Tech Lead Journal

“With machines, you know there are limitations. You can’t go beyond that. You have to upgrade your machines. Or the technology changes. But with people, the interesting part is: if you get all the parts right, the sum of the parts will be definitely greater than adding them together." Ranganathan Balashanmugam is the co-founder and CTO of EverestEngineering. He is passionate about scaling and leading distributed teams, where most of us can relate to with the remote working becoming a norm nowadays. I had a pleasant conversation with him in this episode to discuss many strategies and thought leadership on how to lead a distributed team by taking parallel from distributed system, overcoming challenges of building a team with different culture, and how to nurture a team. We started with him sharing his career journey and interesting story of him conquering the Mount Everest Base Camp, where he gained some insights and inspiration throughout the trek. Ranga then shared what led him to take his first management role and developed strategies around scaling distribution teams over the years. We then discussed about hiring and onboarding, the concept of orchestration vs choreography when managing a team, and the qualities of an excellent leader. At the end, Ranga also shared about EverestEngineering and its differentiators to ensure good engineering quality for their clients. Listen out for: Ranganathan’s career journey - [00:06:16] Trip to Mount Everest - [00:08:19] How Ranga took management role - [00:12:55] Scaling distributed teams - [00:14:43] Onboarding new joiner - [00:26:23] Orchestration vs choreography - [00:31:01] What makes a good manager/leader - [00:36:41] EverestEngineering - [00:43:13] Ensuring good engineering quality - [00:47:09] Ranga’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:27] _____ Ranganathan Balashanmugam’s Bio Ranga has worked with globally distributed teams for the last fifteen years. He graduated as a civil engineer and became a developer for nearly eleven years. He worked on web, mobile, and distributed technologies to scale software. Later he picked up operations and engineering management at Aconex, where there were teams distributed in four different time zones. He is currently co-founder and CTO of EverestEngineering, which he scaled the organization to 80+ people in the last two years, in three other regions. He is passionate about scaling and leading distributed teams. Microsoft MVP for Data Platform - 2016, 2017. Experience in building two startups. Speaker at many international conferences and meetups Experience in building distributed high-performance teams and offices. Organizer of one of the top technology meetups - Hyderabad Scalability Meetup. Follow Ranga: Linkedin – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ranganathanb Twitter – https://twitter.com/ran_than Medium – https://medium.com/@ran_than SlideShare – https://www.slideshare.net/techmaddy Follow EverestEngineering: Website – https://everest.engineering 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/19.

“What I come to realize is that technology doesn’t move that fast. The fundamentals are roughly the same. It’s the fact that we don’t necessarily teach fundamentals. When you start to focus on the fundamentals, then you don’t mentally get attached to one particular implementation." Kelsey Hightower is one of the leading figures in open source, cloud computing, and Kubernetes. I’m extremely excited to have him with me sharing a lot of his insights around many things in tech. We started the conversation with what he has been doing recently—his involvement in serverless technologies and security landscape. Kelsey then shared his interesting career journey of how he got from working at fast food in high school to where he is at Google today. He also shared his advice on how one should learn and develop knowledge in the current fast changing technology landscape, and how he shifted his learning mindset to overcome impostor syndrome. Kelsey also discussed various latest updates on cloud, serverless technologies, and Kubernetes. He also shared how he has developed his fundamental understanding of certain technologies by learning them “the hard way” and publicly. We also covered his latest observation and views on microservices vs monolith. Last but not least, we close off the session with Kelsey’s Tech Lead Wisdom on his take around personal growth, learning, and his preferred way of leading by inspiring others. Listen out for: What Kelsey is up to - [00:06:39] Kelsey’s career journey - [00:10:15] Succeeding in tech from under-represented groups - [00:13:21] Understanding technology fundamentals - [00:16:45] Impostor syndrome - [00:21:19] On cloud latest and cloud native - [00:27:51] Twelve-Factor application - [00:34:00] Serverless latest - [00:36:14] Monolith vs microservices - [00:42:44] Learning things The Hard Way - [00:54:20] Kubernetes-ify everything - [01:02:15] Kubernetes resources - [01:08:54] Kelsey’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:12:13] _____ Kelsey Hightower’s Bio Kelsey Hightower has worn every hat possible throughout his career in tech, but most enjoys leadership roles focused on making things happen and shipping software. Kelsey is a strong open source advocate focused on building simple tools that make people smile. When he is not slinging Go code, you can catch him giving technical workshops covering everything from programming and system administration to his favorite Linux distro of the month. Follow Kelsey: Twitter – https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower Github - https://github.com/kelseyhightower 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/18.

