The Tech Trek

The Tech Trek

By ElevanoTechnology
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The Tech Trek episodes

  • Ali Hosseinkhani - Moving from Scrum to Kanban; Factoring remote into the hiring process

    Some of what Ali talks about:

    • Handling the hiring process to overcome the challenges of hiring remote
    • Adjusting the software development process to minimize the impact of employees that might leave
    • Paying attention to context switching
    • Building a team post-pandemic
    • Shifting the development process from Scrum to Kanban

      • Meet: Ali Hosseinkhani is the Director of Software Engineering at Next Trucking leading four teams focusing on data engineering, machine learning, platform application development, and infrastructure.

      If you have any questions for Ali, please feel free to reach out via:

      https://www.linkedin.com/in/kosarh/

      I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

      31 min
    • Chad Sanderson - The growth of the data platform product manager role

      Chad dives into everything data platform product management including:

      • Why does your org need a data product manager
      • Origin of where the role comes from
      • Measuring the impact of the data platform product manager
      • What to look for in hiring a data platform PM
      • Take advantage of internal-facing PM roles

        • Meet: Chad Sanderson is the Head of Product for Convoy’s Data Platform team, which includes the data warehouse, streaming, BI and visualization, experimentation, machine learning, and data discovery.

        If you have any questions for Chad, please feel free to reach out via:

        https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-sanderson/

        I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

        36 min
      • Juan Pablo Buriticá - People grow linearly; organizations grow exponentially

        Some of what Juan Pablo talks about:

        • Lean into potential
        • An early-stage startup can take risks to let people grow into roles
        • Hiring someone with experience means you are hiring someone that has already made mistakes
        • Experience can be a double-edged sword
        • People grow linearly; organizations grow exponentially
        • Interviewing is part of building software and you must account for that process

          • Meet: Juan Pablo Buriticá is a software engineering leader who has built and led distributed teams at companies like Stripe and Splice. He currently leads Engineering at Ritchie Bros, is originally from Bogotá, Colombia, and lives in New York City. After a decade of building distributed engineering teams, he compiled his experience in The Holloway Guide to Remote Work.

          Juan Pablo has built high-performing software engineering organizations by emphasizing Open Source software values, technical excellence, trust, and empathy. He has also organized more than 10 software engineering conferences in the US & Latin America, founded multiple JavaScript meetups, and led the creation and growth of Colombia’s JavaScript community, now one of the largest Spanish-speaking JS communities in the world.

          His favorite food group is empanadas.

          If you have any questions for Juan Pablo, please feel free to reach out via:

          https://www.linkedin.com/in/buritica/

          I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

          24 min
        • Trenton Huey - Managing and executing within a highly matrixed environment

          Key takeaways:

          • Gap analysis to forecast data pipeline needs
          • Work backward from the end-user point of view
          • Every system has to have some human involvement
          • Going beyond the initial scope of work to learn about a new industry
          • Working with stakeholders to help them understand what goes into getting analytics to them

            • Meet:  Trenton Huey is the Director of Data at Vida Health, which provides access to therapists, registered dietitians, and health coaches for mental and physical health conditions. His team drives innovation, clinical outcomes, and business growth through machine learning, AI, and reporting and analytics.

            If you have any questions for Trenton, please feel free to reach out via:

            https://www.linkedin.com/in/trentonhuey/

            I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

            20 min
          • Aniket Soneji - Focus your team's activities on work that can't be outsourced via third-party services

            Key takeaways:

            • Optimize resource allocation by examining maturing applications
            • Find ways to offload activities to 3rd party services to help scale
            • Being remote requires an open work culture

              • Meet:  Aniket Soneji is passionate about solving the world's most important and difficult problems with innovative engineering solutions. He holds multiple engineering degrees from UC Berkeley, and spent his first few years in technology consulting, helping clients across the US build-out and scale their IoT and Analytics platforms. He currently serves as the VP of Engineering at AutoGrid, where his team is building the software to help support, optimize and monetize today's energy transition.

              If you have any questions for Aniket, please feel free to reach out via:

              https://www.linkedin.com/in/aniket-m-soneji/

              I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

              23 min
            • Brent Goldman - Treating engineering management as a type of engineering

              Some of what Brent talks about:

              • Engineering management is made up of complex systems
              • Provide your team with a playbook and make sure the playbook is being executed
              • People are the most complex system
              • Build up engineering management systems and refactor

                • Meet: Brent Goldman is the VP of Engineering at Sisu Data, the industry's first decision intelligence engine helping companies make better business decisions with data. Prior to Sisu, Brent was an engineering director at Uber, where he founded and led teams responsible for dispatch, pricing, self-driving cars, measurement & inference platforms, and more. Before Uber, Brent co-founded Standard Treasury,  a YC-backed enterprise API banking platform acquired by SVB. Brent started his career at Facebook as an early engineer building the third-party Developer Platform, and he earned a B.S. in Computer Science & Economics from Caltech. Outside of work, Brent is an active angel investor with a portfolio of ~100 startups, as well as a conceptual artist building electronic & experiential art.

