If you ever find yourself staring at a screen not knowing how to even start an important presentation this episode is for you! Arquay Harris (VP Engineering @ Webflow) underscores the importance of storytelling in public speaking, and shares valuable tips on how to craft a narrative and get your point across in a way that feels natural for you.For Arquay’s slides & original presentation from our 2022 Spring Virtual Summit - check out the full video here: https://bit.ly/3GxMjT3ABOUT ARQUAY HARRISArquay is the VP of Engineering at Webflow. Prior to Webflow, she held Engineering leadership positions at Slack, Google, and CBS Interactive. A developer who also has a Masters in Design, Arquay loves the marriage of form and function. When not working she can be found cooking, stumbling over guitar and piano chords, or watching Seinfeld."And so if you were using this to give an actual presentation, you might say something like, ‘Imagine a world where deploys only take two seconds? Or what if tests only took 30 seconds to write?’So you're taking this undesirable thing and you're contrasting it with this idealistic future to really bring in that emotionality to get the audience hooked.- Arquay Harris This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:What Arquay starts every presentation with (2:03)Message, tone, and audience (3:17)The hero’s journey (7:17)The mountain story structure (8:42)Nested loops (9:33)Sparklines (11:28)In medias res (13:14)Converging ideas (14:22)False start (15:16)The petal structure (16:27)Focus on the purpose (21:13)LINKS AND RESOURCES(Full video from 2022 Spring Summit) Storytelling & the art of public speaking with Arquay Harris - https://elc.community/public/videos/storytelling-and-the-art-of-public-speaking

In this episode, Sri Shivananda (EVP, CTO @ Paypal) and Joel Beasley (host of Modern CTO! podcast and CTO @ Leaderbits) discuss some of the principles and frameworks that have made the greatest impacts on Sri’s career as an engineering leader. They cover Sri’s approach to organizational transformation, a framework for choosing new technologies, areas to look for when you’re building a pipeline of leadership, and recognition and disruption of patterns through self-reflection.ABOUT SRI SHIVANANDASri Shivananda (@srishivananda) serves as PayPal’s Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Sri oversees Technology Platforms & Experiences, leading teams responsible for the company’s secure, reliable and scalable global infrastructure and strategic core platform, the foundation that enables PayPal to deliver innovative services to global consumers and merchants.Sri has played a critical role in helping PayPal remain at the forefront of innovation since joining the company in 2015. Prior to his appointment as EVP and CTO, Sri was Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure, directing his team of technologists to drive massive growth at scale across a disruptive payments platform. Sri was responsible for all core technologies covering PayPal’s data centers, internal private cloud, online and offline data infrastructure, internal developer frameworks and tools, and various platform services.Before PayPal, Sri was with eBay for 12 years, working his way up from a software engineer to Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure. As VP, he was responsible for the company’s technology infrastructure that powered the eBay Inc. businesses, including eBay’s hundreds of millions of listings and PayPal’s millions of daily payments. Sri found his way to eBay via the acquisition of Deja.com.Sri has served on the board of F5 Networks since 2020.He received his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University and holds a Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharal Nehru Technological University."The most important thing here is that the human fabric in any organization, any team, any ecosystem is the most important one. When you align people to an outcome or a purpose, they'll figure out all the techniques that are necessary to do it. Sometimes they'll pull off magic when they are called the action.- Sri Shivananda  ABOUT JOEL BEASLEYJoel Beasley (@moderncto_io) is the host of the #1 leadership and technology podcast in the world, Modern CTO. Modern CTO is focused on interviewing high-profile executives in the leadership and technology space with over 150k active listeners. Joel is an MIT-educated CTO of Leaderbits with clients from Startups up to Billion dollar companies. He is also the founder of The Beasley Foundation, a charity that designs STEM-related children’s books that are then donated to orphanages, homeless pregnant women, and children in need.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Changing mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets in times of transformation (2:16)Creating clarity and alignment in eng orgs (5:24)Getting skeptical team members to buy into mindset shifts (7:53)Sri's framework for choosing new technologies (10:33)Why engineering leaders need substance, depth, and hunger (14:40)How PayPal is democratizing financial services (19:43)The curiosity quotient (21:44)

Join Bill Coughran, partner at Sequoia Capital and former Google SVP of Engineering, alongside Melody Meckfessel, CEO of Observable, as they delve into making engineering a strategic advantage. They discuss the significance of simplicity in feature design and the role of Site Reliability Engineers. The duo emphasizes fostering collaboration and mentorship, the balance of technical debt with product development, and the importance of community feedback for user engagement. Their insights are essential for cultivating effective, user-centric teams.

