Zooming Out From Engineering: featuring Alyssa Henry, Head of Seller & Developer Business Units @ Square & Chanda Dharap, VP of Engineering @ NodeSource #7

Apr 28, 2020

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Alyssa and Chanda share stories and mental frameworks about how to strategically think about and accelerate your career journey. You’ll hear examples of how to navigate between large and small companies, how to level the playing field by strategically leveraging emerging tech fields, intentionally harnessing skip-level managers, and establishing a growth mindset.

Alyssa Henry - Head of Seller & Developer Business Units & Infrastructure Engineering @ Square

Alyssa Henry is the Seller Lead at Square, which creates tools that help sellers start, run, and grow their businesses. She leads product management, design, and engineering for Square’s seller- and developer-facing products. Alyssa has been integral to shifting Square from a single app focused on payment processing into a broad financial services platform and commerce ecosystem that serves the complex needs of verticals from restaurants to retail. Prior to joining Square in 2014, she previously served as VP of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Storage Services and Product Unit Manager for Microsoft SQL Server Data Access.

“People want to work on something that matters, something where they’re growing and learning. Autonomy, mastery & purpose resonates with everyone.” Alyssa Henry

Chanda Dharap - VP of Engineering @ NodeSource

She is currently the VP Engineering at NodeSource, bringing 20+ years experience leading Engineering and Product teams with a strong focus on emerging trends and new technologies. With a solid mix of both global corporate and startup experience, Dharap has a proven track record of excellence, most recently in the the Node.js ecosystem, leading cross-functional efforts around solutions to drive the API economy. Prior to joining NodeSource, she held a product leadership role at Adobe, where she was responsible for the vision and technical direction of a next-generation search platform for Adobe’s cloud ecosystem. Dharap holds a Masters and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Pennsylvania State University, and has also earned a certificate in Strategic Decision and Risk Management from Stanford University’s Center for Professional Development.

SHOWNOTES

Alyssa’s work at Square supporting new entrepreneurs start and grow businesses. (5:13)
The experience and challenges transitioning from a large to small company. (6:51)
How you transition from running an engineering team to broad cross-functional teams. (8:49)
How Alyssa grew her teams at Amazon and Square. (11:41)
Early adoption of emerging technology, having a growth mindset, and the power of skip level mentoring to drive career development (15:28)
Alyssa’s questions she asks to assess her next career opportunities. (18:59)
When should product and engineering be in the same organization? (20:45)
Lessons from growing at hyperscale. (21:13)
How to retain core members of a team, especially in a high-turnover industry. (23:29)

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