You've got to want to build houses, not paint walls. Painting walls is fine and it's totally good, but if you do not like to build houses, actually don't make that transition because you're literally going to go like, oh my god, there is no wall here. And you're going to have to build it from scratch. Everything you need to be able to do yourself. Welcome back to The Engineering Leadership Podcast. ELC Annual 2023 is just around the corner.
So we're launching a special series featuring past sessions that capture some of the themes and topics that you'll see during the conference. Why, you ask? Because you're probably wondering, what can I expect from the conference? Well, the answer is incredible speakers and content and this episode is just a preview of what you might see this year. Speaking sessions will tackle some of the most critical challenges facing engineering leaders today.
We're talking leadership technology. Well, specifically technology on how generative AI is impacting software development and engineering leadership. But today's theme is career development and our career track will expose you to different opportunities, different company types, and introduce you to different engineering cultures and processes to help you navigate and build the career you want.
And specifically, the speaking sessions we're featuring are going to tackle everything from how to assess startups, how to expand your impact beyond engineering, the differences between B2B and B2C businesses, and how to navigate critical relationships like products, go to market teams, customers, and more. If you haven't gotten your ticket yet, I'm telling you right now, you're missing out.
And you need to be there. You can grab your ticket and check out all of our speakers and topics at sfelc.com forward slash annual 2023. This episode features a session from ELC annual 2022 with Vinod Marr, SVP, Vengeeering at Databricks, and Ali, Eurter, VP of Engineering at Commerce Hub, sharing strategies for transitioning from large companies to smaller companies.
And in this conversation, you'll hear some of the different strategies for finding the next opportunity, tips to make your transition smooth frameworks for being a successful leader at a smaller organization, skills and attributes you need to be successful in these contexts, and how to integrate teams that consist of original startup members and hires from larger companies. Let me introduce you to our speakers. Vinod Marr is the SVP of Engineering at Databricks.
He was previously at Rubric, where he served as SVP of Engineering. And prior to that, Vinod spent nearly 15 years in leadership roles across some of Google's most critical business units, including search, ads and payments, as well as tapping into his passion for developer platforms to create and lead the actions on Google platform. Ali, Eurter, is currently VP of Engineering at Commerce Hub.
Previously, he was the VP of Engineering at Workboard, which is a strategy and results enterprise SaaS platform, helping large organizations align quickly for results, and was the VP of Engineering at Alice Technologies, working on revolutionizing the construction industry with an artificial intelligence powered enterprise SaaS product.
Again, if you are interested in topics just like this and beyond, you can get your ticket to join your peers, check out all of our other speakers and explore additional topics at sfelc.com forward slash annual 2023. Enjoy this special episode with Vinod Marr and Ali Eurter. Thank you. Thank you for joining us. Thank you for the introduction. Show us that. Absolutely. Let's go for it. I know you joined Google in 2004, and this is only six years after Google was founded.
Google was smaller by then, and you were there for around 15 years. And from IC to management, all the way to VP level, and you hold many different roles. And the company went from a couple thousand to hundreds of thousands. I like to hear the little about that Rockership experience, but then I know that you moved to a smaller startup compared to Google, of course. Companies like Rubrik and Beta bricks. I like to better understand the motivation behind that change. And tell us more about them.
So first of all, thanks for having me here, and thanks for working with me to get me to this point. Yeah, so I'll try to keep this one fairly short at least in the first part, because there's a lot that you can wax eloquent about 15 years at Google. But for me, probably the biggest thing that led me to Google stayed through almost all the very end, which was this. It was a very diverse space. Even back in 2004, as you could see the company, you could see the conversations.
And even an interview tells you a little bit about how the person is thinking. And by then, you know, I'd already had three, four years since. So I knew one thing about me is that new problem spaces and new skills would be something that was very important to kind of like keep me engaged.
And Google provided that in leaps and bounds. It was very difficult to get adjusted, because as much as I didn't work in a company like Google before, your notions of how work exists, what a manager does, how anything else works. Everything was out of the window. I think it is only probably two years before then that there's this very famous incident where Larry came and told all the managers.
You're fired, not like you have to go and leave the company, but you no longer managers because he hated the idea of managers. Right. After recruiting into a bunch of people at work out to get in the managers. So it really defied everything. And you suddenly woke up realizing there's nobody telling you what to do. The idea that you'd go and ask somebody, can I do this was very alien. So you had to build a lot of muscles and I think that never stop.
You know, I joined a particular team pretty much as an accident when I was just hanging out in Google New York, which is where I started my career. And I quickly discovered there's an opportunity to build a product. I crafted an idea for it. And next thing I know they wanted to ship it. And I was like, no, it's a support. I please don't ship it. So I built into this is like month three. I landed up building a little bit of a business case.
