We share the most critical perspectives, habits & examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry.
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This ELC Hiring Summit special feature explores tactics & strategies to help you build powerful relationships & professional network! We cover the impact of vulnerability, why you should focus on “giving” first, how to break down power dynamics, prepare for important introductions & more with Dan Portillo (Managing Partner & Founder @ Sweat Equity Ventures) & Jim Cook (CFO @ Orbital Insight). DAN PORTILLO Dan is a former Talent Partner @ Greylock. Previously, he was VP of Suc...
This ELC Hiring Summit special feature dives into compensation! We cover where you should start with your comp strategy, how to create consistency/transparency in your program, competing on comp/equity at the early stages, how to consider geography, and when you should bring in external support with Thanh Nguyen (Founder & CEO @ OpenComp) and Cyrus F. (GM/SVP @ Hatched Labs). THANH NGUYEN, FOUNDER & CEO @ OPENCOMP Thanh has spent the greater part of his decades-long career partnering wit...
What IS engineering branding? What are the most effective things you can do to immediately improve your engineering brand & attract top talent? This special feature from the ELC Hiring Summit covers all things engineering branding & attracting top talent with Cosmin Nicolaescu (CTO @ Brex) Kris Rasmussen (VPE @ Figma) Brad Henrickson (Leadership Coach / former CTO @ Scoop Technologies) & Sam Wholley (Partner @ Lightspeed Venture Partners). SHOWNOTES What are the most important things...
This ELC Hiring Summit special feature covers building a diverse hiring pipeline! You’ll hear how to approach DE&I holistically & what success looks like beyond the metrics. Plus how to balance headcount demand with DE&I goals, hold execs/managers accountable & ideas for effective DEI programs & partnerships with Ragini Holloway (SVP People @ Affirm) and Gabe Westmaas (VPE @ Checkr). RAGINI HOLLOWAY, SVP PEOPLE @ AFFIRM Ragini is currently Senior Vice President of People at A...
This special feature from the ELC Hiring Summit covers optimizing and scaling your hiring process! You’ll learn signs that indicate it’s time to optimize/scale, tactics to create a consistent hiring bar, key metrics to measure efficiency, feedback loops & more with Catherine Miller (VPE @ Flatiron Health) Vinithra Varadharajan (Head of Platform Eng @ Airtable) & Keng He (Sr. Director of Eng @ LiveRamp). SHOWNOTES The current size and scale of Cat/Vinithra’s engineering teams + their curr...
This special feature from the ELC Hiring Summit covers everything sourcing engineering candidates! You’ll hear the latest sourcing trends, most effective sourcing tactics, how to get candidates attention, increase response rates to your outreach, & source senior engineers with Kah Seng Tay (GM & Eng @ Airtable) Shauna Geraghty (SVP, Head People & Ops @ Talkdesk) & Mike Pinkowsky (Head of Eng @ Gem) KAH SENG TAY - GM & Engineering @ Airtable SHAUNA GERAGHTY - SVP, Head People ...
This special feature from the ELC Hiring Summit explores the current state of hiring and how the rise of remote work will affect sourcing engineering candidates, the interview process, and compensation with Bret Reckard (Talent Partner @ Sequoia), Maia Josebachvili (former Head of People @ Stripe), and Erica Lockheimer (VPE @ LinkedIn) BRET RECKARD - Talent Partner @ Sequoia Capital MAIA JOSEBACHVILI - Head of M&A and Investing (interim), former Head of People @ Stripe ERICA LOCKHEIMER - VP ...
Melissa Binde, VP Engineering, Cloud @ Splunk, shares lessons from her time building Amazon Apollo. You’ll hear the origin story of Amazon Apollo, how to define the right problem, identify the right solution, and what makes technology endure 20+ years. Plus how to improve your engineering storytelling and pitch the right product features to the right stakeholders! "We were heavily influenced by an early project manager I worked with who called it, the 'JEDI principle' - You make just enough deci...
Sarah Clatterbuck, Sr. Director of Engineering, YouTube & Google Zurich Site Lead @ Google, shares the story of her transition as a site lead during the covid-19 pandemic. We cover her past experiences that helped prepare her for the role, what it was like bootstrapping a new team during a pandemic, re-introducing teams to in-person work, AND the story behind her 18-day staycation & its impact on team burnout. "You can't worry about pleasing everyone because there are many thousands of p...
