The Engineering Leadership Podcast

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/

In this episode, we cover compassionate accountability & facing difficulties head-on with Marc Lesser, author of Finding Clarity. He shares what it was like living in a Zen monastery for 10 years and the leadership lessons he learned while working in their kitchen. We also address strategies for conversations around high standards, accountability, agreements, and alignment; models for correcting negative self-talk; closing the gap between seemingly combative standards, such as speed vs. quality; and how to transition from avoiding conflicts to accepting them. Lastly, we close with a three-minute meditation that can help bring much-needed well-being into your workspace.ABOUT MARC LESSERMarc Lesser (@marclesser) is a CEO, executive coach, and Zen teacher. He founded and was CEO of 3 companies, and helped develop a mindfulness program inside of Google's headquarters. Marc was a resident of the San Francisco Zen Center for 10 years, and director of Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, the first Zen monastery in the western world. He is the author of Finding Clarity."So to me it's really maybe about high standards and aligning around those standards. Avoiding those conversations is the problem and this is where I think the whole realm of emotions and emotional intelligence and self-awareness comes into play. Five emotionally intelligent engineers working together will produce much, much greater outcomes than people who are not really aligned, not really having those real conversations.”- Marc Lesser   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:Marc’s experience working / living in a zen monastery for 10 years (3:30)Leadership lessons learned from the monastery’s kitchen (6:09)Exploring accountability & confronting conflict (8:37)Frameworks for conversations around high standards / accountability (10:26)How to incorporate compassionate accountability (13:53)Practices that help teams develop greater alignment (17:04)When leaders practice accountability w/ kindness (19:53)Model for correcting negative self-talk & how it impacts team alignment (21:23)Closing the gap between speed vs. quality, or other combative standards (24:22)Curiosity & flexibility as core values (26:49)Best practices for forming agreements (27:50)How to move from avoiding difficulties / conflicts to accepting them (29:57)Rapid fire questions (32:28)Marc’s three-minute closing meditation (35:27)LINKS AND RESOURCESFinding Clarity - Marc Lesser’s book that shows how, together, compassion and accountability play an absolutely critical role in transforming how we communicate in our work and family relationships.Think Again - Adam Grant, the bestselling author of Give and Take and Originals examines the critical art of rethinking: learning to question your opinions and open other people’s minds, which can position you for excellence at work and wisdom in life.Peace Is Every Step - In this book Thich Nhat Hanh shows us how to make positive use of the very situations in our daily life that usually pressure and antagonise us. The most profound satisfactions, the deepest feelings of joy and completeness lie as close at hand as our next conscious breath and the smile we can form right now.These Truths: A History of the United States - Widely hailed for its “sweeping, sobering account of the American past” (New York Times Book Review), Jill Lepore’s one-volume history of America places truth itself—a devotion to facts, proof, and evidence—at the center of the nation’s history.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/

