Tech Lead Journal

“Technology is really impacting our daily life, sometimes without us knowing, and it’s important that we start understanding or relearning what is ABCDEFG. In the future of business, or future of work, there are many use cases of technology that are non-traditional, non-techie people need to learn and know how to use them." Jim Lim is the founder of the socio-techno network 59stVentures, the healthcare sector lead for NCS, and previously the CEO of Good Doctor Technology. In this episode, I had a fun conversation with Jim to redefine ABCDEFG, which is a shorthand for a set of modern immersive technologies that are rapidly affecting our daily life, sometimes without us even knowing. ABCDEFG stands for AI, Blockchain, Cloud, Data, Ecosystem, and 5G. Jim also shared with me his unique multicultural career journey and the reasons why he started 59stVentures as a way to pay it forward and contribute back to the society. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:25] Embracing Multicultural - [00:11:15] Pay It Forward - [00:15:10] The 59 Number - [00:19:43] Redefining ABCDEFG - [00:21:57] A = AI - [00:26:15] B = Blockchain - [00:36:40] C = Cloud - [00:42:33] D = Data - [00:47:41] E = Ecosystem - [00:49:56] FG = 5G - [00:54:39] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:01:50] _____ Jim Lim’s Bio Jim is the founder of 59stVentures, a socio-techno network focussing in leveraging expertise, experiences and connections of senior executives globally to contribute back to the society. He is currently also the healthcare sector lead for NCS tasked to build digital healthcare ecosystem and to expand NCS footprint regionally. Jim also sits in the board of startup companies in China, Taiwan, Singapore and India. Prior to this, he was CEO for Good Doctor Technology, a Joint-Venture between PingAn Good Doctor from China and Grab. He joined the company as first employee to setup the entire business in Indonesia and Singapore. Jim is currently also adjunct lecturer for NUS, SUSS, Huawei University and FinTech Academy. Before Good Doctor, Jim was the Global Senior Director in Group Chief Transformation Office in Huawei Technologies and its Regional Chief Technology Officer for strategic digital transformation projects in APAC, focussing on digital transformation cross industries (e.g. Telco, Smart Nation/City, Retail, Healthcare, Logistics, Agriculture), domains (e.g. Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Mobile Money, Connectivity) and aspects (e.g. Business Modelling, Customer Journey, Design Thinking, Org. Change). Follow Jim: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-lim-shien-min-pmp-ba537a1/ Email – shienmin@gmail.com Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/39.

“Tech Capital is about creating something that enables things that weren’t possible before, that genuinely helps the business and enables other people in your organization, and those are the kind of stuffs that eventually end up paying long term." Aviv Ben-Yosef is an advisor and consultant for tech executives to help them create world-class engineering teams. In this episode, Aviv shared with me in-depth about “The Tech Executive Operating System“, his latest book for first-timers and veteran tech leaders to maximize their leverage, which includes the axioms of tech leadership, producing Tech Capital to drive value vs obsessing about tech debt, shifting the engineers mindset to create impact by adopting “Coders Without Borders“ mentality, moving up the decision stream to increase leverage, how to create impact within the organization, importance of product mastery, and organizational debt. Towards the end, Aviv also explained why we should not forget to put more emphasis on product-oriented engineers, instead of principal engineers who focus solely on just the tech. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:50] Tech Executive Operating System - [00:08:00] Why Does the Company Need You - [00:09:40] Executive Leadership is Long-Term - [00:12:30] Tech Capital - [00:14:00] Coders Without Borders - [00:17:49] First 100 Days - [00:20:43] Moving Upstream - [00:25:48] Balancing the Time - [00:32:55] Management by Walking Around - [00:37:06] Creating Impact - [00:39:58] R&D - [00:45:05] Organizational Debt - [00:51:06] Conway’s Law and Microservices - [00:54:15] Product Mastery - [00:55:24] Product 101 - [00:58:29] Less Principal Engineers, More Product Engineers - [01:01:39] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:03:48] _____ Aviv Ben-Yosef’s Bio Aviv Ben-Yosef is an advisor, coach, and consultant for executives and leaders throughout the tech industry. In his consulting business, he helps companies worldwide, ranging from day-old startups to Fortune 100 companies. Aviv’s mission is to help create world-class engineering teams that achieve the unthinkable by upgrading tech from a tool to part of the strategy, amassing Tech Capital, and creating Coders without Borders. In his work as a consultant, Aviv has developed a unique approach to aid software organizations’ leadership. Aviv’s online writing has reached over six million readers, and his publishing includes multiple blogs, podcasts, videos, and online courses. He is the author of The Tech Executive Operating System, a book for first-timers and veteran tech leaders who seek to maximize their leverage. Follow Aviv: Website – https://avivbenyosef.com/ The Tech Exec Podcast – https://www.techexecpodcast.com/ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/avivbenyosef/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/avivby Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/38.

