Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Peter Bell
Hear the inside stories of the "geeks who lead at scale" - Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.I'm your host - Peter Bell, I've been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that's before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/
Episodes
Mentioned books
Aug 18, 2023 • 36min
Yoav Grossman - Adding LLMs to your product - a case study
This week I interviewed Yoav Grossman, VP of Product & Engineering at Spinach.io about how they went about identifying potential use cases for LLMs within their product, spiking, implementing, and releasing an offering. It’s a great mini-case study of the steps involved in adding GenAI to a product thoughtfully, but quickly. Spinach is a smaller startup, but the lessons are applicable to companies of all sizes, and previously, Yoav was Head of Product for Asurion Health, Head of Global Business Process at Uber, and a manager for Walmart eCommerce.
Aug 11, 2023 • 36min
Mike Boufford - Creating an AI Strategy
Just before our CTO summits in May I got to chat with Mike Boufford, CTO at Greenhouse about his experiences in getting up to speed with GenAI and LLMs as a non-expert.In this thought provoking interview Mike explains how he got up to speed with the capabilities of the latest LLMs and his thoughts on how CTOs should think strategically about engaging with Generative AI - both for improving the process of writing software and more broadly to rethink their product offerings and even their internal business processes.
Aug 3, 2023 • 37min
Gayatri Iyengar - The Art of Storytelling for Managing Stakeholder Relationships
Especially when building platform or infrastructure, sometimes it can be difficult for non-technical stakeholders to truly appreciate the value of the work being done.In this interview, Gayatri Iyengar shares her experiences building platform solutions at both Uber and Doordash and how she used storytelling to connect business stakeholders with the real value that her org was delivering.
Jul 28, 2023 • 35min
James Turnbull - Trimming your operating costs
In this wide ranging discussion, I speak with James Turnbull, SVP Engineering at Sotheby’s about his approach to managing his costs during a downturn. From cloud spend and SaaS costs to prioritizing fewer projects and hiring globally, it’s a great insight into how a traditional enterprise is engaging with a tighter financial environment.
Jul 21, 2023 • 35min
Mona Soni - Why the grand hybrid experiment is going to fail!
While there has been a major push to return to the office (by many managers and a good number of ICs), when remote is done right, it can reduce costs, provide access to a much wider talent pool, make teams more productive and scale more effectively (beyond a certain team size, every company is distributed). In this interview I chat with Mona Soni about her experiences running a distributed team at a larger company before, during and after the pandemic and some of the lessons she learned to get the maximum value out of a distributed engineering org.
Jul 14, 2023 • 40min
Matt Welsh - LLMs for engineering teams - a practical guide
Do you still have doubts about the wisdom of leveraging LLMs in software development? Maybe you’re not sure how much they can help or how best to get started with them. Or maybe you’re well into the process of experimenting with LLMs for speeding up software development and you’d just like to compare notes?!In this fascinating interview I got to chat with Matt Welsh - Chief Architect and Co-founder of Fixie.ai about his practical experiences in leveraging Generative AI for software development, clearing up some common misconceptions along the way
Mar 28, 2023 • 29min
Mission Driven - Josh Nesbit: Founding Member, Widespread Care
Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Josh Nesbit (Founding Member, Widespread Care) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.
Feb 28, 2023 • 25min
Mission Driven - Jim O’Leary: VP of Engineering, Signal
Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Jim O’Leary (VP of Engineering, Signal) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.
Feb 14, 2023 • 22min
Mission Driven - Sam Quigley: CEO, Kicho Inc
Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Sam Quigley (CEO, Kicho Inc) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.
Jan 31, 2023 • 22min
Mission Driven - Max Roser: Researcher at University of Oxford / Founder & Director of Our World In Data
Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Max Roser (Researcher at University of Oxford / Founder & Director of Our World In Data) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.
