Geeks Who Lead Podcast

In this episode of CTO Connection, host Peter Bell sits down with Rebecca Parsons, CTO of Thoughtworks, to discuss managing a large, truly global engineering team, the implications for current advancements in architecture and the importance of supporting diversity and inclusion. [00:28] Path to CTO[01:58] Leading a 1200-person engineering team[04:08] Deciding on team size and structure[05:22] Managing geographically distributed teams; hiring locally[07:49] Career development for individual contributors and managers[11:00] Keeping up with new technologies[12:19] ThoughtWorks University[15:43] Looking forward to the next 3-5 years[18:58] Advancements in how we think about architecture[25:29] What makes a great engineer[26:42] Attracting talent[29:17] Bias in AI and the science of diversity You can hear more at The 2019 San Francisco CTO Summit, coming up May 21, 2019, where Rebecca will be presenting her talk on Bias in AI and the Science of Diversity. You can also find Rebecca on LinkedIn or Twitter and her latest book, Building Evolutionary Architectures, is out now.If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to CTO Connection in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps others find the show.Podcast episode production by Dante32.

In this episode of CTO Connection, host Peter Bell sits down with Colin Bodell, Chief Technology Officer of Groupon, to discuss how to balance being open to unexpected opportunities while still delivering on today’s commitments, encouraging idea-sharing from all levels of an engineering organization and what differentiates leaders from managers. [00:27] The need to stay open to unexpected discoveries[02:38] How to remain open to those unplanned opportunities while still delivering promised business objectives[05:12] The boldness required to surface the alternative solution[06:30] How identifying entrepreneurial flare plays into the hiring process[08:06] Teaching managers inclusivity tactics to ensure everyone has a voice[09:40] How to have a meaningful impact with a team of more than 1k engineers[13:52] How Colin’s career path evolved and his current  role and career goals[16:16] What differentiates a manager from a leader and the value of both[16:47] What Colin is most proud of in his careerYou can hear more at The 2019 Chicago CTO Summit, coming up May 1, 2019, where Colin Bodell will be presenting his talk - Scratch Your own Itch and then Scratch Theirs. If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to CTO Connection in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps others find the show.Podcast episode production by Dante32.

In this episode of CTO Connection, host Peter Bell sits down with Nick Caldwell, Chief Product Officer of Looker, to discuss the challenges of scaling leadership in a growing tech organization. Nick shares his experience moving from a 15-year career at Microsoft into the world of Bay area startups, his approach for finding and developing tech leaders, and some of the hard lessons he learned early in his management career.  [00:53] Fundamental challenge of scaling leadership in pace with the business[01:33] Nick’s career journey from Microsoft to Reddit to Looker[04:00] Thinking about career progression and training in a growing business[06:26] Balancing priorities of product delivery and people management[09:34] What resources to provide managers for their career development[11:09] The MBA experience as a ‘forcing function’ for exiting your comfort zone[13:06] Is this an engineering manager or is it a replicant?[15:13] Different traits desired from an engineering manager versus director[17:07] Cringeworthy lessons from early days in management[21:25] View of opportunities in the Bay area and tapping talent across the country[23:51] What Nick gets out of attending the CTO SummitsYou can hear more at The 2019 Chicago CTO Summit, coming up May 1, 2019, where Nick Caldwell will be presenting his talk - Ignite the Fire: How Managers Can Spark New Leaders.If you'd like to receive new episodes as they're published, please subscribe to CTO Connection in Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, please consider leaving a review in Apple Podcasts. It really helps others find the show.Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Welcome to the CTO Connection Podcast!StartupCTO.io was an amazing podcast, but Kevin and Miles got busy with their many other projects, so they decided to pass it along to myself.I’m an ex-CTO, a Senior Director at WeWork/Flatiron, and the founder of CTO Connection - a series of summits, meetups and an online platform where engineering leaders can connect with and learn from their peers. I’m speaking with senior engineering leaders from fast-growth tech companies on a regular basis anyway for the summits and meetups, and in the last few weeks, I recorded over fifteen new interviews with engineering leaders like Nick Caldwell, CPO at Looker, Edith Harbaugh, CEO of LaunchDarkly and Rebecca Parsons, CTO at ThoughtWorks. Look out for a new episode every couple of weeks. And if there’s ever anyone you want to see on the show - email me - peter@pbell.com - and I’ll do my best to fit them in!Podcast episode production by Dante32.

Today we are posting an interview for The Changelog that StartupCTO.io host Kevin Owocki recently did.  From The Changelog:We’re joined by Kevin Owocki, the founder of Gitcoin. Gitcoin is a platform to monetize or incentivize work in open source software. We talked about how Gitcoin sits at the intersection of sustaining open source and cryptocurrencies, their history and roadmap, their decision to leverage the brand name of Git, bug bounties, funded issues, web3, MetaMask, and the future of Gitcoin and how open source benefits.

