The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ Product Board, discusses how to achieve successful collaboration between product and eng teams! He addresses the elements that make up healthy collaboration, common areas of tension between product & eng, and steps for aligning the teams on product vision, tooling, and processes. We also cover strategies for engineering leaders who want to contribute more to their business’s product vision, facilitation frameworks to improve communication between product management & eng teams, and how to best advocate for engineering’s most important considerations.ABOUT HUBERT PALANHubert Palan is Founder and CEO of Productboard. Driven by a passion for building truly excellent products, he started the company when he saw a hole in the market for a dedicated product management platform. Before Productboard, Hubert was VP of Product Management at GoodData and a management consultant at Accenture. Hubert mentors and advises startups and judges teams at entrepreneurship competitions and frequently speaks at his two alma maters – UC Berkeley, where he got his MBA, and the Czech Technical University, where he received an MSc. in Computer Science."When the engineering partner would come to the conversation talking about how other products that are successful have approached that and what choices they made, as opposed to just talking about the technology in the abstract, the business aspect of it, how it helped drive business results for other companies that are in similar markets or adjacent spaces, t hat's something that's super valuable because it shows that you are thinking about the technology, just not for the love of technology, but in the business context and in the appreciation of how the technology decisions drive the business outcomes.”- Hubert Palan   Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development!With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner, you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines!To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Elements that contribute to successful collaboration between product & eng (2:34)Tools for understanding customer demographics & behavior (4:50)Greatest areas of friction between engineering and product (8:11)How to determine who is driving what initiative (11:03)Tactics for splitting responsibilities between EMs, PMs, tech leads, etc. (13:03)Hubert’s favorite tooling techniques (15:39)Strategies for aligning eng & product management processes (17:51)Frameworks for developing product vision & breaking it down into steps (19:27)Solving friction points between existing & new customers (23:16)How eng leaders can get involved with the product vision side of the business (24:28)Handling conflicting priorities & misalignment between teams (27:42)Tips for successful communication between product & eng (29:16)Advocate for engineering’s most important considerations (31:32)Specific conversations for facilitating communication between eng & PM teams (34:32)Steps to ensure engineers are involved in defining product vision / strategy (37:27)Rapid fire questions (40:55)LINKS AND RESOURCESOutlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - 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.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/

Bhawna Singh, CTO @ Okta, shares strategies for re-architecting your product roadmap, collaborating with customers, setting up guardrails while scaling, and communicating throughout the prioritization process. She also discusses the importance of 'secure by design' approach and its implementation at Okta.

Ritu Bhargava, Chief Product Officer at SAP, shares strategies for collaboration and navigating conflicts in large-scale organizations. Topics include building bridges, gaining buy-in, minimizing ego, and setting priorities. They discuss the impact of establishing support, learning from conflicts, and the importance of flexibility in setting priorities for large-scale orgs.

Laura Bell Main, CEO & Founder @ SafeStack, shares strategies for building a security team & tool stack. Topics discussed include prioritization conversations for assessing risks, considerations for early-stage security teams, behavior change & decision-making impact on security, communicating security in terms of tech debt, measuring tools' ROI, and strategies for mature companies in the 'messy middle' phase.

Jessica McKellar, CTO & Founder @ Pilot, shares strategies for achieving product-market fit, measuring important metrics, prioritizing long-term business building disciplines, and fostering collaboration between product, eng, & design teams. They discuss understanding the business trajectory, building business discipline, tracking metrics, assessing business tools, and trends like decarceration in California.

Alamelu Radhakrishnan, a technology leader and advisor, shares her frameworks for making great decisions quickly without fear. She discusses pitfalls to avoid, strategies for avoiding decision fatigue, and concepts like first principles and the 40% to 70% guide. She also talks about effective delegation and the process of delegating tasks and decision-making.

