The Engineering Leadership Podcast

We cover reinventing your role and refocusing your eng team in the face of the unknown with Maher Saba, Head of Remote Presence and Engineering @ Meta! He discusses his leadership history from IBM to Microsoft to Meta and how he took on IC roles to gain credibility as an eng leader. We also cover how to productively channel & embrace emotions to drive improvement, frameworks for motivating eng orgs, how to incorporate personal feedback into your product, how the pandemic offered opportunities to pivot into the unknown, refocusing eng teams after challenges/periods of uncertainty, and more!ABOUT MAHER SABAMaher Saba is the Head of Remote Presence and Engineering at Meta and is responsible for creating rich social, real-time video and audio experiences that connect people while they’re physically apart. Saba has held numerous Engineering leadership roles at Meta, and during his time at the company he launched Video on Newsfeed, Facebook Live, Facebook Watch, Messenger Rooms and Live Audio Rooms. Before Meta, Saba worked at IBM and Microsoft as a developer and software engineering lead, eventually becoming a Distinguished Engineer at Microsoft. Saba has a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from The University of Texas at Austin.“He goes, ‘Have you ever written an endpoint?’ I said, ‘I'm actually curious to know what an endpoint is.’ And he goes, ‘Have you written anything in Ruby?’ I'm like, ‘No, I've never seen the language before.’ He goes, ‘How about Go Language?’ I'm like, Rob Pike just came up with Go Language. Nobody knows it.’ And he's like, ‘So, you know nothing.’ I'm like, ‘I know nothing. I just wanna be in a place where either I sink or swim and the best way for me to know this is to jump with both feet into the deep end.’”- Maher Saba   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Maher Saba’s transition from Microsoft to Meta (01:54)Why Maher restarted as an IC to gain credibility before moving back into eng management (7:08)Embrace emotions in order to gain focus & drive improvement (12:14)How Maher refocused his work at the start of the pandemic & what it’s like jumping into the unknown (16:48)Frameworks for motivating eng teams to focus on execution (22:28)Maher’s favorite experiences from his team’s show-and-tell sessions (26:59)Incorporating feedback into your product from personal sources – like your mother! (28:29)Post-pandemic challenges & how to address them (31:27)How to refocus eng teams after periods of uncertainty (36:16)Do’s and don'ts for inspiring teams to be part of a turnaround (39:35)Why Maher is excited for the unknowns surrounding the metaverse (42:00)Rapid fire questions (43:51)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Swerve - Stephen Greenblatt’s book on how the discovery of an Ancient Greek poem changed the course of human thought and shaped the world as we know it today.

We discuss product innovation with Saumya Bhatnagar (CPO & Co-Founder @ involve.ai), who shares her passion for the product trio and how it enriches problem-solving! We cover how to best optimize the product trio, implementing empathy into your communication practices, the importance of the value priority score, frameworks for healthy & energetic discourse between the product trio, and improving the experience of telling users “no” while pursuing potential “yes” opportunities.ABOUT SAUMYA BHATNAGARSaumya Bhatnagar is the CPO and Co-founder of involve.ai, an AI-driven Early warning system that helps companies predict churn and revenue growth opportunities using customer data.Before starting involve.ai, Saumya co-founded a startup right out of high school in New Delhi which focussed on using technology to reduce gender-based abortions in India. She did her undergrad in Computer Science and went on to earn her Masters's in Computer Science from the University of California, Santa Cruz with a focus on Natural Language Processing.She is a Forbes 30 under 30 alum, winner of the Stevie Gold Entrepreneur of the Year award, recognized as the 50 Most Powerful Women in Tech by the National Diversity Council, and is on the list of Top 100 Women in Technology by AI Technology magazine.Saumya is a strong advocate of more representation for women in tech and is the founder of a nonprofit in India for women empowerment.When not working, Saumya enjoys binge-watching Netflix, photography, and traveling."A good relationship is not about how well you work with each other, but how well you fight with each other and how well can you disagree with each other. That's the entire goal of a product trio. They shouldn't agree. They should look at it from different lenses, but then how do you have that argument and come to a consensus is like the hardest part of managing it."- Saumya Bhatnagar   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Why it’s valuable to always consider the context of a problem first (2:07)How Saumya became passionate about the product trio (5:47)Optimize the product trio by exercising empathy & good communication (10:39)Why designers & front-end eng should be connected from the start (14:36)The five components of the value priority score framework (16:59)Improving the experience of telling users “no” (20:16)The role of recency bias in prioritization conversations & how to get to “yes” (24:16)Determine a product’s success by measuring what will impact the outcome (26:36)How the product trio gained alignment regarding the trust score feature (30:54)Saumya’s tips for knowing when the product trio is working well (34:20)Frameworks for healthy discourse within your product trio (36:17)Incorporating a bottom-up decision-making process (39:28)Rapid fire questions (42:43)LINKS AND RESOURCESCompetitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors - Michael E. Porter's book that has transformed the theory, practice, and teaching of business strategy throughout the world.Dopamine Nation - Dr. Anna Lembke’s book that explores the exciting new scientific discoveries that explain why the relentless pursuit of pleasure leads to pain.

