Managers Club, Interviews and Resources for Engineering Managers

In this interview, with Ashok Ramaraj, Senior Engineering Manager at Sam's Club (Walmart), we discuss going from IC to engineering manager, should I get an MBA, and many lessons learned.

In this interview & podcast, with Jossie Haines, Senior Director, Platform Engineering at Tile, we discuss diversity and inclusion, women in tech, going from IC to engineering manager, and time management.

Vidal: Today I have with me Trish Gray. Welcome, Trish, to Manager’s Club. Trish: Thanks, Vidal. It’s great to be here. Vidal: Thanks. It’s great to have you. Trish, maybe we could start out a little bit … maybe you could tell people a little bit about your current role and what you do. Trish: Yeah. Currently, I’m the head of business growth at Pinterest. Growth is a discipline that is emerging quite powerfully in the Bay Area regarding being the glue between engineering, product, marketing and business objectives. We’re in the business of creating those prototypes and really testing with an extreme data-driven approach utilizing a lot of user research, a lot of opportunity sizing, and other methods and disciplines in order to make sure that we’re maximizing all of engineering’s time and making sure that we’re creating features that we know have product markets that we know that are great for our users. What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: All right. Awesome. Yeah, growth is super important. Trish, I was looking through your background on LinkedIn and you’ve had a long career in engineering leadership. You were Director of Software Engineering, VP of Engineering, Head of Business Growth, a bunch… Maybe you could speak a little bit about your background and how did you get into management? How did you transition in? Trish: Yes. Yeah. I’ve done a little bit of everything. I started my career in computer science. I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for computer science. And while I was there decided to start a company for online education. At the time, I was just a coder. I’d been coding since I was 12. I loved coding. That was my thing. I had really no interest necessarily in being an entrepreneur, but that’s how it happened because we wanted to create the best learning system on the web in information technology. Trish: We built what you could now call an online bootcamp a CodingDojo or a Hackbright Academy online but we were about 10 years ahead of our time. Worked on it for many, many years, made it into a school, had a lot of customer support. I created an online IDE system for learning. Also created a similar system for instruction and for creating instructional materials. Trish: So that was my role. I was the coder, the technologist of the entire thing and how I got into management was simply by necessity. We were growing the business and I had to run multiple aspects of the business, and so I couldn’t be the only one coding anymore. Brought in a few folks, we were a very close-knit family so we learned it all together and that just grew from there. Trish: So I don’t have a traditional trajectory into management but I will say that once we sold our company to O’Reilly Media, I had a mentor in the form of a director of HR that really taught me a lot about organizational development, performance management, and really just more of how complex management is and how it’s a completely different set of skills. Trish: And I found myself really geeking out on it and very much enjoying it and realizing that if you really build management skills and you try to be the most effective manager possible, then not only does your business improve but you end up having this wonderfully healthy organization that is right there with you, mission-driven and excited to be working on the same things.

Vidal: Well, today, I have Lavanya Ramani with me. Lavanya, thank you for joining ManagersClub today. Lavanya: Thank you, Vidal, this is a great opportunity. I appreciate this. What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: Maybe we could start a little bit, tell us about your background, maybe what you do now, how you got into management. Tell us a little bit about yourself? Lavanya: Sure. I graduated from India after completing my engineering from computer science in one of the reputed colleges in India. I joined as a software engineer in a services company and, after a quarter, realized that I wanted to work for a product company. So I moved from the services to a networking product company and continued to work there for about three and a half / four years. Later, I moved here and continued with the same company, which was headquartered in the Bay Area, and continued to grow from an individual contributor to a manager. Lavanya: So it was a great journey, the road to management, because I started understanding that I appreciate it when there’s a team around, and I’m able to bring out my best and think that I’m able to perform at my optimal best only when I’m around my team. That kind of made me think about whether I should move into management. But it was one such opportunity, which I wanted to pick up, where I could start with a small team. When I started working with a small team of about four engineers and delivered a particular feature for a particular product, we understood that it’s a great feeling to be within the team and it’s very rewarding when you see what a team can accomplish, by you being able to course-correct actions, tell what’s working, what’s not working well, and how you’re dedicating your time in a day to help people grow and the finding people, their blind spots in the team. Lavanya: So those are the things which made me think, let me move to management, and I ended up in management, right. Today, I’m an engineering manager at Amazon, and that’s been a great journey so far. So, that’s where I stand. Vidal: Nice. Could you say a little bit more, maybe like how you transitioned into management? So you applied to be a manager, or you were selected or asked by your boss, or how did that happen? Lavanya: Certainly, so at one point in my career, I had an opportunity. It was about four years ago. I had an opportunity to either go into technical leadership as an individual contributor or try to take management. And my director came and said to me that Lavanya, “can do well in both, but I personally feel that as a person who likes to work with a team, it would be awesome if you want to try the management part”. Lavanya: And I said, “certainly, that’s what is running in my mind as well. Why don’t I try management?”. So he said, “yes, certainly. But you won’t be starting with a big team, try to manage four people who are not going to be reporting to you to start with, but you deliver a project with them, thinking that you are their manager”. And these four people had varied experience levels. One of the engineers had over 25 years of experience in the industry. Another was a new hire from college, and I had mid experience in the industry with two more people. It was four people with varied experience, with varied knowledge, age. It was amazing learning how to lead a team, being that mentor, being the guide, being that leader,

