Smruti Patel

"Is my team solving the right problem?" To answer this seemingly simple question, we assembled a panel of some of the smartest engineering leaders we know and asked them how they answer this question with their own teams.Featuring Rukmini Reddy, SVP of Platform Engineering at Slack, James Stanier, Dir. of Engineering at Shopify, and Smruti Patel, VP of Engineering at Apollo, the following conversation debuted in front of a live audience at the Interact engineering conference. Originally an exclusive conversation for Interact attendees, we listened to our fans and decided to drop the full conversation as an episode of the podcast. Items of note: This panel was filmed in October prior to many of the recent layoffs that have been in the news. When this panel was recorded Smruti Patel worked at Stripe. She has since taken a job with Apollo. Show NotesOFFERS Start Free Trial: Get started with LinearB's AI productivity platform for free. Book a Demo: Learn how you can ship faster, improve DevEx, and lead with confidence in the AI era. LEARN ABOUT LINEARB AI Code Reviews: Automate reviews to catch bugs, security risks, and performance issues before they hit production. AI & Productivity Insights: Go beyond DORA with AI-powered recommendations and dashboards to measure and improve performance. AI-Powered Workflow Automations: Use AI-generated PR descriptions, smart routing, and other automations to reduce developer toil. MCP Server: Interact with your engineering data using natural language to build custom reports and get answers on the fly.

Smruti Patel, Head of Engineering at Stripe, discusses building trust through clarity and vulnerability, information flow in organizations, productivity factors, achieving a culture of constant evolution, and thinking in systems. Insights on autonomy, delegation, job descriptions, career growth, trust in team management, systemic issues, problem diagnosis, and transitioning to a managerial role.