The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Sri Viswanath (CTO @ Atlassian) shares Atlassian’s approach to building autonomous teams, the story behind Project Pascal & how Atlassian built their engineering career ladder! You’ll learn Sri’s 3 key areas to creating autonomy (principles, priorities & process), creating transparency at scale, and common & counter-intuitive process changes. Plus the key elements to build/launch a successful engineering career growth plan! ABOUT SRI VISWANATHSri is the chief technology officer (CTO) at Atlassian. Sri joined the company in January 2016 and is at the helm of Atlassian's cloud-native journey – assuming responsibility over the building and scaling Atlassian's cloud platform. Before joining Atlassian, Sri served as CTO and senior vice president of engineering at Groupon, the vice president of R&D for mobile computing at VMware, and the senior vice president of engineering at Ning – where he was instrumental in the company's acquisition by Glam. He also led the development of a number of very successful open-source and B-to-B products at Sun Microsystems, served on the Board of Directors for SendGrid, and has a number of patents. Sri currently serves on the Board of Directors for Splunk and holds a M.S. in Management from Stanford University and a M.S. in Computer Science from Clemson University. LINKS & RESOURCESAtlassian's Engineering Handbook: https://www.atlassian.com/engineering/handbookAtlassian's Project Pascal: https://www.atlassian.com/engineering/career-framework SHOW NOTESSri’s people-first approach to leadership (1:50)Why “putting people first” is key to building autonomous teams (3:17)How Sri operationalizes his approach to leadership (4:35)What processes should you prioritize first, to build autonomous teams? (9:31)Common & counter-intuitive process changes for engineering leaders to assess (15:32)How Atlassian leverages pre-mortems for major projects at Atlassian (20:29)How Atlassian’s engineering culture creates transparency at scale (22:22)Where to start with building your own engineering handbook: principles, prioritization, & process (24:29)Atlassian’s approach to engineering career growth & “Project Pascal” (32:20)How Atlassian defined each role in it’s engineering career ladder (39:48)How Atlassian formed cross-functional working groups to define different roles (42:23)How different opinions were included in Project Pascal (43:38)How Atlassian incorporated feedback to improve it’s career framework (46:08)Rapid Fire Questions (48:15)Takeaways (54:15)---Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCListen to our Bonus Episode: Building Your AI Organization with Maia Brenner! Listen HERE: https://spoti.fi/2WLX9CmReady to own your AI Strategy? Learn more about Tryolabs HERE: https://bit.ly/39QpNoHSend in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message

Li Fan (CTO @ Circle) shares about the power of mentoring and the impact of paying it forward! We cover Li’s career journey, the mentors that have inspired and shaped her leadership, and how Li’s passed along those lessons to the people she’s mentored. Through Li’s stories, we uncover the long-term impact and ripple effect when you pay it forward.ABOUT LI FANLi Fan is CTO at Circle, a global fintech firm enabling business to harness the power of digital currencies and public blockchains (Circle is the principle operator of USD Coin). Prior to Circle, Li was CTO at Lime, an innovative technology company that connects and empowers urban living through mobility. Before Lime, Li was SVP of engineering at Pinterest leading all 600+ engineers to execute technology strategy and deliver company priorities. Li was a Senior Director of Engineering in Google, accountable for Google’s popular image search and was Vice President of Engineering at Baidu.SHOW NOTESWhy this conversation with Li Fan is so special (2:02)When has a mentor made a meaningful difference for you? (3:30)How mentors help show you what’s possible in your career and life (6:29)How mentors inspire and shape your leadership (10:00)Mental models for a successful mentor relationship (13:29)Paying it forward and becoming a mentor (15:19)How to balance your team’s retention and your mentee’s career growth (19:12)The hard-to-imagine long term impact of mentoring (25:20)Staying in touch with your mentors and the people you mentor (29:17)The long-term ripple effect when you “pay it forward” and mentor others (31:22)Finding the right mentor and creating mutually beneficial relationships (36:04)How Art influences Li’s approach to engineering leadership (39:51)Rapid Fire Questions (44:17)Takeaways (47:38)---Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCListen to our Bonus Episode: Building Your AI Organization with Maia Brenner! Listen HERE: https://spoti.fi/2WLX9Cm

