Interview with Steve Tauber, CTO at madewithlove. He shares his secrets to productive IT audits from preparation to execution. Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The basics of tech auditsDifferent approaches to IT auditsMaking the most out of the IT audit processFlexmail's tech audit storyWhat auditors observeHow to prepare for an IT auditExcerpt from the interview:"We were teaching people how to communicate in a more agile way, and to collaborate effectively. We made sure the code was well-tested, and that everything was documented so we didn’t lose important information.It was more about team shaping and making sure that the work was flowing in a proper way. Of course, there were technical challenges as well, but those were manageable.Since then, the company has grown immensely. We worked with them for a long time, but we’ve stepped away, and they’re thriving.For us, this is success. They took the lessons to heart, they understood our philosophy, and they continue to build on it."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Pau Minoves, CTO at Typeform. He talks about leaders' role in managing culture change in the workplace during rapid growth in a company's scaleup phase.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Establishing the right environment for growthCulture change management as a leaderBenefits of strong company cultureChallenges of culture change in the workplaceIntroducing new standards Importance of team autonomyScaling tipsExcerpt from the interview:"When I joined Typeform, there was 20% time dedicated for personal projects on Fridays. It wasn’t working. People try to do things, but there is always somebody missing, and you lose context from Friday to Friday. So we tried a different approach. Instead of working on those projects on Fridays, we dedicated the last 10 days of the quarter to them. Suddenly, people got their Fridays back to do their normal work. On the other hand, they dedicate all their attention to their side projects in these dedicated sprints. During the side project sprints,  on Mondays, we kicked off ideas, and had the demo on the second Friday. It blew our minds: without even asking, around 60% of the projects were product oriented."Click here to read the full interview!

State of Engineering Management 2022 reportInterview with Dylan Hansen, Senior Director of Engineering Enablement & Engagement at Salesforce dicussing the results of the State of Engineering Management 2022 report. We analyze the most interesting findings to get more insight and commentary from a fellow engineering leader.In this interview we're covering:Self-improvement in leadershipHiring and retentionPeople and performance managementEngineering brandRemote workSign up for the Level-up Engineering newsletter!

Interview with David Siegel, CEO at Meetup. He talks about ways the leaders at Meetup and he has been utilizing to motivate employees and combat the Great American Resignation.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Takeaways from the pandemicImproving employee retention and motivationCommunication in a hybrid environmentSupporting leaders at MeetupImproving work-life balanceBuilding a communityCommunicating your mission rightExcerpt from the interview:"I received an email a few days ago from a Meetup organizer. The subject line said, ”Thanks for Meetup.”The email read, "David, I'm grateful for Meetup. My mom is in the hospital, and she's probably going to die. Because of all the great friends I've made through running my groups, I'm not alone. People come over to support me at this difficult time. Thank you!"This is a real story. Every few weeks, I get a few powerful emails like this. As a leader, you need to connect with your customers, and you need to find ways to tell these stories to your team, so they connect with the customers as well."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Charles Roman, Technical Director at Respawn Entertainment. He talks about setting up, leading, and scaling the engineering team behind Respawns' upcoming Star Wars FPS with no official title yet.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:The path to Respawn EntertainmentAdapting to remote managementHiring video game engineersProcess changesUtilizing feedback in video game engineeringExcerpt from the interview:"Video game development is a cross-disciplinary process. You have artists, designers, and engineers, and you have to keep them aligned. For example, an artist may do something that impacts the performance of the game, so you have to get in front of these problems.This is difficult to manage with a team of 60 people. You can't have a conversation with each of them, so you have to rely on your engineers to gather information on the ground level. You need to create an environment for that and focus on building relationships with other department heads, so the information flow works on each level."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Zoe Sobin, Senior Engineering Manager at HubSpot. She tells her story of turning an engineering project into a centralized platform solution and how he managed communication, prioritization and every other challenge along the way.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Signs that you need a platformGetting buy-in for a platform productCommunication in platform engineeringPrioritization in platform engineeringNecessary skills for platform engineersExcerpt from the interview:"The original idea for our project was to have one place for all the core reports. It didn’t start out as a platform engineering project; we just realized along the way that we couldn’t easily plug other reports into one place. We needed to build an end-to-end tool, and we had an opportunity to turn it into a centralized platform that scaled across data types, report types and teams.We built a core reporting platform first, then we worked on our own customer facing applications on top of it. Afterwards, we started talking to teams that had point solutions for reporting about getting these supported by our infrastructure.The difficulty of building a tool for everyone is that it won’t be perfect for anyone. For example, the email team knows what type of reports their customers prefer, and the centralized tool may not fit their needs. In platform engineering, you have to compromise on some functions and build a central solution that works for 80-90% of use cases."