“Lean Inception is about aligning a group of people to be successful. It’s about aligning the vision and the MVP from three different angles: the business, the users, and the engineers, so they align and decide what is the very first step." Paulo Caroli is a Principal consultant at Thoughtworks, co-founder of Agile Brazil, and the author of the best-seller Lean Inception and the recent FunRetrospectives. In this episode, Paulo shared in-depth with me about Lean Inception, its connection with Lean Startup movement, the similarities and differences with Design Sprint, how to create a good product vision, MVP canvas, and also the importance of shifting our mindset from project to product. In the second half of our conversation, Paulo shared his latest contribution, FunRetrospectives, which brings together many techniques to conduct effective retrospectives. He explained the reasoning behind the fun techniques, shared some of those fun activities, and also emphasized the importance of psychological safety and facilitation skills in a retrospective. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:43] Lean Inception - [00:08:35] Lean Inception and Design Sprint - [00:14:06] Lean Inception Frequency - [00:17:18] Lean Inception Agenda - [00:20:33] Product Vision - [00:29:41] MVP Canvas - [00:33:50] Fun Retrospectives - [00:38:44] Retrospective Celebration Activities - [00:41:28] Lightweight Environment - [00:44:52] Retrospective Check-in - [00:48:29] Facilitation Skills - [00:50:24] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:47] _____ Paulo Caroli’s Bio Paulo Caroli is the author of the best-seller Lean Inception: how to align people and build the right product. His most recent contribution is FunRetrospectives, which brings together numerous techniques to conduct effective retrospectives. As a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, he helped transform dozens of organisations worldwide. Follow Paulo: Website – https://www.caroli.org/en/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/paulocaroli LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulocaroli/ FunRetrospectives – https://www.funretrospectives.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/37.

“A high-performing team is one that gets to spend almost all of their time solving interesting problems that move the business forward. Not doing a lot of toil. Not working on things they have to do in order to get to the things they want to do." Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, the observability tools for engineering teams to debug production systems faster and smarter. In this episode, we discussed in-depth about building high-performing teams by having observability and CI/CD as the critical pillars to support it. We opened up our discussion discussing what observability is and how Honeycomb helps to provide observability for distributed systems compared to the other monitoring tools available. Charity then shared her strong views on how to build high-performing teams by focusing on Continuous Delivery, the sociotechnical aspects of the team, and the 5th key metric as her addition to the widely known DORA metrics. Towards the end, we discussed the engineer/manager pendulum, how one should be conscious about it, and that we should not treat going into management as a promotion or a one-way street. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:04] Observability and Monitoring - [00:10:52] Observability Mindset - [00:13:08] Implementing Observability - [00:15:09] Observability Pillars - [00:18:35] Honeycomb Overview - [00:20:06] Honeycomb Cool Use Cases - [00:27:02] Writing Custom Database - [00:28:40] Building High-Performing Team - [00:31:20] 15-Min Continuous Delivery - [00:34:45] Testing in Production - [00:36:05] Shipping is Company’s Heartbeat - [00:38:47] Sociotechnical Aspect of Teams - [00:41:01] Good Traits to Look for in Engineers - [00:43:17] The 5th Key Metric - [00:45:51] Engineer/Manager Pendulum - [00:48:45] Effective Manager - [00:54:21] Concerns on Manager/IC Pendulum - [00:55:19] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:56:49] _____ Charity Majors’s Bio Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, provider of tools for engineering teams to debug production systems faster and smarter. Previously, Charity ran infrastructure at Parse and was an engineering manager at Facebook, where she ran next-generation distributed systems at scale. Charity is the co-author of Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly), and is devoted to a world where every engineer is on call and nobody thinks on call sucks. Follow Charity: Twitter – https://twitter.com/mipsytipsy LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/charity-majors/ Website – https://charity.wtf/ Honeycomb – https://www.honeycomb.io/ O11ycast – https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (incl. quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/36.