                If you have any questions for Brent, please feel free to reach out via:

                https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentgoldman

                I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

                16 min
              • Gil Feig - Integrations have expanded opportunities for end users and software companies

                In this episode, Gil talks about the impact that prebuilt integrations have on an organization and how these integrations have expanded opportunities for both end-users and software companies. 

                Meet: Gil Feig is the co-founder of Merge. Previously the Head of Engineering at Canvas, he’s led projects at Wealthfront and LinkedIn. A graduate of Columbia University, Gil lives and works in San Francisco.

                If you have any questions for Gil, please feel free to reach out via:

                https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilfeig/

                https://twitter.com/GilFeig

                I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

                19 min
              • Kirby Frugia - Developer autonomy to drive process improvement

                What we talk about on this episode:

                • “Ship Wow, Ship Now” mantra
                • Developer autonomy to drive process improvement
                • Using your “I intend to” voice
                • Focus on delightful experiences, high-quality products and act with urgency
                • Perceived vs actual velocity

                  • Meet: Kirby Frugia is MURAL’s SVP of Engineering and is responsible for Product Engineering, DevOps, and Data Engineering. He joined the company in October 2020 and since then, he has grown his team from 48 MURAListas to over 200. Kirby first got into software engineering because he loves problem-solving and making things easier for people — whether that’s a process, a tool, or an experience. He’s always looking for ways to unlock someone’s creativity or ability to do more with what’s in front of them.

                  Over the course of his career, Kirby has worked at numerous companies, including Hewlett-Packard, InVision, and New Relic, where he’s built both products and teams. While at HP, he built software for digital printing presses and realized his passion for managing teams. From HP, he transitioned to New Relic, where he found his niche growing and helping teams adapt to a high-growth start-up environment while staying true to who they are as a company. For Kirby, building products and building teams have something in common: They both involve a firm sense of the company’s values, scaling processes and practices, and lots of communication and listening.

                  He holds bachelor’s degrees in business administration and computer science from Oregon State University. He lives near Portland, Oregon.

                  If you have any questions for Kirby, please feel free to reach out via:

                  https://twitter.com/kfrugia

                  https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfrugia/

                  https://www.mural.co/blog/meet-kirby-frugia

                  I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

                  21 min
                • Chris White - When do you start a formal product organization?

                  Key takeaways:

                  • Define when you should look to formalize the product role
                  • Look for a bottleneck in the decision-making process
                  • Creating an opportunity for people on the team to grow into new roles
                  • Look to internal staff to promote people into product positions
                  • Growing into a new role means owning the decisions and learning opportunities

                    • Meet:  Chris White is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Prefect, overseeing the design and implementation of the next generation of data workflow automation systems. Chris began his journey into data tooling while getting his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he researched optimization guarantees for highly non-convex data-driven problems. Throughout his career, Chris has gained experience in a diverse number of roles - teacher, researcher, data scientist, software engineer, sales engineer, and security officer to name a few.

                    In his spare time, he is an avid runner and loves spending time in the ocean.

                    If you have any questions for Chris, please feel free to reach out via:

                    https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitecdw

                    https://twitter.com/markov_gainz

                    I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

                    24 min
                  • Hamed Ahmadi - Scaling engineering teams within Life Sciences Industry

                    Key takeaways:

                    • Overcoming the perceptions of the healthcare and life sciences industry
                    • Mission-driven aspects of the industry is a massive draw from high-tech companies
                    • Ramping up on nomenclature
                    • Moving fast and saving lives
                    • Software engineering becoming a competitive advantage rather than a service organization

                      • Meet:  Over the past 15 years, Hamed Ahmadi has contributed to many software products in various industries impacting millions of users with very diverse needs. To name a few, Microsoft Visual Studio, Office & Windows, the data acquisition & monitoring systems for the largest fleet of renewable energy power plants in the world, the infrastructure and software systems for two pioneer Life Sciences companies leading the development of novel blood-based genomic tests for diagnosing the cause of cancer and infectious diseases. Hamed is passionate about our environment and positive social impact, which is projected in his work, volunteering activities, and photography as his hobby when not working on software systems.

                      If you have any questions for Hamed, please feel free to reach out via:

                      https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamedahmadi

                      I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

                      25 min

                    About The Tech Trek

                    From the publisher's feed

                    The Tech Trek is a podcast about how founders, operators, and technology leaders build and scale technology companies.