Jacob is a seasoned tech leader in the startup world, having been CTO of Grofers (now Blinkit) and has also spent a stint at Sequoia as CTO-in-residence. He now works with CTOs, CPOs and their teams to be a sounding board for their ideas, and help grow the cultures and systems they dream of.
Contents:
00:00 Teaser
01:42 Introduction
02:05 Life in a day of a CTO
05:00 Peacetime vs Wartime CTO
06:50 Challenges for a CTO at different startup stages
10:00 Tech vs Business
14:30 What motivates engineers?
19:00 How EMs can keep their teams engaged ?
24:30 Why Engineers should focus on writing?
30:00 Importance of conferences, blogs and open source participation
35:00 Developing the art of communication and documentation
38:30 Personal Branding for Software Engineers
43:00 Open Source contributions and hiring via open source
45:00 Role of Public Speaking in Jacob's career
49:00 Importance of Developer Advocacy
52:00 Engineers can smell bullshit
54:30 How can one move into Developer Relations?
58:30 How is the 2022 downturn/recession playing out?
1:00:30 Things that will still grow despite the downturn
1:03:00 Advice to budding tech entrepreneurs
1:06:00 Emergence of Vertical SaaS
1:08:00 ML/AI and generative tool applications
1:10:00 Pains of Mobile Developer experience
1:13:00 What's next for Jacob in life?
1:14:25 Jacob's passion for early child education
