The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Melissa Binde, VP Engineering, Cloud @ Splunk, shares lessons from her time building Amazon Apollo. You’ll hear the origin story of Amazon Apollo, how to define the right problem, identify the right solution, and what makes technology endure 20+ years. Plus how to improve your engineering storytelling and pitch the right product features to the right stakeholders!"We were heavily influenced by an early project manager I worked with who called it, the 'JEDI principle' - You make just enough decisions to implement! And so anytime we hit something. We would actually stop, if we were arguing, we'd stop and go, 'Well, wait, hang on. Do we actually have to decide this now? Or can we kick this down the road?' And so that helped us avoid getting too tied up in philosophical arguments." ABOUT MELISSA BINDEMelissa Binde previously served as Splunk’s VP of Platform and Observability. Prior to joining the company, Melissa led Google’s GCP Site Reliability organization for almost five years, supporting GCP’s growth from 250M revenue in 2015 to almost 9B in 2019. Before that she led engineering teams at Nordstrom, helping them transition to online and cloud, a cloud startup providing business continuity as a service to SMBs, and several other startups. Ms. Binde began her career as one of Amazon’s first 1000 employees, spending almost ten years there developing tools and technologies that are still part of the company’s core AWS stack. Ms. Binde holds a B.A. from Swarthmore College. LINKSCheck out Melissa's hand-made pens: https://motleywoods.com/ SHOWNOTESThe origin story behind Amazon Apollo (2:44)Pitching the right features to the right audience (10:48)Solving the right problem vs. what you were asked & the value of owning outdated projects (12:15)Selling, pitching and building buy-in for new projects (16:21)How do you know the problem defined isn't the problem you should solve? (20:56)How to determine if you need a technical, process or organizational solution (27:35)Building enduring tools & technology (30:23)How to become a better storyteller (32:44)Other examples of determining the right type of solution (36:08)Lessons on project naming (38:44)Rapid Fire Questions (40:10)Takeaways (44:50)---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!

Sarah Clatterbuck, Sr. Director of Engineering, YouTube & Google Zurich Site Lead @ Google, shares the story of her transition as a site lead during the covid-19 pandemic. We cover her past experiences that helped prepare her for the role, what it was like bootstrapping a new team during a pandemic, re-introducing teams to in-person work, AND the story behind her 18-day staycation & its impact on team burnout."You can't worry about pleasing everyone because there are many thousands of people that I'm trying to represent. But you can try to think about what kind of decisions optimize for the most good." ABOUT SARAH CLATTERBUCKSarah joined Google in 2018. She is leading engineering teams working on the Creator Economy at YouTube. Prior to joining Google, she was a Sr. Director of Engineering at Linkedin focused on Application Infrastructure. Prior to joining Google, she was a Sr. Director of Engineering at Linkedin focused on Application Infrastructure.She previously held roles at Yahoo! and Apple while progressing in leadership ranks. Her undergraduate degree is from the University of San Francisco and her graduate degree from San Jose State University. She is passionate about getting girls interested in technology and from 2013 until 2018, she served on the board of Girl Scouts of Northern California, leading the board STEM task group. SHOWNOTESWhat is a site lead and the reporting structure? (2:28)Why Sarah became a site lead for Google Zurich and what the transition was like (6:57)How is the tech industry, community & culture in Zurich different from Silicon Valley? (10:52)Sarah’s past experiences that helped prepare her to be a site lead (13:16)Possible career paths & surprise lessons after becoming a site lead (19:00)Bootstrapping a new team during the COVID-19 pandemic (22:15)Integrating remote hires to in-person office culture (25:19)How to help your team feel included (27:07)About Sarah’s YouTube Channel (29:41)Sarah's 18-day staycation & combating burnout in your team (31:34)Rapid Fire Questions (35:20)Takeaways (41:32) ---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!

