In this episode, we chat with Lake Dai (Founder & Managing Partner @ Sancus Ventures), who shares her career story & how to harness AI technology in a way that is both effective & compassionate. We cover the concept of “co-parenting AI”; why ethics in AI is non-negotiable; and how to create compassionate AI. Lake also reveals how she became a veteran at serving on boards & why it is something she is passionate about. We dissect ways current eng leaders who are interested in board service can gain the right experiences & demonstrate their value as a potential board member.

ABOUT LAKE DAI

Lake Dai is Founder and Managing Partner of Sancus Ventures, a VC firm focused on pre-seed to seed stage companies, investing in the next generation of software infrastructure for applications, such as distributed computing, AI model management, platform scalability, data privacy & safety, cybersecurity and more.

Lake has been an Adjunct Professor of Applied AI at Carnegie Mellon University since 2016. She was a keynote speaker on AI ethics, data privacy, real-world applications, and AI education topics at the UN, UK Parliament, California State, and leading tech conferences such as the MIT conference and VentureBeat.

"Students ask, 'Why do I have to study AI ethics? Why can't I just jump into how do I build this model?' If you imagine AI as a very powerful tool, there is no difference between teaching building AI tools from teaching people how to use a weapon. If you ever take any weapon training classes, the first thing people teach you is safety, which is really understanding how the weapon works and how much impact both on the positive and negative side to people surround you. That part is missing for a lot of AI technical training these days.”

- Lake Dai   

This episode is brought to you by testRigor!

testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:

1. It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers
2. Low productivity building your own QA Automation
3. Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time

testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:

• Why VC fundraising is set to thrive in 2024 & beyond (2:14)
• Eng leaders should focus on AI ethics (6:09)
• The importance of starting with a safety check before implementing technology (8:14)
• Lake’s recommendations for eng leaders to guide current & future AI dev (9:46)
• Third-party involvement with internal building processes (12:22)
• Strategies for helping engineers address AI dev in a mid or late-stage roadmap (14:06)
• The concept of co-parenting AI & its implication for eng leaders (15:40)
• Benevolent AI & feeding AI compassion information / data (18:50)
• How to harness AI to address societal challenges & create positive outcomes (22:42)
• Examples of AI addressing climate change & education-related issues (24:44)
• Three reasons why Lake is passionate about serving on boards (28:33)
• The positive impact of serving as a board member (31:40)
• How to gain the right experience & demonstrate value to get on a board (33:21)
• Why it’s important to let others know you’re looking for a board role (35:17)
• Rapid fire questions (40:51)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - Wouldn’t you like to live longer? And better? In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.
• The All-In Podcast - Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg cover all things economic, tech, political, social, and poker.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we’re resharing one of the most popular & exciting sessions from ELC Annual 2023, featuring a panel of experts discussing what software dev will look like in the decades to come! This conversation features Tara Hernandez, VP Developer Productivity @ MongoDB; Erik Meijer, Sr. Director of Engineering @ Meta; and Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director @ Zetta Venture Partners. They debate & dissect how AI is changing what software dev looks like, what capabilities future eng leaders will need to build upon, where AI technology will need to improve moving forward, and more.

ABOUT TARA HERNANDEZ

Tara Hernandez has spent nearly thirty years evolving ways for companies to develop and ship software. She helped launch Mozilla.org and has been a firm proponent of open source ever since. She also thinks smart companies understand the business value of having a diverse employee base. Tara currently works at MongoDB, is a member of the board for Women Who Code, and a member of the Continuous Delivery Foundation.

"What was so amazing about Da Vinci? Da Vinci was an artist, he was a painter, he was a sculptor, he was an engineer. Breadth, more than depth, is increasingly going to be critical.”

- Tara Hernandez   

ABOUT ERIK MEIJER

Erik Meijer is a Dutch Computer Scientist, entrepreneur, and AI enthusiast.

In his long career, he has democratized many academic concepts such as functional programming, reactive programming, and language-integrated query by introducing these concepts into mainstream languages such as C#, Visual Basic, Dart, and Hack, as well as through his startup Apllied Duality Inc.

As an educator, Erik has shared his knowledge through platforms like Channel 9, Coursera, and edX, enlightening learners worldwide with his courses on reactive and functional programming.