Vidal: So, today I have with me, Rukmini Reddy. Hi Rukmini, welcome to Manager’s Club. RUKMINI: Thank you, Vidal. Thank you so much for having me. Vidal: My pleasure. Rukmini could you start out, maybe tell us a little about your current role, what you do. RUKMINI: Absolutely. So, I’m currently the VP of Engineering at a hyper-growth startup in the Bay area. I lead a team of about 45 engineers and we are a remote-first company. Vidal: That’s great. Rukmini I was looking through your background. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and I know you’ve been VP of engineering at many places. How did you get into management? RUKMINI: So, this is an interesting story. I think…I’m not going to say how long though because it’s going to make me look like a dinosaur. So, this is a very long, long time ago, I was…I joined a company to be a software architect/principal engineer. I was an individual contributor who was coding and about four months into my new role, my then CTO and VP of engineering came to me and said they saw I had a unique knack for people and building relationships and wondered if I would consider transitioning into engineering management. RUKMINI: Like most IC’s, I was very skeptical about that move because I was afraid I would lose my technical skills and it would become stale, but I asked them if I tried it, would I be able to go back to it if I hated it in six months. And, they gave me that security and they said I could. So, I tried it and I’ve never looked back. I worked my way to engineering manager, to VP of engineering. I have now been a VP of engineering for over four years in three different organizations. What are the biggest challenges you face? Vidal: That’s fantastic. Could you say, what are some of the biggest challenges you face as an engineering leader? RUKMINI: I think it’s just the state of hyper-growth startups these days. You face tremendous challenges and I think this is very common in Silicon Valley, especially in very dynamic marketplaces, of keeping your team motivated, engaged, driving through with the same success factors. Marching to the same North star, that’s a challenge most of us leaders face. Vidal: Is there anything, in particular, you do to try to keep your team motivated and marching towards that North star? RUKMINI: Absolutely. I think clarity is really critical for teams to do their best. So, it’s my job to set up as much processes I can to make some of these… I’ll give you an example. So, if there are several initiatives that are active at the same time in an organization and you’re in a hyper-growth startup, it becomes really difficult to keep up. So, one of the things I use is a RACI framework. So, most initiatives have a RACI framework attached and I leave assigned… I assigned DRIs, directly responsible individuals, to lead this initiative, so that it makes it very clear to everyone what their roles are, how they’re contributing to an initiative and who the primary responsible individual is. So, when I need information, I need to provide support, I know who to go to and this is especially important in a remote company. Vidal: Got it. Yeah, the RACI framework is popular. I’ve heard of it, so I’ll put a link to that. Since you mentioned a couple of times it’s a remote company.

