The Pod Presents: Primarily Context-Based

This is a special episode recorded in the month of ‘Movember’, as we are keen to contribute to the movement raising awareness of mental health. If you or someone you know is struggling, it's really important to get the right help. You can find a link to some organisations that offer support in our LinkedIn post here. 

In this show, Hywel is joined by Omar Reid, CTO at mental health start-up Alena, to discuss how to support your team, and still hit deadlines. Hywel and Omar discuss the mental health issues that can often arise in tech teams, and what tools you can implement as a leader to help”.

This week Hywel is joined by Lewis Moore, who previously helped carve a new category in hospitality operational software as CTO of Trailapp, and is now part of the early engineering team at Evidenced, an interview intelligence platform. 

In this discussion, Lewis shares his experience in pivoting from an extremely sales-led growth approach, to a much more product-led one at Trailapp.

This episode features VP of Engineering and Product at Healx, Ryan Tomlinson. Ryan has previously led engineerings teams at OpenTable, Salesforce and GSK and this week, he joins our host Hywel to discuss what makes a good leader, and leans on his vast experience to address how you can drive change in a high performing organisation.

Ryan and Hywel bond over being context-based advocates, talk the ‘30,000 foot view’ and slowing down to speed up.

‘Digital transformation’ on your mind? Hear Ryan’s insights on how people often play fast and loose with key terms in the tech industry, and what they really mean in practice.

Erynn Peterson- ex-CTO of Drizly and current CTO of Simple Health joins Hywel in a discussion on the benefits and drawbacks of being agile and having a roadmap, and when each might be the better method to use. 

If you want to hear a fresh take on a topic every tech leader has considered, this one’s for you.

This week we’re delighted to have Omnipresent’s Director of Engineering, Matt Belanger joining us. Matt has scaled the engineering team from 2 to almost 90 over the last year or so and is an expert on fast growth.

Part 2 of last episode’s discussion sees Hywel Carver and Meri Williams focus on feedback and its relationship to empowerment. Tune in for useful tips on how- to, (and how- not- to) give and receive it.

If this is a topic you’re interested in, here’s a link to a Meri-approved resource we think all leaders - tech or other, will find useful: Thanks for the Feedback - By Douglas Stone and Sheila Heen.

In the first of a brilliant two-part discussion, Hywel is joined by Meri Williams. Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations. She has led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter and Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, to Monzo and AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others. A published author and international speaker, she is the chair of The Lead Developer conference. In her spare time she enjoys building complex Lego, board & video gaming, snorkelling and underwater photography.

In this episode, Meri and Hywel address the growing need for a culture of empowerment in work spaces. How do you create one? How does that help you with scaling, as a business and as a leader? Why is it important?

Simon Andrews is the Head of Engineering at Hubble, London's largest online marketplace for renting flexible office space, and the world's first hybrid workplace platform.

Simon has been coding since he was 10 and is now a people-focused leader, striving to build an engineering environment where everyone can thrive.

In this episode, Hywel and Simon reflect on how Hubble navigated a period of economic pressure and uncertainty, and emerged from it successfully.

In this episode, Hywel and Chris discuss the challenges of growing quickly. Is it people or processes that you should scale first? How should you structure your teams to maximize scaling? What happens if you have enough people but not the right processes in place and how important is consistency?

Chris is a self-described "passionate technology leader" with over a decade's experience leading teams at some of London's most well-known scale-ups. He's currently the Director of Software Engineering at Gousto and helping shape the rapid growth of the Tech team there as the company consistently outperforms its expectations and sets the ambition ever higher.

Hywel Carver is the Co-Founder and CEO of Skiller Whale, a SaaS company enabling development for developers. Hywel was a CTO for a variety of VC-backed companies for over 10 years, ran Tech Leader Dinners, and coached other CTOs. He’s a published curriculum author and avid blogger. 

Dave, Hywel, and Hayley created Skiller Whale out of the frustration that learning for developers is broken; Learn more about the company and sign-up for a free trial here. 

In this episode, Laura and Hywel discuss diversity in tech teams, as well as some of the common mistakes companies make when trying to improve diversity in an existing team.

They delve into questions such as: What’s the difference between diversity and inclusion? Why is a neutral interview process sometimes anti inclusive? Do you prioritise candidates who are a culture ‘add’, as opposed to a culture ‘fit’? And, what are the implications of having a founding team that lacks diversity?

Laura Tacho is a product development leader with a successful track record leading cross-functional product development teams — engineering, product management, design, and data — through different stages of growth and transition. She's a former VP of Engineering for an edtech startup, and previously worked as a Senior Director of Engineering at CloudBees after joining the company through the acquisition of Codeship, a CI/CD tool. She became involved in the cloud native container ecosystem during the very early days of Docker, when she worked on some of the first open-source developer tools for Docker. Since then, she's been awarded the title of Docker Captain, has spoken at dozens of development conferences across the globe, and enjoys jumping in to help teams and companies solve big engineering problems.

Hywel Carver is the Co-Founder and CEO of Skiller Whale, a SaaS company enabling development for developers. Hywel was a CTO for a variety of VC-backed companies for over 10 years, ran Tech Leader Dinners, and coached other CTOs. He’s a published curriculum author and avid blogger. 

Dave, Hywel, and Hayley created Skiller Whale out of the frustration that learning for developers is broken; Learn more about the company and sign-up for a free trial here.