As the founder of the Probability team at Meta in 2016, he is one of the pioneers in applying AI to programmer productivity and systems efficiency.

Most recently, Erik is working on providing every knowledge worker with a personal assistant that supercharges their productivity and boosts job satisfaction.

"I think the engineer of the future will be more like an English major or a music major. Somebody that can really explain their thoughts very well. If you have kids, I would not send them to do computer science. Send them to a liberal arts.”

- Erik Meijer   

ABOUT JOCELYN GOLDFEIN

Jocelyn Goldfein (@jgoldfein) is a Managing Director at Zetta Venture Partners, where she invests seed capital in AI-native startups with B2B business models.

Jocelyn is a widely recognized industry expert on product strategy, infrastructure, and organizational scale. Her career as an engineering leader spans from early-stage startups to high-growth years at Facebook and VMware.

During her tenure at Facebook, she helped convert News Feed to Machine Learning and spearheaded the transition to a ‘mobile first' product organization. As an early engineer at VMware, she built core virtualization technology and ultimately created and led VMware’s Desktop Business Unit. Jocelyn also held engineering and leadership roles at startups Datify, MessageOne, and Trilogy/pcOrder.

Jocelyn has a passion for STEM Education. She currently lectures at Stanford University where she received her BS in Computer Science.

"Part of me finds it almost insane to think about what if there's never a new programming language? What if we're at the end of history for new programming languages and the next and last programming language is Hindi?”

- Jocelyn Goldfein   

This episode is brought to you by testRigor!

testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:

1. It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers
2. Low productivity building your own QA Automation
3. Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time

testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:

• Introducing Jocelyn, Tara, and Erik & their interest in the future of software dev (2:31)
• Ensuring AI accuracy / confidence as a key inflection point (5:06)
• What the next generation of building software will look like (7:09)
• Why engineers will always be needed for understanding machine capabilities (10:51)
• Erik & Tara’s perspectives on the future of AI & engineer interaction in software dev (13:19)
• Great engineers of the future need to have well-rounded skills (16:38)
• Why flow will (or will not) be as necessary in the future (19:06)
• How AI will augment human creativity & the engineering role (21:06)
• Will AI replace the need for cross-collaborative teams? (23:30)
• Jocelyn’s theory that today’s best QA folks will be the best engineers in 2033 (26:14)
• Audience Q&A: What logical & cognitive skills will still be needed as AI progresses? (28:24)
• Challenging the current definition of software development (31:45)
• What is the potential for a future dialogue system? (34:17)
• Will the change in eng skills also impact other degrees like mathematics? (36:46)
• How will the industry navigate workforce loss as AI replaces certain roles? (38:01)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Video Version of Episode
• All of the Sessions from ELC Annual

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss expanding your leadership capabilities to support total business growth & career visualization with Prashanthi Padmanabhan, Head of Engineering @ LinkedIn Premium and Global Women in Tech Lead @ LinkedIn. Prashanthi dissects her career journey & leadership growth practices like creating a half-pager to visualize your potential career path, developing value-based leadership skills, identifying the micro & macro transformation opportunities for your professional growth, and ways to employ empathy within your team & toward customers. We also cover the vital skills & capabilities you’ll need to expand your eng leadership to work in a more cross-functional role and directly impact the growth of your business. Prashanthi also dives into how she lead LinkedIn Premium as it adopts generative AI-based features.

ABOUT PRASHANTHI PADMANABHAN

Prashanthi is a seasoned technologist and product builder with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. Currently, she leads Engineering for LinkedIn Premium, building a world-class subscription platform, helping deliver customer value for millions of members, and growing LinkedIn’s online subscription business line. Prior to joining LinkedIn, she led engineering for large-scale consumer products at Yahoo and Verizon Media. She excels at operating at the intersection of Business, Technology, and People, and her leadership style is rooted in compassion - for her teams and her customers.

Prashanthi also leads the global Women In Tech community at LinkedIn and routinely mentors emerging women leaders inside and outside LinkedIn. She writes on LinkedIn on topics spanning engineering, leadership, organizational culture, well-being, etc.. Outside work, she is passionate about maintaining a healthy and active lifestyle.

