Interview with Ákos Kapui, VP of Engineering at Shapr3D. He talks about running an engineering organization in hypergrowth, doubling its employee count every year. Pick up his tips, tricks, and learn from his experience as he goes into detail on recruitment, decision making at scale, and planning while in hypergrowth.In this interview we're covering:Challenges in hypergrowthFinding the right employeesKey moments for a startup in hypergrowthScaling management as the organization growsPlanning hypergrowthPreparations for projected growthExcerpt from the interview:"Startups often don't recognize that the teams in the frontline should make their own decisions. The top leaders are far from the problem, their insight is limited, and their knowledge of the ground level work may be outdated. Micromanagement has its place, but it often leads to bad decisions.As you grow from 20 people to 40 and 100, you need to start making decisions differently. As a high level leader, your job is to help your employees make decisions, show them how to align a good decision, spot a bad one, and help them learn from their mistakes.Cities don’t involve the prime minister in details, and the frontline workers make the big decisions. The problem is that people lack experience in making decisions quickly, sticking with them, learning from them, and taking responsibility for them."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Taavi Rehemägi, co-founder and CEO of Dashbird. He tells the story of founding Dashbird, and what it took for him to go from software engineer to CEO. Learn how he built his network and found success in a completely different role!In this interview we're covering:How they came up with the idea of DashbirdChallenges of going from engineer to CEOEssential skills for a CEOHow his engineer background made him a better CEOHow he improved the skills necessary to be a CEONetworking tipsExcerpt from the interview:"A CEO has to continuously learn just like a software engineer. My background in engineering helped me with the following:Iterating different solutionsSetting expectations toward solutionsLearning from past activitiesTracking variablesThe first years of a new tech company are about learning what strategy is viable on your market. Your best bet is using data and making logical decisions. Engineers are good at this."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Gergely Hodicska "Felhő", VP of Engineering at Bitrise. We take a deep dive with him into leadership soft skills and his story about finding his weaknesses and turning them into superpowers. We cover common weaknesses, methods to improve yourself and others around you, and more.In this interview we're covering:Importance of soft skills in engineering leadershipEssential leadership soft skillsStory about building up leadership soft skillsPractices to improve leadership soft skillsCommon challenges for engineering managersHelping direct reports improve their leadership skillsIntegrating leadership soft skills into your engineering cultureExcerpt from the interview:"I had a heated argument with a friend of mine at Ustream, and he told me, “This is why I don’t like working with you.” At first, I thought, I’m just trying to find the best solution, but really I was defending my ego in that conversation.Moments like that made me realize that I should improve, and research why I react the way I do in certain situations. That’s when I started to learn about my psychological drivers.The first step I took was learning about personality types. This didn’t give me a lot of answers, but it helped me understand why others are stupid..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jerie Shaw, Senior Technical Program Manager at Shopify about building a remote onboarding process to suit the needs of remote software engineers. Coming up with new ways to get developers familiar with the job, keep energy and engagement high, and integrate them into the team while they're often continents apart.This is how Shopify deals with onboarding remotely.In this interview we're covering:Differences between remote onboarding and in-person onboardingMethods to integrate new hires into a group remotelyStakeholders in the remote onboarding of new hiresBreakdown of Shopify's remote onboarding processTracking the progress of new hiresMistakes when setting up the remote onboarding processExcerpt from the interview:"Solving problems together energizes people. On the other hand, spending an entire day on a video call drains their energy. Knowing this, we redesigned the onboarding experience to be active, synchronous, and hybrid.We give a group of new employees a real challenge, like ship a dashboard or build a data pipeline. They work on it together at the same time. We provide them with support structures like a virtual pod for better collaboration, and experts on the topic to answer their questions via Slack.This gives them a sense of being with a group and working on an interesting problem without being trapped in a video call for eight hours straight."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with John Ford, VP of Engineering and Site Leader at LogMeIn about his management framework to turn around underachieving teams and improve overall team performance. Learn from his practical tips and tricks while listening to some of the stories from his decades worth of engineering leadership experience!In this interview we're covering:Assessing team performanceVelocity goals for a productive engineering teamFocus points for underperforming teamsPeople improvementsProcess improvementsTechnical improvementsA story about turning around an underachieving teamBonus adviceExcerpt from the interview:"My advice for engineering managers and leaders is to keep an open mind because there might be many reasons for suboptimal performance. There are lots of differences between companies in engineering culture, team history, management, etc.If you’ve been running your team for a while, and the performance is dropping off, the reason is often a lack of clarity around the high-level objectives. In this case, you need to link the product or company strategy to the daily work of the team, and to provide direction about the higher-level strategy. Consider these questions:What's important for my manager?What’s the team doing..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Balázs Balázs, former Engineering Manager at Facebook about the knowledge sharing strategies he's used over the years with his engineering teams. You'll get tips, tricks and real stories from behind the scenes about how knowledge sharing works with real people, rather than how it should work in an ideal situation.In this interview we're covering:Picking the right methods for sharing knowledge in your teamThe best knowledge sharing methods in engineering teamsThe rules of using documentationThe best methods to help junior engineers growOnboarding software engineers to your teamMaking time for knowledge sharingTools for knowledge sharing in engineering teamsEncouraging engineers to partake in knowledge sharingThe key to Facebook's success in sharing knowledgeExcerpt from the interview:"Facebook has offices all over the world and employees get to travel to other offices for free with business reasons. As it turns out, software engineers are very innovative when it comes to figuring out business reasons for free travel.My team was based in London, and we worked with a team in New York for a while. We were struggling with effectively analyzing data. One of my engineers came up with the idea to fly our team to New York, and hold a data week, where the two teams analyze data together.I'm pretty sure that the motivation was to get a free week in New York. Still, it was the most productive week we’d had for a long time. It took a lot of preparation, but people didn’t mind, because the traveling made it fun.This is just an example; there are far more affordable ways to make knowledge sharing fun..."Click here to read the full interview!

