The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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Debate! Flat vs. Hierarchical Organizations w/ Farhan Thawar & Jerry Krikheli #60 Sep 07, 2021

Show notes

Welcome to our community’s FIRST DEBATE! Farhan Thawar (VPE @ Shopify) & Jerry Krikheli (Sr. Director of Engineering @ Facebook) hash out which org structure should rule them all… Should you go flat? Or should you become a hierarchy? You’ll hear how each structure impacts culture, innovation, and velocity!

FARHAN THAWAR, VP OF ENGINEERING @ SHOPIFY

Farhan Thawar is currently VP, Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. He is an avid writer and speaker and was named one of Toronto's 25 most powerful people. Prior to Xtreme, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, Celestica, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Farhan is also an advisor at yCombinator and holds a board seat at Optiva (formerly Redknee).

JERRY KRIKHELI, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING @ FACEBOOK

Prior to Facebook, Jerry was VP of Engineering at Houzz where he oversaw all infrastructure, platform, and engineering across Consumer, Marketplace, and Industry Solutions initiatives. Jerry was also an engineering director at Google responsible for developing early versions of the display ad serving infrastructure and launching YouTube ads as well as video ads on mobile apps. He has a passion for building high-performing systems, products, and people.

SHOW NOTES

The rules of the debate (2:45)
Opening Statement: Why hierarchical organizations? (3:39)
Opening Statement: Why flat organizations? (6:25)
Culture in flat organizations (9:09)
Culture in hierarchical organizations (10:55)
Culture rebuttals (14:19)
Innovation in flat organizations (19:49)
Innovation in hierarchical organizations (22:01)
Innovation rebuttals (24:57)
Velocity in hierarchical organizations (26:05)
Velocity in flat organizations (28:42)
Closing Statements on Flat vs. Hierarchical (30:16)

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Lessons on Hyper-Growth & Scaling w/ David Singleton & Bill Coughran #59 Aug 31, 2021

Show notes

You've found the mythical product-market fit & are scaling fast... now what?! Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital; Former SVP Engineering @ Google) & David Singleton (CTO @ Stripe) cover common mistakes scaling engineering orgs make, signals to help you identify & develop good managers internally AND find great hires externally. Plus how to balance short & long term demands while scaling & more!

DAVID SINGLETON, CTO @ STRIPE

David joined Stripe from Google, where he was VPE, leading the Android Wear & Google Fit teams. At Google, David led teams that built some of the company’s most ambitious products, including its first apps with voice search; publisher products for Google Adsense; Google Offers; and Google Mobile Search Apps. He was also one of the first engineers at Google London and oversaw much of the growth of the London engineering office from inception to the large scale it has today.

Prior to Google, David spent 3 years as a senior engineer at Symbian, the pioneering mobile phone operating system, where he developed software for Nokia & Samsung smartphones & worked on both the Bluetooth stack & PC Connect software.

BILL COUGHRAN, FOUNDER'S COACH & PARTNER @ SEQUOIA; FORMER SVP ENGINEERING @ GOOGLE

Bill Coughran works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security.

SHOW NOTES

What are the most common mistakes scaling organizations make? (2:24)
What's the best way to add managers to a technology organization? (4:40)
Signals to identify potential engineering managers to develop from inside the organization (7:32)
Finding the right external hires while in hyper-growth (signals & warning signs) (8:41)
What questions do you ask for hiring references? (11:23)
Navigating doing things that don’t scale in the short term (16:17)
“Second system syndrome” & avoiding the urge to rewrite your system (19:12)
How to retain early employees at a hyper-growth startup (21:30)
What Bill’s most excited about in the tech industry right now (24:18)
Tips to help turn ICs into leaders (25:20)
Deciding on org structure when you’re scaling fast (27:26)
Navigating speed & long-term quality building your architecture at an early-stage company (29:43)
Final advice from Bill & David (31:37)

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Build or Buy: Scaling Through Acquisitions & Ownership w/ Marianna Tessel & Aileen Lee #58 Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

Marianna Tessel (CTO @ Intuit) & Aileen Lee (Founder/Managing Partner @ Cowboy Ventures) cover how to navigate the build vs. buy decision! They share the frameworks they use to make a “buy” decision, how they assess engineering talent during acquisitions, how they decide between vendor software vs. open-source vs. building yourself. Plus the leadership skills that help Marianna lead a 5,000+ person team!

MARIANNA TESSEL, CTO @ INTUIT

Marianna oversees Intuit’s technology strategy and leads all of Intuit’s product engineering, data science, information technology and information security teams worldwide. Marianna's been at the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops.

Marianna previously served as Executive VP of Strategic Development at Docker, held leadership roles at VMware, Ariba, and General Magic working on the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops.

