What are the challenges that accompany being a woman leader in technology? How can you be an ally for women in your workplace? How do you overcome imposter syndrome? These are just a few of the questions Christine Awad—the Director of Engineering at Facebook—so kindly answers in this episode of Simple Leadership.
How do you build an engineering team of A-players? What does a well-rounded high-performing team look like? Why is engineering for impact more important than solving hard problems? In a world where engineers are looking to pad their resume and solve cutting-edge problems, Ashish Aggarwal shares the one thing that is far more important: solving your customer’s problems . In this episode of Simple Leadership, he walks through building high-performing teams, solving customer problems, and the best ...
Jon Thornton worked at some small companies in NYC before he ended up at Squarespace. He’s been able to build a new product and new team—their email marketing product. He launched that and has since been supporting other products. Throughout his career, he’s learned how to manage technical debt. What is the difference between technical debt and good technical debt? What is a framework for using technical debt? Listen to this episode of Simple Leadership for Jon’s advice on managing technical deb...
Being in a management position in any industry can often leave you overwhelmed. Striking a balance between your work and personal life is already difficult. So how does a manager take parental leave? Matt Newkirk—the engineering lead for Etsy’s International Customer Experience initiative—has worked out some of the kinks. I’m the father of three girls. During their birth, I was fully involved in startups and was never able to take parental leave. Not only did I miss out, but as a manager I feel ...
If you’re an engineer in a leadership role where you’re dealt with the task of developing teams, the hiring process can be daunting. Do you hire junior engineers that you can shape and mold? Or senior engineers who are experienced, but come with baggage? And how do you throw boot camp graduates into the mix? Johnny Ray Austin joins me to lend his thoughts on the hiring process, including what he looks for in an engineer. Don’t miss it! Johnny is an experienced engineering executive and internati...
Today’s guest—Emad Georgy—is passionate about technology leadership. He’s a CTO Consultant and the Founder and CTO of Georgy Technology Leadership. Emad has been in the tech industry for over 25 years. His hybrid approach to technology management—focusing on both the practical and cultural elements of leadership—makes Emad a trusted and valued partner helping both domestic startups and global enterprises scale and grow. In this episode of Simple Leadership, we chat about what cultivating leaders...
Transitioning an engineering leadership position to a work-from-home model can be a challenge. For some engineers, working remotely is the norm. For others, such as those working for Shopify, being forced to work from home because of the Coronavirus is a whole new ballgame. In this episode of Simple Leadership , Farhan Thawar joins me to chat about his transition into working from home and how Shopify has made the process manageable. We talk about the benefits of coding in pairs, whether or not ...
If you’re in a leadership position in the engineering industry and have suddenly been thrust into working remotely, it may feel like your world has been turned upside down. In this episode of Simple Leadership, Dana Lawson and I discuss a few tips to help you manage remote teams. You want your team to thrive and be successful during a time of great uncertainty. Dana describes herself as an atypical engineer. She wanted to attend college to be an artist but soon realized the ‘starving artist’ lif...
A management role in software development can be difficult to navigate. You need to keep a high-level perspective on projects while making sure they go smoothly. Eric Elliott, today’s guest on the show, believes that you need to implement coding quality practices such as test-driven development. In this episode, we talk about why software development processes such test-driven development makes an impact and why it’s important to remove bugs. We’ll also talk about how to train developers and kee...
If you are transitioning into an executive or leadership role in an organization, you can find yourself dealing with incredible loneliness. You also deal with a change in power dynamics, gaps in information, and a lack of support systems. It is difficult to prepare for the change from “getting work done” to being an “influencer”. As a former COO, today’s guest, Suzan Bond, understands the struggle of the transition. She joins me today to share some ways you can combat loneliness and ease the tra...
Effectively leading a team through an acquisition or merger can be shaky ground to navigate. You aren’t just dealing with merging teams, tech stack, and processes—but also a culture. Your team needs leadership that is open, honest, and transparent about the process. If your company is going through a merger or acquisition and you want to arm yourself with some tools to manage your team efficiently through the process, learn from the expertise of today’s guest, Loïc Houssier. In this episode of S...
