BONUS: Internal mobility, mission-driven decisions, & self-service infrastructure w/ Guillermo Fisher

Guillermo Fisher (Director of Engineering, Infrastructure @ Handshake) shares the impact of mission & values alignment, supporting your team’s internal mobility & professional growth, plus interesting infrastructure challenges & actualizing values on the infra team. This episode serves as a great reminder of WHY we become engineering leaders - to empower our teams to become great leaders in tech.

"The engineering team pivoted! Trashed OKRs! Trashed the roadmap... and said, 'We're going to build out virtual career fairs.' And so we did the work over the course of the year. Delivered career fairs in that same year... which is amazing! And have since served thousands and thousands of career fairs."

GUILLERMO FISHER, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, INFRASTRUCTURE @ HANDSHAKE

Guillermo Andrae Fisher has been working on the Web for almost twenty years in several capacities, many of which are detailed on LinkedIn. He is currently the Director of Infrastructure at Handshake. He is also the founder of 757ColorCoded, a nonprofit organization focused on helping people of color achieve careers in technology and an advisor at Kura Labs, a free training and job placement academy for Infrastructure Computing, DevOps, & SRE for students from under-served communities. Guillermo is a Christian, husband, father of four, continuous delivery enthusiast, writer, AWS Data Hero, and a fan of very silly comedy.
 

SHOW NOTES

• Guillermo’s engineering leadership origin story (1:39)
• Discovering mission & values alignment at Handshake (4:29)
• The impact of Handshake’s COVID career fair pivot on students (6:25)
• How engineering enables Handshakes mission (8:03)
• Internal mobility, promotions & how Handshake supports professional growth within the company (10:15)
• How Handshake’s values are actualized on the infrastructure team (13:02)
• Practices to operationalize empathy on your team (14:43)
• What Guillermo loves most about the people and culture at Handshake (18:36)
• How to cultivate care & passion on your team (19:56)
• The infrastructure team's future focus and impact (21:45)
• Infrastructure challenges Guillermo's most excited about (23:42)
• Why Guillermo’s most excited to be at Handshake right now (25:39)
• Guillermo’s favorite part of being an engineering leader (27:43)
• Final Words: “If you want to work on something cool that matters, come here” (28:50)
   

LINKS

• 757 Color Coded: https://www.757colorcoded.org/
• Guillermo's Website: https://guillermoandraefisher.com/
• Kura Labs: https://kuralabs.org/
   

WANT TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION?

To stay up to date with key engineering initiatives at Handshake, keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the launch of the LinkedIn group, "Engineering at Handshake."

And of course, if you're exploring new opportunities and motivated by Handshake's mission, check out open roles at joinhandshake.com/join-us/