Asif Makhani, CTO @ Handshake shares about making non-incremental career transitions, unique opportunities at startups, and exercising influence at mid-stage companies. Plus Asif shares questions to help you gain clarity before your next transitions AND how to attract & retain senior engineers at smaller companies. "When you have the ability to take a step back, you begin to think a little bit more philosophically about your journey. And it's not just incremental thinking. When it's incremen...
We cover practical tools to eliminate workplace injustice and help your team “get sh*t done fast and fair” with Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor & Just Work + Trier Bryant, CEO @ Just Work! We discuss the root causes of injustice and introduce several strategies to help you interrupt bias, address prejudice & confront bullying in your organization. "You can't possibly do your best work if you are being harmed by the way you're being treated by your colleagues..." - Kim Scott "Whatever...
Jan Chong, VP of Engineering @ Tally shares strategies to manage and navigate relationships with your leadership team, direct reports and peers. We cover the fundamentals of managing up, why you need to align with your peers first when you join a new team, plus ways to communicate your ideas and the priorities of engineering more effectively with your non-technical colleagues. "Organizations are made up of humans that are making decisions based on the data they have. If you don't think about how...
Nick Rockwell, SVP of Engineering & Infrastructure @ Fastly shares his recent reflections on incidents, resiliency, blamelessness, and accountability. You’ll hear why the heroic model of incident response is unsustainable, how to improve reliability by closing the long-feedback loop, plus opportunities to maximize post-mortems for process improvement AND emotional processing. " We started doing a biweekly meeting. We talk about resilience. We revisit everything that has not been closed, whet...
We have a conversation with Christina Wick, CTO @ Flowcode, on the current state of the gender gap in tech and what we can do as engineering leaders to actively bridge that gap. We cover stories of the historical impact of women in tech as well as what you can do to remove bias in interviews, performance reviews and feedback. Plus what you can do to intervene when you observe bias happening. "The first time I heard someone talking about how "women should seek executive sponsorship" I got really ...
Allan Leinwand, SVP of Engineering @ Slack shares his core philosophy & approach to creating developer productivity AND happiness! You’ll learn how Allan combines what developers want most + metrics, & analysis of the dev pipeline to optimize productivity. Allan covers how to translate those principles to remote/hybrid work and how to tell (and what to do...) if your dev teams are unhappy. "I generally say developers want to do three things... They want to solve hard problems at scale. T...
Quentin Clark, Managing Director @ General Catalyst shares how to get your career unstuck at different scales & stages! You’ll learn different frameworks you can use to benchmark your growth and identify where you might be stuck. Plus different approaches you can take to get your company and the people you lead, unstuck at scale! "The specifics of the framework are not as important as having one at all. Create some ruler... Like if you're a snail and you're trying to inch your way towards th...
Jeremy Henrickson VP Engineering & Product @ Rippling shares how to align, lead and scale a combined engineering and product organization! You’ll learn about the common tension points while scaling, different ways to structure your org, when to combine your orgs vs. split, and how to realign your teams when expectations get out of sync. Plus how to build credibility with new teams and acquire product skills as an engineering leader! “When I have like a number of teams and each of them has li...
John Kim has had an unconventional career, pivoting from professional gamer to software developer, to serial entrepreneur. We discuss how to assess your career, make pivots, and balance your growth long term. John shares principles from complexity science to help you navigate unknowns, risks, & opportunities in your career. Plus other powerful frameworks to make better career decisions. " So if you're working at a bigger company, what you're really trying to optimize for is how quickly can y...
Tia Caldwell shares frameworks to motivate teams, unlock individual superpowers, and shift team mindsets to confront adversity by identifying strengths using a superpower framework, understanding roles within the Drama Triangle, and creating psychological safety through open communication and personal operating manuals.
We deconstruct two distinct career paths in engineering & leadership, and a co-founder relationship 15 years in the making. In part 2, Tom & Viraj share why they decided to start a company together, how they assess start-up opportunities, early company building & values-defining conversations, and other strong opinions on how they’re creating the engineering culture and execution at Common Room. VIRAJ MODY, CO-FOUNDER & CTO @ COMMON ROOM Viraj led engineering organizations at Con...