Vidal: Today I have Vishal Saxena here with me on the show. Welcome to Managers Club, Vishal. VISHAL: Thank you for inviting me. I’m looking forward to our discussion. It’s great to be here. What’s your background? Vidal: Awesome. Maybe you could start out a little bit. Tell us a little about your current role, what you do, I guess a little bit of background on yourself. VISHAL: Sure. I’m Vice President of Global SaaS Operations at Aktana. Aktana is an AI-based platform that enables customers to make data-driven decisions. Prior to joining Aktana, I was at Opentext for two years managing the SaaS team and before that, I was at Oracle for over 10 years. How did you get into management? Vidal: That’s awesome. Yes, I was looking at your background. Maybe tell us a little bit more, how did you get into management? How did you break into management? What was your motivation for getting into management and leadership? VISHAL: It may sound like a cliche. I became a manager by accident. I started as a shipping and receiving for a local system integrator and from there moved into the help desk and a couple of years later I joined a small company Brio Software again as an individual contributor, and after two years Brio was acquired by Hyperion. VISHAL: During that integration, I was promoted to a senior manager managing a small team including the manager. A couple of years later Hyperion was acquired by Oracle and the economies of scales changed. From managing the team of 10 I was managing each team over 50 people when I joined Oracle. And that number change to over 110 by the time I left. Vidal: How many was it by the time you left? You said it was 50 and then I went to how many? VISHAL: About 110. Vidal: 110, okay thank you. Sorry, go ahead. VISHAL: No problem. It was a very global, diverse team and it was fun to be part of the team. It did bring its own challenges, but it’s the dirt that comes with the rain. I enjoy managing the team, mentoring them and learn from them. What are the biggest challenges you face? Vidal: Okay, that’s great. Well, since you mentioned the challenges, maybe you could talk to us. What are some of the biggest challenges you face as an engineering leader? VISHAL: One of the biggest challenges is that many still struggle to accept change. See, change is inevitable. It’s going to happen and sometimes you need to take a step back and understand why the change occurred and try to be in the shoes of other people. But at times it’s hard to accept and I’ve been in those shoes where it was very hard for me to accept that change. But what helps is to take a step back and see from other’s perspective, I then tried to motivate myself. Once you’re able to do that, you’re able to motivate others within your team. If you don’t agree with the change don’t stick around, it’s not good for them, it’s not good for you. Vidal: Do you have an example that comes to mind? VISHAL: For example, since I was part of Oracle, organization changes were very often, right? And you’re moving from one org to another role or while you are being moved into the roles and at times you don’t like to be in that role, but you are moved into that role. And for example, let’s say you are managing a data center team. All of a sudden now you are moved into managing lab rather than managing the whole data center.

Vidal: Good afternoon, Pei-Chin. Thank you. Well, welcome to the show. Thanks for joining me today. PEI-CHIN: Thank you. Vidal: Could you maybe introduce yourself, say a little bit about where you’re located and what your current role is? PEI-CHIN: Yeah, so I work at Redfin and we help people buy and sell homes. Currently, I’m a senior director of product at Redfin, leading our consumer facing products, so this includes acquiring new customers, thinking about how we evolve our search experience and converting more site users into customers that use Reston to buy or sell homes. What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: That’s great. I mean, that’s a big market, real estate. Could you tell me a little bit about your background and how you got into management? PEI-CHIN: Yeah, so I am an engineer turned product manager. I started out my career as an engineer working at Google, worked on Google search infrastructure. And then after a few years I wanted to tap into my, I guess, inner superpower, which I think is connecting different ideas and really strong empathy to human beings. And I thought I’d try out product management. And it’s been, I think I’ve been the product manager for probably close to 10 years now. And I started managing, I think, five years ago. I was in a startup after I left Google. And as the company grew, I had the opportunity to manage, starting with one person, and that was a really great experience, and now at Redfin I manage a much bigger team. Vidal: Okay. I think that’s great how you said you were an engineer turned product manager. Can maybe talk a little bit, I haven’t had too many product managers on the show. Maybe, is there anything that engineers, engineering managers maybe don’t understand about product managers, or might be helpful for them in working better with product managers? PEI-CHIN: I think maybe one thing is to understand, at least this is my personal point of view, that it is by design to have healthy tension between engineering and product and design. And engineering often thinks about what is the best way to build something in a scalable way or what might, because engineers, like code, are touched by many different people. And I actually think, I really admire that engineering partners tend to think about how to make components more reusable, scalable over a long term period of time. And a product manager, oftentimes they want to bring the product to the market sooner. They want to test the hypothesis as fast as possible. And so there’s a healthy tension between getting to the market sooner or slower. PEI-CHIN: And then, product manager also plays a role of like being the voice of the customer, who’s the only person that’s not in the room, but the most important person for us all to serve. And so I think that healthy tension is helpful, and I actually really enjoy a lot of engineering partners that work with so we can have that healthy debate and tension. It really brings out the best of all of us. What are the biggest challenges you face? Vidal: I think that’s well said. Yes, you have to balance it. Could you describe, maybe what are some of your biggest challenges as a manager? PEI-CHIN: Yeah, it actually evolved as my team got bigger. I think at the beginning when I was managing a few people, the biggest challenge is to think about how do I help them grow and consis...

