The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Organizational change is hard. Jean-Denis Greze shares how he thinks about building organizations that can adapt in a way that preserves strengths, mitigates weaknesses, and develops new capabilities or “spikes” through periodical “forced changes.” He’ll explore what those forced changes are and what they’ve looked like at Plaid and other companies."You're asking me what makes us different. I think it's that we've been really deliberate about building what I would call a ‘spiky org’ as opposed to a very balanced organization. The reality is when you're in a fast-growing company, it's much easier to do a few things well than to try to do everything.” - Jean-Denis Greze ABOUT JEAN-DENIS GREZEJean-Denis Greze is Head of Engineering at Plaid, the technology company giving developers access to the financial system and the tools to build many of the most influential applications and services of the modern financial era. Companies such as Venmo + Paypal, Coinbase, Robinhood, Acorns, Clarity Money and hundreds more are built on Plaid.Prior to joining Plaid, Jean-Denis was Director of Engineering at Dropbox, where he led the growth, identity, notifications, Paper and payments teams.Prior to Dropbox, Jean-Denis worked in fintech in New York and has CS degrees from Columbia as well as a JD from Harvard Law School. SHOWNOTESWhat you should focus on when building an organization: Be a "spiky" org (2:31)How to change and adapt your organization that preserves your strengths, mitigates weaknesses, and develops new capabilities: force yourself to adapt your “spikes” (7:01)Recruiting, Growth and Performance Management as “spike” examples in organization building (and why it's NOT useful to be good at all three of them) (8:15)The org design dilemma between "Hiring Well" vs. "Firing Fast" (12:01)The org design dilemma between business impact vs. craft and quality (18:27)How you know when you should change your strengths, values and build a new "spike" (24:48)The dilemma of building an organization with bottom-up vs. top-down decision making (27:47)How to develop new strengths, capabilities, or “spikes” in your engineering organization (32:20)Jean-Denis's process to create space for questions, creativity, and problem-solving (36:33) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com

Eisar Lipkovitz shares the value of being direct as well as other insights on leadership. You’ll hear how to practice the art of direct communication, how to prepare for difficult conversations, and overcome the fear of being direct. Plus Eisar’s insights on where engineering leaders get stuck in their career and how to help them grow."At the end of the day, the main reason I think direct is effective is you actually sort of get to the core of the issue where a lot of people dance around the details and they're conflict-averse" -Eisar Lipkovitz ABOUT EISAR LIPKOVITZEisar is Executive Vice President of Engineering at Lyft. Prior to Lyft, Eisar spent 15 years at Google in various leadership roles, overseeing the tremendous growth of that business while streamlining operations and reducing product complexity. Since 2014, his team of several thousand engineers built Google’s Display, Video, and Apps Advertising products.Previously, Eisar worked on the infrastructure behind Google Search, driving many innovations during a tremendous increase in scale and a transition from web to structured data. Prior to that, he worked for four years at Akamai during the explosive growth of the Internet. Eisar began his career at Israeli Air Force after graduating from Tel Aviv University with B.Sc and MBA. ShownotesWhy being direct is more effective and how to practice the art of direct communication (2:27)How to overcome conflict aversion and the fear of being direct (9:16)How to prepare yourself for a direct, difficult conversation (13:14)How to balance communicating vision and strategy vs. the details (16:42)How to navigate conversations when people don’t understand you (20:31)How to make your conversation more direct when someone is speaking ambiguously or in code (26:07)How to help junior engineering leaders grow (28:29)Where people typically get stuck in the engineering leadership career track (32:59)How inclusion creates environments for more direct conversations about real world challenges (36:26)What has brought you the greatest amount of joy as an engineering leader? (38:00) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com 