Set this was a team should look like, etc. But meanwhile, I also decided I'd do something else, which is actually work in Google search. And in most companies, I think there would have been a very terrible conversation. But it was perfectly fine. It's like great. We'll put together a team and go off and do your very thing and go right code. So I think things like that kept happening again and again and again and again, pretty much I'd say maybe a year or two till I left to answer the question.
And why that stop happening? It became much more of a, you know, where does the headcount set who is the VP should I do this because it's not part of this group or that group. And you know, some of it is natural, by the way, to become our risk of us at that size. But for me personally, it wasn't where I was getting bored, but I wasn't certainly getting challenged.
I wasn't learning anything new. And the way I like to put it is you do wake up very often in the morning wondering whether your causation or correlation and at least the egoistical in all of us wants to provide at least some causation. And I still don't know whether that is true or not, but I said, let me go and find out. This is this is about continue to learn having growth mindset, right?
You are not bored, but you are not challenged enough and that's actually what trigger to search for another opportunity. And then you come to that point in your career, in wherever you are in your career. How do you go about searching for that next opportunity? Where do you even start? What does it even matter?
I think it's going to be different for different folks, but you know, couple of pieces of advice and this again came from a lot of mentors in my own life is it's best not to go away from something, but go to something. And that requires a little more thought and work at your end and certain be patients. So and by the way, it's not like this is this masterful trade I've had all my life, I've made mistakes where I've both gone away from things as well as rush timelines. These things take time.
You just need to give it the time it's going to take because let's say you don't know where you want to go. You might land up in an atmosphere which is worse than where you are an environment worse than you are and not like what you're doing it more than what you're doing today.
But to then know what that looks like you have to actually spend some time and even that is very hard. I mean, I'm sure most of you all know this, you know, folks who've just come straight out of school. If you ask them, what do you want to do? They're going to be like a one or right code.
And then they want to do two years later, they're going to look at you strange some of them, of course, no, they want to be the CEO of their own company, et cetera, which I find admirable. But by large people don't know and it takes time to understand what you want to do next. And even after any use of working that changes.
You need to spend some time introspecting. But for me, the way I discovered it is a lot of conversations. So I don't know, I must have talked to how many co founders, how many managers, how many folks at various companies just trying to understand what they were looking for, what I could be doing.
And many of these would be like, you know, lead nowhere and that's okay because I did at least learn about things that were happening outside. And in that process, I've developed overloaded word my own rubric of what I wanted to achieve. So you reflect a lot, you think about this things a lot. You have patients. I don't have a patient. I'm saying do have patients do have patients throughout this process. And then you also said something about talking to many people.
So you actually get a chance to validate your ideas, get to learn about the opportunities out there and take your time to take your time to figure out what you want to do next. Is it correct to say not take an action even at the end of the day, it might not work out is actually worse than take that action. I, you know, I think it depends on those conversations at the end of it. If you conclude consciously and not going to take an action, it's okay.
But not having those conversations and just staying in I'll say stagnation mode. I think that's super dangerous. Because you know, you're fundamentally accepting that you don't want to change, but here's the sad truth. Even if you don't want to change things around you're going to change. There's going to be a re or the company's not going to do well. It's going to add a new product. Somebody else is going to come in.
So you're going to be forced to evaluate. So I think it's much better to understand whether the journey that you're going to be dragged into is something you want to do or you drag yourself into a journey that you want it. I can't they agree more stagnation is, you know, very dangerous doesn't mean that you shouldn't do your due diligence. But you just kept it stuck in a place you know the tree you can always move right at 10 today. So you mentioned growth is very important.
And if the growth slows down. It's time to look for another opportunity. We talk about putting a lot of time in it having some patience throughout the process that a lot of people to find your next opportunity. I assume you found one and now you move to this smaller company now in your case. Maybe you can walk us through Databricks experience. How do you go about the 30 days? What were the things that were different from your previous experience?
Sure. So actually before I get into that one, the one thing I'll say is as you make your choice. I think this is particularly true if you're making a transition from Victor small. I think you need to have a very honest conversation with whoever you're going to work with the founders, the leadership, etc. On what they want you to do, what value did they see you bringing it to the company rather than assuming.
I am whatever I am and there's something magical about me and I'm going to go in there because. So like one thing which I remember you and I me discussing us inside a big company. It's actually much easier to wear multiple hats. What I mean by that is a practical example is. You could be reading engineering, but you'd also be doing product. You could be doing design. Because you have so much of a support system around you to fill in the gaps.