Maia Brenner (AI Specialist & Head of Business Development @ Tryolabs) shares the fundamentals to begin your company’s AI/ML journey! We cover the most common challenges & pitfalls eng leaders face when investing in AI, how to understand feasibility/impact & ROI of different AI/ML initiatives, how to build your AI roadmap, how to break down massive AI/ML projects into small experiments, and how to accelerate different phases of your AI/ML strategy with partners like Tryolabs.ABOUT MAIA BRENNERMaia Brenner is a passionate data scientist and economist with strong programming skills, a mathematical and statistical background, and work experience in consulting and the public sector. As an AI Specialist at Tryolabs she helps clients maximize the full potential of data science and machine learning to solve their business problems.Maia's experience in the consulting industry covers several projects related to demand forecasting, price optimization, customer segmentation, and natural language processing applications, among others. As a technical consultant, she has helped design and develop AI solutions for companies from several different industries such as Retail, Finance, Pharma, Logistics, Transportation, Hospitality, Education, and more.She is also a professor in several universities and enjoys working on initiatives of AI4SocialGood. She has helped in the application of Machine Learning to improve the Public Education sector and is involved in Gender Inequality research groups.SHOW NOTESThe origin story behind Tryolabs (2:33)Common AI/ML challenges Tryolabs helps solve (5:48)Most painful problems with building AI capabilities (7:50)What are the fundamentals to build an AI organization? (10:11)How do you integrate AI/ML into your core business? (12:42)What problems can (or can’t) be solved with AI/ML? (15:18)How Tryolabs helps companies to identify specific AI/ML use cases (16:59)Common pitfalls when investing in & integrating AI/ML into your company (18:19)How to start small & experiment with AI/ML solutions (20:14)How Tryolabs scopes & iterates their AI/ML projects (24:42)Metrics, KPIs & other ways to determine feasibility, impact & ROI of your AI/ML project (26:53)How to build an AI/ML roadmap for your organization (30:34)How Tryolabs accelerates building your AI organization (34:28)---Ready to own your AI Strategy? Learn more about Tryolabs HERE: https://bit.ly/39QpNoH

Richard Wong (SVP of Engineering @ Coursera) shares how the dilemma of speed & quality evolves as a company scales. We cover how to balance building new features & fixing quality issues, internal & external signals to help you determine your priorities, & how to gain alignment. Plus how to avoid over-engineering!ABOUT RICHARD WONGRichard oversees Coursera's infrastructure and product development. Prior to joining Coursera, Richard held various engineering leadership roles at the early days of LinkedIn, with a key focus on scaling the Jobs marketplace and Talent Solutions to become its first billion-dollar product.Richard also oversaw the product development for Linkedin international expansions. Prior to LinkedIn, Richard spent over a decade at Microsoft leading various product development teams including MSN Hotmail, Active Directory, Windows Server, and System Center. Richard received his Master’s degree from Stanford University.SHOW NOTESThe dilemma of speed v. quality (1:49)Richard’s personal example of speed v. quality dilemma (5:58)How Coursera improved product quality (7:47)Tactical steps to improve product quality (10:34)How to avoid over-engineering & leverage customer complaints to improve product quality (16:37)How to balance speed & quality as an engineering leader (20:06)How to get alignment on quality issues with executive & cross-functional teams (25:25)How to prevent spending too much time on quality-focused engineering work (29:46)What are the signals for when you need to shift between speed v. quality? (33:22)How the dilemma of speed v. quality change as you scale (38:52)How Richard allocates resources to focus on new features or quality (42:02)Rapid Fire Questions (48:28)Takeaways (54:17)---Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCInterested in ELC's Peer Group Program? Click here to learn more & apply: https://bit.ly/3oBwLDC

