The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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.

Emad Elwany, CTO & Co-founder @ Lexion, discusses scaling challenges and trade-offs in engineering teams. He emphasizes the importance of aligning decision-making with company goals and using strategic themes to organize teams. They also explore consensus building, problem-solving, and maintaining high velocity. Additionally, they discuss the impact of culture issues and entrepreneurial interest as a company grows.

Scott Woody, Co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares how they transitioned to operate at a global scale. They discuss creating specialized teams, relationships between finance and engineering, and pivoting business models. They also touch upon the challenges of teaching customers and determining pricing models.

Jill Wetzler, former VP of Engineering and Executive Coach, shares practices to become a great coach. She discusses creating a mindset of possibility, fostering positive relationships, cultivating trust, navigating threats, and thinking about the future. They touch on implementing a peer coaching structure and making the most of peer group discussions.

Kathleen Vignos, VP of Software Engineering @ Capital One, shares strategies for career growth and overcoming executive leadership skill gaps. Topics include portfolio approach to career development, essential executive skills, facilitation techniques, and negotiation strategies. She also explores the impact of lifestyle trends like non-drinking and taking big risks for career growth.

James Everingham, co-founder and VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, shares tools for scaling down as an engineering leader. Topics include leadership methods like the Socratic method, principle-based decision-making, and creating narratives. They also discuss navigating process vs. anti-process, product planning, and adapting communication style within different org sizes.

Pete Peterson, CTO @ Riviera Partners, shares strategies for gaining stakeholder buy-in in complex environments. He discusses finding collaborators, quick wins, balancing competing interests, introducing change when facing resistance, and leadership practices. He also talks about navigating stakeholder relationships and recognizing team efforts. The podcast concludes with a discussion on the impact of automation on jobs.

Data leader and author, Shailvi Wakhlu, discusses practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate and improving negative self-talk. She also explains how engineering leaders can coach their teams to become better self-advocates, including in scenarios like job promotions and negotiating a job offer.

Clemens Mewald, Head of Product at Instabase, discusses how to enhance engineering leadership using generative AI tools, addressing cross-functional collaboration challenges. They explore creative ways to implement GenAI beyond chatbots, questions to ask when leveraging GenAI capabilities, and rethinking productivity. Clemens also shares insights on translating technical knowledge into meaningful business outcomes.