Asif Makhani, CTO @ Handshake shares about making non-incremental career transitions, unique opportunities at startups, and exercising influence at mid-stage companies. Plus Asif shares questions to help you gain clarity before your next transitions AND how to attract & retain senior engineers at smaller companies."When you have the ability to take a step back, you begin to think a little bit more philosophically about your journey. And it's not just incremental thinking. When it's incremental thinking it's about, 'what's next in my career.'But when you are able to take a step back, it's about... 'What impact do you want to leave behind? When I look back 10 years from now, will I be happy? Will I feel a sense of fulfillment?'I think that line of questioning really gives you the courage to be able to break away from an incremental way of looking at next steps." ABOUT ASIF MAKHANIAsif has over 20 years of engineering experience with a focus on search engines and edtech. He is currently the CTO of Handshake, the largest career platform for college students and recent graduates. Most recently, Asif was the head of Google Image Search and prior to that, he was the Sr. Director of Engineering for Learning Solutions at LinkedIn, leading the Lynda.com online learning technology organization and launching LinkedIn Learning.Asif was the founding member and engineer of A9.com (a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon.com), creator and GM of Amazon CloudSearch, and the Head of Search at LinkedIn. Asif is passionate about scaling high performance organizations, developing leaders and coaching early talent SHOW NOTESWhat Asif learned from starting A9.com at Amazon (2:45)The unique opportunity of early stage companies & lessons from Amazon Cloud Search (6:26)How do you exercise influence at a mid-stage startup? (9:02)Successful transitions, why it’s essential to capture your early perspectives, & Asif’s favorite relationship building question (13:25)Asif’s lessons from taking time off & how that gave him clarity with his next career transition (17:56)Why Asif made the transition to Handshake (22:47)Questions you should ask to help you gain clarity before your next transition (25:39)How to attract and retain senior engineers at a smaller company (30:03)Rapid Fire Questions (39:49)Takeaways (43:29) ---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!

We cover practical tools to eliminate workplace injustice and help your team “get sh*t done fast and fair” with Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor & Just Work + Trier Bryant, CEO @ Just Work! We discuss the root causes of injustice and introduce several strategies to help you interrupt bias, address prejudice & confront bullying in your organization."You can't possibly do your best work if you are being harmed by the way you're being treated by your colleagues..." - Kim Scott"Whatever problem you're solving, whatever OKR you have... your people are the ones that get it done. So we have to optimize for that experience!" - Trier BryantABOUT KIM SCOTT & TRIER BRYANTKIM SCOTT is the author of Just Work: Get Sh*t Done Fast and Fair as well as Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity - (one of our community’s ALL TIME favorite books!) Kim was a CEO coach at Dropbox, Qualtrics, Twitter, and other tech companies. She was a member of the faculty at Apple University and before that led AdSense, YouTube, and DoubleClick teams at Google.TRIER BRYANT is Co-Founder and CEO of Just Work LLC, the implementation counterpart to Just Work, the book. Trier previously held leadership roles at Astra, Twitter, & Goldman Sachs. She proudly served as a combat veteran in the United States Air Force, as a Captain leading engineering teams while spearheading diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives for the Air Force Academy, Air Force, and DoD. Trier also advises leading companies like Equinox, Airbnb, SoundCloud, Alto, Rockefeller Foundation, and others on their talent and DEI strategies. RESOURCESRead Just Work (The Book): https://www.justworktogether.com/the-bookContact Just Work (The Company): https://www.justworktogether.com/our-capabilities SHOW NOTESWhy Kim wrote Just Work after Radical Candor (4:58)How Trier got involved & became CEO of Just Work (7:23)The impact of workplace injustice and why it matters (10:33)The root causes of workplace injustice and the roles we play (13:51)How to interrupt and stop bias (17:01)How to use “bias interrupters” and make them a part of your culture (29:55)Why language matters & how to respond to someone concerned about the “word police” (34:22)How to address bias using “I Statements” (39:46)What to do when someone is “mansplaining” during your meeting (44:39)How to confront prejudice using “It Statements” (47:58)How to address bullying with “You Statements” (51:05)Takeaways (54:08) ---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