Contradiction is that you burn to a super small company. Let's see you found something. You're forced to do that. You know everybody is being a salesperson, being a documentation person, etc. But somewhere in that leadership spectrum and the growth spectrum, focused lines are being very important. So I'll give you an example as it relates to where I am. I love talking to customers. I love shaping products even if I'm not good at it. You know it's a question of what I like to do.
But the problem is every minute I spend there is time spent away from something that the company needs, which could be. The hiring process is not okay. We don't have a build systems are not okay. Testing infrastructure needs to change. We keep having outages. So you need to go and talk to customers. So all of this sound like painful stuff, but maybe that's what that company wants a few.
And having that honest conversation is super important because if you go there assuming the title translates into the same type of activities. And you can find very quickly. It's not in fact at the smaller companies. I'd say there's a pretty good. Dividing line between the CTO responsibility versus the VP of ends responsibility. One is very innovation product focused. One is very operational. And I've seen a lot of people struggle with this realization to lead in the game because they thought.
I like building products early products. I'm going there. Maybe you're going to be making sure the trains run on time. So having that conversation, I think it's important. So sorry for that bit of a segue. But now let's say you land there. I say the biggest thing. I'll say you start off with having very low expectations of yourself. Because what we forget is that what makes us succeed, which is why that company is like, hey, maybe you should come and join us.
You might be the smartest person. I'm not. You might have lots of experience, which, okay, let's say I do. But what allowed me to succeed as a context and context takes a lot of time to build. So you go in there, assuming that, you know, I'd be sitting in my random queue, but Google going like, oh no, you need to ship two weeks earlier. And I knew what needed to happen to make that happen. And I didn't need to teach anyone.
You go to this company. First of all, you have no idea what they're doing. So you'll have to learn the business. You have to learn the people you have to learn the technology. If you don't be patient with yourselves and try to score these big victories very quickly, you land up actually really hurting the company. And that's probably the other big thing. I'll tell every failure of yours. It's not just a failure for you. It's a failure for that company because they can't afford that.
So the constraints are very different. So I'll say take a very low, you know, pace, but calibrate that for the people who brought you in and say, hey, this is what I'm going to do. And very often, both the times, in fact, the feedback that came to me was, that's way too fast. Just stop. Actually do even less. And now this is like completely messing up my brain because I'm like, I'm the best things in sliced bread. I can do lots of things and you brought me here to change your company.
At least mentally these things are going on and you're telling me to go even slower. And I measure myself by a certain expectation. I said, so it took me a long time to learn to live with that lower expectation. Right. The second thing is in that context gathering. I mean, anyone here who's worked for really big companies and made the move to small companies. How many people did you find a lot of great documentation that you could read up on?
Was the code based phenomenal with comments? No. So how do you do it? You have to form people bonds. You have to form friends. You have to build. Learn who does what? Who's good as what? By the way, that particular thing of who who's great at something versus who is amazing at something else is one of those things with no one talks about, but that's what enables you to succeed.
Because you know by experience that for instance, yeah, you don't give Vinod that thing which requires a lot of structure and discipline. And maybe you don't give Ali something that requires slow pace. You need to know your personalities and that is again context right. So you need to learn who these folks are what they've how long have they been there, etc. So game that context is the first part and start with very tactical wins. So set yourself some very tactical goals.
So I'll tell you my experience at Drew break. I've gone there. They should be the stand up meetings and be like, what are the stand up meetings? But turns out they were trying to release something. So I'm going to go to the stand up meeting. I thought it's 10 minutes. No, it was like 40 people. It's going on for 45 minutes. I realized they meant that when they start stand up in my mind, it was ship room and very different activities.
So I observed for three whole weeks and then I went to the co-founder and said, I think this we should tweak and it's like, yeah, that's right. That makes sense. So you made one week and next week and next week. So that constant calibration with people who've been there and it could be a co-founder.
It might be one of the senior engineers, but most importantly, people have been there to another DNA of that company. That is super important. And then your appeal and rents just repeal and rents and repeal and rents. So thank you. Since this is a smaller company, like you said, the impact that you have tend to be a lot bigger. And the mistakes are amplified. And like you said, again, context matters because, you know, taking things out of context and trying to apply them.
Might not really make things any better than any found them. I think what really resonate with me the most is this context gathering exercise. Even big companies have these issues of documentation and making the information available for successful onboarding. It's just only more amplified in a small company. And I think what you called out was this relationship building. It's critical as you learn new document and teach others, but also kind of giving yourself a break.