[from the archives] Our guest today is Scott Carleton.Scott has a passion for building communities and empowering self-growth through education. Scott is currently the VP of Technology at Andela, a global engineering organization dedicated to fostering the next generation of elite tech talent across Africa. Previously, Scott co-founded Artsicle as CTO, building a global community of visual artists now featuring over 6000 creators in 100 countries. His work on Artsicle’s discovery engine, which was able to create a personalized experience for passive users, earned NYER’s “Best Use of Technology” award in 2013. This episode is for you if you’re into #learning #hiring or #mentorship.Favorite QuotesYou hear a lot that “it's all about the people”, but you don’t really get it until it kicks you in the shins.I think a lot about communication through a company in the context of dynamic systems and controls. You can have an input of information where someone’s unaligned or there’s some dissonance, and you’re not going to feel the full impact of that until it works its way through the organization.In the early days, I felt like I needed the “best” engineers. That came out as needing Stanford Grads. But what I realized very quickly was that they had very different expectations and needs. I couldn't provide for them the right kinds of challenges because we were still hunting for product market fit.I’ve found that in hiring I should look for “potential” and not “pedigree”.We created a culture of really customer focused engineers. The engineers really own their parts of the product. They *really* care about its usability.Friction rises in communication when information doesn't have a place to settle.Chat is a tool. I’m sold on it. A tool is necessary but not sufficient. You need the tool to be able to create the behavior you want, but you need a cultural change or a behavior/belief change to use the tool effectively.Chat allows us an always-on meeting in its worst form. At best, it’s an asynchronous tool to keep everyone in sync.On chat, my top belief is “Get everything into public channels”The health of an engineering team is: How many issues are raised and resolved, and how fast is that iteration?Finding out how to have the right focus for a conversation in a chat channel is important.When I first started doing 1:1s, I totally didn’t want to do it. I’d make up excuses. Every 1:1, there were engineers who would complain and I just wanted to avoid that. But it turns out 1:1s are invaluable because you’ll always discover something important that you don’t know.If you’re having problems in your organization, a 1:1 is like taking a knife to that problem and sinking it a little deeper.When I first joined an organization with an existing engineering team, the first 1:1s were very much “clearing out the backlog” — Figuring out the existing problems.I have a passion for developing peoples potential.How do we measure someone’s learning velocity – how quickly they’re picking up new skills?The killer problem with distributed teams right now is whiteboarding. It’s just *so* hard to do remotely.Distributed teams are about trust. How do you get the information you need? How do you communicate outward & upward so that we have trust at all times? We need to know we’re all pushing in the same direction.What's really incredible about software development is that the people who are building the applications have a lot more information about the problems they're solving than you do. You really want most solutions coming from the bottom up.I focus on how I can expose business problems to the team. I tell them what we’re solvin

Clay Collins & Nick Gauthier are founders of Nomics will be “Yahoo Finance for Crypto” and the internet’s home page for Bitcoin, Ethereum, and other cryptocurrencies.Nick Gauthier has been developing for the web for 10 years and loves Ruby, Go, and PostgreSQL. You can find him on Twitter at @ngauthier.Clay Collins is currently CEO/Co-founder of Nomics and Board Chair at Drip/Leadpages.  Before co-founding Nomics, Clay founded Leadpages, where he drove growth to over 48K paying customers (and 175 employees), led the company’s acquisition of Drip, and raised $38M in venture capital financing

This episode is co-hosted by Jacob Ablowitz.  We are honored today to be interviewing  Quin Hoxie, founder and CTO of Swiftype.   This episode covers Quin’s experiences as an engineer at Scrib, and then as Co-Founder and CTO of Swiftype — The leading platform delivering search solutions for businesses.Quin’s BioQuin Hoxie is the Co-Founder and CTO of Swiftype, the leading search platform for delivering fast, relevant and customizable search results for businesses. After graduating from University of Arizona in 2008 with a B.S. in Computer Science, Quin worked on search at AboutUs before joining Scribd in 2010 to work on their search team. His experiences building the search platform at Scribd led him to start Swiftype with fellow Scribd engineer Matt Riley in 2012. Since graduating from Y Combinator in Winter 2012, Swiftype has become the easiest way to add powerful search to any website or application. With clients ranging from TechCrunch to Hubspot to Qualcomm, Swiftype powers billions of searches every month across the web.About SwiftypeFounded in 2012, Swiftype’s industry-leading search platform delivers relevant and customizable search results for businesses. Swiftype’s suite of products, Site Search and Enterprise Search, have revolutionized the way people find information across their organization and on public-facing websites. Headquartered in San Francisco, the company has raised $23 million in funding, by investors including NEA and Y Combinator. Its strong customer portfolio includes AT&T, Shopify, SurveyMonkey, Dr. Pepper, publishers Engadget and TechCrunch, and brands like Qualcomm, Asana, Marketo, and Hubspot.About Jacob AblowitzJacob Ablowitz serves as Co-Founder and CEO of dmi.io, the marketplace for business data. dmi is transforming business decision-making by democratizing access to data-driven insights through connecting sellers and buyers of data while streamlining data discovery, evaluation and contracting.Jacob has deep experience with the data and technology systems that power the modern information economy. He began his career at Lockheed Martin, working on bleeding-edge ballistic missile defense and submarine sonar systems. At Dealertrack Technologies (now Cox Automotive), Jacob led infrastructure projects underpinning their market-leading car loan application platform. In 2012 he moved on to Bridgewater Associates, the largest hedge fund in the world, in an analytics role, before starting dmi in 2013.Jacob holds a B.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Colorado and a Master’s in Systems & Information Engineering from the University of Virginia. He is an active member of the Colorado startup community.

Today, we are honored to have Eric Berry, founder of CodeSponsor.ioCode Sponsor is a matchmaking platform for software developers and open source projects. Code Sponsor enables paying sponsors to get their messages across in front of developers.In this very special combo episode,Learn more about the founding story of Code Sponsor and the success they’re seeing in helping Open Source projects become more sustainable.Learn about the founding of Gitcoin, a project that Kevin founded with a similar goal — pushing open source forward.If you have an OSS project you’re working on, and a few bucks every day in sponsorships might help, CodeSponsor is there to help. Learn more about Codesponsor at CodeSponsor.io and Eric at @coderberry.

We are joined this week by Matt Walters (Blockchain Engineer at Consensys, former Techstars CTO), and Rhys Lindmark (Independent Blockchain Engineer) for a very special Blockchain episode of StartupCTO.io.Join us as we share stories about web3, a hacking story, Blockchain Engineering stories, and to learn about “the human operating system”.