The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Greg Czajkowski (SVP of Engineering @ Snowflake) shares some of the secrets he’s learned about great teams! We discuss the power of eliminating hierarchy, “going direct,” reducing energy dissipation in your team, removing friction in your org, and creating “higher innovation per time unit.” Plus dilemmas balancing velocity & quality, what to do when team size is used as proxy for power, and how to know your eng org is operating at peak output!ABOUT GREG CZAJKOWSKIGrzegorz (Greg) Czajkowski, a distributed systems and organizations scaling expert, is Senior Vice President of Engineering and Support at Snowflake. Prior to Snowflake, Greg spent 13 years at Google, where he was VP of Engineering responsible for a broad portfolio of Google Cloud data analytics and machine learning products and for internal services addressing data analytics needs of all of Google’s businesses. Before Google, Greg spent six years at Sun Microsystems, working on Java runtime environments and operating systems. Greg has a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University, an MBA from UC Berkeley, and an undergraduate degree from AGH Krakow, Poland. He holds over 50 patents."What I learned at Snowflake is  really practicing "Go Direct."  If there's something you don't like, you'd like to fix, you have to go to the person who made the decision.Usually you learn much more about the decision. There's a good conversation. Sometimes you convince the owner of the decision to do something different.I think nothing beats going direct, because any other means of trying to change a certain decision, certain point of view indirectly, is ineffective causes, frictions, and ultimately energy gets dissipated.- Greg Czajkowski   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022This episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Qualities and characteristics Greg's observed in great teams (2:02)Why Greg joined Snowflake (3:46)“Go direct” and other secrets to great teams (5:27)Balancing "go direct" and the chain of command (7:35)Eliminating hierarchy (9:21)Creating higher innovation per time unit in engineering teams (11:21)How do you know your eng org is operating at peak output? (13:41)Balancing business expectations and removing the dilemma between velocity & quality (15:36)Energy dissipation (18:21)Removing team friction at scale (21:20)How Snowflake’s small team units optimize for intimacy, learning & dev happiness (23:50)How small teams scale up & interact across the eng org (25:56)How to address when team size is used as proxy for power & career progression (28:35)Rapid Fire Questions (30:37) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss why alignment is key to delivering great digital products & team outcomes, how to recognize & navigate misalignment, and create better alignment with Jonathon Hensley (CEO @ EMERGE, Author of "Alignment"). We cover a couple of community case studies exploring dilemmas like navigating misaligned product vision & executive conflict, transforming grand product visions into clear execution, AND shifting toward a customer-centric engineering culture!ABOUT JONATHON HENSLEYJonathon Hensley (@jonathonhensley) is co-founder and CEO of Emerge, a digital product consulting firm that works with companies to improve operational agility and customer experience. For more than two decades, Jonathon has helped startups, Fortune 100 brands, technology leaders, large regional health networks, non-profit organizations, and more, transform their businesses by turning strategy, user needs, and new technologies into valuable digital products and services. Jonathon writes and speaks about his experiences and insights from his career, and regularly hosts in-depth interviews with business leaders and industry insiders. He lives in the Pacific Northwest with his wife and two boys.Originally from Silicon Valley, Jonathon got into the digital product space inspired by the incredible people developing new technologies all around him and the possibilities they unlocked. This fueled his curiosity to understand how technology transforms the ways in which people live and work.Today that curiosity continues to drive him, as he works to help businesses harness technology. His work focuses on alignment, helping leaders define the value they want to create in a succinct and tangible way; where to focus, why, and what it will take to achieve that outcome. His favorite part is going beyond the idea but reimagining how you bring together people, data, and processes so that a client can succeed."We hear a lot of times about the execution gap - This gap that, you know, we have this idea, or we have this outcome we want to achieve… We start building something and then it doesn't have the outcome we intended.And that execution gap is because no bridge was ever built. You're making a leap of faith that somehow if we do this, that this will happen. And it's not grounded, most often, in its execution and process.And so, without a clear direction how do you know what resources, or people, or process, are even needed to achieve the intended outcome that you're working towards?- (Jonathon Hensley)   Our in-person conference ELC Annual returns 10/27-28!Learn from 60+ of the best engineering leaders in the industry / Critical insights on leadership, career and technology / Plus tons of experiences optimized for deep conversations & meaningful connections - all to help you build your support network!Don't miss out on being part of the biggest celebration of engineering leadership of the year!Grab your ticket HERE: sfelc.com/annual2022Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcThis episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcSHOW NOTES:Why alignment is the key to deliver great products & outcomes (2:22)What does alignment actually mean? (4:10)How do you recognize when you're misaligned? (7:51)How do you create alignment? (10:48)Navigating misaligned product vision & executive conflict (15:09)Transforming your grand product vision into clear actions (18:58)Making a shift to a more customer-centric engineering culture (23:27)Operationalizing customer empathy within your engineering org (28:05)How to gain clarity on the right intended outcomes (30:32)Measuring alignment (36:04)Rapid Fire QuestionsTakeawaysLINKS AND RESOURCES(Jonathon’s book) Alignment: Overcoming internal sabotage and digital product failure Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