"I wrote a half pager about how I'm looking at my career at LinkedIn, what am I passionate about, and these things that I'm passionate about needs to continue to be ingredients in my journey. And then I wrote like, short term micro-transformations that I want to go through. And then, like, longer term, what is the macro transformation that I want to experience? And that macro transformation was I want to lead as an engineering leader, or maybe even a product leader, a line of business.”

- Prashanthi Padmanabhan   

This episode is brought to you by testRigor!

testRigor is trusted by tens of thousands of companies across the globe, including Netflix, Splunk, BusinessWire, and more to solve three main problems with end-to-end test automation:

1. It’s challenging, expensive, and slow to hire QA Automation Engineers
2. Low productivity building your own QA Automation
3. Fragile tests, that cause maintenance to consume enormous amounts of time

testRigor solves all of the above by allowing our users to express test cases in plain EnglishTo learn more, check out a case study on testRigor hereSign up for a free trial today at testrigor.comSHOW NOTES:

• Prashanthi’s early career days to leading LinkedIn Premium (3:12)
• Deeply understand who you are building a product for (5:10)
• The pivotal moment that drove Prashanthi’s involvement w/ LinkedIn Premium (8:23)
• Strategies for creating a career half-pager to think about what’s next (11:49)
• An example of DEI for micro & macro transformation opportunities (13:35)
• Steps to ensure your team embodies your values day-to-day (16:05)
• Creating a pre-transition thesis before stepping into a new role (19:11)
• Using other leaders as a sounding board for your thesis (21:48)
• Important skills / capabilities to learn when shifting to a new role (24:13)
• Employing empathy within a cross-functional leadership team (27:09)
• Challenges faced & lessons learned during Prashanthi’s leadership evolution (30:06)
• Demystifying the business (32:07)
• Why eng teams need to hear from customers & empathize with them (33:06)
• What gave Prashanthi’s team the confidence to reimagine LinkedIn Premium’s roadmap (35:49)
• Use cases for generative AI in the business model (37:44)
• Rapid fire questions (40:31)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Possible - a new podcast that sketches out the brightest version of the future—and what it will take to get there. Most of all, it asks: what if, in the future, everything breaks humanity’s way? Hosted by Reid Hoffman and Aria Finger, each episode features an interview with a visionary from a different field: climate science, media, criminal justice, and more. The conversation also features another kind of guest: GPT-4, OpenAI’s latest and most powerful language model to date. Each episode has a companion story, generated by GPT-4, which will serve as a jumping-off point for a hopeful, speculative discussion about what humanity could possibly get right if we leverage technology—and our collective effort—effectively.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Matt Greenwood, Chief Innovation Officer & Head of Investment Management Engineering @ Two Sigma shares some of the most unique and valuable cultural practices behind how the engineering org operates at Two Sigma. We discuss strategies that prepare you for scaling (like intentional relationship-building with your front-line managers); examples of how Two Sigma successfully deployed the “Inverse Conway Maneuver,” how to reinforce a consensus-driven culture from early-days to 1000+, how to navigate both large & small reorgs; and why Two Sigma made the intentional decision to rebrand their R&D org as M&E (modeling & engineering)! Plus, Matt’s approach to full-bodied problem-solving.

ABOUT MATT GREENWOOD

Matt is Chief Innovation Officer and Head of Investment Management Engineering at Two Sigma. He joined Two Sigma in 2003 and since then has led a number of company-wide efforts in both engineering and modeling. Matt is also an Advisor at Two Sigma Ventures and works closely with the business’ portfolio companies as a board member and advisor.

Matt began his career at Bell Labs and later moved to IBM Research, where he was responsible for a number of early efforts in tablet computing and distributed computing. In 2000, Matt was lead developer and manager for Entrisphere, Inc., where he helped create a product providing access equipment for broadband service providers. Matt earned a BA and MA in Math from Oxford University, and a Master’s degree in Theoretical Physics from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. He also holds a PhD in Mathematics from Columbia University, where he taught for many years.

"We came to New York in 2003, nothing was happening in New York. Silicon Alley, as they called it back then was just kaput. Then one day, I was browsing Craigslist, because that's what you did in 2003, and there was a little ad, ‘Hedge fund, looking for excellent engineers.’ So I was like, 'All right, maybe.' I said to my wife, 'This is either the sketchiest thing ever or the best decision of my life. It's one of those two things.' On Craigslist, there's no other way you can be, right? And it was probably the best decision of my life.”