Customer narratives are a transformative tool to help you build successful products! Marco Argenti (CIO @ Goldman Sachs) explains how to develop these narratives as your team’s guiding vision and help eng orgs better understand “the business” side of software. Plus we cover best practices for investing in developer experience, Goldman Sachs’ transition to prioritize external developers, and the signs, signals and trends Marco’s used to navigate his career across tons of different emerging technology fields.ABOUT MARCO ARGENTIMarco Argenti is the Chief Information Officer at Goldman Sachs. He is a member of the Management Committee, the Firmwide Technology Risk Committee, the Client Business Standards Committee, the Enterprise Risk Committee and the Global Inclusion and Diversity Committee. Mr. Argenti joined the firm as a Partner in 2019.Prior to joining Goldman Sachs, Mr. Argenti served as Vice President of technology of Amazon Web Services (AWS) since 2013, overseeing all aspects of the product lifecycle of Cloud Services, including strategy, business planning and developer engagement, and leading several AWS technology areas, such as mobile, serverless, Internet of Things, messaging, and augmented and virtual reality. Before that, Mr. Argenti spent several years at Nokia Corporation, where he was Senior Vice President and Global Head of Developer Experience and Marketplace from 2011 to 2013, with responsibility for Nokia’s developer ecosystem and app store across the company’s entire product portfolio.Earlier in his career, Mr. Argenti was a board member and Chief Executive Officer of internet and mobile company Dada S.p.A., as well as a board member, executive vice president of strategy development and chief technology officer of Canadian e-commerce solutions provider Microforum Inc., where he founded Internet Frontier Inc., an internet publisher and e-commerce retailer. He previously founded and sold Dreamware S.r.l., a software development firm, to Microforum Inc.Mr. Argenti serves on the Board of Directors of the Seattle Symphony Orchestra and the Pancreatic Cancer Action Network, also known as PanCan. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of Carnegie Hall."Today, the world is so complex that it's almost like an asteroid field and when you navigate an asteroid field, if you don't turn often, you're gonna be having some surprises and so that's why iteration is so important. You need to release sometimes multiple times a day because the world is changing in front of you and there are opportunities and obstacles that come all the time."- Marco Argenti   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Marco’s leadership journey – as a CTO, VP of Tech, and beyond (2:39)Questioning biases & observing signals when predicting opportunities (8:41)How Marco used intuition & data when deciding to work with Goldman Sachs (10:10)Why engineers must understand business principles (13:46)Using customer narratives to create a guiding vision for eng teams (17:47)How to help eng orgs better understand the business metrics of software (22:01)Why Goldman Sachs transitioned to prioritizing its developer clients (25:39)Shifting the focus from internal developers to external developers (31:34)How the tech team navigated challenges during this transition (33:34)Rapid fire questions (36:43)

Today’s episode marks a special occasion – 100 episodes of The Engineering Leadership Podcast! To celebrate, we’ve compiled some of our favorite moments from the past hundred episodes, featuring a wide range of high-energy guests and compelling topics. We cover tension points while scaling eng & product orgs, why you should seek existential issues, how to get unstuck in your career, helping engineers outgrow their positions, hyper-growing your eng org/career, identifying burnout, understanding workplace injustice, confronting your fear of failure, and much more!Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:How to focus on what really matters... seek the "existential issues" & find where there's "Room AND Attention" - Will Larson (3:23)The Portfolio of Time Management - Jean-Denis Greze (8:50)How to get unstuck in your career - Wade Chambers (13:04)“Crashing” your way to a seat at the table - Melody Hildebrandt (15:51)The fundamentals of managing up - Jan Chong (17:12)Common tension points while scaling engineering and product organizations - Jeremy Henrickson (19:31)The story of Amazon Apollo, solving the right problem & pitching the right stakeholders - Melissa Binde (24:43)"Hero Developers don't scale" - Andrew Lau & Eli Daniel (30:09)How to increase your pool of potential candidates - Farhan Thawar (34:48)Why you should help engineers outgrow their positions & how to discuss career growth with your team members - Tara Ellis (39:45)How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth - Samir Naik (43:32)Move as fast as long as - Richard Wong (47:41)Lessons from leading large-scale, complex, strategic projects - Wendy Sheppard (49:38)How to operationalize your approach to leadership - Sri Viswanath (52:55)How to detect & identify the early signs of burnout in your engineering team - Erica Lockheimer, Sabry Tozin & Lori Allen (55:50)The root causes of workplace injustice & the roles we can play to prevent it - Kim Scott & Trier Bryan (59:29)Conflict optimizations vs. conflict resolution & why eng leaders need to embrace conflict - Jordan Adler (1:04:14)How to get over the fear of silence - Alexis Rask (1:07:22)Leading through uncertainty - David Silverman (1:13:50)"Rage-fixing" & Eddie's breakthrough moment confronting fear of failure at Gusto - Eddie Kim (1:20:05)LINKS AND RESOURCESEpisode 30 - Spend Time On What Matter w/ Will LarsonEpisode 18 - Building a Successfully "Spiky" Org (Part 2) w/ Jean-Denis GrezeEpisode 21 - Conscious Career Growth (part 2) w/ Wade ChambersEpisode 72 - Why Engineering Needs a Seat at the Negotiating Table w/ Melody HildebrandtEpisode 43 - Managing Up w/ Jan ChongEpisode 38 - Align & Scale Engineering AND Product w/ Jeremy HenricksonEpisode 47 - Building Technology That Endures w/ Melissa BindeEpisode 79 - Translating engineering to the CEO w/ Andrew Lau and Eli DanielEpisode 10 - Speed & Creativity in Recruiting w/ Farhan ThawarEpisode 75 - A Counter-Intuitive Approach to Career Growth & Internal Mobility w/ Tara EllisEpisode 77 - How eng orgs (and careers) evolve through hyper-growth w/ Samir NaikEpisode 63 - Speed vs. Quality w/ Richard WongEpisode 31 - How to Lead Large Scale Projects w/ Wendy ShepperdEpisode 65 - Building Autonomous Teams & Engineering Career Ladders w/ Sri ViswanathEpisode 66 - Addressing Burnout in Your Engineering Org w/ Erica Lockheimer, Sabry Tozin & Lori AllenEpisode 44 - “Just Work” w/ Kim Scott & Trier BryantEpisode 74 - Conflict Optimization w/ Jordan AdlerEpisode 32 - Ask Powerful Questions w/ Alexis RaskEpisode 12 - Leading Through Uncertainty w/ David SilvermanEpisode 29 - Remove Fear of Failure From Your Org w/ Edward KimSPECIAL THANK YOU TO OUR PRODUCTION TEAMNoah Olberding, ProducerLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding-49138a19b/Have strong movie opinions? Send Noah a message with your hot cinema takes!Dan Overheim, Audio EngineerIG: @doverheimAre you also an avid 3D printer? Check out Dan’s 3D printing work here: bnd3d.comEllie Coggins Angus, CopywriterLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliecoggins/Love books? Check out Ellie’s bookstagram: @ellieturnsthepage

We speak with Vinay Hiremath, Co-Founder & CTO @ Loom, about his experience balancing three high-level exec roles and living out his personal values at work while prioritizing his mental & physical health! Scaling up is never easy, but Vinay shares tips and systems that have worked for him, including utilizing timetables, building good habits despite emotions, and triply verifying decisions. We also cover the stigma surrounding paternity / parental leave in the tech industry, how knowing your values inspires better health, and journaling frameworks for identifying values & goals.ABOUT VINAY HIREMATHVinay Hiremath (@vhmth) is Co-Founder & CTO at Loom - Check out Vinay’s video bio on Loom here"I'd lost a sense of direction because I just took on so much work. Direction became something that was a luxury for me to think about which is an incredibly dangerous place to be as an executive and it's really easy to fall into it especially when there's a fire hose of work that's coming at you all the time.And then I had morphed my life around work versus around my health and I realized the thing that had led me to have so much mental clarity before was my health. And so I started taking health incredibly seriously again.”