What does it take to build a tech org from the ground up? Khawaja Shams (Co-Founder & CEO @ Momento) sits down with Anshu Narula (VP Digital Technology @ Rivian) to discuss how Anshu went from larger companies like PayPal and eBay to scaling Rivian’s digital tech org from scratch. They discuss critical cultural values, early guiding principles and processes for the org, Anshu’s approach to scaling the engineering teams, and a starting point if you’re building from 0.ABOUT ANSHU NARULAAt Rivian, Anshu is responsible for the strategic development of Rivian’s digital ecosystem. She leads teams building products and architecting systems across the technology stack, which has her overseeing a wide range of initiatives from rivian.com to charging software, in order to best serve Rivian B2C and B2B customers. With more than 20 years of experience in product development, technical management and software architecture, Anshu is passionate about technology and building products that are simple, scalable and engaging."I started with my leadership team first. Next approach we took, was to go after hiring those engineers underneath them. Because I really needed coders to get through the aggressive growth phase. So those teams then hired all those engineers, once we had the architecture in place.Then we started layering the managers to help. And started calling out the sub-functional areas. And that's when we started to add in the layer of senior managers...- Anshu Narula  ABOUT KHAWAJA SHAMSKhawaja (@ksshams) is a technical hands-on leader, passionate about investing in people, setting a bold vision, and execution with his team. At AWS, he owned DynamoDB, a highly available fully managed database service serving at extreme scales! It powers much of Amazon retail, Amazon Video, and control planes of critical AWS Services. Khawaja subsequently owned product and engineering for all 7 of the AWS Media Services, responsible for streaming some of the most visible events in the world, including the Super Bowl and the world’s first Live 4K Stream from Space. He was awarded the prestigious NASA Early Career Medal for his contributions to the Mars Rovers.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company.Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster?Learn more at coderpad.io/elcCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Being the first digital tech hire at Rivian (1:58)Shaping Rivian’s tech org from scratch (4:42)Anshu’s approach to establishing processes (6:00)Adapting the hiring strategy to the pandemic (8:15)Creating culture in a remote-first environment (9:41)How to build an organization from the ground up (11:06)Deciding how to structure the tech org (13:31)Anshu’s strategy for scaling engineering teams (15:17)Identifying the right candidate for something that’s never been done before (17:56)Prioritizing teamwork in the leadership layer of the eng org (19:36)How to assess teamwork as an attribute in candidates (21:01)Balancing pace of innovation with quality (22:33)Advice for any eng leader building an org from scratch (24:15)Ashu’s takeaways from scaling Rivian (24:57)