AILEEN LEE, FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER @ COWBOY VENTURES

Aileen is founding Partner at Cowboy Ventures, a team that backs seed-stage technology companies re-imagining work and life through technology, what they call “life 2.0”. Cowboy Ventures works with startups like Guild Education, Lightstep, Dollar Shave Club, and Tally.

Aileen periodically writes about technology insights and is known for coining the business term “unicorn” for public and private companies valued over $1bn. She has been named to the Forbes Midas List of best investors and Forbes Most Powerful Women, as well as to Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.

Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was founding CEO of RMG Networks, and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is mom of 3, wife to a startup founder, an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and co-founder of the non-profit All Raise - aiming to accelerate success for women in the technology ecosystem.

SHOW NOTES

About Marianna’s role at Intuit (2:33)
How many acquisitions / build vs. buy decisions have you had to make? (4:35)
Marianna’s evaluation framework for buying companies (6:26)
Assessing engineering talent in acqui-hires (9:37)
How do you decide to buy vendor software or build yourself? (15:41)
How do you define what’s core to the business vs. context? (19:11)
Where are you looking to buy instead of build right now? (21:40)
Hard & soft skills that helped Marianna advance her career and run a 5000+ person team (23:48)
Were you always good at the "developing talent" and "managing" part of being a CTO? (26:50)

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BONUS: Internal mobility, mission-driven decisions, & self-service infrastructure w/ Guillermo Fisher Aug 24, 2021

Show notes

Guillermo Fisher (Director of Engineering, Infrastructure @ Handshake) shares the impact of mission & values alignment, supporting your team’s internal mobility & professional growth, plus interesting infrastructure challenges & actualizing values on the infra team. This episode serves as a great reminder of WHY we become engineering leaders - to empower our teams to become great leaders in tech.

"The engineering team pivoted! Trashed OKRs! Trashed the roadmap... and said, 'We're going to build out virtual career fairs.' And so we did the work over the course of the year. Delivered career fairs in that same year... which is amazing! And have since served thousands and thousands of career fairs."

GUILLERMO FISHER, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, INFRASTRUCTURE @ HANDSHAKE

Guillermo Andrae Fisher has been working on the Web for almost twenty years in several capacities, many of which are detailed on LinkedIn. He is currently the Director of Infrastructure at Handshake. He is also the founder of 757ColorCoded, a nonprofit organization focused on helping people of color achieve careers in technology and an advisor at Kura Labs, a free training and job placement academy for Infrastructure Computing, DevOps, & SRE for students from under-served communities. Guillermo is a Christian, husband, father of four, continuous delivery enthusiast, writer, AWS Data Hero, and a fan of very silly comedy.

SHOW NOTES

Guillermo’s engineering leadership origin story (1:39)
Discovering mission & values alignment at Handshake (4:29)
The impact of Handshake’s COVID career fair pivot on students (6:25)
How engineering enables Handshakes mission (8:03)
Internal mobility, promotions & how Handshake supports professional growth within the company (10:15)
How Handshake’s values are actualized on the infrastructure team (13:02)
Practices to operationalize empathy on your team (14:43)
What Guillermo loves most about the people and culture at Handshake (18:36)
How to cultivate care & passion on your team (19:56)
The infrastructure team's future focus and impact (21:45)
Infrastructure challenges Guillermo's most excited about (23:42)
Why Guillermo’s most excited to be at Handshake right now (25:39)
Guillermo’s favorite part of being an engineering leader (27:43)
Final Words: “If you want to work on something cool that matters, come here” (28:50)

LINKS

757 Color Coded: https://www.757colorcoded.org/
Guillermo's Website: https://guillermoandraefisher.com/
Kura Labs: https://kuralabs.org/

WANT TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION?

To stay up to date with key engineering initiatives at Handshake, keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the launch of the LinkedIn group, "Engineering at Handshake."
And of course, if you're exploring new opportunities and motivated by Handshake's mission, check out open roles at joinhandshake.com/join-us/

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Productivity Practices to Scale Your Time & Mind w/ Ashton Kutcher & Ryan Petersen #57 Aug 17, 2021

Show notes

This episode covers productivity practices to scale both your time & mind with Ashton Kutcher (Actor & Investor) & Ryan Petersen (CEO @ Flexport). They share their most essential productivity tools & systems, how to filter decisions & say NO to optimize your time, leverage your company’s culture to scale your time/mind. Plus energy audits, networking hacks, powerful questions, and more!

ASHTON KUTCHER, ACTOR & INVESTOR

Ashton’s career has spanned over many years with well-known projects on screen and film, but it's his passion in technology, entrepreneurship and investing that has brought him notable recognition. He’s been named TIME magazine’s “100 Most Influential People in the World,” as well as being honored by Vanity Fair's New Establishment List, which identifies the top 50 of an innovative new breed of buccaneering visionaries, engineering prodigies and entrepreneurs. Twice, Kutcher was named one of Forbes magazine’s “World’s Most Powerful Celebrities,” and one of Fast Company magazine’s “Most Creative People.”

