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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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!
Copyright: © 327413
How do you have an effective performance conversation during a pandemic? Jonathan Raymond (@jonathanrefound) will introduce us to a super-easy to use and effective framework to provide critical feedback. You’ll learn how to apply the framework using real community challenges and tease out the actual language you can directly use to initiate those conversations.
“That's what feedback is about. It's not to correct the mistake, it's to start a conversation.”
JONATHAN RAYMOND - Author of “Good Authority”, Founder & CEO @ Refound
Jonathan spent 20 years building careers in business development and personal growth before figuring out a way to bring them together. He advises CEOs and organizational leaders on how to create a people-first culture that drives results. Refound works with organizations going through dynamic change, from Fortune 100 companies like Panasonic and McKesson to tech startups. Jonathan loves being a dad to two girls, surfing, and yoga. He also has a surprisingly good jump shot.
SHOWNOTES
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Farhan Thawar (@fnthawar) , VP of Engineering @ Shopify shares the hiring framework he’s built where 15-minute interviews result in both faster placements AND better fits. You’ll hear how to find talent in non-traditional ways, what happens when you leverage creativity, and how speed in hiring is a massive competitive advantage.
“The problem with interviews in general are they're very biased to either things you've done before or they're biased to some other signal...like school you went to company, you worked for, GPA in some cases, right? Google used to use that... And it excludes a wide swath of people. That's my number one problem with interviews. Not that good candidates can pass an interview. It's that non-traditional candidates will likely fail your interview”
ABOUT FARHAN THAWAR
Farhan 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).
SHOWNOTES
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Max Levchin shares lessons and stories that have been critical to his development as an engineering leader. He shares stories from the early PayPal days and foundational insights for leading Affirm as a mission-driven, values-based company. He also shares essential principles for building and hiring, and how the hardest problems are almost never about code.
“I should just solve the thing that matters. I don't need to worry about the hard stuff, it will show up on its own. And there's plenty of hard problems and the more you work with people, the more you'll realize that the truly hard problems are always about humans, they're never about code.” - Max Levchin
MAX LEVCHIN - Founder and CEO @ Affirm
Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services technology company, co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company, and co-founder and general partner at SciFi VC, a private venture capital firm. All three companies were created and launched from his San Francisco based innovation lab, HVF (Hard, Valuable, Fun). Max was one of the original co-founders of PayPal where he served as the CTO until its acquisition by Ebay in 2002. In 2002, he was named to the Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world as well as Innovator of the Year. In 2004, he founded Slide, a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, which he sold to Google in August 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor in and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards such as Yahoo!, Yelp, and Evernote. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups.
BEN JUN - CEO @ HVF Labs
Benjamin Jun is Chief Builder at HVF Labs (hard / valuable / fun), a fintech startup studio. The lab focuses in areas where technically differentiable solutions can unlock world-changing companies. HVF founders have spun out companies such as Affirm, Divvy Homes, and Yelp. Ben was co-founder and CTO of Cryptography Research, which provides security technologies for payment systems, mobile handsets, digital content protection, and the manufacturing supply chain. While there, he developed and architected security technologies that shipped in over 25 billion consumer devices. Cryptography Research was acquired by Rambus for $340M in 2011.
SHOWNOTES
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What should be the role of engineering leaders in recruiting? What levers do they have at their disposal? In this fireside chat, you'll hear the perspectives of two recruiting heavy-hitters, Aditya Agarwal & Dan Portillo, on how engineering leaders can optimize for successful hiring outcomes.
ADITYA AGARWAL - Former CTO Dropbox; Partner-in-Residence @ South Park Commons (@adityaag)
Aditya Agarwal is a Partner-in-Residence at South Park Commons - a collective of technologists, tinkerers, and entrepreneurs who have come together to freely learn, explore new ideas, and help each other launch their next venture. Aditya was the CTO and VP of Engineering at Dropbox. He scaled the Engineering team from 25 to 1000 and was responsible for new product development, infrastructure, and technical operations. Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company that he co-founded. Prior to Cove, Aditya was one of Facebook’s first engineers. He helped build the first versions of key products like Search, NewsFeed and Messenger. He was Facebook’s first director of Product Engineering, overseeing engineering for products like NewsFeed, Profile, Groups and Events. Aditya serves as an independent director on the board of Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce company, the advisory board of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and on the board of trustees of the Anita Borg Institute. He is also an active investor and advisor to Silicon Valley startups.
