadership. More recently he’s been scratching his entrepreneurial itch. In this interview, we discuss some of the things that make software development and engineering leadership a unique career, the importance of setting limits, and the value of therapy as an engineering leader.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Short Byte: Mark Porter - Exercising Judgement Sep 01, 2022

Show notes

In this episode, I get to chat with Mark Porter, the CTO of MongoDB. Mark was previously the CTO at Grab and the GM for RDS at AWS and, after joining MongoDB as CTO in the pandemic's early days, has scaled the engineering org from 400 to over 1000 people over the last two years. In this wide-ranging episode we discuss everything from MongoDB’s “Future of Work” initiative for letting their teams decide how and where to work, the importance of providing air cover for Non-Functional Requirements, why you need a “zipper” connecting product and engineering all the way up and down the org and how to know when you’re halfway done with a change initiative.
PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

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