RYAN PETERSEN, FOUNDER & CEO @ FLEXPORT

Ryan Petersen is the founder and Chief Executive Officer of Flexport, a full-service freight forwarder and customs broker. Since founding Flexport in 2013, Ryan and his team have worked to make global trade easy for everyone. Ryan led Flexport from inception to the company it is today: supporting over 10,000 customers and suppliers across 109 countries and doubling revenue to nearly $450m last year. His areas of focus include setting company strategy, ensuring the company tracks to goals, and most importantly, building and maintaining Flexport’s unique culture.

Prior to founding Flexport, Ryan helped run an e-commerce company and co-founded ImportGenius, one of the largest providers of business intelligence to the import-export industry. His experience and frustration with global logistics served as the inspiration to start Flexport. Ryan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley and an MBA from Columbia University.

SHOW NOTES

How Ashton & Ryan first met & their early entrepreneurship hustles (2:15)
Productivity tools & systems (4:06)
How to say “NO” to optimize your time (7:08)
Leverage culture in your organization to scale your time and mind (10:32)
The power of predictability on company culture and productivity (15:26)
Networking Hack: Connect through social impact (17:40)
Creating a personal mission statement & the “energy audit” (19:02)
How to avoid being reactive to your to-do list (21:26)
Productivity as your company scales & cultivating sub-cultures within your org (23:17)
What question should you be asking yourself right now? (25:01)

SPONSORS

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Strategies for Closing Engineering Candidates with Darian Shimy #56 Aug 12, 2021

Show notes

This episode covers effective strategies to help you “close” engineering candidates with Darian Shimy (VP of Engineering, Weebly @ Square). We share how to strategically approach closing throughout the interview process, how storytelling & vulnerability help you connect with candidates, how to communicate the value of your company/compensation & strategically navigate offer negotiations!

DARIAN SHIMY, VP OF ENGINEERING, WEEBLY @ SQUARE

As an engineering leader who scales teams and products, Darian Shimy is an industry veteran with over 25 years of experience. He is currently at Square with prior leadership positions at Weebly, Attensity, and eHarmony.com. He received an MS in Computer Science from The University of Southern California and continues to code as a hobby. Outside the professional setting, Darian is a softball coach for various age levels from the recreation to the competitive level.

SHOWNOTES

How Darian approaches closing engineering candidates (2:33)
Who’s involved in closing conversations (4:55)
How to address candidates’ needs throughout the interview process (6:09)
“Boomerang candidates” & maintaining relationships to rehire previous co-workers (11:23)
How to make candidates feel they can immediately contribute and be successful (13:12)
How to make remote offers an opportunity to close candidates (18:50)
High leverage ways to show appreciation & gratitude for hiring candidates (20:44)
Money’s role in the closing conversation (23:47)
Navigating offer negotiation (25:16)
How to help candidates navigate multiple offers (27:42)
Is "no" the end of the closing process? (30:59)

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Technical Interview Tips for Effective Communication w/ Lusen Mendel & Rohit Grover #55 Aug 11, 2021

Show notes

This special feature covers strategies to lead an effective technical interview! Through live examples, we share your 3 main responsibilities, how to give clarity & guidance, set candidates at ease, create consistency & get the best from candidates in your technical interview with Lusen Mendel (Director of Developer Relations @ Karat) & Rohit Grover (Senior Interview Engineer & Mentor @ Karat).

Lusen Mendel (they / them) is Director of Developer Relations at Karat, where they share interviewer best practices with interviewers around the world. Previously, Lusen helped build Karat's Interview Engineer organization. Before that, they managed engineering teams at Indiegogo and Rackspace, worked as a software engineer at a number of startups and research groups, and graduated with a couple of Computer Science degrees from MIT.

Lusen is also the host of Candidate Planet - a podcast / YouTube channel empowering engineering candidates to ace interviews, negotiate offers and advocate for themselves at work.

SHOWNOTES

Setting the Stage - Interview Example #1 (1:41)
Time management during the technical interview (5:52)
Your 3 main responsibilities in the technical Interview (6:29)
Setting candidates at ease when they're having difficulty during the technical interview (8:26)
Interview Example #2 (8:58)
How to get the best from candidates during the technical interview (11:17)
Sources of noise & bad signal in the technical interview (16:48)
How to give hints appropriately in the technical interview (19:15)
Interview Example #3 (21:04)
Creating consistency in your technical interview experience (22:12)
How to handle a difficult technical interview (25:07)

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Strategies to Tend, Feed & Grow your Professional Network w/ Dan Portillo & Jim Cook #54 Aug 10, 2021

Show notes

This ELC Hiring Summit special feature explores tactics & strategies to help you build powerful relationships & professional network! We cover the impact of vulnerability, why you should focus on “giving” first, how to break down power dynamics, prepare for important introductions & more with Dan Portillo (Managing Partner & Founder @ Sweat Equity Ventures) & Jim Cook (CFO @ Orbital Insight).

