The Engineering Leadership Podcast

In today’s episode, we’re resharing Dheeraj Pandey’s popular session from ELC Annual 2023 on the disciplined pursuit of less! As the Co-Founder, CEO & Chairman of DevRev.ai, he shares how AI tools can maximize customer impact & reduce information asymmetry between various teams, including eng, customer support, product, sales, etc., ultimately creating a more customer-centric mindset. He reveals how to leverage AI to tackle “verbs,” such as classifying, routing, attributing, summarizing and more, further streamlining productivity and empowering your org to focus on customer needs.ABOUT DHEERAJ PANDEYDheeraj Pandey is the co-founder & CEO of DevRev.ai, one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley, with over 70 million dollars in seed funding.He previously founded Nutanix (Nasdaq: NTNX), a global leader in enterprise cloud software and hyperconverged infrastructure solutions, and currently sits on the board of Adobe (Nasdaq: ADBE) and is a member of their Audit Committee.Dheeraj co-founded Nutanix in 2009 and led as its CEO and Chairman for 11+ years. Boasting the largest software IPO in 2016, Nutanix is now a multi-billion dollar company with thousands of employees in over 60 countries. Pandey has been recognized with prestigious industry awards, including Dell's Founders 50 and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley.Before founding Nutanix, Pandey was the VP of engineering at Aster Data (now Teradata). His technology and enterprise software experience include engineering and leadership roles at Oracle, Zambeel and Trilogy Software. Pandey has been recognized with several prestigious industry awards, including Dell's Founders 50 and the E&Y Entrepreneur of the Year, Silicon Valley. Pandey holds a degree in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur,  and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin. In addition, he was a Graduate Fellow of Computer Science at the University of Texas at Austin Ph.D. program."In my last company, we had brought almost 7,000 employees together. My biggest job was to really bring all the VPs together. What does it mean for them to work together, behave well together, and respect each other? And it's all because there were all these silos of departments. If you look at the power of AI, AI knows no boundaries. If anything, it needs the entire knowledge graph and the knowledge graph of customers and product and people and their work, not just people on the inside, but also users and their activities on the outside. That's a big problem that we all have to go and solve for.”- Dheeraj Pandey   This episode is brought to you by testRigor!testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation EngineersLow productivity building your own QA AutomationFragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of timetestRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:The role of essentialism in software dev & company building (1:52)Dheeraj’s experience fostering a customer-centric approach in all teams (4:22)Commonly used tools & why they fall short for full eng functions (7:20)Why it’s important to connect AI, analytics & collaboration features (10:15)How AI can help solve information asymmetry (13:12)Using AI for analytics to help make teams more customer-centric (15:14)Audience Q&As: A day in the life of a PM using LLMs in an interactive discussion (18:03)Tips for educating users to provide better prompts when using GenAI (22:50)How would a company typically use the DevRev product? (24:38)DevRev’s object model of support (27:21)Is DevRev capable of answering arbitrary questions once data is uploaded? (28:36)Methods used to measure performance w/ DevRev (30:02)Creating multiple namespaces w/in the same index to host multi-tenant data (31:10)Qualitative & quantitative benefits DevRev offers to its customer base (33:39)LINKS AND RESOURCESVideo Version of EpisodeAll of the Sessions from ELC AnnualThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In this episode, we chat with Lake Dai (Founder & Managing Partner @ Sancus Ventures), who shares her career story & how to harness AI technology in a way that is both effective & compassionate. We cover the concept of “co-parenting AI”; why ethics in AI is non-negotiable; and how to create compassionate AI. Lake also reveals how she became a veteran at serving on boards & why it is something she is passionate about. We dissect ways current eng leaders who are interested in board service can gain the right experiences & demonstrate their value as a potential board member.ABOUT LAKE DAILake Dai is Founder and Managing Partner of Sancus Ventures, a VC firm focused on pre-seed to seed stage companies, investing in the next generation of software infrastructure for applications, such as distributed computing, AI model management, platform scalability, data privacy & safety, cybersecurity and more.Lake has been an Adjunct Professor of Applied AI at Carnegie Mellon University since 2016. She was a keynote speaker on AI ethics, data privacy, real-world applications, and AI education topics at the UN, UK Parliament, California State, and leading tech conferences such as the MIT conference and VentureBeat."Students ask, 'Why do I have to study AI ethics? Why can't I just jump into how do I build this model?' If you imagine AI as a very powerful tool, there is no difference between teaching building AI tools from teaching people how to use a weapon. If you ever take any weapon training classes, the first thing people teach you is safety, which is really understanding how the weapon works and how much impact both on the positive and negative side to people surround you. That part is missing for a lot of AI technical training these days.”