There's the patient part of the so that so that you can actually understand things better before you take actions. And also we talked about these tactical, smaller wins that you want to have as you gather more context and observe and rinse and repeat. So how long does this process take in general? I'm sure it's context the contest changes. When do you feel you're like ramped up?
I still don't feel ramped up at day breaks. Really don't. I mean, like suddenly we love some new thing come up and I'm like, man, who knew the API work this way? I guess I'm so far away from the code base, first of all, so finding who can actually educate me on that is the first exercise. And then I have to go to that person and be like, yeah, I know this. But two years before it was somebody else was working on this and you need to go and talk to so and so.
So it could be that or the way certain customers have certain expectations because they've been around for a long time. So it still doesn't stop for me. And I think in my mind, typically for any complex product and company, it takes a piece two to three years. And I think through that process just be patient and make sure constantly calibrating.
That makes a lot of sense. One of the things that I always realize and it's kind of a challenge for people who are moving from a large company to a smaller startup. They realize how much of a sport network they had around them. And it could be just examples will be on boarding. That's what's already available. It could be HR. It could be, you know, budgeting.
When you join to a smaller company, you start realizing you're these things don't exist anymore. What was your experience related to that? But also, how did you end up tackling that because you might just end up meeting the go outside of your responsibility. Girl say it's a VP of engineering. And because that's what job requires to get to get it done.
That's a great question. So actually, maybe maybe one to the audience. So I noticed a couple of your hands up saying you'll make the transition was anyone an utter sheer horror the first day that you're land made the transition. Discurious what what why were you horrified? Just a lack of structure and processes and you know, everyone doing everything kind of like, yeah, that was a shot me. That's a great description because you suddenly realize, you know, my couch isn't there.
I don't know if it's a metaphorical thing. Everyone's running around doing everything. There's a candidate who's four different managers are pitching their stuff. And the candidate is having a ball. The managers don't even know. I mean, just the list goes on and on. Right. And there's this immediate thing in your brain. They go like, I'm going to bring order. I'm going to quickly have a list of everything that made me succeed. And I'm going to transplant it here. Right.
You will get that thought. Just stop. Just literally just halt yourself. Two things. A lot of it is irrelevant. Right. Rituals are many of the things you were used to actually just rituals. They're more cultural than helping your way of factors. Second, be you are picking a particular problem with you. You see is very important at that point in time. Meanwhile, if you actually go and talk around, people are going to be like, are you crazy? You're talking about a small little wound on your head.
Did you notice my luck leg is gushing blood here? Can you come and help me fix that picking what problem you want to work on again? Same thing you need to keep going back to folks. And this might sound bizarre to you going like, hey, you're there to lead the company. You can't lead unless you have the context. So first of all, the other part I'll for gone of engine is definitely get very, very humble. Humble that you don't know anything. I won't do bad words here.
But you don't know anything to be able to even pick the right problem to work on. So calibrate that. And then the second thing is, let's say I'll just give you an example. It's like, oh, hiring is going slow. Even though we have a lot of candidates. You'll immediately jump back to whatever structure work for your company.
You go like, I'm going to build that here. Stop. Actually, just write it down and see if people come back and say, okay, because you'll find very often that the way you're picking the solution is based on a pattern match. It doesn't work in the new place because you forget that that work because you used the word support network. You had this large number of recruiting people. You are recruiting coordinators. You're sorcerers. Here is the one mind show.
So then you go like, all right, if I want this end effect on this is the way the process works. What are the things that I have to compensate going back to BP offense. Now I'm now going to start harvesting my Lincoln network and going up hitting up every single person. So you're starting to be playing sorcerer.
I was so well caffeinated at times that I didn't sleep all night because it was like five meetings at Starbucks back to back because that's the only way you're going to get in candidates to talk to you. So you just first calibrate on the right problem. Secondly calibrate on the right approach and then be prepared. Somebody actually gave me a very nice line recently said you have to be prepared that what this company needs of you is to work maybe two three four levels beneath your level.
But with the potential that you can suddenly go three four levels above where you are hired in a very short period of time. That's what small company is one and that's hard right it's particularly hard if you have myths and misconceptions or what your role looks like. It does resonate with me a lot as well when I made my transition from a larger company to a very small company.
I realized almost everything that you mentioned really not having a recruitment team you're the recruiter you're the one who purchases a greenhouse and sets that up. I remember going to stock to myself that you need to get sucked to certification and you look around who's going to do it.
If the room is quiet all you got to do just look at the mirror she and it's going to be you. So you're too very about you know how are you going to you know lock the doors because we at the past we can't just say we're all put done. And then it's just I think brings up another topic in my mind is some of these things are sort of skills that the kind of like knowing the programming language.
