Tech Lead Journal

#19 - Scaling Collaboration Across the Globe - Ranganathan Balashanmugam


Listen Later

“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.

          ...more
          View all episodesView all episodes
          Download on the App Store

          Tech Lead JournalBy Henry Suryawirawan

          • 4.7
          • 4.7
          • 4.7
          • 4.7
          • 4.7

          4.7

          14 ratings


          More shows like Tech Lead Journal

          View all
          The Knowledge Project by Shane Parrish

          The Knowledge Project

          2,672 Listeners

          Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers by team@se-radio.net (SE-Radio Team)

          Software Engineering Radio - the podcast for professional software developers

          273 Listeners

          The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source by Changelog Media

          The Changelog: Software Development, Open Source

          288 Listeners

          Software Engineering Daily by Software Engineering Daily

          Software Engineering Daily

          626 Listeners

          Talk Python To Me by Michael Kennedy

          Talk Python To Me

          583 Listeners

          Soft Skills Engineering by Jamison Dance and Dave Smith

          Soft Skills Engineering

          287 Listeners

          Thoughtworks Technology Podcast by Thoughtworks

          Thoughtworks Technology Podcast

          44 Listeners

          The InfoQ Podcast by InfoQ

          The InfoQ Podcast

          38 Listeners

          Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats by Wes Bos & Scott Tolinski - Full Stack JavaScript Web Developers

          Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

          985 Listeners

          Today, Explained by Vox

          Today, Explained

          10,331 Listeners

          The Stack Overflow Podcast by The Stack Overflow Podcast

          The Stack Overflow Podcast

          63 Listeners

          The Big Take by Bloomberg

          The Big Take

          155 Listeners

          科技工作講 Tech Job N Talk by Tech Job N Talk 科技工作講

          科技工作講 Tech Job N Talk

          24 Listeners

          HBR On Leadership by Harvard Business Review

          HBR On Leadership

          170 Listeners

          The Pragmatic Engineer by Gergely Orosz

          The Pragmatic Engineer

          77 Listeners