- Matt Greenwood   

This episode is brought to you by incident.io

incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.

Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Matt’s eng leadership journey & discovering Two Sigma on Craigslist (3:34)
• Key moments of Two Sigma’s evolution as an org that sparked excitement (7:26)
• Lessons learned on keeping your work exciting by focusing on “human problems” (10:25)
• Create a culture of investing in people’s growth across longer timelines (12:22)
• How Sigma Two intentionally structures its R&D org (15:18)
• An unexpected way to prepare for scaling your org - intentional relationship-building strategies for your first-line managers (18:10)
• Frameworks for deploying the inverse Conway maneuver (20:56)
• The right people / conversations for small & large reorgs (23:30)
• Consensus-driven culture at 1000+, approaches to create buy-in & ownership with organizational change (26:02)
• Two Sigma’s approach to full-bodied problem solving (30:26)
• Rapid fire questions (34:06)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Whalefall - A scientifically accurate thriller from Daniel Kraus about a scuba diver who’s been swallowed by an eighty-foot, sixty-ton sperm whale and has only one hour to escape before his oxygen runs out.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, we are deconstructing the “first team approach” with Monica Bajaj, VPE @ Okta. We cover how to apply “first team" across your org, within different team functions (including architecture, quality, security, etc.) and across all levels. She also shares real-life examples from her experience with “first teams” in scenarios like onboarding new teams after M&As, developing new products, and more. Monica provides tactical steps for implementing the first team concept within your org & why it encourages bottoms-up initiatives / self sufficient teams.

ABOUT MONICA BAJAJ

Monica is currently VP of Engineering at Okta where she leads the Developer Experience portfolio for Customer Identity Cloud (CIAM). She is responsible for building a frictionless developer experience for Consumer and SaaS Apps thus securing billions of logins every month. Her expertise spans technology, operations, global expansion, and product launch in areas such as Consumer/Enterprise, Infrastructure, Business Intelligence, DevOps, and Security. She has taken products into the global market by launching localization and globalization programs delivering multi-million dollar growth.

Previously she has held senior engineering leadership positions at Workday, Perforce, Network Appliance, and UKG. She holds a Masters in Computer Science from IIT Mumbai. Monica is an active supporter of diversity in STEM, has launched several Women in Technology initiatives, and is now an exec sponsor for Women at Okta. When not obsessing over technology, she can be found spending time with Boy Scouts, enjoying hiking, and supporting the cause of mentorship and uplifting women and young girls.

"The first team concept was launched at my level and then I went through this journey and I realized like, 'Oh, this is very powerful.' First, it was confusing that I need to put my team aside and take my peers as my first priority, but then I became more curious and then I was intrigued by the results and I'm like, 'Oh, this is so powerful. I need to put this in my own organization.' So I started with my directs like, 'Hey, we have studied about this. We did a whole session and walk them through some real examples. That's where it was like, 'Oh, we need to implement this and see it.'”

- Monica Bajaj   

This episode is brought to you by incident.io

incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.

Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Defining the “first team” concept & three characteristics that lead to success (3:22)
• How applying a first team approach impacts relationships (6:05)
• Why adopting these principles improved the quality, trust & maturity of eng teams (8:30)
• What conditions were met to set up the relationship between teams (12:09)
• Nuances of incorporating a first team approach at different levels of your org (13:48)
• How the first team facilitates faster pivoting as new priorities arise (16:31)
• First team frameworks for successfully & quickly onboarding new teams (19:08)
• An example of this concept applied to an architecture context (20:20)
• Why “first teams” support / encourage bottoms-up initiatives (23:47)
• Strategies for leadership to implement first teams @ different levels of their org (27:38)
• Recommendations for regaining cohesiveness as a first team (29:17)
• Rapid fire questions (31:28)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Habit of Winning: Stories to Inspire, Motivate and Unleash the Winner within

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In one of our most anticipated conversations of the year, we got the chance to sit down with three of Spotify’s eng leaders: Krisitan Lindwall, Director of Engineering, Data, Insights, Experimentation, & ML Infrastructure; Mark Grey, Senior Staff Engineer; and Pooja Dave, Director of Engineering, Music Promotion. They share insights from their experience building a culture of experimentation & innovation at a massive scale and what elements are necessary for experimentation at scale. They share the origin story of Spotify’s experimentation platform, how to develop eng leaders to think strategically & execute effectively, mistakes to avoid while scaling your experimentation capabilities, and navigating the balance between structured processes vs. unstructured time to ideate.