Vidhya Srinivasan shares her framework for how she’s navigated her career and operated under high pressure. You’ll learn the practices she uses to deal with and diffuse pressure plus how to coach and create opportunities for engineering leaders to be more comfortable with failure and risk."one question that I often ask myself is... 'Given how I feel right now if I, were to fast forward five years and I look back, would I feel the same level of pressure or anxiety about the situation?' And I've yet to come across a situation where it would still be that relevant five years out" -Vidhya Srinivasan ABOUT VIDHYA SRINIVASANVidhya is the VP/GM at Google Ads responsible for engineering and product for Measurement & Analytics @ Google Ads. Previously, she led engineering, operations & product management for Amazon Redshift and other analytics services at AWS. Before that, she was an engineering leader for 10 years at IBM. SHOWNOTESHow Vidhya has approached and navigated her career (2:04)Vidhya’s framework she uses to deal with high pressure (7:20)How to diffuse pressure (12:55)How Vidhya’s dealt with and diffused pressure personally and professionally (15:44)How Vidhya learned to operate out of hunger vs. fear (19:35)How to coach engineering leaders to be more comfortable with failure and risk (28:28)How to create opportunities for your team to fail and take on more risk (33:38)When you should step in and help your team (36:23)Who is someone who’s most inspired you to be a better leader? (38:39)What’s brought you the greatest joy as an engineering leader? (40:01) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com

Darian Shimy, Engineering Lead at Square and sports coach, shares coaching techniques for engineering teams. Topics include scaling leadership through effective delegation, creating trust, ownership, and accountability, using repetition in communication, and adjusting communication style to improve engagement.

Darian Shimy, sports coach turned engineering leader at Square, shares coaching techniques applied in teams, effective delegation, and creating trust. Topics include communication for improvement, leveraging time for productivity, scaling junior team members, and handling failure risk.

David Silverman (@dksilverman) shares how to prioritize effectively, regain productivity, compartmentalize pain, and accelerate your rate of learning to succeed through a crisis. You’ll also hear how to apply his lessons to real case studies shared by engineering leaders from our community.“When you're dealing with uncertainty, the main thing you're trying to drive and change as the leader, is you're trying to increase the rate of learning.” ABOUT DAVID SILVERMANLeadership expert and best-selling author David Silverman has paved the way in transforming groups into high-performing, agile, and adaptive teams that drive success. David continues to bring out the best in people as CEO and Founder of CrossLead. A graduate of the United States Naval Academy, David served in the US Navy as a SEAL Officer for 12 years. Building off of his collective leadership experiences, David created CrossLead as a holistic performance management solution for today’s environment. CrossLead is designed to empower leaders, teams, and organizations to scale the adaptability of elite small teams to the entire enterprise.David previously co-founded the McChrystal Group and led the company as CEO from 2011 through 2015. During his time at McChrystal Group, David laid out the framework for CrossLead as a co-author in the New York Times bestseller Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World.If you want to learn more about David Silverman and CrossLead, connect with him on LinkedIn or check out CrossLead.SHOWNOTESDavid’s experience with uncertainty from the Navy SEAL’s (1:15)How to compartmentalize and deal with physical and mental pain (5:16)How to restore and improve your productivity (13:11)How to increase your rate of learning to succeed when things are changing fast (16:26)The difference between “wartime” and “peacetime” leaders (26:10)How to prioritize effectively in a crisis applying the framework “Ship, Shipmate, Self” (29:33)How you can build trust in a crisis (34:29)Applying Dave’s lessons in a company trying to find product-market fit (38:11)How to apply the tools to deal with uncertainty to support your family (40:55)How to deal with uncertainty when you’re not the decision-maker (45:23)How you can boost team morale in the short and long term (48:41)How to create trust and camaraderie remotely (51:56)How to deal with cross-team or cross-organization issues and negotiations (54:06) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com 