We discuss operational & organizational innovation with Zhichun Li (Director of Engineering @ Scale AI)! We explore the early days of Rapid at Scale AI, different organizational design experiments Zhi’s tested, and many of the principles behind their operational practices. You’ll hear about merging engineering & ops, designing orgs for autonomy, scaling into multiple products, and leveraging different org structures for innovation.ABOUT ZHICHUN LIZhichun Li (@zhichun_li) is Director of Engineering @ Scale AI. She built the Rapid team from scratch with a focus on providing the fastest way to production-level quality labels within a day, with no data minimums. As an early employee of the company, she built up the infrastructure for Scale’s supply ops system and scaled up Scale’s 3D Sensor Fusion product.Before Scale, Zhi worked at Lightspeed China Partners, Facebook, Microsoft and Airbnb with roles in investment and software engineering. She was a producer of VC Pulse, a podcast spotlighting venture capitalists in China. Zhichun was the youngest ever admit to the Yale MBA program, and studied computer science at CMU."We tried to basically brand it as like black ops, i.e. the special kind of ops where you get to do 10x work and build a lot of product out of it. And that actually, in a lot of ways attracted very entrepreneurial individuals to want to join. So I think a lot of it is shaping the brand of the program, helping people understand how important it is and the things that I'll learn.- Zhichun Li This episode is brought to you by PlusPlusPlusPlus is an all-in-one technical onboarding and internal knowledge platform that fast-tracks productivity.Learn more & sign up at plusplus.co/elcCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success. Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:The early days of scale & why engineering runs operations (1:44)What is ops engineering (3:48)Why engineering first got involved in ops (6:29)How to brand ops engineering to attract top engineers (8:51)Merging ops & engineering to eliminate silos (10:07)How to merge ops & engineering for the first time (11:39)How team composition evolved at Rapid (12:46)Designing your org for autonomy & customer empathy (17:07)Rapid’s operating principles (18:53)Generating Rapid’s operating principles (23:18)Painful short-term decisions that yielded better long-term outcomes (24:57)Scale AI’s evolution into multiple products (28:04)Behind the scenes of Scale’s multi-product moment (31:04)Leveraging general managers & org structures to drive product innovation (32:43)When to invest in, or shut down a project (36:21)Rapid Fire Questions (37:47)Takeaways (40:41) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

William A. Adams, the first Technical Advisor to Microsoft’s CTO, shares his journey from Silicon Valley's early entrepreneurship to a pivotal role in tech leadership. He discusses how to navigate career growth by focusing on both technical skills and human-centric leadership. The importance of empathy in resolving conflicts and building relationships is highlighted. Adams also emphasizes the LEAP apprenticeship program's role in fostering diversity and the necessity of long-term thinking in tech careers, especially amid rapid innovation.

Culture is the social contract you have with your team. Self-compassion is the social contract you have with yourself! We explore practices to cultivate compassion with Kevin Eyres (Executive Coach & Former MD LinkedIn Europe). We cover practices to eliminate negative self-talk, self-doubt, and increase compassion in your team. Plus bridging the gap from aspirational culture to reality, and how to identify the top 3 behaviors that help you succeed as a leader.ABOUT KEVIN EYRESAn engineer by background, Kevin Eyres (@kevineyres) spent his early career leading engineering and product development teams for the likes of Compaq, Shopping.com and Alta Vista. Kevin has also been responsible for leading the European divisions of three Silicon Valley companies. He was the General Manager of Alta Vista International spanning 14 countries from 2001. He joined SideStep, now Kayak, as first employee and Managing Director in 2005 and in 2007 was appointed Managing Director for LinkedIn. Starting from his spare bedroom to IPO four years later Kevin lead the global movement at LinkedIn into five countries and the global Irish HQ.Kevin ranked 22nd in Wired Magazine’s "The Wired 100" in 2010, a listing that features the most influential people shaping the UK’s digital landscape.Today, Kevin lives in Los Altos and is now enjoying a plural career as an exec coach/board member/ investor / Hoffman Process Teacher."If you continue with the negative talk, it just reinforces itself. So stop. Acknowledge it, and stop. And the drop is you drop into your breath.And the self-compassion mantra is, 'This is a moment of pain. Everybody feels pain. I'm not alone. And may I be kind and gentle to myself.’- Kevin Eyres   Check out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Kevin’s journey to engineering leadership (1:36)What prepared Kevin to become a general manager (4:45)Kevin’s transition to executive coaching (6:53)Why culture and self-compassion are important themes in Kevin’s career (9:34)How to eliminate negative head talk (12:52)“Stop, drop & roll” to overcome self-doubt (16:24)How to create space from automatic responses of anxiety or shame (19:14)Bridging the gap between aspirational company culture and reality (20:54)How self-compassion and culture are connected (23:25)Increasing self-compassion in your team (24:44)How peer groups increase compassion and bring relief (26:24)Making self-compassion a habit (29:03)How to cultivate the patience to be compassionate (31:02)Identifying the top three behaviors that help you succeed as a leader (33:01)Rapid Fire Questions (35:13)Takeaways (39:10) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