- Vinay Hiremath   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Vinay’s experience taking on three exec roles at Loom (3:51)Why creating a daily timetable is crucial for busy eng leaders (6:02)The intersection between mental health & living by your values (9:14)What Vinay’s personal values are & ways he identified them (10:35)Incorporating the value of freedom within your eng org (11:35)How your goals & competencies act as gatekeepers to your values (16:25)Tips for building out your schedule to expand your working capacity (19:02)The importance of understanding your systems (20:11)As you scale your eng functions, set up delegation systems (21:49)Why eng teams should utilize budgets & triple verification (25:48)How triple verification works in people systems (27:07)What the CEO role taught Vinay about leading engineering (31:40)How Loom tackles the stigma surrounding parental leave (33:40)Prioritize mental & physical health to live out your values (35:48)Journaling frameworks to contemplate values (40:28)Vinay’s process for building – and keeping – new habits (43:03)Recognize your emotions & act despite them (47:07)Rapid fire questions (48:28)

 We cover how psychology, neuroscience & mindfulness tools can help eng leaders overcome challenges, communicate successfully, and foster a culture of empathy! Our guest is Luther Kitahata, an Innovative Executive Leadership Coach & Interim CTO/VP of Eng – he’s also described by Chip Conley as the “Obi-Wan Kenobi of Silicon Valley.” We also chat about identifying personality types, uncovering unconscious traits/patterns, shifting from the comfort zone to the growth zone, and how to be a transformative leader!ABOUT LUTHER KITAHATALuther Kitahata is an Executive Leadership Coach known for his expertise in innovation, C-Suite roles leading global organizations, and as an entrepreneur building companies from the ground up. Luther draws on his deep understanding of the patterns that drive human behavior as well as his own corporate leadership experience to provide individuals and organizations with a transformative and pragmatic approach to their most complex challenges. He is described as a "Silicon Valley Obi-Wan Kenobi" in Chip Conley's bestselling book Wisdom at Work.Luther works with high-growth companies led by senior executives who are committed to their own growth and transformation. Having been a C-level executive himself, he knows their challenges from the inside out. His methodology is designed to uncover hidden strengths and blind spots. He encourages leaders to experiment with new behaviors and actions. This results in transformations at the individual, team, and organizational levels.Luther draws on his 20+ years as a C-level operating executive, as well as entrepreneurial expertise starting 8 companies, enabling him to bring practical and actionable guidance to his clients. He has grown new teams from 0 to 100+, taken over large existing teams, and successfully handled turnaround situations. Luther also serves as a Fractional CTO or VP of Engineering to fill a recruiting gap; mentor founders growing into their leadership roles; or upgrade product development methodologies to drive agility, maturity, and scalability.“We make these patterns for ourselves all the time and particularly early in life, we learn patterns of how to navigate the world. The problem is that the modern-day world has a lot of stimulus and input that can throw us into that survival state, that fight flight freeze state very easily. So if you understand that that's what's happening, that we have all these patterns and they're mostly unconscious or barely conscious, then you start to think, ‘Well, okay… What are the patterns that are serving me and what are the patterns that aren't?'"