Juni scaled 2x-3x week-over-week in the 1st month of Covid-19 restrictions. Vivian Shen (Co-Founder & CEO @ Juni Learning) shares why they had to massively shift priorities from growth to internal tooling/operations & how they gained buy-in from their engineering teams throughout the process. Plus you’ll hear about their pitch process to surface innovative ideas, and how the “engineering pod” team structure increases ownership, creativity & directly connects engineering to user impact!ABOUT VIVIAN SHEN, CO-FOUNDER & CEO @ JUNI LEARNINGVivan's experience ranges from strategy development for Fortune 500 companies to building teams from scratch at startups -- and everything in between. Prior to founding Juni in 2017 to satisfy the gap in the education system, Vivian served as the Director of Product at Operator, where she launched multiple products in the US and China. She also spent two years as a Consultant in McKinsey & Company’s Silicon Valley office, working with high-growth tech companies. She began her career as a software engineer at Google.Vivian has been featured on Forbes’ 30 Under 30, as well as in Fast Company, TechCrunch and Fortune. She holds a B.S in Computer Science from Stanford, with a minor in Creative Writing. Today, she is passionate about helping kids discover and cultivate new interests and skills, empowering them to learn through the power of community and connections. LINKS SHAREDIDEO Design Thinking Blog with David Kelly - https://www.ideo.com/journal SHOW NOTESJuni’s Covid pivot: Why they focused on engineering operations & internal tooling (2:19)Making the decision to pivot (4:59)Prioritizing and reallocating engineering resources (8:49)Refocusing the team and getting buy-in (11:01)Dealing with resistance/friction on the company’s direction (13:50)Juni’s pitch process to surface new ideas (17:06)How to leverage end-users to motivate your teams (21:03)Increase ownership and creativity with “Engineering Pods” (26:13)Lessons learned on communicating priorities (28:21)When to revisit your orgs priorities while scaling (32:09)Shifting focus back on growth (34:52)Collaborating in planning meetings with analytics / biz ops & engineering to impact end users (37:10)Rapid Fire Questions (40:13)Takeaways (46:19)---Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCInterested in ELC's Peer Group Program? Click here to learn more & apply: https://bit.ly/3oBwLDC 

Brad Henrickson (Leadership Coach, Former CTO @ Scoop Technologies) shares how to reclaim ownership of your time by using an energy/calendar audit! You’ll learn the mechanics of how to conduct an energy audit and how to transform energy-draining moments engineering leaders commonly encounter, into energy-giving moments. Plus how to apply this at scale to amplify energy AND increase ownership throughout your entire org! ABOUT BRAD HENRICKSON, LEADERSHIP COACH, FORMER CTO @ SCOOP TECHNOLOGIESBrad is a seasoned technology leader with a broad range of experience from founding companies, to building product, to maturing organizations to driving culture and results in highly dynamic environments. Brad has an extensive range of skills including but not limited to: building recruiting and hiring pipelines, organization design and SDLC design, people management, product management, board representation, budgeting, performance management, culture advocacy and delivery of critical technical projects. Outside of the technical domain you will find Brad out rock climbing, surfing and mountaineering. He grounds himself through his connection to the outdoors and through his meditation practice which he has been doing for 20 years. LINKS & RESOURCESConscious Leadership Group: https://conscious.is/Henrickson Leadership: https://henricksonleadership.com/Sign up for Brad's Newsletter: https://bradhenrickson.substack.com/people/38350988-brad-henricksonFollow Brad on Twitter: https://twitter.com/lowercase24 SHOW NOTESIntroducing the “energy audit” (2:31)“Time is an expression of your priorities and values” (4:21)How an “energy audit” impacts how you spend your time (5:42)How to address routine meetings on your calendar that drain your energy (7:25)How to conduct your own calendar review & energy audit (10:55)How to approach a calendar review when you don't have total control of your time (14:36)Common energy audit trends for engineering leaders (18:13)How to transform energy-draining meetings to make them exquisite (19:34)Unplanned energy giving experiences to have on the calendar (22:54)How to transform activities from energy draining to energy giving (25:35)Renters vs. Owners & how to increase ownership in your engineering team (27:37)How to use energy audits at different scales of your organization (32:24)Framework to start a conversation about energy draining activities (33:50)How to get people to share problems without emotion or fear of judgement (37:00)Other contexts to apply the energy audit beyond meetings (39:34)How to use the energy audit to amplify your energy (41:16)Rapid Fire Questions (44:11)Takeaways (48:01)---Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCInterested in ELC's Peer Group Program? Click here to learn more & apply: https://bit.ly/3oBwLDC