If you ever find yourself staring at a screen not knowing how to even start an important presentation this episode is for you! Arquay Harris (VP Engineering @ Webflow) underscores the importance of storytelling in public speaking, and shares valuable tips on how to craft a narrative and get your point across in a way that feels natural for you.For Arquay’s slides & original presentation from our 2022 Spring Virtual Summit - check out the full video here: https://bit.ly/3GxMjT3ABOUT ARQUAY HARRISArquay is the VP of Engineering at Webflow. Prior to Webflow, she held Engineering leadership positions at Slack, Google, and CBS Interactive. A developer who also has a Masters in Design, Arquay loves the marriage of form and function. When not working she can be found cooking, stumbling over guitar and piano chords, or watching Seinfeld."And so if you were using this to give an actual presentation, you might say something like, ‘Imagine a world where deploys only take two seconds? Or what if tests only took 30 seconds to write?’So you're taking this undesirable thing and you're contrasting it with this idealistic future to really bring in that emotionality to get the audience hooked.- Arquay Harris This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends at Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:What Arquay starts every presentation with (2:03)Message, tone, and audience (3:17)The hero’s journey (7:17)The mountain story structure (8:42)Nested loops (9:33)Sparklines (11:28)In medias res (13:14)Converging ideas (14:22)False start (15:16)The petal structure (16:27)Focus on the purpose (21:13)LINKS AND RESOURCES(Full video from 2022 Spring Summit) Storytelling & the art of public speaking with Arquay Harris - https://elc.community/public/videos/storytelling-and-the-art-of-public-speaking Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Sri Shivananda (EVP, CTO @ Paypal) and Joel Beasley (host of Modern CTO! podcast and CTO @ Leaderbits) discuss some of the principles and frameworks that have made the greatest impacts on Sri’s career as an engineering leader. They cover Sri’s approach to organizational transformation, a framework for choosing new technologies, areas to look for when you’re building a pipeline of leadership, and recognition and disruption of patterns through self-reflection.ABOUT SRI SHIVANANDASri Shivananda (@srishivananda) serves as PayPal’s Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer. In this role, Sri oversees Technology Platforms & Experiences, leading teams responsible for the company’s secure, reliable and scalable global infrastructure and strategic core platform, the foundation that enables PayPal to deliver innovative services to global consumers and merchants.Sri has played a critical role in helping PayPal remain at the forefront of innovation since joining the company in 2015. Prior to his appointment as EVP and CTO, Sri was Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure, directing his team of technologists to drive massive growth at scale across a disruptive payments platform. Sri was responsible for all core technologies covering PayPal’s data centers, internal private cloud, online and offline data infrastructure, internal developer frameworks and tools, and various platform services.Before PayPal, Sri was with eBay for 12 years, working his way up from a software engineer to Vice President of Global Platform and Infrastructure. As VP, he was responsible for the company’s technology infrastructure that powered the eBay Inc. businesses, including eBay’s hundreds of millions of listings and PayPal’s millions of daily payments. Sri found his way to eBay via the acquisition of Deja.com.Sri has served on the board of F5 Networks since 2020.He received his Master’s in Mechanical Engineering from Ohio University and holds a Bachelor of Technology, Mechanical Engineering from Jawaharal Nehru Technological University."The most important thing here is that the human fabric in any organization, any team, any ecosystem is the most important one. When you align people to an outcome or a purpose, they'll figure out all the techniques that are necessary to do it. Sometimes they'll pull off magic when they are called the action.- Sri Shivananda  ABOUT JOEL BEASLEYJoel Beasley (@moderncto_io) is the host of the #1 leadership and technology podcast in the world, Modern CTO. Modern CTO is focused on interviewing high-profile executives in the leadership and technology space with over 150k active listeners. Joel is an MIT-educated CTO of Leaderbits with clients from Startups up to Billion dollar companies. He is also the founder of The Beasley Foundation, a charity that designs STEM-related children’s books that are then donated to orphanages, homeless pregnant women, and children in need.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Changing mindsets, skill sets, and toolsets in times of transformation (2:16)Creating clarity and alignment in eng orgs (5:24)Getting skeptical team members to buy into mindset shifts (7:53)Sri's framework for choosing new technologies (10:33)Why engineering leaders need substance, depth, and hunger (14:40)How PayPal is democratizing financial services (19:43)The curiosity quotient (21:44) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Join Bill Coughran, partner at Sequoia Capital and former Google SVP of Engineering, alongside Melody Meckfessel, CEO of Observable, as they delve into making engineering a strategic advantage. They discuss the significance of simplicity in feature design and the role of Site Reliability Engineers. The duo emphasizes fostering collaboration and mentorship, the balance of technical debt with product development, and the importance of community feedback for user engagement. Their insights are essential for cultivating effective, user-centric teams.