DAN PORTILLO - Talent Partner @ Greylock (@dan_portillo)
Dan is Talent Partner at 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.
SHOWNOTES
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Alyssa and Chanda share stories and mental frameworks about how to strategically think about and accelerate your career journey. You’ll hear examples of how to navigate between large and small companies, how to level the playing field by strategically leveraging emerging tech fields, intentionally harnessing skip-level managers, and establishing a growth mindset.
Alyssa Henry - Head of Seller & Developer Business Units & Infrastructure Engineering @ Square
Alyssa Henry is the Seller Lead at Square, which creates tools that help sellers start, run, and grow their businesses. She leads product management, design, and engineering for Square’s seller- and developer-facing products. Alyssa has been integral to shifting Square from a single app focused on payment processing into a broad financial services platform and commerce ecosystem that serves the complex needs of verticals from restaurants to retail. Prior to joining Square in 2014, she previously served as VP of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Services and Product Unit Manager for Microsoft SQL Server Data Access.
“People want to work on something that matters, something where they’re growing and learning. Autonomy, mastery & purpose resonates with everyone.” Alyssa Henry
Chanda Dharap - VP of Engineering @ NodeSource
She is currently the VP Engineering at NodeSource, bringing 20+ years experience leading Engineering and Product teams with a strong focus on emerging trends and new technologies. With a solid mix of both global corporate and startup experience, Dharap has a proven track record of excellence, most recently in the the Node.js ecosystem, leading cross-functional efforts around solutions to drive the API economy. Prior to joining NodeSource, she held a product leadership role at Adobe, where she was responsible for the vision and technical direction of a next-generation search platform for Adobe’s cloud ecosystem. Dharap holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Pennsylvania State University, and has also earned a certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development.
SHOWNOTES
Want to get involved with our community of engineering leaders? Check us out at sfelc.com
Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message
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While you don't jump out of bed excited about it, you know how powerful it is for morale when you make the choice to tackle technical debt. Learn a framework for how to do the same thing with organizational debt, and unlock untapped energy, creativity and connection on your team in the process.
“As organizational leaders, when it comes to organizational debt, we know that we take shortcuts. We make easy decisions. We do things that are expedient in the moment. But it has a cost. But we have to deal with it as a responsible leader.”
ABOUT JONATHAN RAYMOND
Jonathan Raymond (@jonathanrefound) is the CEO at Refound and author of the award-winning book, Good Authority. In 2018, he was named one of Inc. Magazine’s top 100 leadership speakers. Refound trains leaders on how to give effective feedback and create a culture of accountability. The former CEO of EMyth, Jonathan has led business transformation projects in technology, renewable energy, and the coaching industry. He’s a half-decent barista, a bad-but-enthusiastic surfer, and will never give up on the New York Knicks.
SHOWNOTES
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Jason Warner (@jasoncwarner), CTO @ Github shares management principles fundamental to how he leads remote engineering teams. He shares how to scale leadership by applying the right tools and frameworks for effective communication. Jason also tells us the structures and strategies he applies to build & maintain trust throughout an organization.
“Every leader in an organization should make THE SET of decisions that ONLY they can make. And then delegate all the other ones. And the only way that you can do that is if everyone is empowered to make the right decisions with the right context, and you have invested ahead of time and trained the neural net of the organization to make those appropriate decisions well.” - Jason Warner
ABOUT JASON WARNER
Jason oversees the Office of the CTO, whose mission is to explore the unknown and non-existent aspects of technology and software in order to build a map of GitHub’s future. He oversees over 704 engineers, 85% of whom operate remotely. He was previously Senior VP of Technology at GitHub, where he played an integral role in scaling the Engineering, Product, and Security Teams, and built GitHub’s product roadmap.
He’s been the leader of fully distributed companies for the last 10 years. Prior to GitHub, Jason was VP of Engineering at Heroku. He oversaw Product Engineering for Ubuntu Desktop and Ubuntu Phone at Canonical.
He’s also a member of the Advisory Board of INNOVATE Ohio - reporting to the Lt. Governor advising policy decisions that impact growth in technology and aim to make Ohio the most INNOVATIVE state in the country in the next 5 years.
RESOURCES
SHOW NOTES
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The hardest business problem has a soft solution. Scientists and engineers display a (well-deserved) skepticism toward touchy-feely ideas such as leadership. Fred shows there's a very technical way to understand why most organizations, from couples to multinational corporations, die a premature death... and what can be done to extend their lifespan.