Jan Chong, VP of Engineering @ Tally shares strategies to manage and navigate relationships with your leadership team, direct reports and peers. We cover the fundamentals of managing up, why you need to align with your peers first when you join a new team, plus ways to communicate your ideas and the priorities of engineering more effectively with your non-technical colleagues."Organizations are made up of humans that are making decisions based on the data they have. If you don't think about how that data is being seen and understood, then you're going to have a really hard time getting the outcomes or driving the goals that you want to achieve..." ABOUT JAN CHONGJan Chong is Vice President of Engineering at Tally, a financial automation company helping people navigate the complex world of consumer finance to save money, pay down their debt and reach their goals sooner. She leads and oversees the company’s client engineering, infrastructure security and technical operations teams. Before joining Tally, Jan was a long-time executive at Twitter where she played a critical role in launching and scaling its core mobile and web products, overseeing a team of more than 300 people in Twitter’s consumer engineering organization. Prior to that, Jan ran client and server development at OnLive, a cloud gaming platform. She received multiple degrees from Stanford University, including her Ph.D in management science and engineering, and M.S. and B.S in computer science. SHOW NOTESWhat is Managing Up (3:52)What to do when your manager has different expectations and perception of your performance (6:19)The fundamentals of managing up (8:42)Making the world of management visible (10:39)The three categories of “managing up” and why you should align with your peers first (15:07)Who you need to “mind-meld” with & how to replicate it remotely (22:29)How to align & “mind-meld” with your peer leaders (27:22)Managing up at different levels of seniority (33:28)What you need to do to “manage up” effectively (39:30)Unexpected differences of working with non-technical colleagues & Jan’s metaphors to explain engineering (43:23)Takeaways (51:05)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

Nick Rockwell, SVP of Engineering & Infrastructure @ Fastly shares his recent reflections on incidents, resiliency, blamelessness, and accountability. You’ll hear why the heroic model of incident response is unsustainable, how to improve reliability by closing the long-feedback loop, plus opportunities to maximize post-mortems for process improvement AND emotional processing."We started doing a biweekly meeting. We talk about resilience. We revisit everything that has not been closed, whether it's a year old, or it's a day old, , we're forced to keep coming back to it. So how to move away from that incident based post-mortem to something that's more like a continual revisiting of every thread or pathway that's been opened until they're not even open anymore. So that's the lines I'm thinking along." ABOUT NICK ROCKWELLNick Rockwell is SVP of Engineering & Infrastructure @ Fastly helping build the next-generation edge infrastructure for a faster, safer, more resilient Internet. Nick was formerly Chief Technology Officer at The New York Times, overseeing product engineering, infrastructure and R&D. Previously he was Chief Technology Officer of Conde Nast, and Digital CTO at MTV Networks. Throughout his career, Nick has worked at the intersection of media and the Internet, building digital products at scale. Nick graduated from Yale in 1990 with a B.A in Literary Theory. SHOWNOTESNick’s story of why incidents, resiliency, accountability & blamelessness are top of mind (2:20)The “heroic model” of incident mitigation and it’s emotional impact (6:41)Building a resilient system & transitioning away from heroics to a more mechanistic incident management model (12:12)“The long feedback loop” of incidents (15:57)Grappling with the risks of a more process-driven, mechanistic model of incident management (21:27)Dedicated vs. distributed incident response teams & how incident management evolves over time (24:43)Balancing individual accountability and a culture of blamelessness (28:37)Why you need to talk about incidents and process their residual emotions (33:12)On maximizing post-mortems for process improvement & emotional processing (37:01)Takeaways (40:15) 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/ELC