There are more like certain attributes of a person. Some some people are more inclined or there may be happen to have an attribute than others. So actually when you move into a small company like that what attributes a person attributes using that matters the most. I mean you mentioned some of them already you know being able to be nimble iterates and call ownership.
Are there others that you will emphasize so that people can actually go back and think about these attributes and say I need to invest in that attribute so I'm not shocked. And then one comes to mine and this is credit to one of the day breaks co founders are salon and I'd never heard it put quite this way. It's like you've got to want to build houses not paint walls. If painting walls is fine and and it's totally good.
But if you do not like to build houses actually don't make that transition because you're going to be building a lot of house you're not just tweaking around things. And then you're going to go like oh my god there is no wall here and you're going to have to build a trim scratch and that requires again is the right place to build the wall who else can help people the wall.
Nobody how do I go and get some help everything you need to be able to do it yourself. I say that might be the build versus a painter better for comes to my mind when we talk to each other.
And then sometimes you also mentioned not being scared of failures. I think it's a huge one and just kind of allowing yourself to be slimmed and fail and learn because I think most of these and one of the most significant changes that I feel like I realize after I talk to you was that you learn my failing and sometimes it's more important to fail fast. I know it's been overused but to be successful.
No thanks for reminding me of that one because the other if anything I think bigger companies really make you fearful of a failure because not in any bad way but things happen when you fail like all Sunday they're going to be no change or if I don't do this and not going to get head count on this product won't ship.
You know there's so much of failure constantly happening in a smaller company if you're not comfortable with that you have to it'll Sunday hit you heart and part of it is also equal right who likes to fail you don't so that fear always stands in your way. And the second part of the deal was again you fail and then you're going to go and ask my case you know sometimes we're talking to somebody who's just like two years out of school going like what do you think I could do better here.
So being open to that feedback is super important. And I'll drink one of our conversations as well. I remember you mentioned there is really no textbook for this. There's a lot of books that I can read to learn more about about the Google does this a really or like how do you get higher than say Google or other companies usually for a set up you just on your own in that environment.
I think networking or the people you know who went through that matters a lot do you have mentors coaches advisors within the companies outside the company that help during this transition and how did they do that. I mean there've always been some formal mentors which is how I landed up achieving anything that I did in my life.
Yeah, I'm just not ever shy to go out and ask for advice and it's and the other thing I'll tell you is it's a bit tricky because what happens is and this is even in a big company senior roles are some one of my long time managers and closest friends made this comment way back and I couldn't quite grow.
I can't get it but I can assure you if you just think about it maybe three years down the line will ring through as you grow senior the loan role start getting loanlier and loaned you don't have the comfort of as many people that you can go to or go to without some impact of that conversation happening.
So which is why I think depending on what you're trying to do having a set of folks who that you can lean on who are not going to be shy about telling you exactly what you need to hear is so important but very often for some other things they won't have the context. So in my case you know we have an interesting mix of folks who've been there a database very long I think at this point six co founders are still there a lot of early employees and they span all kinds of levels.
So I'll just go to any one of them and just like when I came trying to do this what do you think do you think it's even the right thing this ranges from everything from how we want to structure something to whether to invest in a particular area things which you would have never even talk to other folks at the bigger company because you can see all the pattern matches around you and exactly
how to do it. It makes the experimentation is a lot more efficient because now you actually get to learn from others experiences. Yeah absolutely. And they have things that you don't have to help you there. So a lot of insights there's no way to do this quickly being patient small wins understand the company culture if you go back and think about either one of your transitions were there other things that you will be doing differently this time.
I'll say you know all of the things that I mentioned right I mean it's like I said I'm a terrible person to learn from perfection from a perfection perspective everything has been make this mistake make this mistakes I'll say I've been way more patient with myself and those around me second I would definitely lean on even more and cultivate some relationships and the other part there by the way is in bigger companies the cross functional relationships are and as important because you have systems that take care of it.
It becomes a largely in person space here that doesn't work so for instance and this I can assure you if I tell you this anyone in the smaller company will immediately go like that happens.
You'll Sunday wake up realize that some vital piece of equipment software license take your pick is Sunday not there it was fine yesterday evening you come in today it's expired or the license is gone and it would be like who did this and be like I don't know if somebody who is here with Mr. is person six months back and it was on their personal credit card they no longer even here so both of these companies the first thing I did is sat down with the purple in the purchasing department.
