Tech Lead Journal

“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.

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Alex Siow’s Bio

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.

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“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.

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Johnny Wijaya’s Bio

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“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.

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Annie Vella’s Bio

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.

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“If a user is even reading documentation that a technical writer has produced, they’re probably already annoyed."

Helen Scott is a technical writer and Java Developer Advocate at JetBrains. In this episode, we discussed many things about technical writing, such as the technical writer role definition, the traits of a good technical writer, and how to create a good technical content, including a few gotchas that a technical writer needs to be aware of. Helen also shared with me the concept of community mentoring, and how it can be helpful for the mentee, the mentor, and the community altogether. Towards the end, Helen shared some content creation and sharing tips/hacks based on her popular blog post.

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Helen Scott’s Bio

Helen is passionate about the journey of learning and discovery. She enjoys challenging herself to learn new tools and technologies and sharing the highs and inevitable lows of that journey through the content that she creates.

Helen believes that the role communication plays throughout our personal and professional lives is critical and often overlooked. She strives to put communication front and centre of all her interactions and loves working with and meeting like-minded people.

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“The output of a manager is the output of the manager’s team plus the output of the organization that they influence."

James Stanier is the SVP Engineering at Brandwatch and author of “Become an Effective Software Engineering Manager”. In this episode, we explored on how one can become an effective software engineering manager and how to build and run effective engineering teams. We started off by discussing why the tech industry is facing a skill crisis because of the inability of many managers to manage people effectively and the challenges faced by engineers when transitioning to become managers. We then dived deep into the best practices to become an effective manager, such as getting oriented, delegating effectively, letting go of control, and nurturing one-on-ones with your teams. James also pointed out the hardest things that engineering managers have to deal with, which are projects and humans. We then wrapped up with James’ tips on how to handle failures and move forward.

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James Stanier’s Bio

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“I truly believe that what set the superstars or people who are very successful is the ability to tell to themselves to quit. Winners quit fast and quit without guilt."

Doron Shachar is an Israeli entrepreneur living in Vietnam over the past 12 years and the founder & CEO of Renova Cloud, an AWS and GCP Consulting Partner in Vietnam. In this episode, we looked at the essence of Israeli entrepreneurship as we first learned about Doron’s childhood & education in Israel and how he built valuable leadership skills throughout his years in the scouts and the army. As we unpacked the Israeli’s approach of problem-solving, risk-taking and overcoming failure, Doron then shared how he ventured into Southeast Asia and ended up staying in Vietnam. We discussed how Vietnam is evolving in terms of technology trends and adoption, including how Vietnamese businesses are adopting cloud as part of their digital transformation. Doron also shared some tips on how entrepreneurs should prepare for a successful venture into Southeast Asia.

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Doron Shachar’s Bio

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"Most people confuse a technical capability with technology. Ultimately, technology is a technical capability plus the human outcome that it creates."

Tim Kobe is a design leader, author, and founder of Eight Inc., a global award-winning strategic design firm also widely recognized as “Apple’s best kept secret”. In this episode, we looked at how successful brands build radical impact by creating ground-breaking human experiences with design.

We started off with Tim’s career journey, the founding of Eight Inc., and how he ended up working with Steve Jobs for over 12 years, including coming up with the original design of the iconic Apple’s flagship stores. Tim also shared how he sees Steve Job’s mission to democratize technology and how he helped Apple built a unique branded experience. We then dived deep into Experience Design (XD), starting with understanding the human outcomes to building the strategy and tactics to create value with a unique human experience. We also discussed how Asia is evolving in Experience Design and how COVID has been dramatically changing the world. Tim also spoke about the massive impact of AI & ML that is yet to be witnessed. Towards the end, Tim shared insights about some future trends that he is currently working on to transform the industries and shape the future in human connection from retail, banking, real estate, telecommunication, and even government!