ABOUT KRISTIAN LINDWALL

Kristian (@klindwall) is an engineering leader at Spotify. He has over 10 years of experience managing and coaching a broad variety of engineering and product teams. He is currently based in New York where he manages the engineering teams working on the company’s data, insights, and machine learning platforms. Prior to that, he led parts of the agile coach practice at Spotify for a few years and has been very active in supporting the growth of a strong agile and lean approach in the company. Before Spotify, Kristian spent 8 years in fintech in Stockholm where he built and grew the engineering team at the largest online broker company in Sweden.

"How we behave in the organization is really what reinforces and drives the culture and I think there's a few things driving that culture of innovation. Connecting hands to heads, meaning give people an opportunity to engage in ideation and make sure people are involved in strategy work and in the full process of figuring out where we're heading.”

- Kristian Lindwall   

ABOUT POOJA DAVE

With over a decade of experience building and leading several R&D organizations in ad tech, marketing tech, and platforms servicing those, Pooja currently runs the organization at Spotify that helps artists engage and grow their fanbase. Prior to Spotify, she worked at Microsoft on several products including Devices, Browser Rendering Engine, and Advertising/MarTech SDKs. This diversity in experiences has given her a well-rounded exposure to engineer solutions and lead teams with strong backend architecture, client, machine learning, and data practices.

“For Spotify, failure is the paradox to success.”

- Pooja Dave   

ABOUT MARK GREY

Mark is a Senior Staff Engineer at Spotify, where for a decade he has worked on a broad range of distributed systems related to experimentation, data processing, and analytics. Having operated and scaled solutions at all stages of growth, his primary focus is on technical strategy and platformization.

Prior to Spotify, Mark worked at the New York Times on personalization infrastructure such as near-realtime article recommendations.

"We want to ideally maximize the throughput on those things that we see pan out or don't pan out. So kind of a fail faster, double down model and there's all kinds of practices and tools that we put in place that Confidence is just one among many that allow us to increase that throughput. So try and derive insights from a small experiment, validate your hypothesis quickly, and then proceed and scale up from there.”

- Mark Grey   

This episode is brought to you by incident.io

incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.

Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• About Spotify’s experimentation platform, Confidence (3:46)
• Why Spotify decided to offer Confidence externally (5:43)
• What experimentation without a platform looked like in the early days @ Spotify (6:24)
• Understanding the scale of the Confidence platform (8:58)
• Challenges eng leaders face when scaling testing / experimentation processes (10:51)
• Strategies for determining which experiments & features are most impactful (13:23)
• How to build a stronger culture of innovation / experimentation at scale (15:47)
• Frameworks to help develop eng leaders to be both thinkers & doers (19:11)
• Facilitating conversations around data ideation (23:13)
• An example of how Spotify ideates around data (26:10)
• Mistakes to avoid when scaling up & defining the experiment (28:36)
• How to prioritize experiments when there are conflicts (32:22)
• Recommendations for capturing ideas & turning them into features (35:32)
• Create breathing space within eng teams to help bolster innovation (40:10)
• Why it’s also key to implement structured processes for experimentation (42:57)
• What good coaching looks like when orgs are scaling their experiments (45:24)
• Knowing when you need to platformize something (48:55)
• How generalizing platform capabilities can enable greater speed (51:27)
• Learn to think outside the box & don’t get in the way of experimentation (55:11)
• Rapid fire questions (57:10)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Becoming - In her memoir, a work of deep reflection and mesmerizing storytelling, Michelle Obama invites readers into her world, chronicling the experiences that have shaped her—from her childhood on the South Side of Chicago to her years as an executive balancing the demands of motherhood and work, to her time spent at the world’s most famous address.
• Unsolicited Feedback - A new podcast by Reforge that invites you into closed-door conversations between growth and product leaders. Brian Balfour (Reforge, HubSpot), Fareed Mosavat (Reforge, Slack), and friends give targeted feedback around recent features and releases across the product and growth multiverse.
• Lenny’s Podcast - Lenny Rachitsky (author of #1 business newsletter on Substack with 500k+ subscribers) interviews world-class product leaders and growth experts to uncover concrete, actionable, and tactical advice to help you build, launch, and grow your own product.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Laura Tacho, CTO @ DX, joins us to discuss why changing what you measure doesn’t necessarily lead to improved productivity (and what to do about it)! How to define and measure productivity in your eng org is one of the hottest topics for eng leaders… We cover best practices for identifying what productivity looks like in your org, what motivates your team to reach those goals, how to harness behavioral psychology, and antipatterns to avoid when you focus on productivity. Plus Laura shares some of her favorite practices to identify your skill gaps, and how define what success looks like for yourself and your teams on your productivity journey.