We have a conversation with Christina Wick, CTO @ Flowcode, on the current state of the gender gap in tech and what we can do as engineering leaders to actively bridge that gap. We cover stories of the historical impact of women in tech as well as what you can do to remove bias in interviews, performance reviews and feedback. Plus what you can do to intervene when you observe bias happening."The first time I heard someone talking about how "women should seek executive sponsorship" I got really annoyed... The term executive sponsor in project management usually means the C-level executive that sponsors or is responsible for the project. So like, why do women need an executive sponsor? I'm not some project! But then I thought about it... And men sponsor men all the time! We just don't label it that." ABOUT CHRISTINA WICKChristina was previously VP of Engineering at Harry’s, a successful next-generation CPG company. Before Harry’s, Christina’s roles have ranged from running Product, Design and Engineering at Venmo, to defining strategies and building services in the mobile and devices space at Amazon, to AOL where she started as a Software Engineer and rose to the level of Sr. Technical Director responsible for over 50 consumer-facing mobile apps and websites and where she received an Apple Design Award for the Best iPhone Entertainment Application, AOL Radio, in June 2008.Christina has a Bachelors in Computer Science, with minors in Mathematics and Psychology, and a Masters in Computer Science and Applications from VA Tech, with her area of concentration being Human-Computer Interaction." SHOWNOTESThe historical impact of women in programming & tech (2:03)The current state of the gender gap in tech (7:04)Three things you can do to start actively bridging the gender gap in tech (12:12)Stop gender stereotypes & vague feedback (14:04)Remove bias in performance reviews and interviews (17:01)Intervene when observing bias (23:44)Executive sponsorship (29:40)Establish norms and make it okay to talk about bias (34:29)The Impact of “throwing starfish in the ocean” (37:36)Takeaways (38:39)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 www.sfelc.com!

Allan Leinwand, SVP of Engineering @ Slack shares his core philosophy & approach to creating developer productivity AND happiness! You’ll learn how Allan combines what developers want most + metrics, & analysis of the dev pipeline to optimize productivity. Allan covers how to translate those principles to remote/hybrid work and how to tell (and what to do...) if your dev teams are unhappy."I generally say developers want to do three things... They want to solve hard problems at scale. They want to see that hard problem when they solve it... get put to use! The third thing that I think, honestly, is they just don't want to work with jerks. I think if you master those three things then you end up with a very happy and productive development team." ALLAN LEINWAND SVP ENGINEERING @ SLACKPrior to leading engineering & operations at Slack, Allan was Chief Technology Officer at ServiceNow, where he was responsible for overseeing all technical aspects and strategy. He has co-founded and held senior leadership positions at multiple companies and was a venture capital investor for seven years. He founded Vyatta (acquired by Brocade), the open-source networking company, and co-authored “Cisco Router Configuration” and “Network Management: A Practical Perspective” and has been granted a patent in the field of data routing.Leinwand previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught on the subjects of computer networks, network management, and network design. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder. SHOWNOTESYour team is more than the metrics! (2:19)The cyclical pattern & lifecycle of developer productivity (4:05)Allan’s essential components to developer productivity (7:48)How to account for people behind the metrics (12:12)The goal is not the metrics! The goal is to understand developer workflow! (17:40)How to know if your dev teams are happy (26:49)What to do if developer productivity goes up, but dev happiness goes down… (30:55)Staying present & how to context switch effectively (34:32)How to identify metrics serving the wrong purpose or incentivizing the wrong behavior (38:12)How Allan’s principles on dev happiness & productivity translate to remote & hybrid work (39:29)Takeaways (42:46) 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 Looking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com!