“Asynchronous communication promotes flow. And flow is generally what we’re all looking for. Not only because it’s more productive. Not only it’s because it’s within this state that we produce the best work. It’s also within this state that we feel the most fulfilled." Gonçalo is the CTO of Doist, the remote-first company behind Todoist and Twist that has a mission of building the future of work by creating tools that promote more fulfilling ways to work and live. Doist has been a remote-first company practically since the founder started working on Todoist in 2007 and with its first remote hire in 2011. In this episode, I learned a lot from Gonçalo about Doist and its remote working history and culture, including some advantages and disadvantages of remote work. We also discussed at length about having asynchronous communication as the first preferred communication style instead of synchronous, and why it is such an important communication style to adopt in a remote team. Gonçalo then shares about Doist core values, the cornerstone of every single thing that Doist does as company, from creating processes to decision making and recruiting. Towards the end, Gonçalo also shares some engineering and technical practices that Doist does, especially the ones important for a successful remote team, including the importance of pre-allocation and prioritization. Listen out for: About Doist - [00:05:59] Gonçalo’s career journey - [00:06:52] Doist remote work history - [00:10:30] Remote work advantages & disadvantages - [00:13:01] Asynchronous vs synchronous - [00:18:53] Handling emergencies - [00:25:10] On meeting and real-time chat - [00:26:48] Hiring and onboarding - [00:30:38] Doist 5 core values - [00:39:01] Role of a manager - [00:41:07] Technical practices - [00:42:47] Prioritization - [00:48:55] Doist architecture - [00:54:04] Remote work resources - [00:55:48] Gonçalo’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:56:54] _____ Gonçalo Silva’s Bio Gonçalo is the CTO of Doist, creators of Todoist and Twist. He’s been working remotely for over a decade and managing remote teams for most of that time. He loves long-term ambition, asynchronous communication, and programming. Follow Gonçalo: Twitter – https://twitter.com/goncalossilva LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/goncalossilva/ Follow Doist: Website – https://doist.com/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/doist LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/doist/ YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/user/DoistApps Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/doistofficial Our Sponsors Are you a startup in software development which is less than 5 years old? If yes, our sponsor at JetBrains has a 50% startup discount offer which allows Startups to purchase multiple products and subscriptions for up to 10 unique licenses over a period of months. To find out more, go to https://www.jetbrains.com/store/startups. 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/17.

“Having the conversation within the business, the data science teams, and the technology teams about what problems are you trying to solve? What can AI do with the data that you have? Sometimes business comes with a lot of problems that are like science-fiction." Feng-Yuan is the co-founder and CEO of BasisAI, a Singapore-headquartered augmented intelligence software company that helps data-driven enterprises deploy AI responsibly. He has a vast experience in the tech sector, working with the Land Transport Authority Singapore to make public transport more efficient; and with GovTech pushing data initiatives for Singapore’s Smart Nation projects. In this episode, I talked to Feng-Yuan about responsible AI and how to build trust in artificial intelligence, including the possibilities, challenges and dangers that AI and ML offer to businesses. We began by talking about his company, BasisAI, which offers bespoke AI solutions that are built responsibly. Feng-Yuan explained why it’s important to differentiate between what is interesting and what is useful when it comes to AI trends. We also spoke at length about deepfake, the dangers that come with it, and how to prevent such instances. At the end, Feng-Yuan also shares some wisdom about effective communication in the age of AI and ML. Listen out for: BasisAI - [00:04:48] Feng-Yuan’s career journey - [00:06:23] Feng-Yuan’s interesting projects at GovTech - [00:11:57] The fear of AI/ML - [00:17:29] AI/ML current trends & challenges - [00:20:15] The danger of AI/ML - [00:23:07] Responsible AI - [00:25:00] Explainable AI - [00:28:24] Challenges for implementing AI - [00:30:14] Managing expectations for AI projects - [00:33:12] Productionizing AI - [00:35:07] Role of ML engineers in product team - [00:38:31] Data Scientist and ML Engineer - [00:41:03] Hyper-personalized AI - [00:43:16] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:50] _____ Liu Feng-Yuan’s Bio Feng-Yuan Liu is the co-founder and CEO of BasisAI, a Singapore-headquartered augmented intelligence software company that helps data-driven enterprises deploy AI responsibly. In his previous capacity, he was responsible for leading and driving Smart Nation data initiatives for the Singapore government, including setting up and growing the data science and AI capabilities within GovTech. Follow Feng-Yuan: Email – fengyuan@basis-ai.com LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/feng-yuan-liu-9b09aa42/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/fengyuanliu Follow BasisAI: Website – https://basis-ai.com LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/company/basis-ai/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/basis_ai Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/basisai/ Our Sponsors Are you a startup in software development which is less than 5 years old? If yes, our sponsor at JetBrains has a 50% startup discount offer which allows Startups to purchase multiple products and subscriptions for up to 10 unique licenses over a period of months. To find out more, go to https://www.jetbrains.com/store/startups. 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/16.