Sarah Milstein and Tanisha Barnett, both from Mailchimp, discuss the importance of skip level meetings in engineering leadership. They cover topics like the definition and purpose of skip level meetings, choosing participants, keeping track of content, icebreakers, and advice for new leaders. The podcast also explores the benefits of skip level meetings with interns and the impact on leadership development.

Interview with Jurgen Appelo, leadership speaker, writer and entrepreneur. He is an expert on the topic of managing teams to maximize happiness, which heavily bolsters productivity. Learn his tips, tricks and strategies in making it happen, and make your own team happier so you all win.In this interview we're covering:Connection between happiness and performancePrerequisites for high performanceCreate a company culture based on experimentationMethods for managers to learn their team's needsSurveys and measuring team happinessThe process to build a management system for happinessSigns of a happy teamMethods to engage employees to take action for their happinessExcerpt from the interview:"There isn’t one process to manage for happiness.The best way is to think outside the box and to do the things you enjoy and others might enjoy as well. Here are some examples of what I did as an engineering manager:I invited people for dinner at my house and surprised them with the fact that we would cook together.I put a bell in the office..."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Gergely Orosz, self-employed author of 'The Tech Resume Inside Out', former Engineering Manager at Uber.He shares unique insight into the process of hiring for a big tech company. We also look at tips to stand out from the crowd with your software engineer resume, and what companies should do differently to find talent more effectively.Giveaway ended.In this interview we're covering:The importance of a software engineer resumeThe goal of a software engineer CVHighlights in a great tech resumeThe resume review process in a big tech companyThe role of referrals in the tech industryWhy you get no response to your applicationRemaining objective for hiring managersImproving the hiring process in a tech companyExcerpt from the interview:"Before COVID-19, resumes were less important for software engineers, especially with a few years of experience. Engineers new to the industry have always needed a resume that represented them fairly. But COVID-19 changed the way we work, and it made resumes more important than before.The challenge when recruiting engineers, especially with a few years of experience, used to be to get them interested in your company. This was true even for Uber.COVID-19 unfortunately brought layoffs, even to the tech world, and resulted in fewer companies hiring. Now these people are applying for jobs, and they need to submit a CV."Click here to read the full interview!

Interview with Jonathan Rasmusson, ex-Spotify engineer and author of 'Competing with Unicorns' about the key elements of making the Spotify model work.Squads, tribes and guilds are the essential elements of the Spotify model, but there is a lot more to it. Leadership is the force that drives all the elements, makes the model come alive and deliver a great product. You get all the answers here about how that works.Giveaway ended.In this interview we're covering:Comparing traditional organizations vs the Spotify modelThe keys to effective engineering in the Spotify modelWhat makes the squad system successfulContribute as an engineering managerRole of engineering leaders in the Spotify modelIncentives to keep up developer motivationPerformance management in the Spotify modelHow to improve when you're missing deadlinesExcerpt from the interview:"In 2014, Sony came to Spotify to set up a partnership, because their music service was shutting down. This instantly became our biggest project, and a lot of squads started working on making Spotify work on PlayStation. I was coaching a team working on this.At one point, I realized that the launch date was coming up, and we were behind schedule. I thought we were in trouble. At the next all-hands meeting, I told everyone that the deadline was in jeopardy.In any other company I’ve been part of before, this would have been a big deal. Instead, the program director said, “Thank you for the information. We'll let the team tell us if they think there's a problem.” Then she simply moved on.This left me puzzled, because I expected the CEO and everyone else to get up in arms and demand action. This showed me how much trust Spotify puts in their teams."Click here to read the full interview!