Ludo Antonov, VP of Engineering @ WhatNot, shares how eng leaders can better operate from their organization’s first principles. He defines the concept & what that looks like for WhatNot through their values of listening to customers, moving uncomfortably fast, and more – plus what happens when optimizing for one principle conflicts with another! We also cover Ludo’s leadership journey, how he navigated the transition from a business model focused on discovery & matching to two-sided marketplaces, and challenges / lessons learned from working within the social, community, & marketplace space.ABOUT LUDO ANTONOVLudo (@ludo_antonov) is the Vice President of Engineering at Whatnot. He has an extensive background in building engineering teams at fast-growing startups including Hulu, Pinterest, and Lyft. He led the Pinterest Growth team as the company was going through hyper-growth up to IPO. Prior to joining Whatnot, he served as an engineering executive at Lyft, overseeing the company’s core rideshare products including the rider, driver, marketplace, and growth organizations."That's one of the important parts is it allows for common language to fall back to whenever these problems actually happen because they tend to be more and more complex and take more and more nuance in order to get right and sometimes, especially like it's very powerful to take it back to first principles and say, 'How would we do this if we have to be ruthlessly prioritizing? Are we moving comfortably fast in thinking of our approach?' And then everyone understands because it's part of our vocabulary and it takes repetition to build that.”- Ludo Antonov   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:Ludo provides a status update on recent milestones @ WhatNot (2:40)What operating from first principles looks like within an eng org (4:08)Strategies for going back to your founding leadership principles (6:35)Overcoming product challenges by leading through listening to your customers (8:34)How the eng team pivoted their approach based on that first principle (9:40)Deconstructing “moving uncomfortably fast” & its impact on operating systems (12:13)Incorporating first principles with WhatNot’s international strategy (13:35)When optimizing for one value is in conflict with another (15:32)Frameworks that aid in ruthless prioritization (16:41)Assess impact, likelihood of success & effort during prioritization conversations (19:05)Lessons learned from building Pinterest that Ludo applied to WhatNot (19:57)Ludo’s transition from discovery / matching to a two-sided marketplace (23:40)How Ludo applied two-sided marketplace elements to WhatNot (24:53)Working business model aspects into an engineering context (26:23)Ludo’s favorite seller experiences (28:30)Engineering approaches to & impact on two-sided marketplaces (30:18)Recommendations for eng leaders operating in a new business model (31:57)Rapid fire questions (33:39)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Upside of Stress - Drawing from groundbreaking research, psychologist and award-winning teacher Kelly McGonigal, PhD, offers a surprising new view of stress—one that reveals the upside of stress, and shows us exactly how to capitalize on its benefits.Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey A. Moore’s bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets—now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing.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/

Sarah Milstein, VPE @ Daily, joins us to discuss the most surprising aspect of remote teams – the opportunity for higher trust teams. She covers counterintuitive perspectives & non-obvious practices that can benefit distributed orgs, including why hard conversations can be easier when done remotely and how remote teams are less political & more productive than co-located teams. Sarah also dives into Daily’s unique salary & promotion process and how eng leaders could implement this method into their teams. Lastly, we cover “swift trust” and Sarah’s recommendations for creating the optimal conditions for it to thrive.ABOUT SARAH MILSTEINSarah (@SarahM) joined Daily as VP of Engineering, bringing 25 years of deep experience developing products, setting strategy, and leading teams at startups. Most recently, Sarah was VP of Engineering at ConvertKit. Prior to that, she was Senior Director of Engineering at Mailchimp. Sarah has extensive experience in media as a producer and author, having programmed, co-hosted, and managed conferences and trade shows, including the Web 2.0 Expo. Sarah holds an M.B.A. from University of California, Berkeley."Swift Trust is an idea from workplace psychology about teams that come together quickly counterintuitively often build higher levels of trust and do it with very little structure, and it turns out that actually the coming together quickly and the less structure are themselves some of the conditions that can help. It turns out that those are the kind of conditions that are often true in software development. Those conditions of it's clear what you're working on, everyone has a role, there's time involved, like some sense of timing. A lot of times those conditions are available to you but maybe not being used.”- Sarah Milstein   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:The most surprising aspect of working remotely: higher trust (3:24)Sarah’s Slack experiment & how it revealed team dynamics (6:15)Additional benefits & accommodations provided by remote work (8:26)Non-obvious communication practices that benefit remote orgs (11:18)Strategies for having hard conversations one-on-one in a remote setting (13:52)Recommendations for facilitating big group conversations remotely (16:34)Why distributed teams are less political & more productive than co-located teams (18:58)Internal practices to reduce politics (21:48)How Daily’s salary & promotion process works (23:40)Frameworks for aligning projects toward peoples’ strengths within a remote team (27:04)Process for implementing a new salary & promotion model (30:28)Defining “swift trust” & creating conditions for it to be present (34:20)Benefits of creating agreements on how you’re going to work as a team (37:04)Rapid fire questions (40:28)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe Staff Engineer's Path - For years, companies have rewarded their most effective engineers with management positions. But treating management as the default path for an engineer with leadership ability doesn't serve the industry well--or the engineer. Tanya O’Reilly’s staff engineer's path allows engineers to contribute at a high level as role models, driving big projects, determining technical strategy, and raising everyone's skills.Rethinking levels, promotions and salaries - Sarah’s blog post on Daily’s restructuring of levels, promotions, salaries, and how Daily approaches career compensation.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/

