The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Scott Woody, Co-founder and CTO @ Metronome, shares how they transitioned to operate at a global scale. They discuss creating specialized teams, relationships between finance and engineering, and pivoting business models. They also touch upon the challenges of teaching customers and determining pricing models.

Jill Wetzler, former VP of Engineering and Executive Coach, shares practices to become a great coach. She discusses creating a mindset of possibility, fostering positive relationships, cultivating trust, navigating threats, and thinking about the future. They touch on implementing a peer coaching structure and making the most of peer group discussions.

Kathleen Vignos, VP of Software Engineering @ Capital One, shares strategies for career growth and overcoming executive leadership skill gaps. Topics include portfolio approach to career development, essential executive skills, facilitation techniques, and negotiation strategies. She also explores the impact of lifestyle trends like non-drinking and taking big risks for career growth.

James Everingham, co-founder and VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, shares tools for scaling down as an engineering leader. Topics include leadership methods like the Socratic method, principle-based decision-making, and creating narratives. They also discuss navigating process vs. anti-process, product planning, and adapting communication style within different org sizes.

Pete Peterson, CTO @ Riviera Partners, shares strategies for gaining stakeholder buy-in in complex environments. He discusses finding collaborators, quick wins, balancing competing interests, introducing change when facing resistance, and leadership practices. He also talks about navigating stakeholder relationships and recognizing team efforts. The podcast concludes with a discussion on the impact of automation on jobs.

Data leader and author, Shailvi Wakhlu, discusses practical strategies for becoming a better self-advocate and improving negative self-talk. She also explains how engineering leaders can coach their teams to become better self-advocates, including in scenarios like job promotions and negotiating a job offer.

Clemens Mewald, Head of Product at Instabase, discusses how to enhance engineering leadership using generative AI tools, addressing cross-functional collaboration challenges. They explore creative ways to implement GenAI beyond chatbots, questions to ask when leveraging GenAI capabilities, and rethinking productivity. Clemens also shares insights on translating technical knowledge into meaningful business outcomes.

Ken Pickering, SVP of Engineering @ Starburst Data, discusses navigating catastrophe and uncertainty, building a culture of resiliency, finding PMF for a second product, and leveraging first-principles. He emphasizes the importance of communication, context, problem-solving, and adaptability in driving a strong engineering culture.

Jamie Tischart, CTO @ Bettercloud, discusses strategies for creating efficient orgs & getting the most out of your eng team. Topics include coordinating multiple senior hires, identifying barriers, making meaningful decisions, improving cross-functional relationships, and turning communication into an asset.

Hubert Palan, Founder & CEO @ Product Board, discusses how to achieve successful collaboration between product and eng teams! He addresses the elements that make up healthy collaboration, common areas of tension between product & eng, and steps for aligning the teams on product vision, tooling, and processes. We also cover strategies for engineering leaders who want to contribute more to their business’s product vision, facilitation frameworks to improve communication between product management & eng teams, and how to best advocate for engineering’s most important considerations.ABOUT HUBERT PALANHubert Palan is Founder and CEO of Productboard. Driven by a passion for building truly excellent products, he started the company when he saw a hole in the market for a dedicated product management platform. Before Productboard, Hubert was VP of Product Management at GoodData and a management consultant at Accenture. Hubert mentors and advises startups and judges teams at entrepreneurship competitions and frequently speaks at his two alma maters – UC Berkeley, where he got his MBA, and the Czech Technical University, where he received an MSc. in Computer Science."When the engineering partner would come to the conversation talking about how other products that are successful have approached that and what choices they made, as opposed to just talking about the technology in the abstract, the business aspect of it, how it helped drive business results for other companies that are in similar markets or adjacent spaces, t hat's something that's super valuable because it shows that you are thinking about the technology, just not for the love of technology, but in the business context and in the appreciation of how the technology decisions drive the business outcomes.”- Hubert Palan   Check out Jellyfish's Scenario Planner to help you accelerate your development!With Jellyfish’s Scenario Planner, you can analyze tradeoffs, and optimize resources - to ensure your highest priority initiatives meet your delivery goals and deadlines!To learn more about how Scenario Planner can help you better accelerate, predict & plan your software delivery 👉 head to jellyfish.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Elements that contribute to successful collaboration between product & eng (2:34)Tools for understanding customer demographics & behavior (4:50)Greatest areas of friction between engineering and product (8:11)How to determine who is driving what initiative (11:03)Tactics for splitting responsibilities between EMs, PMs, tech leads, etc. (13:03)Hubert’s favorite tooling techniques (15:39)Strategies for aligning eng & product management processes (17:51)Frameworks for developing product vision & breaking it down into steps (19:27)Solving friction points between existing & new customers (23:16)How eng leaders can get involved with the product vision side of the business (24:28)Handling conflicting priorities & misalignment between teams (27:42)Tips for successful communication between product & eng (29:16)Advocate for engineering’s most important considerations (31:32)Specific conversations for facilitating communication between eng & PM teams (34:32)Steps to ensure engineers are involved in defining product vision / strategy (37:27)Rapid fire questions (40:55)LINKS AND RESOURCESOutlive: The Science and Art of Longevity - In this operating manual for longevity, Dr. Peter Attia draws on the latest science to deliver innovative nutritional interventions, techniques for optimizing exercise and sleep, and tools for addressing emotional and mental health.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/ Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.