“One of the technological opportunities that we have taken during the pandemic has been transforming the mindset to thinking on products, to thinking on platforms. And I think that’s the foundations of the super app." Pablo Sanz is the CTO of AirAsia. In this episode, Pablo shared with me the tough challenges that AirAsia had to go through during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and how it has to pivot and transform in order to survive. He explained what the AirAsia leadership team did to align the company vision and steer the business and technology roadmaps during the challenging situations while keeping the people’s morale high. Pablo also shared the recent AirAsia ambition and transformation as a company from being a traditional airline company into becoming a digital platform and ASEAN super app, and how he envisioned to build a data-driven product engineering culture within AirAsia and to continue coming up with innovations based on data-driven hypotheses. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:09] Changing Career into Tech - [00:07:08] AirAsia Recent COVID Challenges - [00:11:18] Transforming Into Super App Platform - [00:14:03] Aligning Vision - [00:18:31] AirAsia Data Platform - [00:21:02] Aligning Technology Roadmap with Business - [00:27:07] Keeping The Morale High - [00:29:35] Critical Things of a Super App - [00:33:24] Integrating with Partners - [00:35:38] Frequency of Deployments - [00:38:59] Data-Driven Product Engineering Culture - [00:40:45] From Gut-Based to Data-Driven - [00:42:50] Recent Interesting A/B Tests - [00:46:30] Embracing Innovation Mindset - [00:48:19] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:52] _____ Pablo Sanz’s Bio Pablo Sanz is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at AirAsia. He is a product and technology enthusiast, leading an awesome team to scale all product, design, engineering, and data, while transforming an airline into the definitive ASEAN super app. Follow Pablo: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-sanz-69409619 Email – pablosanz@airasia.com Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/35.

“Developer productivity is not lines of code written. It’s not the number of commits. It has to do with the ultimate problem you’re solving and the users that you’re solving it for." Beyang Liu is the CTO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, a developer tools company that brings universal code search capability for developers. In this episode, Beyang shared with me his perspective about developers’ productivity and how we should go about measuring developers’ productivity, including the danger of measuring productivity by using proxy metrics. We then discussed the rationale for universal code search and why he thinks there is a massive need for it to increase developers’ productivity, borrowing from his experience working at Google, and especially to cope in the current era of “Big Code”. Towards the end, Beyang shared how individuals can improve their personal developer productivity and what the future state of developer tools would look like. Also, listen to some of the Sourcegraph cool use cases that Beyang shared based on the feedback given by his customers. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:53] Developers Productivity - [00:07:47] Measuring Developers Productivity - [00:12:15] The Danger of Proxy Metrics - [00:16:51] Productivity in Enterprise vs Startup - [00:23:40] Rationale for Code Search - [00:26:54] Code Search Case Studies - [00:33:16] Other Useful Developer Tools - [00:38:32] Ex-Googler’s Guide to Developer Tools - [00:42:20] Improving Personal Developer Productivity - [00:46:07] Future State of Developer Tools - [00:49:32] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:28] _____ Beyang Liu’s Bio Beyang is the CTO and cofounder of Sourcegraph, a developer tools company bringing universal code search to every developer in open source and every software organization, including leading companies like Uber, Dropbox, Yelp, PayPal, Cloudflare, and more. Follow Beyang: Twitter – https://twitter.com/beyang LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/beyang-liu/ Website – https://beyang.org Sourcegraph – https://sourcegraph.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/34.