We’re taking this week off for a short summer holiday. Until then, here are a few episodes from the backlog we highly recommend, for a little fun summer listening... Leveraging OODA Loops in Leadership with Oksana Kubushyna #118 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/building-platforms-vs-products-and-leveraging-ooda-loops-in-leadership-oksana-kubushnya-riotgames Navigating Multiproduct Expansion + other eadership & career insights from Kris Rasmussen #124 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/navigating-multi-product-expansion-leadership-and-career-insights-kris-rasmussen-figma Alignment is the key to delivering great product & team outcomes w/ Jonathon Hensley #90 - https://elc.community/home/podcasts/alignment-is-the-key-to-delivering-great-products-and-outcomes And a deep cut from the archives… Conscious Career Growth parts 1 & 2 with Wade Chambers!! #20 & #21- https://elc.community/home/podcasts/conscious-career-growth-wade-chambers-part-1 Want to get involved with ELC? Visit elc.community sign up with your email for membership (it’s free) and we’ll include you on the events & programs we have coming up! Join us at our flagship conference for eng leaders, ELC Annual on 8/30-31! sfelc.com/elcannual2023 Thanks for listening to the engineering leadership podcast. We’ll see you next week!

Barbara Nelson, VP of Engineering @ InfluxData, joins us to share her eng leadership philosophies on career adaptation and helping teams adapt to meet both business needs & individual interests / strengths. We cover how her leadership journey has shaped her perspective on adapting to new career opportunities, implementing boundaries within eng teams to foster creativity, approaching problem sets with eng teams, and building a healthy relationship between product & eng orgs. Additionally, Barbara shares strategies for adapting a team based on personality dynamics, meeting developers where they are, and why she’s built her career on building products with purpose.ABOUT BARBARA NELSONBarbara leads the engineering team at InfluxData. She has extensive experience leading globally distributed teams in designing, developing, deploying, and supporting products and services that are delivered on a cloud-based service platform and on a range of client platforms. Prior to InfluxData, Barbara had a variety of engineering and technical leadership roles, including VP of Engineering at iPass, CTO at Cirrent, and Principal Architect at eBay. Barbara has a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from University College Dublin, Ireland."There was an assumption that we had more shared context than we really had. So the engineers kind of thought, 'Well, it'll be obvious to the operations folks that this thing is deployed correctly or incorrectly.' There was no reason for it to be obvious to the operation folks. What would've made it obvious to the operations folks?”- Barbara Nelson   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:Barbara’s favorite leadership dilemma – job efficiency vs. enjoyment (1:57)How Barbara has adapted to various roles throughout her leadership journey (3:42)Lessons learned from diving into the role of Interim VP of Operations (6:19)Formal & informal frameworks for making / communicating adjustments (9:03)Barbara’s perspective on pursuing new opportunities & the “career ladder” (11:33)Advice for those who feel stuck on that ladder (13:25)How Barbara’s experience at General Magic impacted her leadership philosophy (15:07)Why boundaries help foster creativity (17:30)Barbara’s approach to introducing problem sets to eng teams (19:14)Strategies for aligning eng teams to reach an intended output (21:55)Driving a healthy relationship between product & eng teams (23:58)Recommendations for bridging the gap between product & engineering (26:02)Adapt a team based on personality dynamics & what gets them excited (28:49)The power of building a product with purpose (36:31)How AI trends will impact eng team adaptation & alignment (38:12)Rapid fire questions (39:45)LINKS AND RESOURCESBuild: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making - Written for anyone who wants to grow at work—from young grads navigating their first jobs to CEOs deciding whether to sell their company—Tony Fadell’s Build is full of personal stories, practical advice, and fascinating insights into some of the most impactful products and people of the 20th century.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/

