Erik Bernhardsson joins us on the podcast to chat about building engineering teams and the delicate balance between innovation and productivity as organizations grow. Erik has been scaling engineering teams for years. In its early days, he managed the analytics and machine learning teams at Spotify. Next, he grew Better's engineering team from 0 to 300, where he was CTO until the beginning of 2021. Erik is now working on a yet-to-be-named project that will bring exciting new tools to data teams. In this episode, we also shared our views on team mentalities, skunkworks projects, and more as we tried to answer the question: "what is success in engineering?" Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep12  Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_ Developing Leadership is a podcast presented by Athenian. We are introducing the world of engineering to metrics and data that improve processes and help teams. If you want to learn more about data-enabled engineering, go to athenian.co

In this discussion, Erik Bernhardsson, CEO and co-founder of Modal Labs, dives into the intricacies of cloud computing, emphasizing the competitive landscape with giants like Snowflake and AWS. He shares insights on the GPU shortage and its implications for AI startups. Erik boldly critiques the future role of data engineers, questioning its necessity while spotlighting the rise of analytics engineers. The conversation also touches on the impact of generative AI and the democratization of software development, showcasing a landscape ripe with innovation.

Guest Erik Bernhardsson, AI engineer and creator of Annoy vector database and Luigi workflow orchestration tool, discusses building open source tools at Spotify, starting a new startup, improving developer productivity, fine-tuning language models, and challenges of running a startup.

Erik Bernhardsson, founder and CEO of Modal Labs, shares insights on scaling a cloud service that offers serverless GPU solutions essential for AI and machine learning. He discusses innovative resource management strategies to optimize costs and enhance developer experiences. Erik dives into the challenges of creating a custom runtime and keeping pace with traffic demands. He also reflects on his tech journey, shaped by his experiences at Spotify, and emphasizes the importance of intuitive onboarding and fostering skilled hires in a competitive market.

Coffee Sessions #57 with Michael Del Balso and Erik Bernhardsson, The Future of ML and Data Platforms. // Abstract Machine learning, data analytics, and software engineering are converging as data-intensive systems become more ubiquitous.  Erik Bernhardsson, ex-CTO at Better and former Spotify machine learning lead, and Mike Del Balso, CEO at Tecton and former Uber machine learning lead and co-creator of Michelangelo sit down to chat with us today.    These two jammed with us about building machine learning platform systems and teams, the modern operational data stack and how it allows more machine learning applications to thrive, and how to successfully take advantage of data in the process of building products and companies. // Bio Michael Del Balso Mike is the co-founder of Tecton, where he is focused on building next-generation data infrastructure for Operational ML. Before Tecton, Mike was the PM lead for the Uber Michelangelo ML platform. He was also a product manager at Google where he managed the core ML systems that power Google’s Search Ads business. Previous to that, he worked on Google Maps. He holds a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering summa cum laude from the University of Toronto. Erik Bernhardsson Erik is currently working on some crazy data stuff since early 2021 but previously spent 6 years as the CTO of Better.com, growing the tech team from 1 to 300. Before Better, Erik spent 6 years at Spotify, building the music recommendation system and managing a team focused on machine learning. // Relevant Links Building a Data Team at a Mid-stage Startup: A Short Story https://erikbern.com/2021/07/07/the-data-team-a-short-story.html --------------- ✌️Connect With Us ✌️ ------------- Join our slack community: https://go.mlops.community/slack Follow us on Twitter: @mlopscommunity Sign up for the next meetup: https://go.mlops.community/register Connect with Demetrios on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dpbrinkm/ Connect with Vishnu on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vrachakonda/ Connect with Mike on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michaeldelbalso/ Connect with Erik on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/erikbern Timestamps: [01:12] Introduction to Michael Del Balso and Erik Bernhardsson [03:23] High-level space in data [07:25] Complexity in the data world [09:13] Data lake + data bricks [15:20] Platform strategy [16:05] "Platform is when the economic value of everybody that uses this exceeds the value of the company that creates it." - Bill Gates [18:17] Centralizing platforms [21:06] Team spin up centralization or decentralization [27:18] Manifestations of being too far from a centralized and decentralized platform [29:24] Centralized vs Decentralized [33:33] Platform value and appropriate sizing [35:43] Building a Data Team at a Mid-stage Startup: A Short Story blog post by Erik Bernhardsson [38:51] Machine Learning as a sub-problem of Data [42:16] Operational ML [46:30] Spotify recommendations [47:13] Real-time data flows at Spotify [49:40] Data stack, Machine Learning stack, and Back-end stack reusability [51:40] Container management

Erik Bernhardsson, CEO of Modal and former Spotify developer, shares insights on transforming the AI infrastructure landscape. He discusses the shift from training to inference as a primary focus and highlights Modal's goal of simplifying the developer experience. Erik explains the challenges of GPU accessibility and the emergence of specialized AI cloud providers. He also envisions a future filled with AI-native consumer applications, emphasizing the importance of creating products that developers love and efficient feedback loops.

We’ve all experienced pain moving from local development, to testing, and then on to production. This cycle can be long and tedious, especially as AI models and datasets are integrated. Modal is trying to make this loop of development as seamless as possible for AI practitioners, and their platform is pretty incredible! Erik from Modal joins us in this episode to help us understand how we can run or deploy machine learning models, massively parallel compute jobs, task queues, web apps, and much more, without our own infrastructure. Join the discussionChangelog++ members save 1 minute on this episode because they made the ads disappear. Join today!Sponsors:Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com Fly.io – The home of Changelog.com — Deploy your apps and databases close to your users. In minutes you can run your Ruby, Go, Node, Deno, Python, or Elixir app (and databases!) all over the world. No ops required. Learn more at fly.io/changelog and check out the speedrun in their docs. Featuring:Erik Bernhardsson – Twitter, GitHub, WebsiteChris Benson – Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn, WebsiteDaniel Whitenack – Twitter, GitHub, WebsiteShow Notes: Modal Episode 142 discussing Erik’s “building a data team” article Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Former CTO of Better.com and early Spotify manager, Erik Bernhardsson, discusses building recommendation systems, best practices for data team scaling, and the essence of music. Topics include managing data teams, programming languages, and measuring impact. Explore how to govern data teams effectively and embrace the right tools for success.

Former Spotify and Better.com expert Erik Bernhardsson joins hosts to discuss trends in data tools, including the pros and cons of SQL, the rise of low code solutions, and the consolidation of data tools into one platform. They also explore the shift towards business logic over data shoveling and predict further industry consolidation.

Erik Bernhardsson, founder of Modal, talks about the challenges of building a serverless platform and creating a new vision for serverless cloud. They discuss the benefits of using Modal for code deployment and setting up GPU-based infrastructure. They also explore the features and use cases of Modal, including its similarities to a CDN and its applications in AI and non-AI tasks. The podcast concludes with a discussion on Modal's future plans and expansion.