“Simplicity is an experience that makes things easy for users that leaves positive emotions." Jin Kang Møller is an award-winning customer experience strategist, design practitioner, and the author of “The Simplicity Playbook for Innovators“. She was the driving force behind FRANK by OCBC and OCBC OneWealth app that won her a Singapore Good Design Mark Gold award in 2017. In this episode, Jin shared with me her insightful perspectives on simplicity and how simplicity naturally leads to innovation. She shared with me in-detail her powerful framework, “Simplicity Diamond“, that is extremely powerful to help us embrace simplicity in dealing with different aspects of business practices, products and services. She also shared her point of view on agile and design thinking, and how we can combine both methodologies together in order to solve the right problems for our customers and users. And don’t miss her fun sharing on “pain sponge” that provides a great mindset analogy for delivering better customer experience! Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:08] Challenges Introducing Customer Experience - [00:11:38] Simplicity - [00:16:24] Simplicity Drives Innovation - [00:18:31] Simplicity Diamond - [00:23:04] Get Fueled by Empathy - [00:29:01] Dancing with Complexity - [00:35:20] Focus - [00:38:33] Speak Human - [00:43:12] Designing Lovable Experience - [00:46:54] How to Embark on Simplicity Journey - [00:52:01] Personal Simplicity - [00:54:00] Agile and Design Thinking - [00:55:42] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:59:12] _____ Jin Kang Møller’s Bio Jin Kang Møller is an award-winning customer experience strategist, design practitioner and highly-acclaimed executive trainer. She held design leadership positions to creative value and bottom-line impact for twenty years in the large financial services firms such as OCBC Bank in Singapore and Credit Suisse in Switzerland, and has led user experience consulting services for pharmaceutical companies. Her design methodologies have helped wealth management, private & retail banking and insurance businesses to drive successful customer experience and digital transformation initiatives, and won her a Singapore Good Design Mark Gold award in 2017. She is the author of The Simplicity Playbook for Innovators, a battle-tested strategy and the collection of tools to drive innovation, humanise digital transformation and to win customers’ hearts. Follow Jin: Website – https://designfulcompany.com/ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jinkangmoller Twitter – https://twitter.com/JinZwicky Design Thinking, Innovation, Leadership at SMU Academy – https://academy.smu.edu.sg/design-thinking/about/index.html Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/33.

“The CIO is a person who uses IT to facilitate and enable a company so that it becomes more competitive, and it becomes more profitable." Alex Siow is currently a Professor in the School of Computing at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Director of NUS’s Advanced Computing for Executives. With a career that spans over four decades, Alex Siow is well-known as Singapore’s first CIO in the 1990s. He recently published a book, “Leading with IT: Lessons from Singapore’s First CIO”, which is written for the next generation of CIOs, CTOs, and other executives who work closely with technology that offers practical tips, case studies, and personal insights that shed light on the central competencies required of CIOs. In this episode, Alex shared with me his insights on the important role of a CIO, the traits of a good CIO, and how a CIO manages priority, risk and governance. Alex also shared with me his inspiring leadership philosophy and the true essence of servant leadership. Towards the end, Alex shared his views on the future of technology and remote working. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:52] “Leading with IT“ Book - [00:09:43] Role of CIO - [00:12:57] CIO and Other Title Variants - [00:14:46] CIO’s Job of Supporting the Business - [00:16:50] Good CIO Traits - [00:18:41] Aligning Business Vision, Mission, and Values - [00:21:48] Keeping Up With Technologies and Talents - [00:24:49] CIO Time Organization - [00:28:47] On Prioritization - [00:32:13] Managing Governance - [00:33:51] Outsourcing - [00:36:35] On Grooming Technical Leadership - [00:39:49] Leadership Philosophy - [00:42:24] Servant Leadership - [00:44:07] Future of Technology - [00:45:04] Remote Work - [00:48:44] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:31] _____ Alex Siow’s Bio Prof Alex Siow is currently Professor (Practice) in the School of Computing, NUS and concurrently Director of the Advanced Computing for Executives Centre, the Strategic Technology Management Institute (STMI) and the Centre for Health Informatics. Prof Alex’s expertise is in IT Governance, Project and Portfolio Management, Enterprise Risk Management, Management of Emerging Technology, Technology Roadmap Planning and Cloud Security. Alex recently published a best-selling book, “Leading with IT: Lessons from Singapore’s First CIO”, which was released in January 2021 by John Wiley and Sons. Follow Alex: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-siow-5213b4/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/32.