Gergely Orosz, an engineering lead and author of "The Tech Resume Inside Out," shares his invaluable experience transitioning from software engineer to manager at top companies like Uber and Skype. He discusses the crucial components of crafting an effective tech resume that grabs recruiters' attention. Gergely also reflects on Uber's fast-paced environment and challenges faced by engineers. Additionally, he delves into demystifying distributed systems and evolving architectural strategies, providing insights to enhance technical communication and collaborative decision-making.

“Organizations should never set up a central digital transformation office. It should be owned by everybody in the organization. It’s not a CIO’s job. It’s the CEO’s job." Richard Koh is the CTO of Microsoft Singapore who played a major part in the Office 365 founding team. In this episode, I had an inspiring discussion with him around his journey founding the Office 365, the challenges he faced, and on how to approach digital transformation adoption. Our conversation started with some interesting observations on how organizations in Singapore are adapting to the COVID-19 impact, followed by the unique organizational structure Microsoft has in regional aspects and the regional CTO scope in decision making and shaping of Microsoft’s product and culture. Richard also shares how the Office 365 team was structured to instil an independent yet collaborative environment, his viewpoints about technical product management and the importance of cloud technologies. Busting the myths of digital transformation, he provided some advice about how organizations should approach it. Last, Richard also shared about his external contributions to the community, including SGTech and some wisdom on continuous learning with a growth mindset. Listen out for: Impact of COVID - [00:05:59] Richard’s career journey - [00:07:56] Microsoft’s unique regional CTO structure & scope - [00:10:09] The region macro trends - [00:13:43] Founding Office 365 - [00:15:58] The art of Product Management - [00:24:09] Building Office 365 - [00:26:26] Importance of cloud - [00:30:06] Digital transformation adoption - [00:35:02] Community contributions and other interests - [00:40:34] Responsibility Tech - [00:45:01] Richard’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:45] _____ Richard Koh’s Bio Richard Koh is the CTO of Microsoft Singapore. In this role, he is responsible for engaging with key executive leaders across government, industry and academia; bringing in the macro technology landscape; and helping customers leverage technology innovations for their digital transformation. His focus areas include guiding technology policies, standards, legal and regulatory matters, as well as security, privacy and compliance decisions. Richard was part of the founding product team for Microsoft’s flagship productivity cloud services suite – Office 365. Follow Richard: Full bio – https://news.microsoft.com/en-sg/richard-koh/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/richardkoh LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/richardkoh/ Our Sponsors This episode is brought to you by JetBrains. Do you want to learn to code? Do you have friends who are looking to learn how to code? Our sponsors at JetBrains recently launched JetBrains Academy, an education platform that offers interactive, project-based learning combined with powerful, professional development tools. Advance your Java and Python skills, with more programming languages to come. To get an extended 3-month free trial on JetBrains Academy, go to https://techleadjournal.dev/jetbrains-academy. 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/14.