Prachi Gupta, VP of Engineering @ Discord, shares her best strategies for growing your career & leadership skills through transitions, moderated by Chris Chiu, Director of Engineering - Collaboration @ Figma. Prachi and Chris also cover what tactics work well for building community & leading in a remote / hybrid environment, frameworks for operating during wartime, recruiting with the whole person in mind, and why you need to “give away their legos” in order to grow as an eng leader.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT PRACHI GUPTAPrachi Gupta heads engineering at Discord. With close to two decades of experience in consumer technology companies, she is responsible for leading the strategy and execution of a highly scalable and distributed technology stack that powers millions of conversations. Prachi enjoys building engineering teams and defining culture and processes that enable teams to grow and succeed in a repeatable and predictable manner. As an entrepreneurial engineer at heart, she enjoys prototyping ideas and conceptualizing, designing, and delivering impactful software. Prachi is an active supporter of diversity in STEM, co-founded LinkedIn's Women in Technology initiative, and is an alumnus board member of Women's Audio Mission.Prachi holds a Master's in Computer Science and has significant experience in working with startups to explore innovative solutions to real-world problems, from socially-driven consumer websites to enterprise business intelligence & analytics software."You have to learn how to build something, get it to a point that's satisfactory enough to you and be okay handing it off to someone else so they can run with it. That's essentially beenhow I've operated in my career, not because I had this like grand vision in my mind of this is how I get to like the thing I want to get to, but because I was just hungry to learn. I just gained this reputation of, 'Oh, like if something's broken or something needs fixing or something needs figuring out, here's a flexible person that we can throw at it.'”- Prachi Gupta   ABOUT CHRIS CHIUChris Chiu is a Director of Engineering at Figma. Figma is a web-based design tool, and Chris’s teams work on Collaboration & Community as well as Figma’s mobile, tablet, and desktop platforms. Before Figma, Chris led product engineering and platform teams at Flexport and OpenGov.Chris was born in Brazil and has lived in the Bay Area for 14 years. He loves e-bike rides with his kids and reading fantasy & sci-fi novels.Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:What doesn’t work in a remote / hybrid work environment (2:42)Tactics Discord utilizes to enhance the remote / hybrid workspace (4:39)Strategies for building teams w/ a strong sense of community & belonging (7:13)Defining what it means to assess the whole person (10:58)How Discord applies the “whole person” assessment to recruiting (12:42)Prachi’s advice for operating / executing during wartime (14:54)Why understanding the “giving away your legos” philosophy is important (18:09)Prachi’s defining inflection points in her leadership journey (21:15)Balancing your career & parenthood (23:43)The best career advice Prachi has ever received (26:21)Audience Q&A: building trust w/ a new team that is more technically proficient than you are in their domain (28:55)Tips for empowering individuals to their full potential (31:12)How senior eng leaders can help frontline EMs handle their tasks (32:42)Strategies for being the unseen hand vs. seen hand in an org (35:50)Practices Prachi kept & discarded during her pivotal transitions (38:35)Navigating where to allocate your time w/ direct reports (41:50)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 week’s episode, we’re featuring another of our most popular, inspiring sessions from ELC Annual 2022. Oksana Kubushyna, former VP of Entertainment Operations @ Riot Games, shares her best strategies for turning your career into a rocket, along with plenty of inspiring stories from her eight years and multiple promotions within Riot Games. She reveals why your mindset is the most important driver of career success, the importance of prioritizing your team, customers, & company over yourself when it comes to getting ahead, and tips for getting feedback, asking for help, prioritizing relationships, showing initiative, and much more. This is a featured session from ELC Annual 2022. Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT OSKANA KUBUSHYNAAs VP of Entertainment Operations, Oksana Kubushyna (@GLHF2U) oversees operations of Riot’s Entertainment division with a goal to imagine and develop bespoke IP experiences and products - animation, film, interactive narratives, music, consumer products and beyond - that deepen players’ and fans’ connections to the universe Riot has created in League of Legends.After joining Riot in 2014, she quickly rose through the ranks, holding positions including Head of Infrastructure, Development Director for League of Legends, founder and Head of Riot Platform Group, and VP of Game Studios Operations, helping build the foundation for, launch and operate Riot’s new games globally.She has also been a leader of Diversity and Inclusion efforts within Riot. Her passion for the advancement of women in games and tech reaches beyond Riot, and she has been honored by groups such as Girls Inc. and Wonder Women Tech."If you're asking, 'How can I get ahead?', I'm here to tell you also that you gotta flip that. That's exactly the wrong question to ask because the more you ask questions like this, the more people will perceive you as self-serving. There is no quicker way to lose somebody's trust than for them to believe you are acting in your best interests and not in theirs, not in your company's, not in your customer's. Focusing on your customer, focusing on your manager's needs, on your company's needs, on your team needs is a much more effective way to move forward.”- Oksana Kubushyna   Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Oksana & her roles within Riot Games over the past eight years (2:37)Secondary drivers impacting career success (5:53)Why your mindset is the primary driver of success (7:52)Always prioritize the company & customers over your own self-interests (9:57)Strategies for becoming non-reactive & showing initiative (12:53)The importance of prioritizing relationships (15:12)How to incorporate feedback to improve your leadership skills (16:38)Be in the right place so you’re not a $10 watch (19:09)Audience Q&A: tips for going about getting feedback & asking for help (20:48)How to tell stories & adapting the skill for a remote environment (22:52)Tips for recognizing your value & overcoming imposter syndrome (25:10)Knowing you’re not the right “watch” in your company / team (27:37)Defining anti-fragility & its impact on career success (29:14)Serve your team by managing up (30:32)Making the best use of your time in a one-on-one w/ high-level leadership (31:58)Why you should create time to think strategically (33:15)Frameworks for driving change within a larger organization (34:48)Oksana’s advice for moving forward instead of retreating into your comfort zone (36:10)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/

Vinod Marur, SVP of Engineering at Databricks, and Ali Irturk, VP of Engineering at CommerceHub, discuss strategies and challenges in transitioning from large companies to smaller startups. They emphasize continuous learning, cultivating cross-functional relationships, and the importance of perseverance and mindset shift. The conversation also covers the significance of testing in software development and balancing perspectives. The speakers explore the dilemma of balancing priorities and effective leadership in smaller companies.