And said okay I need your help to make sure I can now start collecting I need to just inventory and if you ask any single person including the founders it would be like I don't know what's the list of SAS software that we use so you know much like the US government or any crime enforcement will tell you what do you do you follow the money so now we sat in forensic accounting and
on credit you know expense reports again back to BP of an inch building product no I mean this stuff is important right because you can load your DNS name you can land up realizing your five wall subscription is or virus scanning subscription or you know all all the
service side of failing that's super important for the company and yeah we love need to have this person whose job it is person isn't there you don't know what this person look like because I can assure you if I ask you who does this in a big company you many people wouldn't know I didn't know or okay this is the budget and I have engineers screaming at me about how bad the bell system is do I spring for those two more engineers to help a particular team or do I go and buy more machines or you
get a little more AWS spend to make sure that the bills go faster I never had to make the trade off at Google it was just like generally if actually has completed me I took it forward on to somebody I knew and suddenly they stopped comparing and it's not like I didn't care but it just took care of itself now it doesn't and suddenly you realize that super important so we know that I have a lot more
questions but this not about me so be able around 14 minutes left I really want to do a Q&A but before we do a Q&A I want to ask a question to the audience and if there is anyone who is interested in responding to that I will appreciate your answer and the question is
very similar to what I asked me now for the people who had experience in terms of transitioning from a bigger company to a smaller startup what mine shift changes what leadership style changes do they need to adapt for a successful transition you like to hear that from me.
I think the analogy I think about often is good at the gym right so when you go to the gym there are several things you could do you could work on cable machines you could work on free weights when I work at large companies it's kind of like working cable machines right where you only have one degree of motion you can only do one thing up and down up and down up and down right
and those cable machines you tend to lift heavier weights because you have a lot of support structure around you right and you just go doing one thing and any any given time if you feel like you've taken on too much you just let go and the cable machine goes back to where it started off right start ups is more like lifting
and you need a lot more support structure to be lifting those dumbbells and you tend to end up exercising some support muscles and exercising muscles that you never exercise before as you mentioned but as a result you can lift as heavy as cable machine
and also with dumbbells if you lift too heavy in a wrong way you end up hurting yourself pretty bad right so there's a lot more risk so that's the analogy I like to think about risk and reward phenomenal very good thank you for sharing great analogy I'm going to remember that one thanks any others moving from a larger company to a smaller company right generally larger companies being more top down smaller companies being more bottom up what how did you switch that mindset
so I think this is maybe specific to Google for me does the other way around lot more brownian motion lot more random things happening at Google smaller companies whether or not the intrinsic explicit style is stated top down and not that clarity of what we want to do at any given time is actually a lot more in the smaller companies and even more so in a smaller enterprise
companies because it's not about sitting in a room and imagining things you have to actually go and talk to customers and then it's not just giving them what they want you have to understand what is it that they're trying to do so that actually results if you make that's transition to into any
business as a consumer is developing the world right enterprise company you will see a rigor into that thinking process which I think is phenomenal experience even if you want to go back and bring it to zoom but certainly I think smaller companies even if it doesn't appear like somebody is writing that entire team hard and you
don't have to there is a much more intentful deliberate motion of what you do at least for me both the transitions that was what I discovered I agree with ten what I will add is just like you said it's more bottom up more bottom up. Now you're making a lot more decisions. You really can't wait others to tell you what to do. Possibly one of the most important attributes for success there is having a lot of courage and perseverance to stick to it. The
best way to get that improve that attribute is actually taking more risks. So whatever works for you, you can just push yourself to take more risks or you can just go, you know, race cars, whatever gets that muscle going more and more as you get more and more comfortable taking risks and kind of going through it and dopamine hits and you're like, okay, I can do this and you like me more decisions. So I think perseverance and courage will need to be really
exercised quite a bit. Hello. Thank you for your sharing the wisdom here. I had a question about kind of the opposite, not the opposite, but like in terms of your CEO or the founder, right? So I've seen places where you move from a larger company, but CEO and your managers have still a mentality of a small company. Like one of the examples I would say is they celebrated the features more than the operational wins. In fact, many of them didn't even celebrate operational
wins. So how do you kind of so I feel like there's a coaching aspect to even coaching upwards of what's important at the same time not sounding like you're bringing some large company things or to here. I was wondering if there's any excuses at point here. So that's a great question. I think when when companies, especially startups bring people like, you know, we're not here, he definitely can bring a lot of process and kind of bridge the gap in between which we're talking about
the help. As he has done it multiple times, he's done it in big companies, but there's also some to say about really understanding the context like we're not was mentioning because sometimes it's especially really early stage start that you really that features matter the most because you know, going from like a year year and a half run way to another one. I mean, it's important to have a vision. It's important to have admission. It's important to have a road map. There's no