Vidal: Good morning, Randy. Welcome to the Manager’s Club show. How are you? RANDY: Thank you. It’s great to be here. I’m doing well. Tell us about Yourself Vidal: Maybe we could start off, tell us about your background. Well actually where do you work now? What’s your current role? RANDY: Sure, I’m the vice president of information security at Veterans United Home Loans. We are a VA loan origination company, so our, our mission is to get our veteran heroes into homes at competitive interest rates, faster than anybody else in the industry. We do a very good job of that. Prior to being here, I actually worked for an organization in Missouri called MOREnet. That was the Missouri Research and Education Network. We provided internet connectivity to the public schools, the universities and colleges and public libraries. Most of my career prior to that was also spent in government and education doing mostly system administration work initially, and then switching over as the internet became a thing and as we saw the increased need for security and moving into security when I moved to the role at MOREnet and now here at Veterans United. Vidal: That’s awesome that you’ve been doing stuff for veterans and also in education. I think that’s really great. Thank you. Thank you for doing those things. RANDY: It’s our pleasure. It’s a great industry to be involved with, especially now helping veteran heroes. They’ve put their life on the line for us. This is our opportunity to give back and to serve them What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: That’s just awesome. Could you say a little bit about how you got into management? How did you transition to being manager? RANDY: I think like probably a lot of us, back in the early days, you do system administration work and you continue on. Then there’s a recognition that there’s a need for actually having a team instead of just an individual or a few individual contributors. Part of it was the first position that I actually had was at a small K-12 school. I hired a couple of people to be assistants for me and also actually utilize some high school students at the time in an unofficial capacity where they just were interested in technology. I really started accidentally essentially get into management from that perspective. Then it was just more intentional about seeking careers that had opportunity for both technical growth and also management growth. Each position that I moved into, I changed jobs a couple of times. That had additional people that were reporting to me and gradually just continued on to where I’m at now. Vidal: How many people report to you now? How big a team do you manage? RANDY: I’ve got eight direct reports right now and we also have a concept of something we call dotted in. We have three other people who are parts of other teams, but we bring them on to the information security team, so that they can really be a liaison back to those other teams that they work on. They are essential and integrated into the components of keeping our systems and our data secure. What are the biggest challenges you face? Vidal: Yeah, it makes sense. Yeah. I think several companies, a lot of companies have that concept. Okay. What would you say are some of the biggest challenges you face a...