- Lake Dai   This episode is brought to you by testRigor!testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation EngineersLow productivity building your own QA AutomationFragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of timetestRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:Why VC fundraising is set to thrive in 2024 & beyond (2:14)Eng leaders should focus on AI ethics (6:09)The importance of starting with a safety check before implementing technology (8:14)Lake’s recommendations for eng leaders to guide current & future AI dev (9:46)Third-party involvement with internal building processes (12:22)Strategies for helping engineers address AI dev in a mid or late-stage roadmap (14:06)The concept of co-parenting AI & its implication for eng leaders (15:40)Benevolent AI & feeding AI compassion information / data (18:50)How to harness AI to address societal challenges & create positive outcomes (22:42)Examples of AI addressing climate change & education-related issues (24:44)Three reasons why Lake is passionate about serving on boards (28:33)The positive impact of serving as a board member (31:40)How to gain the right experience & demonstrate value to get on a board (33:21)Why it’s important to let others know you’re looking for a board role (35:17)Rapid fire questions (40:51)LINKS AND RESOURCESOutlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.The All-In Podcast - Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social, and poker.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In this episode, we’re resharing one of the most popular & exciting sessions from ELC Annual 2023, featuring a panel of experts discussing what software dev will look like in the decades to come! This conversation features Tara Hernandez, VP Developer Productivity @ MongoDB; Erik Meijer, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Meta; and Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners. They debate & dissect how AI is changing what software dev looks like, what capabilities future eng leaders will need to build upon, where AI technology will need to improve moving forward, and more.ABOUT TARA HERNANDEZTara Hernandez has spent nearly thirty years evolving ways for companies to develop and ship software. She helped launch Mozilla.org and has been a firm proponent of open source ever since. She also thinks smart companies understand the business value of having a diverse employee base. Tara currently works at MongoDB, is a member of the board for Women Who Code, and a member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation."What was so amazing about Da Vinci? Da Vinci was an artist, he was a painter, he was a sculptor, he was an engineer. Breadth, more than depth, is increasingly going to be critical.”- Tara Hernandez   ABOUT ERIK MEIJERErik Meijer is a Dutch Computer Scientist, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast.In his long career, he has democratized many academic concepts such as functional programming, reactive programming, and language-integrated query by introducing these concepts into mainstream languages such as C#, Visual Basic, Dart, and Hack, as well as through his startup Apllied Duality Inc.As an educator, Erik has shared his knowledge through platforms like Channel 9, Coursera, and edX, enlightening learners worldwide with his courses on reactive and functional programming.As the founder of the Probability team at Meta in 2016, he is one of the pioneers in applying AI to programmer productivity and systems efficiency.Most recently, Erik is working on providing every knowledge worker with a personal assistant that supercharges their productivity and boosts job satisfaction."I think the engineer of the future will be more like an English major or a music major. Somebody that can really explain their thoughts very well. If you have kids, I would not send them to do computer science. Send them to a liberal arts.”- Erik Meijer   ABOUT JOCELYN GOLDFEINJocelyn Goldfein (@jgoldfein) is a Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners, where she invests seed capital in AI-native startups with B2B business models.Jocelyn is a widely recognized industry expert on product strategy, infrastructure, and organizational scale. Her career as an engineering leader spans from early-stage startups to high-growth years at Facebook and VMware.During her tenure at Facebook, she helped convert News Feed to Machine Learning and spearheaded the transition to a ‘mobile first' product organization. As an early engineer at VMware, she built core virtualization technology and ultimately created and led VMware’s Desktop Business Unit. Jocelyn also held engineering and leadership roles at startups Datify, MessageOne, and Trilogy/pcOrder.Jocelyn has a passion for STEM Education. She currently lectures at Stanford University where she received her BS in Computer Science."Part of me finds it almost insane to think about what if there's never a new programming language? What if we're at the end of history for new programming languages and the next and last programming language is Hindi?”- Jocelyn Goldfein   This episode is brought to you by testRigor!testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation EngineersLow productivity building your own QA AutomationFragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of timetestRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:Introducing Jocelyn, Tara, and Erik & their interest in the future of software dev (2:31)Ensuring AI accuracy / confidence as a key inflection point (5:06)What the next generation of building software will look like (7:09)Why engineers will always be needed for understanding machine capabilities (10:51)Erik & Tara’s perspectives on the future of AI & engineer interaction in software dev (13:19)Great engineers of the future need to have well-rounded skills (16:38)Why flow will (or will not) be as necessary in the future (19:06)How AI will augment human creativity & the engineering role (21:06)Will AI replace the need for cross-collaborative teams? (23:30)Jocelyn’s theory that today’s best QA folks will be the best engineers in 2033 (26:14)Audience Q&A: What logical & cognitive skills will still be needed as AI progresses? (28:24)Challenging the current definition of software development (31:45)What is the potential for a future dialogue system? (34:17)Will the change in eng skills also impact other degrees like mathematics? (36:46)How will the industry navigate workforce loss as AI replaces certain roles? (38:01)LINKS AND RESOURCESVideo Version of EpisodeAll of the Sessions from ELC AnnualThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Prashanthi Padmanabhan discusses career visualization, value-based leadership skills, and expanding engineering leadership to impact business growth. She shares insights on empathizing with customers, transitioning to lead a business unit, and embracing diverse skills for success in leadership. The podcast explores purpose-driven career choices, intentional decision-making, and the significance of building great teams for organizational success.

Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer at Two Sigma, discusses unique cultural practices at Two Sigma including intentional relationship-building with frontline managers and deploying the inverse Conway maneuver. They explore scaling strategies, reinforcing a consensus-driven culture, navigating reorgs, and the intentional decision to rebrand their R&D org. Matt also emphasizes full-bodied problem-solving and understanding the whole person at work.

Monica Bajaj, VPE @ Okta, discusses the 'first team approach' and its application within different team functions and levels in an engineering organization. Topics covered include architecture, quality, security, onboarding, and product development. The importance of trust, transparency, and collaboration between teams is highlighted, along with the power of context sharing and autonomy. The chapter also touches on the habit of winning, the 'four piece' model, and the trend of 5G technology.

Spotify's eng leaders discuss building a culture of experimentation & innovation at a massive scale. Topics include the origin story of Spotify's experimentation platform, developing eng leaders to think strategically, mistakes to avoid while scaling experimentation, and balancing structured processes vs. unstructured time to ideate.

Laura Tacho, the CTO at DX and a seasoned leader in engineering organizations, shares her insights on optimizing developer productivity beyond traditional measurements. She emphasizes the importance of trust and communication in teams and discusses motivational drivers like competence and autonomy. With her background coaching leaders from startups to Fortune 500s, Laura offers practical advice on avoiding common pitfalls in productivity measurement, fostering a human-centric approach, and aligning team goals for lasting performance gains.

Andrew Lau, CEO & Co-founder @ Jellyfish, shares engineering management principles to tackle the unknowns & challenges ahead. Topics include year-end reflection techniques, resilience and adaptability, honing financial acumen, planning for technology challenges, and the impact of hobbies on work and life.

Colleen Tartow, Field CTO & Head of Strategy @ VAST Data, shares insights on building data engineering teams from scratch and beyond. Topics include effective communication & collaboration, implications of AI technology, integrating cross-functional partners, and building the hiring process for data eng functions.