Welcome to our community’s FIRST DEBATE! Farhan Thawar (VPE @ Shopify) & Jerry Krikheli (Sr. Director of Engineering @ Facebook) hash out which org structure should rule them all… Should you go flat? Or should you become a hierarchy? You’ll hear how each structure impacts culture, innovation, and velocity!FARHAN THAWAR, VP OF ENGINEERING @ SHOPIFYFarhan Thawar is currently VP, Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. He is an avid writer and speaker and was named one of Toronto's 25 most powerful people. Prior to Xtreme, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, Celestica, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Farhan is also an advisor at yCombinator and holds a board seat at Optiva (formerly Redknee). JERRY KRIKHELI, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING @ FACEBOOKPrior to Facebook, Jerry was VP of Engineering at Houzz where he oversaw all infrastructure, platform, and engineering across Consumer, Marketplace, and Industry Solutions initiatives. Jerry was also an engineering director at Google responsible for developing early versions of the display ad serving infrastructure and launching YouTube ads as well as video ads on mobile apps. He has a passion for building high-performing systems, products, and people. SHOW NOTESThe rules of the debate (2:45)Opening Statement: Why hierarchical organizations? (3:39)Opening Statement: Why flat organizations? (6:25)Culture in flat organizations (9:09)Culture in hierarchical organizations (10:55)Culture rebuttals (14:19)Innovation in flat organizations (19:49)Innovation in hierarchical organizations (22:01)Innovation rebuttals (24:57)Velocity in hierarchical organizations (26:05)Velocity in flat organizations (28:42)Closing Statements on Flat vs. Hierarchical (30:16) BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at sfelc.com!

You've found the mythical product-market fit & are scaling fast... now what?! Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital; Former SVP Engineering @ Google) & David Singleton (CTO @ Stripe) cover common mistakes scaling engineering orgs make, signals to help you identify & develop good managers internally AND find great hires externally. Plus how to balance short & long term demands while scaling & more! DAVID SINGLETON, CTO @ STRIPEDavid joined Stripe from Google, where he was VPE, leading the Android Wear & Google Fit teams. At Google, David led teams that built some of the company’s most ambitious products, including its first apps with voice search; publisher products for Google Adsense; Google Offers; and Google Mobile Search Apps. He was also one of the first engineers at Google London and oversaw much of the growth of the London engineering office from inception to the large scale it has today. Prior to Google, David spent 3 years as a senior engineer at Symbian, the pioneering mobile phone operating system, where he developed software for Nokia & Samsung smartphones & worked on both the Bluetooth stack & PC Connect software. BILL COUGHRAN, FOUNDER'S COACH & PARTNER @ SEQUOIA; FORMER SVP ENGINEERING @ GOOGLEBill Coughran works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security. SHOW NOTESWhat are the most common mistakes scaling organizations make? (2:24)What's the best way to add managers to a technology organization? (4:40)Signals to identify potential engineering managers to develop from inside the organization (7:32)Finding the right external hires while in hyper-growth (signals & warning signs) (8:41)What questions do you ask for hiring references? (11:23)Navigating doing things that don’t scale in the short term (16:17)“Second system syndrome” & avoiding the urge to rewrite your system (19:12)How to retain early employees at a hyper-growth startup (21:30)What Bill’s most excited about in the tech industry right now (24:18)Tips to help turn ICs into leaders (25:20)Deciding on org structure when you’re scaling fast (27:26)Navigating speed & long-term quality building your architecture at an early-stage company (29:43)Final advice from Bill & David (31:37) BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELC

Marianna Tessel (CTO @ Intuit) & Aileen Lee (Founder/Managing Partner @ Cowboy Ventures) cover how to navigate the build vs. buy decision! They share the frameworks they use to make a “buy” decision, how they assess engineering talent during acquisitions, how they decide between vendor software vs. open-source vs. building yourself. Plus the leadership skills that help Marianna lead a 5,000+ person team! MARIANNA TESSEL, CTO @ INTUITMarianna oversees Intuit’s technology strategy and leads all of Intuit’s product engineering, data science, information technology and information security teams worldwide. Marianna's been at the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops.Marianna previously served as Executive VP of Strategic Development at Docker, held leadership roles at VMware, Ariba, and General Magic working on the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. the forefront of significant tech transformations, including virtualization, cloud, and dev ops. AILEEN LEE, FOUNDER & MANAGING PARTNER @ COWBOY VENTURESAileen is founding Partner at Cowboy Ventures, a team that backs seed-stage technology companies re-imagining work and life through technology, what they call “life 2.0”. Cowboy Ventures works with startups like Guild Education, Lightstep, Dollar Shave Club, and Tally.Aileen periodically writes about technology insights and is known for coining the business term “unicorn” for public and private companies valued over $1bn. She has been named to the Forbes Midas List of best investors and Forbes Most Powerful Women, as well as to Time Magazine’s 100 most influential people.Prior to Cowboy, Aileen was a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, was founding CEO of RMG Networks, and worked at Gap Inc in operating roles. She has degrees from MIT and HBS, is mom of 3, wife to a startup founder, an Aspen Institute Henry Crown Fellow and co-founder of the non-profit All Raise - aiming to accelerate success for women in the technology ecosystem. SHOW NOTESAbout Marianna’s role at Intuit (2:33)How many acquisitions / build vs. buy decisions have you had to make? (4:35)Marianna’s evaluation framework for buying companies (6:26)Assessing engineering talent in acqui-hires (9:37)How do you decide to buy vendor software or build yourself? (15:41)How do you define what’s core to the business vs. context? (19:11)Where are you looking to buy instead of build right now? (21:40)Hard & soft skills that helped Marianna advance her career and run a 5000+ person team (23:48)Were you always good at the "developing talent" and "managing" part of being a CTO? (26:50) BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELC 

Guillermo Fisher (Director of Engineering, Infrastructure @ Handshake) shares the impact of mission & values alignment, supporting your team’s internal mobility & professional growth, plus interesting infrastructure challenges & actualizing values on the infra team. This episode serves as a great reminder of WHY we become engineering leaders - to empower our teams to become great leaders in tech."The engineering team pivoted! Trashed OKRs! Trashed the roadmap... and said, 'We're going to build out virtual career fairs.' And so we did the work over the course of the year. Delivered career fairs in that same year... which is amazing! And have since served thousands and thousands of career fairs." GUILLERMO FISHER, DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING, INFRASTRUCTURE @ HANDSHAKEGuillermo Andrae Fisher has been working on the Web for almost twenty years in several capacities, many of which are detailed on LinkedIn. He is currently the Director of Infrastructure at Handshake. He is also the founder of 757ColorCoded, a nonprofit organization focused on helping people of color achieve careers in technology and an advisor at Kura Labs, a free training and job placement academy for Infrastructure Computing, DevOps, & SRE for students from under-served communities. Guillermo is a Christian, husband, father of four, continuous delivery enthusiast, writer, AWS Data Hero, and a fan of very silly comedy. SHOW NOTESGuillermo’s engineering leadership origin story (1:39)Discovering mission & values alignment at Handshake (4:29)The impact of Handshake’s COVID career fair pivot on students (6:25)How engineering enables Handshakes mission (8:03)Internal mobility, promotions & how Handshake supports professional growth within the company (10:15)How Handshake’s values are actualized on the infrastructure team (13:02)Practices to operationalize empathy on your team (14:43)What Guillermo loves most about the people and culture at Handshake (18:36)How to cultivate care & passion on your team (19:56)The infrastructure team's future focus and impact (21:45)Infrastructure challenges Guillermo's most excited about (23:42)Why Guillermo’s most excited to be at Handshake right now (25:39)Guillermo’s favorite part of being an engineering leader (27:43)Final Words: “If you want to work on something cool that matters, come here” (28:50) LINKS757 Color Coded: https://www.757colorcoded.org/Guillermo's Website: https://guillermoandraefisher.com/Kura Labs: https://kuralabs.org/ WANT TO CONTINUE THE CONVERSATION?To stay up to date with key engineering initiatives at Handshake, keep an eye out in the coming weeks for the launch of the LinkedIn group, "Engineering at Handshake."And of course, if you're exploring new opportunities and motivated by Handshake's mission, check out open roles at joinhandshake.com/join-us/