Vidal: Hey, so good afternoon. Today I want to welcome Federico Soria or “Fede.” Fede, thank you so much for joining the show today. FEDE: Thank you for having me. Vidal: Fede, could you maybe tell people a little bit where you work and what your role is? Tell us about Yourself FEDE: Yeah, for sure. I’m an engineering manager for the Luxe hosting platform team. So basically Luxe, it’s one of the businesses inside of Airbnb and it’s everything luxury and what you might think luxury might mean. So gigantic villas, private islands. Sort of the highest tier of Airbnb. And how we deal with a hosts, guests, platform and everything, it’s kind of unique. Two years ago when the engineering team got started, I clearly remember one of the first challenges and everything we had to do was, we had to add a couple of zeros more to everything hardcoded number of minimum around Airbnb. It’s been a fun challenge. What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: That’s great. Could you maybe say a little about your background and how did you get into management? FEDE: Yeah. I’m a software engineer by trade, went to college at Arizona state, earned degree in software engineering. And then from there I worked as a software engineer for a couple of years and then it was on and off of doing my own business and managing other people obviously didn’t do so good at first and then it got better and better until I became CTO for a payments company here in the Bay area and then I went to be VP of eng for a couple of months at another startup. And then I joined as a software engineer here at Airbnb. And about a year into it I transitioned into management, engineering manager, which in Airbnb it’s not really a promotion, just a side step. And then the reason I got into management here at Airbnb is because I cared deeply about people’s lives here at Airbnb, their professions, their careers. I always really like to help every engineer be the best engineer they could be. So helping them out, it became a natural thing for me and people really enjoyed working with me on that area. I’m like what if I do this for a living? And it’s like everyone’s like, yes, that’ll be very helpful and make it less ad hoc and more like providing you the toolset and control to actually help people become better in their careers. I always really like to help every engineer be the best engineer they could be. So that was my number one influence to becoming a manager. The other one was around upwards visibility and how do you work with leadership and setting sort of the structure and the direction of the company. Airbnb is very bottoms up. I mean that’s a very cliche, but the reality is that it’s up to the team to define what projects you want to work on and how you actually influence those OKRs or those signals that move the actual company forward. Could you share with us a lesson you learned as an engineering leader? Vidal: That’s a fantastic reason you gave for wanting to be an engineering leader. So I love that. And I think that also is the best practice at many companies. That’s great you have that parallel career track in the management track now it looks like an engineering track. I think you mentioned, you said you recently became a manager there and that at your previous company.

Vidal: Welcome Eugene. It’s great to have you here on the show. How are you today? EUGENE: Hi Vidal. Thank you for having me here. Tell us about Yourself Vidal: Could you tell me a little bit about your role and what does Xero do? EUGENE: I’m VP of engineering in San Francisco office of Xero. Xero is online accounting system for small businesses. We provide the whole spectrum of tools on web and mobile for a small business to do accounting on the go. You can do invoices, expenses, bills, manage your inventory, reconcile bank balance. of the most important things Xero provides is more than 800 tools and integrations with the different accounting and financial systems. Vidal: I noticed your title. It says “acting” VP of engineering. What does it mean “acting”? EUGENE: Acting means I’m temporarily lead the engineering in the San Francisco office during transition of the product development to different offices. It’s a good challenge owning a global product transition, being responsible for a lot of people. Make sure that my teams still deliver on committed releases, complete the knowledge transfer, and still feel positive and engaged. I think e biggest part of my role here is to make sure people feel motivated to come to the office every day. Vidal: Oh wow. One of the questions I was going to ask is what your biggest challenge is. Is that your biggest challenge to keep people motivated and transition it successfully? EUGENE: Maybe, right now yes. If you think about a general engineering manager’s life, I would talk about different challenges, but when you are in a transition, and it doesn’t really matter on which side of the transition you are, it’s always about how to make extra effort to keep people motivated. Because when you transition a product that you’ve worked for a long time, it’s always important to feel that the effort, years, and hard work you put in a product is not lost. It’s still there. What I like about Xero culture, I can see that even with transitioning product development back to New Zealand, they still will be successful products. The products will continue to grow, provide good services to small businesses. I think that’s what motivates people to come to the office and continue to transition the knowledge. Good question by the way. What’s your background and how did you get into management? Vidal: That’s great. That must be very interesting to have to do that when the people know that work is going away. I think that’s a good approach you have to it. We’ll get back to the general challenge of management. I would like to hear that. I know your background. I know you worked for example at Intuit for a long time. You worked at Chariot. Maybe you can talk a little about your background and how did you transition into management? EUGENE: I have a really typical for engineer manager path. I worked more than 20 years as an engineer. Honestly I didn’t really want to go into management. I was really happy to be one of lead engineers and working hard on engineering challenges. At the same time I was kind of pushedinto management position. Pretty typical where a new engineering manager would say, “Oh, you know what? You want me to be a manager? Fine. I’ll continue doing engineering and I do some management on the side.” I’m lucky. I had really complicated first few years. I got in a lot of troubles.