Career growth in today’s market + effective partnerships between engineering & hiring partners - Live from ELC Annual 2024 #195
The Engineering Leadership Podcast
Navigating Career Growth Amidst Flattening Organizations
This chapter discusses the hurdles engineering leaders encounter in advancing their careers amid flat organizational structures and heightened responsibilities. It highlights the growing importance of networking and encourages exploring mid-tier organizations for impactful opportunities.
We’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 (CEO & Co-Founder @ Job Sauce). Scott shares insights & takeaways from his roundtable conversation on assessing career growth & determining next steps during this trend of eng orgs continuing to become flatter. Eric and Lawrence also stop by the booth to share about their unique partnership, hiring best practices, ensuring candidates maintain your org’s engineering culture, and more.
ABOUT SCOTT SWEDBERG
Scott Swedberg is CEO & Founder of The Job Sauce, a boutique recruiting firm for high-growth companies. He founded The Job Sauce as a career coaching company, and partners with ELC to support engineering leaders in their careers and talent acquisition. He and his wife, Lauryn, live in Denver with their daughter and cat.
ABOUT ERIC FETTNER
Eric Fettner is co-founder of The Job Sauce, a high-touch recruiting firm serving Seed through pre-IPO startups. After helping launch the most successful vertical at Eventbrite (IPO September 2018), Eric was ready to take on something new. He began by building The Job Sauce as the premier provider of career services for tech workers. This focus on candidate experience revealed the horrible experience most recruiting firms provide, leading to the birth and success of The Job Sauce Recruiting, trusted by top startups funded by top VCs.
ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMULLER
Lawrence Bruhmuller is currently the SVP of Engineering at Great Expectations, the open-source data quality solution used by thousands of data engineers in the industry. He has over 12 years of experience as an overall head of engineering, mostly focused on growth-stage startups. Previous roles include CTO roles at Pave and Optimizely, and VPE roles at WeWork, ClearSlide, and Symantec.
Lawrence has been a part of small startups and also larger companies, and has developed products for individual users and also the world’s largest enterprises. In particular, he has focused on delivering cloud-first products in the B2B application and developer tooling spaces.
Lawrence is passionate about the intersection of engineering management and the growth stage of startups. He has written extensively on engineering leadership (https://lbruhmuller.medium.com/), including how to best evolve and mature engineering organizations before, during and after these growth phases. He enjoys advising and mentoring other engineering leaders in his spare time.
Lawrence holds a Bachelors in Mathematics and Engineering from Harvey Mudd College, and a Masters in Applied Mathematics from Claremont Graduate University. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife Amy, and their three daughters.
SHOW NOTES:
- What brought Scott Swedberg to ELC Annual 2024 & how he supports eng leaders (3:12)
- Summarizing Scott’s ELC Annual roundtable discussion on career growth (5:39)
- Understanding how trends shift as technology evolves & investor priorities pivot (9:01)
- Final takeaways on exploring career growth & next steps (11:26)
- Eric Fettner & Lawrence Bruhmuller explain their recent partnership (14:19)
- Questions eng leaders should ask to aid calibration / alignment between partners (17:21)
- Ensuring new candidates reinforce the eng culture you’re aiming to build (18:29)
- Strategies for adopting / adapting cultural practices while hiring & onboarding (20:33)
- Effective communication between eng leaders & talent partners (22:49)
- Lawrence explains Great Expectations’ team structure (25:04)
- Recommendations for providing feedback between partners (26:37)
- The importance of timing when it comes to the hiring process (28:00)
This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:
Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host
Jerry Li - Co-Host
Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/
Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/
Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/
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