DAN PORTILLO

Dan is a former Talent Partner @ Greylock. Previously, he was VP of Success & Engagement at Rypple, and VP of Organizational Development at Mozilla, creators of Firefox. Earlier in his career Dan spent a decade building out successful early-stage, venture-backed consumer and enterprise companies. Dan also served as a Council member for Code2040.org, a non-profit creating opportunities for underrepresented minorities in tech.

JIM COOK, CFO @ ORBITAL INSIGHT

Jim Cook is the CFO at Orbital Insight and he has scaled some of Silicon Valley's most iconic brands. Companies like Intuit, Netflix, Mozilla...

He was one of the first finance hires at Intuit. He was one of the original six founding members at Netflix. He also launched the Bench Board Executive Network, which is a leadership network and knowledge-sharing network for operational executives.

SHOW NOTES

Early career lessons on people, relationships, & “giving” (2:24)
Vulnerability & the impact of lowering your guard (8:37)
Building authentic relationships & trust long-term (12:55)
Breaking down power dynamics & building up “relationship credits” (14:49)
Learning from mistakes, burning bridges & removing your ego (19:38)
Tactics for effective relationship building & networking (24:27)
How to prepare for an important introduction (28:24)
How to balance your priorities & invest time to help others (29:21)

RESOURCES/LINKS

(book) "Give and Take" by Adam Grant - https://www.adamgrant.net/book/give-and-take/
(article) 'How to Work with Me' - Reid Hoffman - https://coda.io/@reidhoffman/meet-reid

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Compensation Mindset & Strategy with Thanh Nguyen & Cyrus F #53 Aug 03, 2021

Show notes

This ELC Hiring Summit special feature dives into compensation! We cover where you should start with your comp strategy, how to create consistency/transparency in your program, competing on comp/equity at the early stages, how to consider geography, and when you should bring in external support with Thanh Nguyen (Founder & CEO @ OpenComp) and Cyrus F. (GM/SVP @ Hatched Labs).

THANH NGUYEN, FOUNDER & CEO @ OPENCOMP

Thanh has spent the greater part of his decades-long career partnering with founders and investors on compensation and HR strategies. He is a leading expert in his field and has helped thousands of tech companies, including Airbnb, Figma, LiveNation, Lyft, Uber and many others.

As founder and CEO of OpenComp, Thanh brings to market a solution that combines his experience with powerful data and technology to help companies get compensation right and pay employees fairly.

Before joining Connery Consulting, Thanh led Rewards at Salesforce.com where he remained for 9 years, spanning domestic and international HR and Talent leadership roles.

CYRUS F, GM/SVP @ HATCHED LABS

Cyrus claims to have dabbled in the software development space since the first bubble. He's the GM/SVP at Hatched Labs - a globally distributed group of crafters. He recently achieved the distinction of Assistant Cofounder to the Adventure Council®.

He doesn't have any venture capital, he owns no equity and he's not on social media. He looks up to his three and three-quarters-year-old daughter who's already acquired four unicorns."

SHOWNOTES

Where to start with your compensation strategy (1:30)
Consistency in compensation (5:00)
Transparency in compensation (7:13)
How to think about DE&I proactively in your compensation strategy (8:57)
How to compete on comp & equity in an early stage company (11:34)
How to consider geography with your hiring/compensation strategy (16:53)
When to bring in external support for compensation & hiring (20:13)
Once you’ve established a compensation strategy, now what? (22:15)
How to minimize differences in expectations on compensation for a role (24:07)
How should you decide to globalize or localize compensation? (26:28)

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Attracting Top Talent & Engineering Branding w/ Cosmin Nicolaescu, Kris Rasmussen, Brad Henrickson & Sam Wholley #52 Aug 03, 2021

Show notes

What IS engineering branding? What are the most effective things you can do to immediately improve your engineering brand & attract top talent? This special feature from the ELC Hiring Summit covers all things engineering branding & attracting top talent with Cosmin Nicolaescu (CTO @ Brex) Kris Rasmussen (VPE @ Figma) Brad Henrickson (Leadership Coach / former CTO @ Scoop Technologies) & Sam Wholley (Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners).

SHOWNOTES

What are the most important things you can do to attract top talent? (1:52)
How have you changed how you attract top talent post-pandemic? (4:44)
Tactical tips to overcome the gap between virtual and onsite employee experiences (8:00)
What IS engineering branding? (9:10)
Easy, immediate actions to improve your engineering brand (15:18)
How do you retain & engage engineers in the company long term? (20:09)
Controversial, but effective approaches to branding & attracting talent (23:33)

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