“Goal on the behaviors that matter. Don’t goal on your vanity metrics. Figure out what it is that, not just works for your product, but also for you as an individual." Crystal Widjaja is a startup growth advisor and a Forbes 30 Under 30. She was most recently the SVP of Business Intelligence and Growth for Gojek. She is also the co-founder of Generation Girl, a non-profit organization that introduces young girls to STEM. In this episode, I had a fascinating chat with Crystal on many things about startup and her exhilarating journey with Gojek as the first data hire. We started with the recent trends of the startup funding in US and Southeast Asia, and the impact that COVID has brought to the startup scenes. Crystal then shared her insightful tips on startup growth strategy, including the common pitfall startups need to avoid in their strategy. She also gave practical tips on how a startup can start its data analytics journey. We then talked about her recent Gojek career when she outlined her amazing journey building Gojek data team from one person (herself) to 200+ people, the challenges she had to go through and how she overcame them. Last, Crystal shared about Generation Girl and why it is an important cause to help Indonesian young girls to succeed in STEM. Listen out for: Crystal’s career journey - [00:06:04] Why Crystal quit Gojek and moved to VC - [00:09:26] Startup trends in US and SEA - [00:13:16] Impact of COVID to startup growth and funding - [00:20:10] Reforge - [00:25:56] Tips on startup growth strategy - [00:28:32] Strategy for building data analytics strategy - [00:36:55] Building Gojek data team as the first data hire - [00:45:54] Generation Girl - [00:59:30] Crystal’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:08:22] _____ Crystal Widjaja’s Bio Crystal Widjaja is a startup growth advisor, Reforge advisor partner, and Sequoia Scout in the SF Bay Area. Crystal has been recognized as a Forbes 30 Under 30 and was most recently the Senior VP of Business Intelligence and Growth for Gojek, the leading on-demand multi-service platform in Southeast Asia committed to empowering informal sectors and MSMEs through technology. She is also a co-founder of Generation Girl, a non-profit organization that aims to introduce young girls to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM). Follow Crystal: Website – https://www.crissyw.com/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/crystalwidjaja LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/crystalwidjaja/ Our Sponsors This episode is brought to you by JetBrains. Do you want to learn to code? Do you have friends who are looking to learn how to code? Our sponsors at JetBrains recently launched JetBrains Academy, an education platform that offers interactive, project-based learning combined with powerful, professional development tools. Advance your Java and Python skills, with more programming languages to come. To get an extended 3-month free trial on JetBrains Academy, go to https://techleadjournal.dev/jetbrains-academy. 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/13.

“You can run an organization where you communicate clearly, and you treat people fairly, and you try to set people up for success. I have seen it work, and I can make that happen, and I remember that it is possible." Hongyi is the Director of Open Government Products, a division of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. He leads an experimental team of engineers, designers, and product managers who build technology for the public good, such as Data.gov.sg, Parking.sg, FormSG, Go.gov.sg, and Isomer. In this episode, I had an inspiring chat with Hongyi about the Singapore government’s challenges in adopting new tech, including some major hurdles that he needed to overcome at the beginning. Hongyi then shared more about his team, Open Government Products (OGP), how he started the whole initiative, scaled it up, and importantly built some cool products that have brought tremendous impact to the public good. Hongyi also outlined his visions for OGP, that include open sourcing the products that his team has built for other governments to adopt and implement. He also touched on Singapore government’s challenges in terms of cloud adoption and hiring engineering talent. Do not miss Hongyi’s explanation on “bureaucratic deadlock” that he beautifully explained as one of the major challenges that he faced when starting OGP. Listen out for: Hongyi’s career journey - [00:04:36] Singapore government’s challenges in adopting new tech - [00:13:33] The biggest hurdles that Hongyi overcame at the beginning - [00:17:38] Open Government Products (OGP) - [00:21:04] How Open Government Products get approved - [00:24:08] Examples of Open Government Products and the impact - [00:25:38] How Hongyi scaled up OGP - [00:30:11] OGP vision - [00:31:30] Cloud adoption in Singapore government - [00:36:04] Singapore government’s talent challenge - [00:39:42] Hongyi’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:42:06] _____ Li Hongyi’s Bio Hongyi is the Director of Open Government Products, a division of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore. He leads an experimental team of engineers, designers, and product managers who build technology for the public good. Projects they work on include Parking.sg, Go.gov.sg, and RedeemSG. Prior to joining the public sector, Hongyi worked at Google on the distributed databases and image search teams. He previously attended MIT, where he obtained degrees in computer science and economics. In his free time, he works on personal projects like typographing.com and chatlet.com. Follow Hongyi: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/hongyi-li-16183230 Our Sponsors This episode is brought to you by JetBrains. Do you want to learn to code? Do you have friends who are looking to learn how to code? Our sponsors at JetBrains recently launched JetBrains Academy, an education platform that offers interactive, project-based learning combined with powerful, professional development tools. Advance your Java and Python skills, with more programming languages to come. To get an extended 3-month free trial on JetBrains Academy, go to https://techleadjournal.dev/jetbrains-academy. 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/12.