This episode features one of our most fascinating sessions from ELC Annual 2022 – we explore how businesses, creators, and researchers are building the “generative generation” & harnessing generative AI’s potential  – featuring Mira Murati, CTO @ OpenAI, Naveen Gavini, SVP, Products @ Pinterest & moderated by Vijay Karunamurthy Head of Engineering @ Scale AI. This session covers the current state & future of generative AI, its potential impacts, what is being done to mitigate potential risks, how smaller companies can take advantage of open-source generative AI technology, and the factors impacting future generative AI innovation.Interested in topics like this, and beyond? #ELCAnnual2023 is happening 8/30 & 8/31! You can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all our speakers + explore additional topics at sfelc.com/annual2023ABOUT MIRA MURATIMira Murati (@miramurati) is the CTO of OpenAI. Mira and her teams are pushing the frontiers of what neural networks can do, seeking to better understand the behavior of powerful AI systems and make them safer, and align them with human intentions and human values. Prior to joining OpenAI, she led the product and engineering teams at Leap Motion (VR/AR startup), and led the design, development, and launch of vehicle products at Tesla, including Model X."We've always wanted human helpers. We've always tried to build tools like since the beginning of life we've created tools. They're just such a natural thing and now this is different because it extends the range of our mental capabilities, of our creativity and intuition and imagination. So we are sort of exploring this new era where tools are helping us extend the range of our minds.”- Mira Murati   ABOUT NAVEEN GAVININaveen Gavini (@ngavini) is the SVP of Products at Pinterest, where he oversees all design and product efforts for both consumer and advertiser products. He is incredibly passionate about building great user experiences and creating environments that stimulate creativity and innovative thinking. Prior to this role Naveen led both the design and engineering functions and was one of Pinterest's earliest engineers, joining in 2012. Since then, he played a critical role in scaling the engineering team, and was involved in almost every major new product initiative the company has developed for users.ABOUT VIJAY KARUNAMURTHYVijay Karunamurthy (@vjkaruna) is Scale’s Head of Engineering. He was the Director of Engineering at Apple for 5 years. He was the Co-Founder and CEO of Nom Labs, a community for food lovers to create, share and watch their favorite stories in real-time, and Co-Founder of AVOS Systems.Additionally, he was an Engineering Manager at Google and Youtube.Vijay is an expert in data-centric AI and building Machine Learning teams. He believes that the next decade of AI achievement is going to be built by teams that take on outsized ambitions, and understand that it is not always a straight line to get there.Join us at ELC Annual 2023!ELC Annual is our flagship conference for engineering leaders. You’ll learn from experts in engineering and leadership, gain mentorship and support from like-minded professionals, expand your perspectives, build relationships across the tech industry, and leave with practical prove strategies.Join us this August 30-31 at the Fort Mason Center in San FranciscoFor tickets, head to https://sfelc.com/annual2023SHOW NOTES:Introducing Mira, Naveen & Vijay (3:33)Mira discusses the current state & future of generative AI (3:51)Naveen’s perspective on how these changes impact curation (7:12)How engineering teams can bring generative AI into their own practice (10:27)Strategies for smaller companies to incorporate this technology into their work (12:54)Marketing & creative industries’ views on generative AI & its potential impact (14:32)Naveen shares his experience with guided search @ Pinterest & generative AI’s role w/ the act of discovery (17:05)The intersection of art & generative AI (19:57)Mira & Naveen’s opinions on if generative AI will replace or enhance current jobs (21:47)How generative AI is being used in highly skilled industries (25:55)Risks of generative AI, such as perceived generation of misinformation (28:13)Mira explains how OpenAI mitigates risks & spread of misinformation (31:14)Three pillars of future innovation for generative AI (33:39)Naveen answers what he sees “next week” in generative AI development (35:04)What’s in store for OpenAI (37:32)What’s next for Pinterest & ML (39:25)Audience Q&A: how to democratize AI & make it beneficial for humanity (40:11)Quantum computing / other computing considerations @ OpenAI (42:31)Weighing the pros & cons of generative AI adoption (43:49)The future of ML & mathematical / scientific discovery (46:42)4This 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/