“Your digital agenda is your business agenda. You got to be very deliberate and intentional about your transformation journey. You do it because it’s the right thing to do, and you got to figure out what is that right thing for your organization." Johnny Wijaya is the Head of Bank of New York (BNY) Mellon APAC Innovation Center. In this episode, we learn from Johnny the sustainable innovation story at BNY Mellon, being an internationally renowned financial institution for over 237 years. Being at the forefront of innovation within the bank, Johnny shared the latest BNY Mellon digital innovation journey and the challenges that the bank had to overcome to rewire the legacy mindset and culture within. Johnny elaborated further what it means to be digital at BNY Mellon, its innovation playbook, and his advice on digital transformation. He also shared his personal transformation journey that he had to go through to put the innovation mindset at his core, which plays a critical part in his successful innovation leadership. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:45] BNY Story of Innovation - [00:13:08] Challenges to Innovation - [00:16:30] Dealing with Legacy Mindset and Culture - [00:21:47] Advice on Digital Transformation - [00:23:57] What It Means to be Digital - [00:26:39] Innovation Playbook - [00:28:46] Importance of Integrating with Ecosystem - [00:32:46] Transforming Personally - [00:36:54] COVID Innovation Acceleration - [00:38:10] BNY Innovations - [00:40:14] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:43:05] _____ Johnny Wijaya’s Bio Johnny Wijaya has over 18 years of experience in business and digital transformation from developing digital innovation strategy, to driving strategic initiatives and blueprint execution. He is currently the Director and Head of BNY Mellon APAC Innovation Center. Being a 237-year-old internationally renowned financial institution, BNY Mellon plays a critical role in providing infrastructure to global markets. Over his 7+ years at the company, Johnny has expanded and strengthened digital capabilities to execute business priorities in APAC. In the last 2 years, he has led the APAC Innovation Center located in Singapore. In addition, he also sits in the BNYM’s Enterprise Innovation Leadership team. This team focuses on driving rapid execution of ideas and concepts while creating an environment that accelerates and promotes product and service innovation. Follow Johnny: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/johnny-wijaya-1338605/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/31.

“Be the supply to the unmet demand. Things that you could make a huge difference on if only you just go and do it. You don’t need to seek permission. That’s how you end up growing and being noticed." Annie Vella is a technologist with almost two decades of hands-on software engineering and technology leadership experience. In this episode, Annie shared her engineering career dilemma story, why she resisted getting into management early in her career. She highlighted why women get singled out for their people skills and thus get offered management role early in their career. Annie also shared with me her unique approach to helping others grow in their career and skills through self-reflection and storytelling, including some of her favorite self-reflection questions. Towards the end, Annie shared her experience at MessageBird where she led the rapid growth of her team organically within a short time, and the importance of promoting engineering leaders from within. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:13] Resisting Management Early - [00:12:25] Tech Career Milestones - [00:17:34] Working with Underperforming Lead - [00:22:37] Women and Early Management Role - [00:26:16] Growing Through Self-Reflection and Storytelling - [00:30:08] Self-Reflection Questions - [00:34:51] Lessons Learned from MessageBird - [00:39:34] Promoting Leaders from Within - [00:46:46] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:47] _____ Annie Vella’s Bio Annie Vella is a technologist with a career in hands-on software engineering and technology leadership spanning almost two decades. Having worked in a range of business domains across four countries both remote and on-site, Annie empowers engineering teams to work smarter by cultivating a curiosity mindset, driving engineering excellence and inspiring engineers to grow through self-reflection and storytelling. Annie recently left her role as Engineering Manager at MessageBird in Amsterdam to return to her home country New Zealand, where she has joined Westpac as a Tech Area Lead in Auckland. Follow Annie: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/annievella/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/codefrenzy Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/30.