We discuss rapid prototyping & how eng leaders can develop better product instincts with David Crawshaw, CTO & Co-Founder @ Tailscale! He shares his leadership journey from Google to Tailscale and how the early product development days at his startup lead to incorporating rapid prototyping principles within their eng org. We also cover strategies and recommendations for those who are new to rapid prototyping, how to work with design & product teams while quickly iterating, navigating the tension between speed & quality, and how to avoid common pitfalls while implementing the process.ABOUT DAVID CRAWSHAWDavid Crawshaw (@davidcrawshaw) is co-founder and CTO of Tailscale. Previously he was a staff engineer at Google, where he specialized in petabyte-scale logs processing. He implemented TCP/IP networking for Fuchsia, as well as ported the Go language platform to iOS and Android."If you're a pre-seed startup in the Bay Area and you are trying to ship something to your first few customers and you ship with 40-something languages, then you've made a mistake, but it's not necessarily true that a large company has made that mistake. For larger companies with more total requirements, I think the big question is can you construct environments where you can experiment without all of these requirements?”- David Crawshaw   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:David’s background at Google & the transition to founding Tailscale (1:51)Early-day challenges at Tailscale w/ prototyping (4:03)How Tailscale discovered & employed rapid prototyping during its early days (6:41)Paradigm shifts around the product-building process & feedback loop (8:37)Recommendations for those new to rapid prototyping (11:20)Shifting your org’s culture toward accelerated iteration cycles w/ arbitrary limits (13:36)Frameworks for getting to a faster prototype (16:52)How to work w/ design & product throughout rapid prototyping process (19:26)Navigating the tension between doing things quickly vs. working well (21:51)Where large companies try to rapid prototype & things go wrong (26:29)Trains vs. EVs in the Bay area – a metaphor for rapid iteration (28:46)Bringing that metaphor to software development (31:37)David’s perspective on widespread adoption of OpenAI (34:31)Rapid fire questions (39:19)LINKS AND RESOURCESTomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow - In this exhilarating novel from Gabrielle Zevin, two friends--often in love, but never lovers--come together as creative partners in the world of video game design, where success brings them fame, joy, tragedy, duplicity, and, ultimately, a kind of immortality.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/

Matt Spitz joins our latest podcast to discuss leading beyond domain expertise! As Head of Engineering @ Vanta, Matt shares his experience managing & developing a security program in the early days of Vanta before hiring for a specialized skillset. We also cover strategies on maximizing security at your organization as it grows, developing a company culture that invests in security, identifying when your org is ready to hire a domain expert, and how to effectively communicate with & lead domain experts within your org. In addition, Matt reveals what qualities he believes a security culture expert should possess & how eng leaders (who aren’t domain experts in security) can help set the org’s right technical direction.ABOUT MATT SPITZMatt Spitz is the Head of Engineering at Trust Management Platform provider, Vanta, where he helps companies practice better security. Previously, he co-founded and led Dropbox's NYC office, started a company, and has built and scaled diverse engineering teams solving complex product and infrastructure challenges. He lives in San Francisco and rides his bike to work."The value that I can provide to all these departments is visibility and context. The perfect strategy for support or something like security doesn't exist. It's contextual, right? And the things that we are trying to do as a business, the things that are happening outside of those departments that maybe I have visibility into, that is value that I can provide to those people in shifting their strategy and setting the right strategy that's contextually appropriate.”- Matt Spitz   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:Matt’s observations around leading beyond your expertise (2:45)Leadership tactics to employ when transitioning to a role outside your expertise (5:02)Matt's transition from Dropbox to Vanta (7:31)Paradigm shifts when transitioning between large & small orgs (9:01)How to improve in leading teams beyond your skill set (11:01)Recommendations for probing / gathering information from experts (13:19)Matt’s experience leading a successful security program before hiring an expert (15:27)Strategies to maximize the area of security as an individual (18:27)How to lay the foundational elements of an early-stage security program (22:14)Knowing when your org is ready for a domain-specific expert (24:05)Indicators to identify when seeking an expert (25:12)Frameworks for hiring / managing an expert beyond your domain (27:03)Evaluating culture fit in hiring security experts (28:54)Effective communication strategies when working with various domain experts (31:44)Setting the right technical direction when you’re not the expert (34:40)Rapid fire questions (36:22)LINKS AND RESOURCESLost Dogs - Matt’s Pearl Jam cover bandThis 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/

