Investing in Your People Pays Dividends with Scott Parker

Jul 18, 2019

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Scott Parker has seen a lot over his 15 year career having transitioned from engineer to manager to executive. In this episode of the CTO Connection podcast, Peter and Scott discuss Scott’s approach to people management, differences in building teams at small companies vs. large companies as well as how to demonstrate the value of personal growth to engineers.

Note: Since the recording of this interview, Scott has moved from VP Engineering at Signal to Director of Engineering at Root Insurance.

[00:24] - Using the perspective of investment portfolio management as a lens to view managing people within an organization at scale
[02:09] - Extending the analogy: managing the portfolio of people on your team
[04:08] - Understanding what each person wants out of their career in order to create balanced teams
[07:00] - The winding path from engineering to leadership
[09:19] - Scott’s experience moving into managing "teams of teams"
[11:15] - The need for an engineering-specific focus within manager training
[13:02] - Diving deeper into the new manager onboarding structure
[14:06] - Scott’s focus as the VP of Engineering at Signal
[15:04] - Creating an environment where engineers are excited about personal growth opportunities

You can find Scott on Twitter, LinkedIn and blogging about culture, on-boarding and management over at his own blog.

CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!

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