Cultivating diversity in the workplace is at the forefront of challenges that starts-ups face. Creating diversity in race, ethnicity, gender, and even opinions and skill sets is something every business must implement. You need to build a team with diverse perspectives in different backgrounds . Tess Hatch from Bessemer Venture Partners and Jess Mink with Auth0 lend me their expertise in today’s episode of Simple Leadership. We’ll cover everything from hiring the right people, what investors wis...
Being an effective leader is about more than just managing people efficiently. Krister Ungerböck (unger-bahk) joins us today to talk about why being a leader is about changing the language you use. Krister is a keynote speaker, CEO Coach, and global expert in The Language of Leadership. Prior to retiring at age 42, Krister was the award-winning CEO of one of the largest family-owned software companies in the world. His expertise in the Language of Leadership is based upon his unique experience a...
What does it take to up your game and improve your management skills? Do you need to read better books or get around the right environment? Here to help us dig in and understand some key aspects of an effective manger is, Jocelyn Goldfein. Jocelyn is a technology executive and investor. She is the managing director and a general partner at venture capital firm Zetta Venture Partners. Previously she was a director of engineering at Facebook and vice president of engineering at VMware. Jocelyn is ...
What does it look like to create a work environment where employees can succeed and thrive? Are there steps you can take as a leader to encourage and support your team members in a meaningful way? Here to help us understand what makes Asana a, “Top 5 Best Place to Work” is my guest, Scott Carleton. Scott is currently the Site Lead of Asana’s NYC office, dedicated to enabling all teams to collaborate effortlessly. Previously, Scott was the VP of Technology at Andela, empowering engineering talent...
As the economy and various business sectors continue to evolve, many leaders are looking at how transitioning to a distributed company might be the best option going forward. I had the pleasure of sitting down with Zapier’s Bryan Helmig to discuss all the benefits and some of the challenges involved with running a distributed company. Bryan co-founded Zapier in late 2011 with his friends Mike and Wade, and they were soon admitted to Y Combinator’s YCS12 batch. Zapier is a web automation applicat...
There’s good news for all you tech leaders who feel you got thrown into management without much preparation - leadership can be learned. My guests on this episode of SimpleLeadership are Johnathan and Melissa Nightingale, the founders of Raw Signal Group - a company with a simple promise, “We Build Better Bosses.” They are also best-selling authors of the book, “How F*cked Up Is Your Management?: An Uncomfortable Conversation About Modern Leadership.” I can't think of two people better suited to...
Steph is the Head of Publications at Toptal , a serial maker, and a supporter of women in technology. Outside of leading a remote team of a few dozen, she is a self-taught developer that builds projects related to women in technology, remote work, and self-improvement. She’s launched products that have hit #1 on Product Hunt, articles that have trended the top of Hacker News, and was nominated for Maker of the Year in 2018. She actively supports women in technology by speaking about the psycholo...
Patrick has spent his career applying his engineering talents to the healthcare industry. In that time he’s focused on learning and growing as an engineer, a teammate, team lead, and more recently as an engineering manager. He considers himself a people gardener and coalition builder and believes in people-first leadership. Patrick loves teaching and tackling people and process opportunities to help teams and individuals grow. On today's show we discuss communication, psychology, having a growth...
Jason Wong is a proven engineering leader, diversity & inclusion consultant, and doughnut enthusiast. With almost two decades of experience in building and scaling web applications, he has worked in a range of industries from academia to online media and e-commerce. He helped establish web development and administrative computing at Columbia College, led development of premium video streaming services at Yahoo! Sports, and spent seven years at Etsy leading their Infrastructure Engineering team. ...
