Programming Leadership

Monkeys and Rocks with Matt Greenberg

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If a friend asks you to help them move something heavy, like a rock, you probably wouldn’t think twice. But if they asked you to take care of their pet monkey… That’s the beginning of our chat with Matt Greenberg, Vice President of Engineering at Credit Karma, who compares problems of various types and sizes to monkeys and rocks. The goal of effective leaders should be to break down bigger problems into smaller ones, going from monkey-sized problems to smaller, rock-sized ones.

Show Notes

  • Framing problems as monkeys -- vs rocks
  • It's not easy once a problem has become a monkey, to shape it back down into a rock.
  • It might be something like choosing a programming language for a specific problem.
  • what you're ultimately trying to do is build teams of Michael Jordan's, so that they can do huge impact things, but that they're easy for them
  • I see most of the challenges with my teams are when people don't have the empathy to see the state from other people's point of view

    • Links:

    • O’Reilly Velocity Conference - Berlin, Germany.  September 4-7, 2019. Use discount code MB20 to save 20% on Bronze, Silver, and Gold packages.
  • Credit Karma
  • Matt Greenberg on LinkedIn
  • Matt Greenberg on Twitter: @matt_muffin
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    Programming LeadershipBy Marcus Blankenship
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