Facebook’s James Everingham shares about his early leadership and management experiences and the secrets he learned from quantum mechanics to manage creative teams. You’ll hear insights about how to unleash creativity by focusing on outcomes and environments instead of process and key differences between optimizing for efficiency and invention.
James Everingham - Head of Engineering, Calibra @ Facebook (@jevering)
“His approach was just to start collecting, recruiting, the smartest scientists he could find, and tell them what the end result needed to be. He trusted them to just go figure it out.” -James Everingham
James is an engineering leader at Facebook. Previously, James was the Head of Engineering at Instagram. Throughout his 35-year career as a manager, entrepreneur and technology developer, James has led many world-class engineering teams. At Yahoo he was Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo media properties after the company acquired Luminate, an interactive image technology company which he founded.
Some of his other previous roles include CTO and founding team member of LiveOps, Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft) and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International.
SHOW NOTES
- James’ early introduction to management at Penn State & Borland. (3:30)
- What managing creative teams and quantum mechanics have in common. (7:56)
- A simple explanation of Classical physics and quantum mechanics. (8:40)
- Henry Ford and classical management. (9:35)
- Robert J. Oppenheimer and “quantum management.” (10:24)
- The distinction between classical and quantum managers. (12:41)
- Other examples of quantum managers. (14:16)
- The observer effect. (17:00)
- Translating the principle of “superposition” into management. (18:16)
- Quantum entanglement, “spooky action at a distance”. (23:15)
- Creating positive “entanglements” and “spooky management at a distance” in your teams using reciprocity, empathy, and camaraderie. (23:39)
- How to get better results for yourself using feedback. (26:06)
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The Engineering Leadership Podcast