- Luther Kitahata  Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022SHOW NOTES:Luther’s journey from eng leader to executive coach (02:33)The relationship dynamics between executive coach & fractional CTO (4:58)Using Enneagram results to assess eng leader’s response to challenges (6:16)Why you should be self-aware of your personality type (8:54)How to coach eng leaders to talk in ways that others will listen (10:58)Mindfulness techniques to foster a state of empathy & curiosity (12:32)What unconscious traits & patterns hold eng leaders back at work (15:42)How to recognize & address unconscious patterns (20:03)Tools to help you uncover areas where you experience resistance (21:43)Overcoming unconscious patterns by identifying your tendencies (22:49)Shift from the comfort zone to the growth zone (25:28)How to transition away from the high-stress zone (27:38)Transformative leadership starts with self-awareness & a growth mindset (30:10)Rapid fire questions (33:56)Luther’s method for tackling to-do lists with tools like Trello (35:51)Rapid fire questions continued (38:38)

If you’ve ever wrestled with technology choices & navigated the consequences of the wrong path… this conversation is for you! Lisa Dusseault (CTO @ Compaas) defines the dilemma of the “aspirational mismatch” & shares real-life examples of how it affects a tech org’s processes, architecture, and metrics. She dives into the frameworks & tools that have helped her work through mismatches, her golden rule regarding “innovation tokens,” choosing the right sized technology for your company, and why tech companies are prone to aspirational mismatch in the first place.ABOUT LISA DUSSEAULTLisa Dusseault is the Chief Technology Officer at Compaas. She has built her career solving complex technology problems. After Microsoft, she led internet standards groups at the IETF, and engineering teams at Linden Lab and Stubhub. She founded tech startups Cathy Labs, Klutch, and ShareTheVisit. Lisa holds a B.S. in systems design engineering from University of Waterloo."The conversation should have been about when and why this company needed a particular technology choice, not whether a technology choice was good in and of itself."- Lisa Dusseault   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishFor insights into where engineering teams are investing their time and resources, how they’re operating and performing, and the way in which leaders are managing today…Download “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE:jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry and gain data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Learn More About Jellyfish Benchmarks @ jellyfish.co/benchmarksSHOW NOTES:Defining aspirational mismatch & its detrimental impact on eng orgs (02:10)What “cargo culting” is & why it’s a decision-making flaw (4:18)How aspirational mismatch manifests in eng orgs (5:48)The importance of tech companies asking the questions “when” & “why” (7:39)Examples of how eng orgs experience aspirational mismatch in their tech choices (9:08)Framework for tying your metrics to your org’s business objectives (12:33)How metrics can inform frontline decisions (14:15)Choose a technology that’s the correct size for your org (16:19)The cost of merging & compounding mismatches (19:28)Lisa’s golden rule regarding “innovation tokens” for tech start-ups (21:07)Why eng orgs need a unified vision to avoid aspirational mismatch in processes (23:52)Using epics to communicate company vision (26:37)Where aspirational mismatches come from & why eng teams experience them (29:10)Recommendations for withstanding aspirational technology pressure (32:11)Additional frameworks for working through mismatches (34:33)How to host conversations around realistically planning for future aspirations (37:02)Rapid fire questions (39:55)

We’re taking a few weeks off to celebrate Patrick’s wedding! We’re going to be mostly unplugged in the mountains… but when we return, we have some fantastic conversations planned with folks like… Lisa Dusseault (CTO @ Compaas), Luther Kitahata (Founder, Executive Leadership Coach & Fractional CTO/VPE @ Integral Response), Vinay HIremath (CTO @ Loom), Maher Saba (Head of Remote Presence and Engineering @ Meta) & more!Email us if you have ideas for episode 100 at hello@sfelc.comLooking for ways to get involved? Join the conversation in our virtual home at elc.community!

