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
Dec 23, 2021 • 30min
Short Byte: Ramana Satyavarapu - Engineering management vs leadership
Ramana Satyavarapu is the CTO at Finix - a payments solution for SaaS companies. Previously he was Head of Data Engineering Platform and Product at Two Sigma, Head of Engineering, Software Network Infrastructure for Uber and a Head of Engineering at Google running the Google Play search team. In this episode we discuss the distinction between management and leadership, dig into how he worked on developing the leadership principles at his current company, how he thinks about balancing product, process and people, and how he helps his team to determine whether the managers path is right for them.
Dec 16, 2021 • 30min
Short Byte: Ron Lichty - Starting a new engineering leadership role
For most of us, jumping into engineering leadership at a new company is only something we do every 3-5 years. Today's guest, Ron Lichty, Consulting VPE, often jumps into three or more new companies every year! In this episode, we’ll discuss how he investigates the technologies, tools, teams and processes to add value quickly to an org. Whether you’re looking forward to starting your next gig or just want to freshen up your impact at your current org, it’ll be a great chance to think about how to get the most out of your engineering organization.
Dec 9, 2021 • 29min
Short Byte: David Subar - How to choose a CTO coach
No matter how experienced you are, there are times where it can make sense to get a second pair of eyes on a problem. For small questions you can always tap your network, but as the amount of context required and input needed grows, it can make sense to bring in a consultant in so they can think deeply and engage thoughtfully with the problem.In this week's episode, I talk with David Subar, a fractional CTO, about his experiences of how and when to engage with a CTO coach and how to find one that’s a good fit for the problem that you’re trying to solve. Get in touch with David via email, dsubar@interna.com or via the contact form at www.interna.com. You can also connect with him via LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidsubar or twitter https://twitter.com/dsubar.
Dec 2, 2021 • 29min
Short Byte: Joe Bradley - Leveraging conversational AI
Conversational AI has come a long way from simple rules based chatbots, but it's still a complex and quickly evolving space. Join me as I chat with Joe Bradley, Chief Scientist at LivePerson, about the use cases, tooling, team structures and gotchas if you're considering implementing a conversational AI system for your company.
Nov 25, 2021 • 23min
Short Byte: Claudius Mbemba - Sustaining culture within a remote-first team
We're all dealing with remote-first teams now whether we like to or not. But the more I investigate hybrid working options, the more likely it seems that we're going to have to come up with remote friendly approaches to building and sustaining the culture of our engineering orgs long term. Hear how Claudius Mbemba, CTO of Neu, has built and sustained an effective remote first culture for four years at his startup.
Nov 18, 2021 • 31min
Short Byte: Labhesh Patel - Diversity, Inclusion and Bias in AI Systems
Most companies are increasingly trying to leverage data science to achieve their business goals, but it's easy to create biased models that disadvantage underrepresented groups. In this episode I get to chat with Labhesh Patel, CTO and Chief Scientist at Jumio.We start by looking at common types of data bias around representation and features that may be highly correlated with protected features (zip codes that are highly correlated with race, for example) and the challenges of supervised learning where the team tagging your data can also introduce bias into models.We then discuss the benefits of increasing the diversity and inclusiveness of both your tagging and modeling teams and questions you can ask as an engineering leader to make sure your data science team is being thoughtful about the potential impact of the models they're building.
Nov 11, 2021 • 29min
Short Byte: Charlie Reverte - Retaining your team during the 'great resignation'
The great resignation is both a threat and an opportunity for engineering leaders. To avoid regrettable attrition, you need to make sure you are tracking your comp to industry standards, creating the psychological safety to allow your team to be honest about their career aspirations and ensuring that you have consistent, high quality management across the org. At the same time, you need to be super clear about your value prop as an employer, active in recruiting, and timely in making offers to the best candidates. Listen as I chat with Charlie Reverte, SVP Technology at MessageBird (previously CTO at SparkPost) about how you can ready your organization for increasing competition for top engineering talent.
Nov 4, 2021 • 29min
Short Byte: Jossie Haines - Empathy and Inclusion in Engineering Leadership
To create a truly diverse and inclusive team where everyone can thrive and share their views, engineering leaders need to abide by the following three pillars: 1) effective and fair management principles, 2) comprehensive DEI practices, and 3) an inclusive culture. Empathy is the framework leaders can use to ensure they are incorporating all three pillars in their daily work. Jossie will share more details on the three pillars and how to leverage empathy as the foundation for inclusive leadership for the future.
Oct 21, 2021 • 32min
Short Byte: Ben John - Managing engineering at scale
In this wide ranging talk, I chat with Dr. Ben John about his experiences in scaling and managing the team at AppNexus (and post AT&T acquisition at Xandr). We talk about six week planning cycles, creating a supportive culture, building out a learnign and development team within the engineering org and Ben's advice for anyone else moving from engineering to leadership.
Oct 7, 2021 • 29min
Short Byte: Anne Lise Waal - Gaming the enterprise
It's not easy to bring gaming technologies into the enterprise. From hardware limitations to unreasonable expectations, it's challenging to bring game like learning simulations to the corporate world. Anne Lise Waal has been doing just that at Attensi, and in this episode she shares her experiences in aligning designers, copy writers and developers, managing feature creep, prioritizing an ever changing backlog and managing technical debt.