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Tim Kobe’s Bio

For almost 30 years in design and a leader in Innovation and Branded Experience, Eight Inc. has worked with companies such as Apple, Virgin Atlantic Airways, Nike, Coke, Knoll and Citibank. The firm takes on an interdisciplinary and holistic approach, working across traditional disciplines including strategy, architecture, exhibition, interior design, product, communications and branding. Many projects have received international design awards and have been published across Asia, Europe, and the United States. Eight Inc. has studios in San Francisco, New York, Honolulu, Tokyo, London, Singapore, Dubai, Istanbul and across China.

Kobe is a keynote speaker and speaks on topics surrounding design, innovation, technology and business valuation for many internationally known forums. He has been featured and recognized for his work in prominent publications like Harvard Business Review, Bloomberg, The Economist, Dezeen and Fast Company.

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“When I think about well-crafted software, it’s code that we are not scared to change. The code clearly specifies what it does. When we change one part of it, don’t break the other. You always feel that you are in control. You are controlling the code, not the other way around."

Sandro Mancuso is the author of “The Software Craftsman” and co-founder of Codurance. In this episode, Sandro shared his great insights on how developers can become a software craftsman by adopting professionalism, pragmatism, and pride mindset to achieve higher levels of technical excellence. We started off with Sandro’s career journey, how he adopted the software craftsmanship mindset in his career and started the London Software Craftsmanship Community. We then dived deep into Software Craftsmanship, how it relates to agile, and the importance of a well-crafted software. We also discussed his latest work on Software Modernization, the principles behind a successful modernization, the business drivers, and common impediments. In the end, Sandro re-emphasized the importance of pragmatism and how we can improve our pragmatism in our career.

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Sandro Mancuso’s Bio

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“When you recruit an engineer on your team, you actually want to make sure from their first day on, you give them the smoothest entry into your company and help them and assist them in as many ways as you can to become productive as fast as possible."

Tanaka Mutakwa is the VP of Engineering at Names & Faces and the founder of the Tech Leadership community in South Africa. In this episode, Tanaka shared with me his best practices for onboarding new technical hires and developers into the team. We started off by discussing tech landscape, startup scenes, and tech communities in Africa (in particular South Africa). Then we dived deep into the onboarding best practices ranging from technical aspects (such as tools and technologies), domain knowledge, and importance of soft skills. Tanaka also shared with me a lifestyle brand/movement that he has been championing called “NoDaysOff”, which has a mission to inspire people to chase their goals and dreams consistently.

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Tanaka Mutakwa’s Bio

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“I always deliver myself against these four things: you should stay true to learning; be curious, understand what is going on; optimize for people, don’t optimize for money; and if you want to do something, there’s only one reason to do it, that you want to do it."

Ajey Gore is an Operating Partner at Sequoia Capital India who was previously the Group CTO of Gojek. He helped build a strong Gojek engineering team with his passion, strategic insight, and innovative mindset, which was highly crucial in transforming Gojek to become Indonesia’s first decacorn. In this episode, Ajey shared his deep beliefs and motto of “earn people, not money” in various aspects of his career and life. We started from his sharing of his journey at Thoughtworks and what he learned there that helped shape a lot of his growth and leadership. Ajey eventually made a bold move, starting his startup journey which led him to founding CodeIgnition which was then acquired by Gojek. Ajey shared a lot about his exhilarating challenges and journey in Gojek, which includes the different Gojek scale and stages he went through, crucial technologies, and architecture decisions. He also shared his views about hiring and leadership that played critical parts to Gojek’s success. We also discussed briefly the importance of community contributions and his advice for fresh graduates to succeed in their career. At the end, I asked Ajey a philosophical question on how we should figure out what to optimize for in our life and career.

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Ajey Gore’s Bio

Prior to joining Sequoia, Ajey was the Group CTO of Gojek. Ajey earlier founded CodeIgnition, which was acquired by Gojek. He has also served as the CTO for hoppr, which was acquired by Hike Messenger, and was Head of Technology for ThoughtWorks.

Ajey has a B. Com degree in Commerce, Mathematics, and Statistics from University of Allahabad and a PG Diploma in advanced software technology/Computer Science from NCST.

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