ABOUT LAURA TACHO

Laura Tacho is CTO at DX, a developer experience company. She previously led teams at companies like CloudBees, Aula Education, and Nova Credit. She’s an expert in building world-class engineering organizations that consistently deliver outstanding results. Laura has coached CTOs and other engineering leaders from startups to the Fortune 500, and also facilitates a popular course on metrics and engineering team performance.

"That is just a ripe environment for the rapid degradation of trust within an organization and has immeasurable consequences when it comes to degrading the culture of a team. I think the temptation is there, understandably, and I think from good intentions of, ‘I want to try to measure unobtrusively. I want to get this data about my team without them knowing about it or minimally knowing about it so that I'm not bothering them.’ That is a trap because we don't need to treat people the same way we treat distributed systems with dashboards and dashboards of telemetry data. People can talk. Just ask them.”

- Laura Tacho   

This episode is brought to you by incident.io

incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.

Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Why people care so much about measuring productivity in engineering (3:25)
• Antipatterns to avoid when tightening focus on productivity (5:08)
• The role of behavioral psychology with engineering productivity (7:04)
• What the ideal consulting relationship looks like structurally (8:58)
• Ensure you’re incentivizing the behavior you want to achieve (12:20)
• How to cultivate the skill of influencing without feeling too “salesy” (13:59)
• Understanding the different facets / types of motivation (17:08)
• Strategies for developing resiliency in “do more with less” environments (19:14)
• Behaviors that prevent eng orgs & leaders from achieving their goals (23:55)
• How to identify areas of personal development & closing the skill gap (27:00)
• Areas that are the most ripe for setting the right expectations / outcomes (29:40)
• Best practices for eng leaders to gain clarity & define what success looks like (32:01)
• Rapid fire questions (35:52)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Remarkably Bright Creatures -Shelby Van Pelt’s exploration of friendship, reckoning, and hope, tracing a widow's unlikely connection with a giant Pacific octopus.
• This Podcast Will Kill You - Grad students studying disease ecology, Erin and Erin found themselves disenchanted with the insular world of academia. They wanted a way to share their love of epidemics and weird medical mysteries with the world, not just colleagues.
• lauratacho.com - Laura’s website where you can find more information about her courses, coaching, and management program.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew Lau, CEO & Co-founder @ Jellyfish, shares the engineering management principles that eng leaders will most want to develop and invest in as we transition from 2023 into 2024. We cover year-end reflection techniques, how eng leaders can become more resilient / adaptable, why honing financial acumen is key, and how eng leaders can better plan ahead to face upcoming technology & industry challenges. We also preview Andrew’s new podcast called 5 to 9, aimed to identify meaningful ways eng leaders spend their time outside of the office. Check out Andrew’s new podcast 5 to 9 here: https://jellyfish.co/5-to-9-podcast

ABOUT ANDREW LAU

Andrew Lau is a Co-Founder and CEO of Jellyfish, where he helps leaders use data to align their engineering teams with business strategy. He was trained as an engineer and grew to VP of Engineering at Oracle acquired company, Endeca. He is also a multi-time entrepreneur and co-founder. At every company, Andrew saw the challenges of leading engineering teams at scale. He co-founded Jellyfish to give engineering executives the tools they need to be great leaders.

Andrew holds a Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Originally from Oakland, CA, he's a devoted fan of the Oakland A's, despite residing in Red Sox territory for more than two decades. Andrew currently calls Cambridge, MA his home, where he lives with his wife Elsie and their two adorable young children, Callie and Mira.

