The Engineering Leadership Podcast

From early days to IPO: Scaling leadership, enterprise growth, product ownership, & outgrowing your failure modes w/ Jon Hyman #215

Apr 8, 2025
Guest
Jon Hyman
Jon Hyman, co-founder and CTO of Braze, brings a wealth of experience from his time at Bridgewater Associates to the conversation. He discusses the challenges of scaling leadership and team dynamics during early growth, emphasizing adaptability and effective management. Jon also dives into the evolution of product strategy in the mobile app landscape and the importance of understanding customer needs. The podcast touches on building a document-driven culture, the fusion of technical and relational dynamics in enterprise SaaS, and his current literary interests.
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ANECDOTE

Sole On-Call Founder Experience

  • Jon Hyman was the sole on-call engineer for years, handling operational incidents himself while others built features.
  • He later learned this limited team knowledge and burned him out, prompting gradual on-call ownership distribution.
ADVICE

Put Engineers On Call Early

  • Do put engineers on call early so they learn the system and share operational responsibility.
  • Do define product boundaries so teams can own, observe, and support their systems independently.
ADVICE

Organize Teams Around Product Areas

  • Do create cross-functional teams aligned to product areas instead of a pooled resource model.
  • Do give each team its own roadmap to improve prioritization, velocity, and career growth.
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