How do you have an effective performance conversation during a pandemic? Jonathan Raymond (@jonathanrefound) will introduce us to a super-easy to use and effective framework to provide critical feedback. You’ll learn how to apply the framework using real community challenges and tease out the actual language you can directly use to initiate those conversations.“That's what feedback is about. It's not to correct the mistake, it's to start a conversation.” JONATHAN RAYMOND - Author of “Good Authority”, Founder & CEO @ RefoundJonathan spent 20 years building careers in business development and personal growth before figuring out a way to bring them together. He advises CEOs and organizational leaders on how to create a people-first culture that drives results. Refound works with organizations going through dynamic change, from Fortune 100 companies like Panasonic and McKesson to tech startups. Jonathan loves being a dad to two girls, surfing, and yoga. He also has a surprisingly good jump shot. SHOWNOTESWhat to do when someone on your team is obviously less productive (1:17)Why people are afraid to give critical feedback and what makes it hard (6:01)What is “The Accountability Dial?” (9:06)How you can open a feedback conversation using “The Mention” (11:04)Understanding the reality of where people are at and how you can move forward using “The Mention” during this pandemic. (17:21)The right time to deliver critical feedback effectively. (23:06)What happens if the first feedback conversation doesn’t work? Reopen it by applying “The Invitation” (30:41)Signs you know your feedback is working. (33:04)How to have a performance conversation during the pandemic by applying “The Mention” & “The Invitation” (36:39)Introducing the other stages of “The Accountability Dial” (42:50)How to increase team morale and give positive feedback using “The Accountability Dial” (53:34)How to create an environment where feedback goes both ways between manager and employee. (55:04) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com  

Farhan Thawar (@fnthawar) , VP of Engineering @ Shopify shares the hiring framework he’s built where 15-minute interviews result in both faster placements AND better fits. You’ll hear how to find talent in non-traditional ways, what happens when you leverage creativity, and how speed in hiring is a massive competitive advantage.“The problem with interviews in general are they're very biased to either things you've done before or they're biased to some other signal...like school you went to company, you worked for, GPA in some cases, right? Google used to use that... And it excludes a wide swath of people. That's my number one problem with interviews. Not that good candidates can pass an interview. It's that non-traditional candidates will likely fail your interview” ABOUT FARHAN THAWARFarhan 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). SHOWNOTESFarhan’s origin story being recruited to start Helpful.com by Daniel Debow. (1:28)Impact and examples of going above and beyond in recruiting using unusual ways to reach potential candidates. (8:30)Using speed as a competitive advantage, especially when you’re small. (12:44)How to prevent speed from backfiring by thinking about decisions as “one-way” or “two-way doors.” (14:36)Critical structures to best assess candidate fit. (15:17)How Farhan starts from first principles to leverage creativity in recruiting. (20:38)Farhan’s MOST IMPORTANT indicator of performance, and how to uncover it in an interview. (25:49)Results of speed in the hiring process - 15 min interview (31:36)How the 15 min interview works. (33:47)What’s different in hiring an engineering leader. (35:41)How to increase your pool of potential candidates through “backward promotions,” interim titles, and recruiting people who haven’t “done it” before. (42:41)Examples of what happens when bias is removed in the interview process and people are given a shot. (48:03)Farhan’s most terrible leadership mistake & how to turn underperformers into extremely high performers in 30 days with Performance Improvement Plans (PIP’s). (49:36)Farhan’s most impactful leadership action: the power of personalization. (53:56) Join our community of software engineering leaders @ sfelc.com