Quentin Clark, Managing Director @ General Catalyst shares how to get your career unstuck at different scales & stages! You’ll learn different frameworks you can use to benchmark your growth and identify where you might be stuck. Plus different approaches you can take to get your company and the people you lead, unstuck at scale!"The specifics of the framework are not as important as having one at all. Create some ruler... Like if you're a snail and you're trying to inch your way towards the head of lettuce, and you're trying to measure whether or not you're making progress every day... It doesn't actually matter whether or not you're using an imperial tape measure with inches or the metric system and a yardstick...You can make up your own ruler! As long as that ruler is consistently being used over and over again. This is why I say it's important for people to have A framework... not necessarily any one framework. And that they come back to it.” QUENTIN CLARK, MANAGING DIRECTOR @ GENERAL CATALYSTQuentin is a product and systems technical leader with broad experience in the enterprise space. Incepted, built, and delivered successful products over many years - from servers to SaaS platforms and applications. He will be joining General Catalyst in January as a managing director.Prior to embarking on a career in investing, Quentin was the CTO at Dropbox, where he led all of engineering, product, design, and growth. He worked with them through its IPO, its pivot to Dropbox Spaces, and drove the portfolio expansion starting with the acquisition of HelloSign.He was at Microsoft for 20 years, most of that time focused on innovation - creating new products and value. The last decade of his time at Microsoft, Quentin was responsible for the high-growth data platform business, including SQL Server. There he worked for Satya Nadella leading the whole data platform business into the cloud.After Microsoft, Quentin was at SAP for two years, first as CTO then as Chief Business Officer where he led strategy and product direction for the platform and ultimately for the whole company. Before joining Dropbox he spent a year angel investing and exploring the VC world.He currently serves on the boards of Coda, Highfive, and Minio, and has been investing and advising very early-stage companies. SHOWNOTESWhat does it mean to get “unstuck?” (2:55)How do you get unstuck? (5:32)How to divide your time between growth, grunt work, & what you’re good at (7:06)Where engineering leaders get stuck + how to benchmark your growth using the 6 areas of competency (10:42)How to get people unstuck at scale (15:55)Why it’s important to have a framework to benchmark your growth (21:22)Quentin’s story of getting unstuck in his career (25:20)“Give up” what got you stuck by changing your goals & intention (31:20)How to get your company and culture unstuck (37:15)Quentin’s podcast “Equivalent to Magic” (44:20)Takeaways (45:58) Quentin's Podcast - Equivalent to Magic: https://spoti.fi/3ulOVwcLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at www.sfelc.com!Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message

Jeremy Henrickson VP Engineering & Product @ Rippling shares how to align, lead and scale a combined engineering and product organization! You’ll learn about the common tension points while scaling, different ways to structure your org, when to combine your orgs vs. split, and how to realign your teams when expectations get out of sync. Plus how to build credibility with new teams and acquire product skills as an engineering leader! “When I have like a number of teams and each of them has like a product leader AND an engineering leader... the expectation that I set with them is like, "Look, you guys are gonna have different points of view. And that's okay. But when you come to me, you either need to one, have a really clear, shared point of view on something, because you've gone into this together and have thought it out. Or a clear point of disagreement, so that you know, we can tie break on, okay, which one of these is actually more important right now?"And either one of those is totally fine. But a shared understanding of the facts, a shared understanding of the trade-offs is sort of the floor that I draw on those conversations.” JEREMY HENRICKSON, VP PRODUCT & ENGINEERING @ RIPPLINGJeremy Henrickson is responsible for scaling a world-class engineering team across two continents. Previously as Chief Product Officer at Coinbase, he oversaw 5x growth of the product and engineering organization and transformed a scrappy startup into a global cryptocurrency platform with millions of users. He began his career at Apple in the 1990s and holds a BS and MS in Computer Science from Stanford. Jeremy enjoys playing board games and piano with his kids. SHOWNOTESJeremy’s experience scaling engineering and product at Coinbase (3:00)How to bridge the gap between engineering and product (5:26)How to think about hiring the right people for early and growth stages of a company (7:56)Finding both true believers AND skills for scaling + navigating hiring doubt through the “crypto-winter” (9:37)Common tension points while scaling engineering and product organizations (14:27)How much technical detail and context should be shared between product and engineering? (19:00)How to build trust and credibility when you’re leading a new team (21:11)Dunbar’s number and the different phases of scaling a product and engineering organization (25:43)Different ways to structure engineering and product organizations (29:20)When You Should Combine Engineering and Product Orgs & Jeremys different approaches with Rippling, Coinbase & Guidewire (35:16)What to do if you want to pursue a career in product AND eng leadership (40:13)How to get engineering & product aligned when they have misaligned expectations (43:02)Where to begin if you’re an engineering leader who just took over product manager responsibilities (45:21)Takeaways (46:29) Looking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at sfelc.com!Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message