We deconstruct two distinct career paths in engineering & leadership and a co-founder relationship 15 years in the making! Tom & Viraj share formative startup experiences that shaped their careers as a Principal Engineer & Eng Leader. Plus insights shaping their new company on assessing risk, dealing with open-ended problems, being decisive, & removing non-coding time for engineers VIRAJ MODY, CO-FOUNDER & CTO @ COMMON ROOM Viraj led engineering organizations at Convoy and Dr...
Harpaul Sambhi, Founder & CEO @ Magical reveals the tools he uses to accelerate his personal and professional growth. You’ll learn how to engineer successful outcomes with your goals through accountability mechanisms, how to build a personal board of directors or leverage friendly competitions like the “master of the universe award” to learn, pivot, & grow faster. "When we do our goal setting, especially if you're trying to compete with someone... is to do the personal side just as much ...
Alexis Rask, Executive Coach & Partner @ Sweat Equity Ventures shares how to ask powerful questions. You’ll hear simple tactical ways to increase the power of your questions, what the most powerful question is, common failure modes of open-ended questions, how to get over your fear of silence, plus stories of the most powerful questions we’ve ever been asked. "When I say a powerful question, I'm saying 'What's the really right question, for this right moment, that is going to TRULY unlock so...
Wendy Shepperd , GVP Engineering @ New Relic covers how she leads massive-scale strategic programs with precision execution. You’ll hear how to lead great project kickoffs, successfully execute across multi-year time horizons, navigate complex dependencies, launch, & of course celebrate success with your team. "One of the things I tell my teams all the time, especially when things get hard... is I say " Hey, y'all we are making memories! One day we're going to look back on this time and talk...
Will Larson CTO @ Calm shares with us how to focus your time on what actually matters. You’ll hear about many of the common traps engineering leaders fall into and his frameworks to help you better target your time to focus on long-term, high-impact work. "A lot of times they'll be like, 'Oh no one's working on this... I can make a huge improvement here!' But then they'll get signals from leadership that 'Actually this isn't valued...' And so I think it's really important to understand what SHOU...
Edward Kim, co-founder & CTO @ Gusto shares the different forms that “fear of failure” can take in your engineering org. Eddie shares incredible stories to help you spot the different signs of “fear of failure”. And you’ll hear different ways you can change your team culture, process and operations to reduce fear of failure. “But as you continue to scale and you grow... that thing that you optimized for starts to become a disservice to you and the company. Because what happens is this fear o...
Erica Lockheimer shares with us her imperfect path to engineering leadership, why the unconventional path matters, and what you can do as an individual leader & organization to empower engineering leaders with unconventional backgrounds. Plus you’ll also hear how to overcome self-doubt and launch an apprenticeship program! “Whether you're a manager or whether you're an individual contributor, you are a leader in your role. Use the voice that you've earned in the seat that you own. What can y...
Craig Martell shares the biggest mistakes leaders of ML teams make, what to do if you have no experience leading an ML team, key skills your ML team needs, plus different models/approaches to building an ML team. You’ll hear the most expensive and time-consuming parts of ML, how to estimate timelines, unique tech debt, and how to manage expectations. “If I had to give one piece of advice about starting AI in your company, one of the first people I would hire is a really great data scientist, eve...
“Giving up control” is about empowering other people to scale yourself, and scale your effectiveness. Maria Latushkin shares with us why you need to give up control as an engineering leader and what holds people back. Plus you’ll learn tons of different ways to influence and manage your performance when it’s dependent on other people’s effectiveness. “You are responsible for the delivery of the team. At the end of the day, nobody really cares like how much YOU work. You can be working around the...
A dynamic conversation between 4 current and past VPs of Engineering who cover tons of patterns and anti-patterns about being a VPE! You'll hear how leadership is different in large vs. small companies, mental models to determine your greatest leverage, why you DON’T need to act like an owner, how to put trust into practice when you’re transitioning into a new role, and about the imperfect path to become a VPE. SPEAKERS: CATHY POLINKSY CTO @ Stitch Fix JERRY KRIKHELI VP of Engineering @ Houzz RI...