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Anand Safi, Senior Engineering Leader at Mark43. He covers methods and metrics for building trust in virtual teams while telling his story of taking over a newly founded remote team and scaling it up.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Definition of trust in the workplaceDifferences between building trust in virtual teams vs the officeMethods for building trust in a virtual teamEncouraging team members to build trust among each otherMeasuring trust in a virtual teamFeedback channels in virtual teamsAnand's story of building trust in his virtual teamExcerpt from the interview:"At the organizational level, the metric can be transparency around communication. Once you’ve built trust with individuals, you can build organizational trust on the back of that.As an engineer, I used to think, “I wish leadership would tell us about every problem; there is no reason not to.” As a leader partaking in some of these conversations, I’ve had to realize how fluid strategic decisions are. I prefer going to my reports with concrete information rather than updates on discussions that may change by next week.I put effort into coaching my team to understand the leadership's position. I assure them that we’re working on a strategy, and I’ll make sure to update them when we have a plan to execute. Their reaction lets you know how much they trust the organization."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Robert C. Martin a.k.a. Uncle Bob. He explains his views and ideas about the need for a set of software engineering ethics, universal quality standards and how they may translate to reality.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Importance of ethicsApplying ethics to software engineeringCurrent ethical problems in the software industrySelling companies on software engineering ethicsCornerstones of software qualityThought experiments with software engineering ethicsRole of the individuals in creating software ethicsThe deadline on software engineering ethicsExcerpt from the interview:"Currently, software developers carry the lifeblood of civilization. Nothing can function without software, and developers' behavior isn’t in line with that responsibility. I want us programmers to behave in a stalwart way, and acknowledge our responsibility which is likely to keep growing.There have been high profile calamities caused by software over the past decades. Software developers need to start discussions about what may be done before a disaster happens that takes control out of our hands.I expect a disaster to happen eventually that overtakes politics and causes legislation to constrain the software industry. We need to get ahead of this and be ready with a code of ethics and a set of standards by the time the politicians come to regulate us."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Ankit Patel, SVP of Engineering at Foursquare. He explains how he realized that Foursquare's decision making process requires a rehaul, and what he did to completely restructure the entire organization to create more efficient decision making.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Organizational decision making issuesNew organization structureFinding the solutionRole of leadership in rebuilding organizational decision makingGetting buy-in from the teamsChanges in hiringCommon mistakes in organizational decision making Excerpt from the interview:"The challenge was enabling fast decision making based on the customers’ needs. Foursquare has been in hypergrowth, and we’d been developing teams based on profession. You often had to cross VP boundaries just to discuss a product feature, and our products require a lot of this type of collaboration.We were slow to innovate, which made it difficult to drive change. You needed at least three to four teams to work together to get anything done. This caused a cascading effect where delays in one team impacted other teams as well.This also made prioritization difficult. When you had an emerging idea, you often needed executive involvement to set up priorities. This slowed down innovation and the overall workflow."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Maura Kelly, VP of Engineering at Mailchimp about injecting customer obsession into software engineering. She details organizing an event to actualize customer obsession and promote it across every level of the company and shares everything she's learned along the way.Sign up to the Level-up Engineering newsletter!In this interview we're covering:Customer obsession in software engineeringCustomer obsession eventOrigins of the customer obsession eventGetting buy-in from leadershipGetting buy-in from software engineersFeedback for the customer obsession eventLasting changes on the development processPitfalls of customer obsession Excerpt from the interview:"This idea didn’t originate from one person. It came from different parts of the company. People on different teams and different levels started thinking about similar ideas, and we all came together and made it happen. It came from engineering, management, and from our support team.I had co-conspirators who helped me plan it out and make it happen. Shout out to Mehdi, Lee, Cal, and Ariana for all the help. They were working on their own pitches about similar ideas.We all got together and worked out the common patterns across our ideas that resulted in this event."Click here to read the full interview!