The Role of Engineering Leaders in Recruiting with Aditya Agarwal former CTO @ Dropbox & Dan Portillo Talent Partner @ Greylock #8

What should be the role of engineering leaders in recruiting? What levers do they have at their disposal? In this fireside chat, you'll hear the perspectives of two recruiting heavy-hitters, Aditya Agarwal & Dan Portillo, on how engineering leaders can optimize for successful hiring outcomes.

ADITYA AGARWAL - Former CTO Dropbox; Partner-in-Residence @ South Park Commons (@adityaag)

Aditya Agarwal is a Partner-in-Residence at South Park Commons - a collective of technologists, tinkerers, and entrepreneurs who have come together to freely learn, explore new ideas, and help each other launch their next venture. Aditya was the CTO and VP of Engineering at Dropbox. He scaled the Engineering team from 25 to 1000 and was responsible for new product development, infrastructure, and technical operations. Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company that he co-founded. Prior to Cove, Aditya was one of Facebook’s first engineers. He helped build the first versions of key products like Search, NewsFeed and Messenger. He was Facebook’s first director of Product Engineering, overseeing engineering for products like NewsFeed, Profile, Groups and Events. Aditya serves as an independent director on the board of Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce company, the advisory board of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and on the board of trustees of the Anita Borg Institute. He is also an active investor and advisor to Silicon Valley startups.

DAN PORTILLO - Talent Partner @ Greylock (@dan_portillo)

Dan is Talent Partner at Greylock. Previously, he was VP of Success & Engagement at Rypple, and VP of Organizational Development at Mozilla, creators of Firefox. Earlier in his career Dan spent a decade building out successful early-stage, venture-backed consumer and enterprise companies. Dan also served as a Council member for Code2040.org, a non-profit creating opportunities for underrepresented minorities in tech.

SHOWNOTES

• Have you ever not promoted an engineering leader because they couldn’t recruit a good team? (3:18)
• What is the role of engineering leaders in the recruiting process? (5:21)
• Sourcing advantages from Aditya’s experiences from Dropbox and Facebook. (7:34)
• On taking the long view and thinking long term about recruitment. (9:42)
• How Aditya closes candidates creatively. (11:21)
• Aditya’s favorite story from Dropbox closing a talented intern. (14:23)
• How to leverage compensation, even if you’re a small stack at the table. (18:59)
• What Aditya tells engineering leaders who are building teams for the first time. (21:48)
• Does comp asymmetry reward good performers or good negotiators? (23:03)
• Using comp as a tool to value, reward, and recognize performers not on the sexiest problems. (25:32)
• Recruiting when you don’t have a brand. (27:58)
• What engineering managers need to know to effectively sell the company and recruit. (29:53)
   

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