Richard Wong (SVP of Engineering @ Coursera) shares how the dilemma of speed & quality evolves as a company scales. We cover how to balance building new features & fixing quality issues, internal & external signals to help you determine your priorities, & how to gain alignment. Plus how to avoid over-engineering!
ABOUT RICHARD WONG
Richard oversees Coursera's infrastructure and product development. Prior to joining Coursera, Richard held various engineering leadership roles at the early days of LinkedIn, with a key focus on scaling the Jobs marketplace and Talent Solutions to become its first billion-dollar product.
Richard also oversaw the product development for Linkedin international expansions. Prior to LinkedIn, Richard spent over a decade at Microsoft leading various product development teams including MSN Hotmail, Active Directory, Windows Server, and System Center. Richard received his Master’s degree from Stanford University.
SHOW NOTES
- The dilemma of speed v. quality (1:49)
- Richard’s personal example of speed v. quality dilemma (5:58)
- How Coursera improved product quality (7:47)
- Tactical steps to improve product quality (10:34)
- How to avoid over-engineering & leverage customer complaints to improve product quality (16:37)
- How to balance speed & quality as an engineering leader (20:06)
- How to get alignment on quality issues with executive & cross-functional teams (25:25)
- How to prevent spending too much time on quality-focused engineering work (29:46)
- What are the signals for when you need to shift between speed v. quality? (33:22)
- How the dilemma of speed v. quality change as you scale (38:52)
- How Richard allocates resources to focus on new features or quality (42:02)
- Rapid Fire Questions (48:28)
- Takeaways (54:17)
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