We discuss how to intentionally select & create new career opportunities, both external and internal! Our guests Ali Irturk (VP of Engineering @ CommerceHub) and Ali Littman (Interim Head of Eng @ Modern Health) share their favorite frameworks around eng leadership plus tips on prioritizing your opportunities, building great relationships, making tough decisions, and identifying your values. They also reveal recommendations on filtering / assessing decisions & their go-to leadership styles!ABOUT ALI LITTMANAli Littman is the Director of Engineering at Modern Health, where she leads product engineering teams that make it possible for people to receive online mental health services the moment they need and at no cost to the individual. Prior to her current role, she served as the Director of Engineering at Omada Health. Outside of her role, she is also a champion for diversity and inclusion, most notably leading a Women's ERG, serving on company-wide belonging councils, and providing imposter syndrome coaching.Ali Littman is a passionate engineering leader specializing in healthcare technology both in traditional and digital healthcare settings. She currently serves as Head of Engineering at Modern Health where she gets to lead engineering teams on the exciting journey of evolving how people access and receive mental health care treatment around the world. Ali enjoys taking startups through their scale phase and has been an engineering leader on hypergrowth journeys at both Omada Health and Modern Health - leading them through organizational, market, and product expansion. Her background in business from Haas at UC Berkeley helps navigate these business challenges with the philosophy of having business strategy inform the engineering strategy.At the end of the day, she cares most about being a great people leader who creates inclusive cultures and teaches managers how to be great managers for their teams. She also goes a step beyond her usual management duties to serve on Belonging Councils, lead ERGs, provides imposter syndrome coaching, and mentor individuals from under-represented groups in tech. Additionally, Ali's led external talks on navigating career growth, imposter syndrome, challenging leadership scenarios, and more!"I view my relationship to people that I work with or people that I manage right now, as actually like a lifelong commitment and I think because of that, I end up with these really strong connections even beyond past opportunities."- Ali Littman   ABOUT ALI IRTURKAli's day-to-day passion is creating and being part of efficient and effective engineering organizations that are firing on all cylinders where team members can achieve autonomy, mastery, and purpose in a psychologically safe environment. He will continue to realize this passion by working at CommerceHub as their Vice President of Engineering.He previously worked at rocketship start-ups funded by some of the top VCs in the world including a16z, SoftBank, Microsoft Ventures, and Lightspeed Ventures to name a few. Ali was the Vice President of Engineering at WorkBoard, a strategy and results enterprise SaaS platform helping large organizations align quickly for results, leading product delivery as well as accessibility, application security, release engineering, platform, and infrastructure teams. Previously, he was the Vice President of Engineering at ALICE Technologies working on revolutionizing the construction industry with an artificial intelligence-powered enterprise SaaS product.Ali also created and managed the advanced products group at Cognex Corporation (NASDAQ: CGNX) for 8 years while working as an adjunct professor at UC San Diego. His team worked on creating innovative industrial vision systems and software to help companies improve their product quality, eliminate production errors, and lower manufacturing costs. Examples of the products he worked on were the world's first vision system on chip and the world's fastest 3D scanning system to name a few.Where Ali is today is quite different from where his journey began. Born and raised in Istanbul, I graduated from the Turkish Naval Academy and served as an officer in the Turkish Navy. After leaving the Navy, he earned Master's degrees in Computer Engineering and Economics at UC Santa Barbara, a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at UC San Diego, and an MBA at UC Berkeley."In a grander scheme, I think people should be always looking for opportunities at all times. There's a famous saying... 'The best time to eat hors d'oeuvres are... they're being passed around. The moment that if you're not ready to eat, now you're gonna miss that!’"- Ali Irturk   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishFor insights into where engineering teams are investing their time and resources, how they’re operating and performing, and the way in which leaders are managing today…Download “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE:jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry and gain data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Learn More About Jellyfish Benchmarks @ jellyfish.co/benchmarksCheck 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/elcTake our DevTools survey & share what dev tools you use!As a gift, we’ll send you a copy of one our favorite books AND you’ll be entered to win a free ticket to the 2022 ELC Summit!Fill out the DevTools survey HERE: elc.community/devtools2022SHOW NOTES:Frameworks for navigating new internal & external opportunities (3:36)Three steps for determining which opportunities you should prioritize (5:21)Ask this question to validate your assumptions (8:08)Reflecting on your personal values & how they align with opportunities (9:02)Why growth & interpersonal connection matter to Ali Littman (10:08)Ali Irturk’s recommendations for great networking (11:13)View your professional relationships as life-long commitments (13:09)Book recommendations for frameworks on the job search process (14:29)How the right manager can provide the best opportunities (16:47)Use a decision-grid to help filter & assess decisions (20:06)Analyzing your energy level & trusting your gut while making decisions (21:52)How your priorities evolve over time (23:49)The hedgehog & outliers concepts (25:45)Balancing your current strengths with opportunities you can grow from (29:29)Why there’s no such thing as a singular leadership style (30:47)Vulnerable leadership & creating a culture of trust (34:10)Rapid fire questions (36:42)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe 2-Hour Job Search - Steve Dalton’s instructional book on how to conduct a job search in the most efficient way possible.This Is Day One - Drew Dudley’s guide to cultivating the behaviors that will help you succeed and empower those around you.Staff Engineer: Leadership beyond the management track - Will Larson’s book on attaining and operating in staff engineering roles.Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion - Dr. Robert B. Cialdini’s book on the psychology of why people say yes and how to apply these principles in everyday situations.A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy - William B. Irvine’s book on how the insights and wisdom of Stoic philosophy are still applicable in our modern lives.Coherence: The Secret Science of Brilliant Leadership - Dr. Alan Watkins’ book on the challenges that take a toll on a leader's effectiveness and the solutions designed to improve physiological factors that impact on core competencies.