To grow your engineering team from 200 to 1,200+ you can expect many phase changes in your org. How might your role change and what can you anticipate? Ryan King (CTO @ Chime) and Clarence Chio (Co-founder & CTO @ Unit21) explore how Ryan’s role has evolved across Chime’s different phases of growth over the last 10 years! You’ll hear how team topologies changed, how they hire senior leaders/VPEs for different phases of the company, how goal setting changes, and other great insights to help you scale your org to the next level!ABOUT RYAN KINGRyan King (@ryanking) is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Chime. Ryan was previously VP of engineering at Plaxo, an early professional social networking pioneer that was acquired by Comcast Interactive Media. Ryan also held senior engineering roles at Liberate Technologies and Microsoft. Ryan earned a BS in computer science & engineering from UCLA, and an MS in computer science from Stanford University."There are a few things that I have come to have strong opinions about... One is, teams should own their own domains, services and data. You got to own full-stack your domain. You want to minimize coordination between teams and dependencies on teams. And then something that gets often overlooked as you scale is... aligning the organization with the architecture. The organization's growing, the architecture is evolving, but you have to consciously align those two things if you want to maintain a highly functioning engineering team as you grow...”- Ryan KingABOUT CLARENCE CHIOClarence Chio (@cchio) is the co-founder and CTO at Unit21, a Google-funded startup in San Francisco building tools to fight fraud, money laundering, and online abuse. He authored the O’Reilly Book “Machine Learning & Security” and is also an adjunct lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, teaching a graduate course on the same topic.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company!Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster? Learn more at coderpad.io/elcSHOW NOTES:Ryan’s story of how Chime first started (2:00)How Ryan’s role as CTO changed over time (4:17)How Chime’s engineering org structure & team topologies evolved (6:37)When should you deviate from your existing team structure? (9:06)When do you know you need to bring in a VP of Engineering? (10:23)How did new VPEs build trust and credibility when first starting? (14:32)How does Chime set goals today? (16:14)How do you measure engineering team and org performance? (19:22)What Chime does different to hire great engineers (23:03)Final advice for engineering leaders running teams who have yet to find product-market fit (27:20)

Aaron Erickson and Brian Guthrie, co-founders of Orgspace and former engineering leaders at big companies, share their experience and advice on pre-seed fundraising, pitching investors, dealing with rejection, finding a co-founder, and making the decision to leave their engineering leadership positions. They also discuss the challenges of building an organization, recommended books for startup leaders, maintaining relationships in the founder community, strategies for diffusing stress, and reflections on their journey.

Welcome to our first ever LIVE recording of the show! This is a special behind-the-scenes preview of the upcoming 2022 ELC Virtual Summit (4/20-4/22)! We cover speaker sessions we’re excited about, why we’re excited for community-led round tables, how they’ll help you harness community & build your support network! Plus we showcase 4x round table discussions covering performance management, courageous leadership, hiring vs. buying, and helping women thrive not just survive in tech!Learn more & register for the 2022 ELC Virtual Summit HERE: www.sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTESWelcome to our first ever LIVE recording of the Engineering Leadership podcast! (1:39)What is the ELC Virtual Summit all about? (4:08)Preview of a few speaker sessions we’re excited about (5:54)Why we’re excited for community-led roundtables & how they’ll help you harness community & build your support network (9:02)What are “round-tables” & why are they valuable to engineering leaders?Introducing roundtable hosts Joy, Andrei, Wen & Keng (plus why they’re most excited about their discussion topic) (12:46)Performance management roundtable preview (18:28)What unexpected feedback have you received from your team during performance reviews? (22:31)Courageous leadership roundtable preview (27:51)If you saw “courageous leadership” what would you want to gain from a roundtable? (34:55)Hire vs. Buy roundtable preview (38:38)Helping women thrive, not just survive in tech - roundtable preview (47:11)Wrap Up! Register for the ELC Summit @ www.sfelc.com/summit2022 (56:52)

