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
Nov 10, 2016 • 36min
Web Security for Startup CTOs w. Andrew Useckas
Andrew Useckas is the CTO of Threat-X; a 10 person startup based out of Colorado that provides Web Application Firewalls as a Service. Join Andrew as we discuss the most relevant threats to software startup companies today and we learn how he and his team built a next-gen security company.Find Andrew on Twitter at https://twitter.com/daronin and Threat-X at https://threat-x.com/Favorite Quotes:An engineer has to be a self starter. I look for someone who can really take initiative; someone who can take a project and make it their ownA quality I look for in hires is ability to pivot as necessary. What tool you use depends upon the task. Things always improve and you have to be flexible.
Nov 3, 2016 • 42min
Building Teams that create Customer Success w. Ingrid Alongi
Ingrid Alongi is the co-founder of Quickleft, a software development firm in Boulder Colorado which was acquired by Cognizant in March of 2016. In this episode, Ingrid takes us through the founding story of QuickLeft, and how QuickLeft used Net Promoter Scores to drive great outcomes for end-customers.Find Ingrid on Twitter at @electromute and check out QuickLeft at QuickLeft.com.Favorite Quotes:My biggest engineering value is pragmatism and collaboration. Things get done better when you work as a team. The best solution is the one that launches.Its really important to be able to communicate ideas, and to sell your ideas; even if the client is not technical. We invest in speaking at conferences and blog posts a lot.If people write software on time and clients are happy, then that’s a success. It doesn’t matter as much if the code they write is poetry.I’ve seen the ebb and flow of people wanting more structure and then less structure. Organizations today are much flatter than they used to be.
Oct 28, 2016 • 17min
ZCash ($ZEC) – A blockchain for Privacy with Zooko Wilcox
We’ve got a special bonus episode for you all this week.Episode 0.8 of our Podcast was a Boulder Startup Week talk about ZCash by its founder; Zooko Wilcox. ZCash is a privacy-centric blockchain. Zcash payments are published on a public blockchain, but the sender, recipient, and amount of a transaction remain private.A lot of people are really excited about a blockchain that enables truly anonymous transactions on the web and believes that ZCash could be a top 5 blockchain within a year. ZCash has an all-star roster of cryptographers; and they today in version 1.0.0; So I’m reposting our ZCash episode, episode 0.8.
Oct 27, 2016 • 45min
Crossing the Chasm w. Brandon Purcell
Brandon Purcell is the CTO of SpatialKey; a leading geospatial intelligence analytics platform. SpatialKey started as a proof of concept prototype in 2007 and has grown into a full-fledged profitable business over the last seven years. Listen to this episode to hear SpatialKey’s founding journey; from finding a core customer who was willing to pay for their product, to growing into a SAAS provider serving several prominent paying customers.