FRED KOFMAN - Advisor, VP of Leadership Development @ Google (@fredkofman)
“No gun in the world can get your best. No incentive can get your best. You can only give your best because you want to. It’s not contractible. And that’s the difference between leadership and management for me. Leadership is about eliciting internal commitment. You do it because it comes from the inside.” - Fred Kofman
Fred Kofman earned his PhD. in Economics from the UC Berkeley, is Google’s Vice President and advisor of leadership, a director of the Conscious Leadership Center at the Monterrey Institute of Technology, & a founder and president of the Conscious Business Center International. Previously, he was a VP of Executive Development at LinkedIn & a co-founder of Axialent, a global consulting company that has delivered leadership programs to more than 15,000 executives around the world.
Fred is the author of the trilogy Metamanagement ('01), Conscious Business ('06) and The Meaning Revolution: The Power of Transcendent Leadership ('18). Since 1990, Fred has designed and facilitated programs on leadership, personal mastery, team learning, organizational effectiveness and coaching for thousands of executives, and consultants worldwide. His book, Conscious Business, has been translated to more than ten languages, received numerous awards and was recently named by Sheryl Sandberg in her New York Times interview as "the business book every executive should read"
SHOW NOTES
We're working on a number of interesting projects to continue to empower engineering leaders. Join us at sfelc.com to be included in updates with our content, events, and all other new opportunities we’re creating!
Learned something impactful? Have an idea to improve our show? We'd love to hear your insights and feedback! ... Send us a message at hello@sfelc.com
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In an interview between Reid Hoffman and Sarah Guo, they discuss “Blitzscaling” and how companies achieve massive scale at incredible speed. Reid shares insights and lessons on how to prioritize speed and efficiency in an environment of uncertainty, the benefits of intense collaboration found in Silicon Valley, and non-obvious rules needed to succeed.
REID HOFFMAN - Co-Founder of LinkedIn, Partner @ Greylock Partners (@reidhoffman)
“Part of the secret and the thing that’s great about Silicon Valley is that, while we compete intensely, we also collaborate intensely.” - Reid Hoffman
An accomplished entrepreneur, executive, and investor, Reid Hoffman has played an integral role in building many of today’s leading consumer technology businesses including co-founding PayPal & LinkedIn.
In '09 he joined Greylock Partners where he serves on the boards of Airbnb, Apollo Fusion, Aurora, Coda, Convoy, Entrepreneur First, Gixo, Microsoft, Nauto, Xapo. In addition, he serves on a number of not-for-profit boards, including Kiva, Endeavor, CZI Biohub, & Do Something. He is the host of the podcast Masters of Scale, co-author of two New York Times best-selling books: The Start-Up of You & The Alliance. His new book is Blitzscaling, based on his Stanford course.
SARAH GUO - General Partner @ Greylock Partners (@saranormous)
Sarah joined Greylock Partners as an investor in '13 and focused on B2B apps & infrastructure.
Prior, she was at Goldman Sachs, where she invested in growth-stage tech startups like Dropbox & advised pre-IPO tech companies like Workday as well as public clients like Zynga, Netflix & Nvidia.
RESOURCES
SHOW NOTES
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Facebook’s James Everingham shares about his early leadership and management experiences and the secrets he learned from quantum mechanics to manage creative teams. You’ll hear insights about how to unleash creativity by focusing on outcomes and environments instead of process and key differences between optimizing for efficiency and invention.
James Everingham - Head of Engineering, Calibra @ Facebook (@jevering)
“His approach was just to start collecting, recruiting, the smartest scientists he could find, and tell them what the end result needed to be. He trusted them to just go figure it out.” -James Everingham
James is an engineering leader at Facebook. Previously, James was the Head of Engineering at Instagram. Throughout his 35-year career as a manager, entrepreneur and technology developer, James has led many world-class engineering teams. At Yahoo he was Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo media properties after the company acquired Luminate, an interactive image technology company which he founded.
Some of his other previous roles include CTO and founding team member of LiveOps, Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft) and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International.
Want to get involved with our community of engineering leaders? Check us out at sfelc.com. We’re working on a number of interesting projects to continue to empower engineering leaders. Join us at sfelc.com to be included in updates with our content, events, and all other new opportunities we’re creating!
Learned something impactful? Have an idea to improve our show? We’d love to hear your insights and feedback! … Send us a message at hello@sfelc.com!
If you enjoyed this or found it impactful, share the episode with someone who might find it meaningful!
Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.