Communication between engineering leadership and the CEO is crucial, and not without its challenges. In this special episode Andrew Lau (Co-Founder & CEO @ Jellyfish) and Eli Daniel (Head Of Engineering @ Jellyfish) give us an inside look into their own working relationship and share tips for optimal collaboration between engineering leaders, CEOs and "the business."ABOUT ANDREW LAUAndrew Man-Hon Lau (@amlau) is Co-Founder and CEO of Jellyfish, the leading Engineering Management Platform (EMP) that provides complete visibility into engineering organizations, the work they do, and how they operate.Prior to Jellyfish, Andrew was the Chief Strategy Officer for ad-tech leader Nanigans after his social retail-tech company LoopIt was acquired. He also previously helped create companies at Redstar Ventures. Andrew was VP Engineering and founding technology team member of Endeca Technologies, an enterprise search software company that was acquired by Oracle Technologies for over $1B. He also has experience at companies such as Microsoft and IBM.Andrew holds a B.S. in Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is a certified barbecue judge for the Kansas City Barbecue Society. He hails from Oakland, CA and is still an avid fan of the Oakland Athletics despite living in Red Sox country for over 20 years. He lives in Cambridge, MA with his wife Elsie and two young children Callie and Mira."There's a game of distrust already happening here, or at least his satisfaction.And dissatisfaction could be why is it something else coming out faster? Like I thought this has been done? Or this thing didn't come out good. Or my favorite person isn't working on this thing.The supposition in the set person's head is that something's wrong with the work assignment, patterns slash it's the wrong matching of people to work or they're doing some stuff is wasting time.Use the act of sharing it and their critique on the specific things to try to suss out what their discontent with...- Andrew Lau   ABOUT ELI DANIELEli Daniel is Head of Engineering at Jellyfish, where he leads the efforts to develop our software products.  He comes to Jellyfish by way of 20+ years in the Boston tech scene, having seen both successful exits and smoldering craters, which have led to a keen interest in what makes successful product development teams go.Eli holds a BS in Computer Science from Yale.  He lives with his family and labrador retriever in Somerville, MA, and looks forward to returning to his regular bike-commute to work."I would try hard to head that thing off at the pass and be like, ‘Whoa! whoa! whoa! Like what... Help me understand, what are you trying to do with this information? How can I help you get what you actually want?Because I don't think it's a list of tasks you haven't heard of that the junior person is working on over there.’”- Eli Daniel   Check out our friends at Jellyfish.Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Translating engineering to the CEO (2:50)The tension between CEO and Head of Engineering (3:54)1:1’s with the CEO (7:01)The disconnect between CEO and engineering leaders (8:22)How to navigate mistrust from the CEO (12:44)Maintaining clarity with the CEO (17:15)Reporting hiring challenges for engineering (19:50)Hero developers don’t scale (27:02)What level of business insight do engineering leaders need? (36:40)Should engineering teams adopt trending frameworks? (39:10)Managing release expectations (45:11)How engineering leaders can stay in tune with business priorities (53:01)Takeaways (59:18)

Joy Dixon (Sr Manager, Engineering @ Salesforce) walks us through a unique goal-setting framework: Next Level Goals - to help you harness group accountability & accelerate their growth. Joy breaks down the process of getting buy-in from skeptical engineers, the power of peer accountability stand-ups, and why embodying your goals can be more effective than moving towards them.ABOUT JOY DIXONJoy Dixon (@JoyD1x0n) is a people-first, innovative, daring, JEDI Leader with strong technical prowess and deep business acumen. Joy has worked in the tech industry for 20+ years as a people leader, software engineer, technical trainer, and network administrator. Joy holds a Bachelor’s degree in African-American Studies, a Master’s degree in Software Engineering, and several professional certifications in software development and Agile methodologies.In the course of a diverse career, Joy has… Led and grown development teams to deliver engineering excellence in code, collaboration, and commitment all while modeling collective genius and having fun. Designed and developed applications using several programming languages and in various environments. In addition, she has configured and administered networks for global companies. Designed and delivered online and in-person, web, animation, and game development courses. Started a software development training company, Mosaic Presence to expand opportunities, cultivate community, and promote the Mosaic.As a self-described sunflower in a bed of roses, Joy conceives and constructs new paths that inspire innovation and transform cultures. She gives 100%+ to herself, team, and work modeling care, creativity, and excellence. Joy is a courageous communicator whose authenticity and integrity are valued and admired. Along with the above, Joy connects people and ideas in a heartfelt effort to support the success of everyone.Additionally, Joy loves music, animation, women's basketball, the Golden State Warriors, and motorcycles. Joy lives by the following quote from the world-record-holding Olympic champion and international sports icon, Wilma Rudolph: "'I can't' are two words that have never been in my vocabulary. I believe in me more than anything in this world.""Don't tell people 'I like to run.' Tell them 'I'm a runner!'It makes a world of difference! So you are embodying that person or those attributes that you want to have. And then from there, you move forward.Because if you say 'I'm moving towards my goal.' Then you're also saying 'I'm not there yet.' But if you embody the end, ‘I'm already there!’ Right?We know you're not holy already there, but you embody the end and then, act as if! And it makes a world of difference. You make so much more progress.- Joy Dixon  Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Team building happens in the in-between moments (2:07)Get the right things done with smaller goals (5:52)Help eng team members make realistic business impacts (8:59)How to implement the Next Level framework with your eng teams (12:07)The magic wand: monthly accountability check-ins (16:42)Leverage peers for accountability, not just managers (18:52)The network effects of group accountability (19:47)Embodying your goals vs. moving towards them (25:01)Getting buy-in from skeptical engineers (29:03)How to measure and track abstract goals (31:46)Apply BRAVING to engineering leadership (34:34)Rapid Fire Questions (37:40)LINKS AND RESOURCES(book) Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins - book Joy referenced talking about “constant and never-ending improvement(book) The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker - book referenced by Patrick discussing facilitation principles(book) Dare to Lead by Brene Brown - book referenced by Joy discussing BRAVING framework applied within her engineering team meetings(book) Linchpin by Seth Godin - what Joy is reading now

