The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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.

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.