“Courage needs to be emphasized even more in software development context. That’s related with respect. We cannot expect the developers will be courageous, to tell the truth, to have integrity, unless the organization, the management respect them as a professional." Joshua initially started his career as a software developer, but over time became more interested in the people aspect of software development, which then brought his interest in Scrum. He has a decade of experience as a Scrum Master and has been working with senior leaderships to improve enterprise agility. In this episode, Joshua shared his views on how we can improve the people’s aspect of the software development by treating the people more humanely. He outlined how an enterprise should adopt agility, execute agile transformation, and use outcome instead of output to drive the behavior change. He also shared his observation on how the COVID pandemic brought forward the importance of adopting agility in business and personal life. Do not miss his anecdote on how he learned about self organization unexpectedly! Listen out for: Joshua’s career journey - [00:05:43] Values and principles of humane software development - [00:12:20] How enterprise can adopt agility - [00:17:34] Agility outcome examples - [00:20:40] How enterprise should do agile transformation - [00:24:03] Agility adoption during COVID - [00:33:37] Joshua’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:36:47] _____ Joshua Partogi’s Bio Joshua is a Scrum Master and also a Co-active Coach. He initially started his career as a software developer but became more interested about the people aspect of software development. He got interested in Scrum because it emphasises the people aspect. He has a decade of experience as a Scrum Master and now became more interested with working with senior leadership to improve the whole enterprise agility. Follow Joshua: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jpartogi/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/jpartogi YouTube – https://youtube.com/c/jpartogi Our Sponsors This episode is brought to you by JetBrains. Do you want to learn to code? Do you have friends who are looking to learn how to code? Our sponsors at JetBrains recently launched JetBrains Academy, an education platform that offers interactive, project-based learning combined with powerful, professional development tools. Advance your Java and Python skills, with more programming languages to come. To get an extended 3-month free trial on JetBrains Academy, go to https://techleadjournal.dev/jetbrains-academy. 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/11.

“As a leader, it’s not your responsibility to do. It’s your responsibility to teach and help your team to level up. Your job is to level up your team, so that you have a team of people who can do it better and faster." Trisha Gee is a Java Champion, author, and the leader of Java Developer Advocacy team at JetBrains. She has an extensive Java experience with expertise in Java high performance systems, and she is exceptionally passionate about sharing things that help real developers. Trisha is an author of a few books: “What to Look for in a Code Review“ and “97 Things Every Java Developer Should Know“. Trisha also produces a monthly newsletter for JetBrains called “Java Annotated Monthly”, which is a great monthly summary for all things happening in the Java world. In this episode, I had a chat with Trisha about the current state of Java, and how it stands compared to other programming languages. She also gave some good tips on how to transition from old Java version to the latest Java version. Trisha shared some code review best practices and explained why reading code is harder than writing it, and that we should put more effort in making our code more readable. She suggested why a developer should use an IDE, and how using an IDE could help in increasing productivity and producing a more readable and idiomatic code. Trisha also shared some of her lessons learned from her recent transition to becoming a team lead. Listen out for: Trisha’s career journey - [00:04:54] Trisha’s lessons learned when becoming a Team Lead - [00:10:04] Current state of Java - [00:17:44] How Java stands among other languages - [00:22:47] Transitioning from older version of Java - [00:27:20] Code review best practices - [00:33:56] Why developers should use an IDE - [00:45:23] Some of JetBrains products roadmap - [00:49:51] Trisha’s 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:58] _____ Trisha Gee’s Bio Trisha is a Java Champion, published author, and leader of the Java Developer Advocacy team at JetBrains. Trisha has developed Java applications for a range of industries of all sizes. She has expertise in Java high performance systems, dabbles with Open Source development, and is a leader of the Sevilla Java User Group. Follow Trisha: Website – https://trishagee.com Twitter – https://twitter.com/trisha_gee Our Sponsors This episode is brought to you by JetBrains. Do you want to learn to code? Do you have friends who are looking to learn how to code? Our sponsors at JetBrains recently launched JetBrains Academy, an education platform that offers interactive, project-based learning combined with powerful, professional development tools. Advance your Java and Python skills, with more programming languages to come. To get an extended 3-month free trial on JetBrains Academy, go to https://techleadjournal.dev/jetbrains-academy. 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/10.