Julia Grace, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack, talks about scaling challenges, building leadership teams, and managing quality of service. She discusses the role of product managers in influencing engineers and the importance of effective communication and credibility in team management. Julia also shares insights on building resilient software and the engineering challenges of handling network flakiness at Slack.
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Quick takeaways
Understanding the root cause of bugs saves time and allows for more efficient problem-solving and product improvement.
Scaling teams in a hyper growth company like Slack poses unique challenges, requiring effective communication and building high-performing leadership teams.
Senior technologists should be given opportunities to transition into management roles, recognizing their expertise and value in guiding discussions and decision-making processes.
Deep dives
The Importance of Understanding the Root Cause of Bugs
Understanding the root cause of bugs is crucial as it saves time wasted on chasing the problem and allows for more efficient problem-solving and product improvement. By identifying the root cause, companies can focus on building new features and enhancing the customer experience.
Scaling Teams in a Hyper Growth Company
Scaling teams in a hyper growth company like Slack poses unique challenges. Julia Grace, Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack, shares her experience and insights on managing teams during rapid growth, building high-performing leadership teams, and effectively communicating within and across teams.
Building and Scaling Infrastructure at Slack
Slack's infrastructure is built with the goal of maintaining high uptime and reliability, given its global user base and critical role in many companies. The infrastructure team at Slack uses a mix of technologies, including PHP, hack, and HHVM, to ensure fast and reliable service. They focus on building fault-tolerant software, establishing performance targets, and collaborating with vendors to provide a seamless experience for users around the world.
Transitioning from Developer to Manager
The podcast discusses the importance of providing opportunities for senior technologists to transition into management roles without feeling pressured to become managers. It highlights the need for organizations to offer support, training, and mentorship to those who are interested in trying out management, ensuring that the transition is seamless and successful. The episode shares stories of technologists who have transitioned back to individual contributor roles, emphasizing that it is not a demotion but a shift to a different job. It underlines the importance of recognizing that management is not necessarily a higher calling, but rather a distinct role within the organization.
The Role of Senior Developers and Programmers
The podcast explores the value and importance of senior developers and programmers within organizations. It acknowledges that these individuals often possess a wealth of knowledge and expertise due to their extensive experience. While they may not be managers, they play a crucial role in leading discussions, sharing insights, and facilitating decision-making processes. The episode highlights the significance of their contributions in areas such as software design workshops, where they can leverage their experience to help guide discussions and ensure that engineers have a safe space to share ideas and learn from each other. It emphasizes the need for organizations to create an environment that values and harnesses the expertise of senior technologists.
Julia Grace joined the show to talk bout about scaling all the things at Slack. Julia is currently the Senior Director of Infrastructure Engineering at Slack, and has been their since 2015 — so she’s seen Slack during its hyper-growth. We talked about Slack’s growth and scale challenges, scaling engineering teams, the responsibilities and challenges of being a manager, communicating up and communicating down, quality of service and reliability, and what it takes to build high performing leadership teams.
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