“As a leader, your job is to know the context and translate the context. You have the benefit of seeing more things, but less deeply and your job is to kind of gather these informations and help other people understand it. People forget, you think you're an engineering leader. You think it's actually about making things. It is, but it's also about translating, especially at scale. You're not making anything anymore. You're enabling other people to make, and in order to do that, you've actually got to be translating and providing context.”

- Andrew Lau   

This episode is brought to you by incident.io

incident.io is trusted by hundreds of tech-led companies across the globe, including Etsy, monday.com, Skyscanner and more to seamlessly orchestrate incident response from start to finish. Intuitively designed, and with powerful and flexible built-in workflow automation, companies use incident.io to supercharge incident response and up-level the entire organization.

Learn more about how you can better identify, learn from, and respond to incidents at incident.ioInterested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Andrew’s observations on how the tech industry is evolving from 2023 to 2024 (3:40)
• Questions to help you reflect at year-end about family, team & business (5:03)
• How eng leaders can build adaptability & resiliency (7:16)
• Skills / focus areas eng leaders should hone heading into 2024 (10:51)
• Developing better financial acumen (13:15)
• Bridging the gap between engineering strategy & business alignment (16:40)
• Why it’s important for businesses to build a plan for a year or two out (19:50)
• How this relates back to eng leadership development & financial acumen (23:00)
• Tips for identifying skill gaps in financial expertise (24:07)
• Knowing what metrics to measure your company against (26:07)
• About Andrew’s new podcast, 5 to 9 (28:42)
• How eng leaders make it work in business & outside of work (31:35)
• Where to follow & listen to 5 to 9 (34:40)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• 5 to 9 Podcast - By day, engineering leaders craft innovative solutions with elegant strings of code. But when the work day ends, who do these keyboard warriors and people managers become? Tune in to 5 to 9 to explore this question and others with Jellyfish CEO, Andrew Lau.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

As the Field CTO & Head of Strategy @ VAST Data, Colleen Tartow, Ph.D., has a vast resume of building data engineering teams from scratch and beyond. Colleen discusses the necessary components for developing new or reorienting existing data programs, strategies for effective communication & collaboration between data & eng functions, the implications of AI technology on data engineering, and integrating cross-functional partners into the data eng planning process & road map. Plus Colleen shares about building the hiring process for data eng functions, when the “data engineering” term or role didn’t exist yet, and how you can apply that to other emerging or undefined functions!

ABOUT COLLEEN TARTOW

Colleen Tartow, Ph.D. is Field CTO and Head of Strategy at VAST Data and has 20+ years of experience in data, analytics, engineering, and consulting. Adept at assisting organizations in deriving value from a data-driven culture, she has successfully led diverse data, engineering, and analytics teams through the development of complex global data management solutions and architecting enterprise data systems. Her demonstrated excellence in data, engineering, analytics, and diversity leadership makes her a trusted senior advisor among executives. An experienced speaker, author, valued mentor and startup advisor, Colleen holds degrees in astrophysics and lives in Massachusetts.

"Everyone wants to be data driven, right? Like no one's going to say, 'No, we don't want data. We just want to function with opinions.' Like nobody's actually going to say that. But that said, getting started on that can be really challenging...

With anything, you have to go back to what does the business really need. Going back to the revenue drivers and the business pain points that you're going to help solve, whether it's monetizing your data directly or using data as an enablement function to actually help in other areas and so I think getting the organization to understand that data is a product of the business and then sort of working back from there into what does that specifically mean.”