Han Yuan, Founder of Post-PC Labs, joins us to discuss some of the biggest converging trends hitting our industry – the rise of AI along with the tech bubble that’s poised to burst at any time. We cover not only these trends’ impact on eng leaders, but we also cover how technology trends can drive opportunities for eng leaders to become key strategic partners toward their orgs’ business strategy. Han shares advice for how to evaluate business needs, align your attitude / work toward those goals, earn a seat at the leadership table, build credibility, and use that credibility to implement strategic changes.ABOUT HAN YUANHan Yuan is the founder of Post-PC Labs, LLC.  Post-PC Labs is wholly-owned and funded by Han, powered by a global team of freelancers. The group's focus is building cash-flow breakeven projects with product-market fit.  Early investment themes include wellness and corporate productivity.Before Post-PC Labs, Han was SVP of Engineering at Upwork, where he led one of the world's most distributed engineering teams:  350+ engineers in 40 countries around the world.  In this role, Han was responsible for any function that had anything to do with a computer, including Information Security, IT, QA, Application Engineering, Cloud Engineering, Data Science, Infrastructure Engineering, and Program Management.  During his tenure at Upwork, Upwork's revenue doubled, and the company went public in 2018.In a previous life, Han was an influential mobile engineering leader, having incubated world-class teams for eBay and Netflix.  Han's early work in mobile proved that it was possible to sell billions of dollars of goods and entertain hundreds of millions of people globally using just a mobile phone.  Together with his teams, Han helped launch and scale the eBay and Netflix programs from small incubation teams.  At eBay, he was the first engineer on his team. When Apple announced its one billionth download in the app store and celebrated the top 25 apps in the store of all time, eBay and Netflix were both on the list.Han started his career in enterprise software specializing in the finance and human resources domains and was a co-founder of Buddystumbler.com.  Han has a B.S and M.S in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from U.C. Berkeley with a minor degree in Computer Science and a Management of Technology Certificate from the Haas School of Business."That's the language that you need to communicate with your colleagues, your peers. That's what everybody else understands. They're not going to understand, 'Oh, we need to migrate the data center to the cloud.' They're not going to understand that, 'Hey, these are all the technical reasons why a forklift could be very complicated.' You have to put it in terms that the business is going to understand. That is going to be the art, and along the way, I think if you use that framework, it helps your own teams understand why their work is relevant to the business.”- Han Yuan   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:Converging industry trends that eng leaders should be aware of (2:45)The impact of these trends on tech leaders (6:54)“Opaque” technology & how it can drive innovation in eng leaders (9:48)Emerging opportunities that may intimidate, such as LLMs (11:34)Han’s litmus test to determine your risk of irrelevance as an eng leader (12:55)Framework for eng leaders to increase their value-add to business / product strategy (15:31)Evaluating the business’s needs & aligning your values toward those goals (18:02)How eng leaders can make strategic impact on the business (19:37)Key questions to help eng leaders identify strategic solutions (22:30)Tips for establishing (or reestablishing) your role as a strategic partner (24:00)How Han built credibility during his time @ Upwork (27:40)Using newfound credibility to implement strategic changes (29:54)Rapid fire questions (32:28)LINKS AND RESOURCESSapiens – A Brief History of Humankind - Sapiens, the book, takes us on a breath-taking ride through our entire human history, from its evolutionary roots to the age of capitalism and genetic engineering, to uncover why we are the way we are. Sapiens focuses on key processes that shaped humankind and the world around it, such as the advent of agriculture, the creation of money, the spread of religion and the rise of the nation-state. Unlike other books of its kind, Sapiens takes a multi-disciplinary approach that bridges the gaps between history, biology, philosophy and economics in a way never done before. Furthermore, taking both the macro and the micro view, Sapiens conveys not only what happened and why, but also how it felt for individuals.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/