How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth w/ Samir Naik #77Samir Naik (Head of Engineering, Core Products @ Plaid) shares how Plaid’s engineering org has evolved over the last 10 years & the many unexpected ways his own career has transformed alongside Plaid. Samir deconstructs 3 different growth phases at Plaid, the indicators that your company is ready for the next growth stage, and how to choose an emerging tech city to expand to! Plus critical questions that helped guide Samir’s career within Plaid.ABOUT SAMIR NAIKSamir Naik (@samirnaik) is Head of Engineering for Plaid’s Core Products, overseeing a cross-functional team of product managers, engineers, designers, marketers building and scaling our core APIs. Having worn many hats throughout his years at Plaid, he’s managed teams large and small and as the first external engineering manager hire, he’s been instrumental in building Plaid’s engineering function from the ground up. Previously, Samir led teams at Dropbox, Zynga, and Disney."I made the comment... I was like, 'I don't think a lot of this is really engineering focused, right? It doesn't seem super relevant to the engineering team..."And he kind of just paused and looked at me and was like, 'That is your job! Doesn't matter if it's engineering or not, you need to fix these problems.'And I think it was a mindset shift for me, and it was really helpful feedback. But I think it kind of framed that there's a bunch of seams in an organization. Doesn't matter whether they're engineering or not, but I really need to look for those seams and those opportunities and make sure they're addressed, whether that's in my job description or not.- Samir Naik   Check out our friends and sponsor, Jellyfish. Jellyfish helps you align engineering work with business priorities and enables you to make better strategic decisions.Learn more at Jellyfish.co/elcThe ELC Virtual Summit is BACK on April 20th-22nd!We’re bringing together engineering leaders from around the world to surface fresh industry insights & help you build peer support. Don’t miss out on expert conversations, peer-led roundtables & workshops to help you accelerate your leadership growth.Learn more and register HERE: sfelc.com/summit2022SHOW NOTES:What was Plaid like in 2017? (2:56)Approaching Eng Mgmt as a business within a business (6:47)The three growth phases of Plaid (7:55)Deciding the sequence of scaling for an engineering organization (13:10)Relying on Eng Managers for project management (14:56)How to attract Sr Engineers during hyper-growth (16:55)Maturing from a single product to multiple business units (18:35)Org maturity as a lagging indicator of success (20:08)Indicators that your company is ready for growth stage 2 (21:10)How scaling turned Samir’s role into a more business-focused function (24:04)How to choose an emerging tech city to expand to (27:32)The need for “2nd communities” in remote organizations (31:58)Indicators that your company is ready for growth stage 3 (34:48)How long should you delay growth stage 3? (38:29)Evolving company culture as the organization scales (40:10)Handing off easy tasks that can be growth opportunities for others (43:40)Rapid Fire Questions (46:23)Takeaways (50:00)