excuse for that. But features bring the customers around matters for the next fundraiser. You really need to understand the context. And that's a hard balance. Hard balance, I'm sure for you. Definitely easy for him compared to others because he has seen both sides, but I think just striking the balance there will be the critical path. Yeah. So actually, let me divide them my response in two parts. So and I forgot to mention this. One of the things everyone, I'm sure if
I use the word tech debt, everyone will go like, yeah, tech debt, right? And it bugs us. It gets under our skin. My own internalization of that as I've come to the smaller companies is if you don't see tech debt in a smaller company, run it because tech debt, it's not because people generally at a macro level are bad or lazy. Particularly the smaller companies, they have actually embraced key things which many folks don't have, which is market opportunity. And in that
timing is everything. So if you use that context, you'll realize whether it's tech debt, whether it's a lack of operational rigor, whether it's something else, there was a very explicit choice that some really smart people made. And not because they didn't know better on other cases, even that they didn't know, it was to respect their opportunity. Respecting the opportunities, what allows fools like myself to show up at a later stage and join that company, right? So I have
to really, really respect that. And I have to understand why it happened. So again, I dig into why this happened. And where and by the way, all of this, it's not meant to say you're just going there to be employee number 20 or 30 or 50 or 100 and just coast. Of course, they're bringing you in because of something that they see in you that you can help. But now take this part to us, let's take celebrating operational
those things. It might be that they are totally gathered. In fact, if you take data breaks by the way, I tell you that Ali is brilliant engineering leader far better than I am going to be. I'm not kidding. But there's a deliberate choice made because they couldn't even afford engineers in the back in the day. They couldn't afford enough engineers and enough senior engineers. So they did what they could, but he recognized that constantly and his pushes, let's make sure
teams have got the right chemistry, the right mix of levels. In fact, I would say the prescription that we a day of bricks brought to how teams should be composed as far more deliberate than Google ever was as to the celebrating, you know, operational rigor. It's not just helping. In this case, I didn't have to I didn't have to do that. It's not just the founders. You have to read the average engineer because the founders or the leaders in the company, they are making the investment
decisions. But the people on the ground who are actually writing the code, they're making the trade off it into a just ship the feature. Do I have a unit test? Do I have a regression test? Do I have some tests? So making sure you as a leader are going and celebrating that out of take a
ton of time to have those conversations and building it into your career evolution ladder. Those are the things that you can and again, you can't suddenly go like feature feature boom six month fees because my by the way, favorite pet peeve is when companies declare freezes because in my mind, that's how both companies and software dies. So spend a lot of time in understanding why something might not exist and make sure you know whether it is a lack of awareness or a lack of
resources or a timing issue. I thank you for excellent talk today. My question is as your startup is going through a growth phase, you hire a lot of people. Usually these people are from more experienced
companies and everything else. So in the end, you have like half of the people who have been in the company for a long time and were part of the early journey and half of the people who are coming from much mature companies and you kind of now need to strike a balance on what type of change you bring to the table. The new people want kind of little bit more mature processes to be implemented while the older people see that like a difficult choice or maybe a threat. So how do you balance some of
those when it is in a high growth phase like data breaks might be? So I am very explicit with senior leaders whether it's ICs or managers coming from big companies. I actually do a little bit of a one-off orientation for the managers and I tell them exactly what I've shared here which is you're not here to bring big process. You're not here to suddenly, oh there's no code readability value. We used to code readability. You could impose it. Why did it exist? Why? How could it actually happen?
Take Google's example massive profit margins plenty of time in the world to do most things. Could afford that. Fried in a smaller company. I mean you'll be an amazing code quality and no customers. Right. So that's one thing. So the folks coming in need to understand why they're coming in not to superimpose every one of what they are used to or want to do. Again pick a few things. Make sure
everyone agrees that that is the right set of problems to go at. So you want to pick the right problems, the right cadence and even that the other part is the smaller company have to be very more iterative things which are going to be like six months one year two years three years doesn't work.
I everyone's hair is on fire mind not but you have to respond right now you're in a half to deliver value constant for the folks who've been there by the way I as far as I'm concerned the you know it's it's almost where I have this notion of elder not by level but by tenure and I lean on a lot of them and the proverbial thing hits the fan. I go to them first because same thing if
there's a problem by the you don't want to come to me at data picks. You'll want to go to the right engineering of the right director the right VP because I literally land up going and pulling that time. So so that I'm very clear on who it's not a win versus last thing but who needs to drive the
change and who can help of course in that change. I definitely agree in terms of the final that balance one tool to you know what we're not mentioned to actually put together would be put in together some kind of an engineering manifesto and when you define that you can actually planning on which stage you're in you can call out the relevant parts from these different parties.