Max Levchin shares lessons and stories that have been critical to his development as an engineering leader. He shares stories from the early PayPal days and foundational insights for leading Affirm as a mission-driven, values-based company. He also shares essential principles for building and hiring, and how the hardest problems are almost never about code. “I should just solve the thing that matters. I don't need to worry about the hard stuff, it will show up on its own. And there's plenty of hard problems and the more you work with people, the more you'll realize that the truly hard problems are always about humans, they're never about code.” - Max Levchin MAX LEVCHIN - Founder and CEO @ Affirm Max Levchin is the founder and CEO of Affirm, a financial services technology company, co-founder and Chairman of Glow, a data-driven fertility company, and co-founder and general partner at SciFi VC, a private venture capital firm. All three companies were created and launched from his San Francisco based innovation lab, HVF (Hard, Valuable, Fun). Max was one of the original co-founders of PayPal where he served as the CTO until its acquisition by Ebay in 2002. In 2002, he was named to the Technology Review TR100 as one of the top 100 innovators in the world as well as Innovator of the Year. In 2004, he founded Slide, a personal media-sharing service for social networking sites such as MySpace and Facebook, which he sold to Google in August 2010. Also in 2004, he helped start Yelp, where he was the first investor in and Chairman of the Board from 2004 until 2015. He has served on several boards such as Yahoo!, Yelp, and Evernote. Max is a serial entrepreneur, computer scientist, philanthropist and active investor in more than 100 startups. BEN JUN - CEO @ HVF Labs Benjamin Jun is Chief Builder at HVF Labs (hard / valuable / fun), a fintech startup studio. The lab focuses in areas where technically differentiable solutions can unlock world-changing companies. HVF founders have spun out companies such as Affirm, Divvy Homes, and Yelp. Ben was co-founder and CTO of Cryptography Research, which provides security technologies for payment systems, mobile handsets, digital content protection, and the manufacturing supply chain. While there, he developed and architected security technologies that shipped in over 25 billion consumer devices. Cryptography Research was acquired by Rambus for $340M in 2011. SHOWNOTES Max’s unsung passion for cryptography and how it came to be. (4:53) Max’s cryptography side-hustle stories while starting PayPal. (6:01) How Ben tried to convince Max to leave Peter Thiel and PayPal. (9:58) PayPal’s early milestones, and why that’s different than what’s commonly celebrated in the press and Silicon Valley. (11:46) PayPal’s “one metric” that matters. (13:10) How Max is different as a leader now vs. during his time at PayPal. (18:00) What to think about when transitioning from a VP of Engineering to becoming CEO (20:52) How Max builds complimentary teams. (24:25) “Max’s aura test” or “the hallway avoidance test” in hiring. (26:16) How to guide your company and know you’re doing the right thing. (29:00) Join our community of engineering leaders at sfelc.com Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message

What should be the role of engineering leaders in recruiting? What levers do they have at their disposal? In this fireside chat, you'll hear the perspectives of two recruiting heavy-hitters, Aditya Agarwal & Dan Portillo, on how engineering leaders can optimize for successful hiring outcomes. ADITYA AGARWAL - Former CTO Dropbox; Partner-in-Residence @ South Park Commons (@adityaag)Aditya Agarwal is a Partner-in-Residence at South Park Commons - a collective of technologists, tinkerers, and entrepreneurs who have come together to freely learn, explore new ideas, and help each other launch their next venture. Aditya was the CTO and VP of Engineering at Dropbox. He scaled the Engineering team from 25 to 1000 and was responsible for new product development, infrastructure, and technical operations. Aditya came to Dropbox via the acquisition of Cove, a company that he co-founded. Prior to Cove, Aditya was one of Facebook’s first engineers. He helped build the first versions of key products like Search, NewsFeed and Messenger. He was Facebook’s first director of Product Engineering, overseeing engineering for products like NewsFeed, Profile, Groups and Events. Aditya serves as an independent director on the board of Flipkart, India’s leading e-commerce company, the advisory board of Carnegie Mellon’s School of Computer Science and on the board of trustees of the Anita Borg Institute. He is also an active investor and advisor to Silicon Valley startups. DAN PORTILLO - Talent Partner @ Greylock (@dan_portillo)Dan is Talent Partner at Greylock. Previously, he was VP of Success & Engagement at Rypple, and VP of Organizational Development at Mozilla, creators of Firefox. Earlier in his career Dan spent a decade building out successful early-stage, venture-backed consumer and enterprise companies. Dan also served as a Council member for Code2040.org, a non-profit creating opportunities for underrepresented minorities in tech. SHOWNOTESHave you ever not promoted an engineering leader because they couldn’t recruit a good team? (3:18)What is the role of engineering leaders in the recruiting process? (5:21)Sourcing advantages from Aditya’s experiences from Dropbox and Facebook. (7:34)On taking the long view and thinking long term about recruitment. (9:42)How Aditya closes candidates creatively. (11:21)Aditya’s favorite story from Dropbox closing a talented intern. (14:23)How to leverage compensation, even if you’re a small stack at the table. (18:59)What Aditya tells engineering leaders who are building teams for the first time. (21:48)Does comp asymmetry reward good performers or good negotiators? (23:03)Using comp as a tool to value, reward, and recognize performers not on the sexiest problems. (25:32)Recruiting when you don’t have a brand. (27:58)What engineering managers need to know to effectively sell the company and recruit. (29:53) Join our community of engineering leaders at sfelc.com