- Colleen Tartow   

Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Colleen’s experience building a data program from scratch (2:25)
• What it used to be like building a data engineering team (4:43)
• Narrowing to first principles when hiring for / building a data eng team (6:44)
• Frameworks to advocate for more resources to build your org’s data function (7:53)
• Knowing when you need to transition your data side project to a full data program (10:11)
• Building data teams from a zero to one perspective (13:05)
• What “onboarding as discovery” conversations look like (14:38)
• Joining an existing team to implement a defined data-focused function (16:14)
• How to have effective conversations & collaborate with other eng functions (19:19)
• Prioritization strategies when refocusing / creating the data eng org roadmap (21:20)
• How to integrate cross-functional partners into the data eng planning process (22:51)
• The implication of AI on data teams & its intersection with eng teams (24:09)
• Colleen’s decision-making framework (27:54)
• Recommendations for tackling complex data pipelines in different ways (29:27)
• Navigating the paradigm of AI & data eng’s impact on other eng orgs (31:31)
• What the ideal collaboration between data & eng looks like (34:01)
• Recommendations for dealing with points of friction (35:21)
• Steps for aligning data & eng under the same goals (37:16)
• Rapid fire questions (39:04)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• The Lioness of Boston - Emily Franklin’s deeply evocative novel of the life of Isabella Stewart Gardner, a daring visionary who created an inimitable legacy in American art and transformed the city of Boston itself.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Emad Elwany, CTO & Co-founder @ Lexion, joins us to discuss navigating the messy  “in-between” phase startups face as they scale up! We talk about the dilemma between optimizing for vertical or horizontal teams. And we cover his approach for aligning teams based on strategic themes / “complete units of value” on the company’s product roadmap and navigating trade-offs when choosing your approach to scaling. Emad also shares strategies for successful interpersonal facilitation and how to build consensus effectively as an approach to sustain your org’s internal velocity.

ABOUT EMAD ELWANY

Emad Elwany is the CTO and co-founder of Lexion. Lexion is a powerfully simple operations workflow and contracting platform that helps teams get deals done faster. Lexion streamlines and centralizes the end-to-end contract lifecycle with intuitive email-driven intake and workflows, simple no-code automation, best-in-class AI, and more. Lexion was one of the first AI companies to leverage LLMs in building production-quality applications. The company was founded in 2018 at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is backed by an iconic Silicon Valley law firm, and recently raised a $20M Series B with support from top-tier VC firms.

Prior to co-founding Lexion, Emad held principal engineering roles at Microsoft Research, working on Microsoft's core AI products, specifically as founding and lead engineer on their core conversational AI and NLP platform as well as their AI scheduling assistant.

Emad holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Alexandria University and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from Stanford University. He’s an active member of special interest groups in machine learning and artificial intelligence and has published research papers in major computer science conferences like CHI, NeurIPS, and KDD.

"We said, 'We're not going to do the vertical. We're not going to do horizontal. Instead, let's be roadmap driven.' If you review our roadmap document, there's a section on key learnings from the past, and then there's a section on the three or four strategic areas we're investing in in the next quarter. So we thought, 'Okay, these strategic themes are very coherent. A lot of the projects on them are kind of homogenous but they span the full stack. They also span different functional areas. Why don't we try that? Why don't we have teams aligned to themes?'”

- Emad Elwany   

Interested in joining an ELC Peer Group?

ELCs Peer Groups provide a virtual, curated, and ongoing peer learning opportunity to help you navigate the unknown, uncover solutions and accelerate your learning with a small group of trusted peers.

Apply to join a peer group HERE: sfelc.com/peerGroups

SHOW NOTES:

• Emad’s observations around scaling up @ Lexion (2:50)
• Strategies for dividing teams / products horizontally or vertically (5:17)
• Navigating trade-offs when deciding the right approach for scaling up (7:39)
• How to decide what areas to optimize vs. sacrifice (10:47)
• Using your product roadmap to drive decision making / optimization (12:59)
• Emad’s process for forming new teams, identifying strategies & executing vision (15:48)
• Fitting the trade-off discussion into this organization model (18:51)
• Determining your org’s specific “budget of problems” (22:21)
• Balancing the timing of problems vs. the quantity of problems (24:01)
• Recommendations for interpersonal facilitation & building consensus (27:01)
• How these actions can help improve & sustain your org’s internal velocity (31:16)
• Why velocity – or lack of it – impacts speedy, efficient decision-making (33:51)
• Emad’s favorite examples of his team finding consensus (35:37)
• Rapid fire questions (38:17)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building -Claire Hughes Johnson’s practical and empathetic guide to being an effective leader and manager in a high-growth environment. The tactical information it puts forward—including guidance on crafting foundational documents, strategic and financial planning, hiring and team development, and feedback and performance mechanisms—can be applied to companies of any size, in any industry. Scaling People includes dozens of pages of worksheets, templates, exercises, and example documents to help founders, leaders, and company builders create scalable operating systems and lightweight processes that really work.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.