Early stage startup people wants to move fast right they want to build features really quickly get quick feedback there's a lot of things to learn from there but they might not to an extent don't care certain portion portion of software developer lifecycle. Later stage engineers that might have different benefits to bring in writing the manifesto like that will actually ask these hard questions to answer where you are in your journey as a company and which parts needs
to be picked and kind of make it very clear. So it's that up orange reputation. Hello it's me to be from wish actually my question is kind of similar to this lady but my question is more like how do you influence other people making their mindset change transition from large to small companies. One part is how do you do it for your organization it's a large one and another part is
how do you influence other organizations. Some example I am experiencing now like other any year or a leader or legal team fund financial leaders they lack of the mindset of treat off right make treat off this year. For example security that asks oh you need to have perfect security and the legal team said you need to have perfect compliance which without
considering the cost how do we influence those people change. Yeah I mean for like I said to hear what we land up doing is at least for all the senior leaders we make sure there's a mentor who has been around a long time and that mentor I also check in to see if you know the person is doing well
and helping make the trade off because I'll take the example that you brought up about security and legal and stuff right the folks in security are right the folks in legal are right but remember every company the decision on what you do and how you make the trade off is a product decision
it is not a security and legal decision you can't have the same trade off at meta amazon or google as a small company because part of it is just your exposure numbers right so you can't expect that translation to happen so and I'd say you have to take that and that's why me coming in brand
you I might not even be able to make the decision so I immediately lean on the person I report to which is Ali the CEO or one of the product leads go like hey this is the trade off what do you think and they'd be like typically I've always found that they would be even more aggressive than where
my brain would lead me and my brain is already aggressive. The other part of it is it's not just security everything you trade off in a smaller company you know there's a slave of being customer obsessed you have to look at it from that perspective in a big company it becomes much more about how
I predict myself in a small company use a customer to guide you on how much to actually push that bar and most times you'll find that you ought to be taking more risks because you can get something to the customer and so long as they understand where you are in your journey they'll work with you you know even if there are mistakes so for me customers provide the perfect way to guide
how better draw that palace. Thanks for the insights like I had one analogy and one question the analogy with which I look at my transition from a large to a medium to a smaller company is like a cruise ship versus a yacht versus a sailboat like in the sailboat we are still trying to even
figure out if we can get beyond the SFB and you know enter the Pacific Ocean but the question I had is that you know the finance example that you gave right like you are you are taking care of these licenses you are like deep into that problem figuring out how to keep the lights running but your
manager probably the CEO founder whom sir be like we know we we want you to focus on the carrier ladder like you are SVP of engineering like you know he comes to realize our carrier ladder where is one of your probably platform teams would have appreciated if you had figured out how to reduce the AWS cost or the circle CI cost so now how do you you know balance out and and either convinced
that the finance thing is the right thing to do or how do you go through this. So it's less about convincing and this where I say what problems you choose to pick you need to calibrate with folks who understand the gravitas relative gravitas of each one of these things and I can't actually make
that choice if you you know gone to my head I'd be like yeah I'm probably going to make sure that we don't follow over tomorrow so if something does if my DNS records are gone I'm going to take care of that if it is career ladder versus spend that's actually the perfect question to the CEO and my
instinct smaller company I mean even more in the climate be live and fix that spend and fix the career ladder because the other part of the career ladder aspect I have this other analogy which is terrible by the way I always ask myself am I in wartime activity or peacetime act and generally if I find myself in peacetime activity I know I'm doing something I like rather than something I
should be doing that constant check in your brain as needs to be going off. So the question I ask myself it's not just this example is you am I am is what I'm doing a wartime activity or a peacetime activity and generally what I found is if I'm indulging in the peacetime activity it's not that it's
not important I've landed a picking at picking that because I like doing that more than the wartime activity which I must do there's different versions of that playing out every single day right and the other party you know I didn't mention this earlier you've pride yourself on efficient
calendar management in a big company or efficient I mean I used to literally plot my sister would help me wear on the campus I would park in the morning and wear it go and pick up the car in the evening I mean I try to plan every Friday but that is not the goal is not for me to be efficient it
is to be effective so if my calendar it looks nothing like what I planned I can't feel terrible about it because I've responded to what the company but biggest thing I'll say just go and check with somebody and I have no ego you know sometimes I'm like this or that I have no ego I'll go and
actually find out I'm doing these two things what would your side pick awesome that's all the time we have for today folks please encourage you to we have with Ali and we know thank you so much for sharing your experience here at the LC and we look forward to your conversations let's give
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