Eric Elliott is a distributed systems expert, and author of the books "Programming JavaScript Applications" and "Composing Software". He builds and advises development teams for crypto projects, and has contributed to software experiences for Adobe Systems, Zumba Fitness, The Wall Street Journal, ESPN, BBC, and top recording artists including Usher, Frank Ocean, Metallica, and many more. He spends most of his time in the San Francisco Bay Area with the most beautiful woman in the world. On today...
Liam is the co-founder and CMO of TimeDoctor.com , Running Remote Conference and Staff.com . After graduating with a masters in Sociology from McGill University, Liam opened a small tutoring company which grew to over 100 employees, and looked to solve a problem with remote employees not reporting accurate work data which turned into Staff.com. He consults on outsourcing and process design and is passionate about how to gain insights into the inner workings of how people work. On today's episode...
John Rouda is an IT Leader and Computer Science Professor. Currently, he is an IT Director and he teaches as an adjunct professor at both York Technical College and Winthrop University. John has spoken at numerous conferences and is currently on the board of the Interface Cyber Security Conference. John’s past experiences include more than a decade of Technical management in both software development and network infrastructure. In 1999, John Rouda and 2 partners founded a business developing, ho...
Saurabh is currently an Engineering Manager at Twilio. He joined Twilio about 4 years back as a senior engineer. He then moved into a tech lead position and then transitioned into management about 1.5 years ago. Since then, he has grown into managing multiple engineering teams within Twilio's Messaging organization. Before joining Twilio, Saurabh worked in a couple of fin-tech startups in the Boston area mostly in an Individual Contributor role. He has a strong passion for engineering leadership...
Michelle is a Senior Backend Engineer at ChowNow, helping local restaurants grow their business by strengthening relationships with their customers. She has previously served as both an engineer and a manager for the last 7+ years in entertainment technology. She has worked tirelessly to help movies and television get made faster and cheaper, saving productions millions of dollars. A Philadelphia native, she has a background in Media Arts and is a self-taught Python developer. Michelle is now wo...
Darragh is currently the VP of Engineering at Intercom. (One of my favorite companies). He joined Intercom in early 2012 as a product engineer and Intercom's second outside hire. Fast forward to today, and he is Intercom's VP of Engineering where he has grown and scaled the organization into a world class Engineering team. Prior to Intercom, Darragh worked at numerous other companies including Amazon.com. Darragh is mentor on the Plato network and is passionate about the outdoors and his family....
Camille Fournier is the head of Platform Engineering at Two Sigma, a financial company in New York City. Prior to joining Two Sigma she was the Chief Technology Officer of Rent the Runway , a transformative brand that offers unprecedented access to designer fashion, disrupting the way millions of women get dressed. She is an open source contributor and project committee member for both Apache ZooKeeper and the Dropwizard web framework. Prior to working for Rent the Runway, Camille served as a so...
Lara Callender Hogan is an engineering leader, coach, and consultant at Wherewithall . She is also the author of Designing for Performance (O’Reilly, 2014), Building a Device Lab (Five Simple Steps, 2015), and Demystifying Public Speaking (A Book Apart, 2016). Lara champions engineering management as a practice, having built and led engineering organizations as an Engineering Director at Etsy and VP of Engineering at Kickstarter. In her world tour to advocate performance to designers and develop...
Mihai Fonoage is the Vice President of Engineering for Modernizing Medicine. In this role he leads a Team of Engineers that are working on building high-quality software for medical practices to increase efficiency and improve patient care . With over 13 years of experience in the technology world, his technical prowess has strongly contributed to Modernizing Medicine’s success. Mihai has a PhD in Computer Science from Florida Atlantic University and was Modernizing Medicine’s first employee. He...
Jen Dary is the founder of Plucky, an organization that works with companies and individuals to create healthy dynamics at work. She is a leadership coach and speaker; she travels across the US teaching workshops, including her popular course, So Now You’re a Manager , which trains new managers across the country for the complex work of herding humans. Jen lives in Berkeley, CA with her husband and two young sons. On today's episode we discuss one of the tricky challenges of being a first time m...