We discuss the challenges with leading eng orgs through unpredictable global events (like the covid-19 pandemic) & pivoting product strategy with Bridget Frey (CTO @ Redfin). We also cover the challenges & successes of building out AI/ ML products in your engineering org, creating an “uncertainty” algorithm, incorporating mental health best practices in your teams, and addressing data bias & systemic racism in your product’s features! Featuring guest co-host Ali Littman (Interim Head of Eng @ Modern Health).ABOUT BRIDGET FREYAs Redfin’s Chief Technology Officer, Bridget Frey (@SVBridget) leads the software engineering and analytics teams. Her mission is to build technology that makes the process of buying and selling a home less complicated and less stressful. She is a leader on issues facing traditionally underrepresented people in technology, and 36% of Redfin’s technology team are women while 10% are Black or Latinx. Prior to Redfin, Frey was the director of analytics and business applications at Lithium Technologies. In addition, she has held management positions at IntrinsiQ Research, IMlogic and Plumtree Software. Since 2019, she has served on the board of directors for Premera Blue Cross. Bridget holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from Harvard University, where she graduated magna cum laude. She was recently recognized as a Seattle CIO of The Year award winner."One of the things we built was this concept of virtual touring. So you could stay on your couch, but have an agent visit a home, but we could only get a very small number of people to hit that button. Despite all of our trying, we only had 1% of our tours happening virtually and then the pandemic hit and almost overnight, it jumped to about a third of our tours being virtual."- Bridget Frey   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by JellyfishFor insights into where engineering teams are investing their time and resources, how they’re operating and performing, and the way in which leaders are managing today…Download “The State of Engineering Management Report 2022” HERE:jellyfish.co/emrTo understand how your engineering org compares against teams from across the industry and gain data-driven metrics to inform your strategic decisions regarding the right tools, processes and workflows…Learn More About Jellyfish Benchmarks @ jellyfish.co/benchmarksCheck 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:How Bridget lead a real estate tech org through a pandemic & tumultuous housing market (1:05)COVID-19’s impact on the healthcare tech space (2:02)How to adapt product strategy based on customer patterns (5:02)Leading with transparency & decisiveness in uncertain times (7:20)Redfin’s transition to digitizing traditionally in-person experiences (10:58)The pandemic’s unexpected influence on employee mental health & burnout (16:14)How your org can implement a company-wide “no meeting” / wellness week (19:43)Set your org up for faster decision making & implementation (23:52)Challenges & solutions when building out AI/ML home buying products (25:06)Incorporating human needs, desires & perspectives in automated recommendation products (27:40)Engineering best practices for uncovering deeper customer needs (30:06)The inside scoop on modeling an “uncertainty” algorithm (31:12)Prioritization conversations & product strategy at Redfin (34:31)Addressing data bias & systemic racism within product features (36:33)How hiring diversely leads to reduced data bias (39:06)A framework for reducing biased data outputs (40:20)What hiring practices lead to a more diverse team (43:43)How tech orgs can cultivate a culture of inclusivity & diversity (46:08)Rapid fire questions (48:51)