What does it take to build a tech org from the ground up? Khawaja Shams (Co-Founder & CEO @ Momento) sits down with Anshu Narula (VP Digital Technology @ Rivian) to discuss how Anshu went from larger companies like PayPal and eBay to scaling Rivian’s digital tech org from scratch. They discuss critical cultural values, early guiding principles and processes for the org, Anshu’s approach to scaling the engineering teams, and a starting point if you’re building from 0.ABOUT ANSHU NARULAAt Rivian, Anshu is responsible for the strategic development of Rivian’s digital ecosystem. She leads teams building products and architecting systems across the technology stack, which has her overseeing a wide range of initiatives from rivian.com to charging software, in order to best serve Rivian B2C and B2B customers. With more than 20 years of experience in product development, technical management and software architecture, Anshu is passionate about technology and building products that are simple, scalable and engaging."I started with my leadership team first. Next approach we took, was to go after hiring those engineers underneath them. Because I really needed coders to get through the aggressive growth phase. So those teams then hired all those engineers, once we had the architecture in place.Then we started layering the managers to help. And started calling out the sub-functional areas. And that's when we started to add in the layer of senior managers...- Anshu Narula  ABOUT KHAWAJA SHAMSKhawaja (@ksshams) is a technical hands-on leader, passionate about investing in people, setting a bold vision, and execution with his team. At AWS, he owned DynamoDB, a highly available fully managed database service serving at extreme scales! It powers much of Amazon retail, Amazon Video, and control planes of critical AWS Services. Khawaja subsequently owned product and engineering for all 7 of the AWS Media Services, responsible for streaming some of the most visible events in the world, including the Super Bowl and the world’s first Live 4K Stream from Space. He was awarded the prestigious NASA Early Career Medal for his contributions to the Mars Rovers.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company.Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster?Learn more at coderpad.io/elcCheck out Shortcut!Shortcut is an issue tracker that offers all the functionality, without most of the complexity making it easier for you to plan, collaborate, build, and measure success.Right now, listeners of our show can get 2-months free on any paid plan.Learn more & sign up at shortcut.com/elcSHOW NOTES:Being the first digital tech hire at Rivian (1:58)Shaping Rivian’s tech org from scratch (4:42)Anshu’s approach to establishing processes (6:00)Adapting the hiring strategy to the pandemic (8:15)Creating culture in a remote-first environment (9:41)How to build an organization from the ground up (11:06)Deciding how to structure the tech org (13:31)Anshu’s strategy for scaling engineering teams (15:17)Identifying the right candidate for something that’s never been done before (17:56)Prioritizing teamwork in the leadership layer of the eng org (19:36)How to assess teamwork as an attribute in candidates (21:01)Balancing pace of innovation with quality (22:33)Advice for any eng leader building an org from scratch (24:15)Ashu’s takeaways from scaling Rivian (24:57) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

To grow your engineering team from 200 to 1,200+ you can expect many phase changes in your org. How might your role change and what can you anticipate? Ryan King (CTO @ Chime) and Clarence Chio (Co-founder & CTO @ Unit21) explore how Ryan’s role has evolved across Chime’s different phases of growth over the last 10 years! You’ll hear how team topologies changed, how they hire senior leaders/VPEs for different phases of the company, how goal setting changes, and other great insights to help you scale your org to the next level!ABOUT RYAN KINGRyan King (@ryanking) is the co-founder and chief technology officer of Chime. Ryan was previously VP of engineering at Plaxo, an early professional social networking pioneer that was acquired by Comcast Interactive Media. Ryan also held senior engineering roles at Liberate Technologies and Microsoft. Ryan earned a BS in computer science & engineering from UCLA, and an MS in computer science from Stanford University."There are a few things that I have come to have strong opinions about... One is, teams should own their own domains, services and data. You got to own full-stack your domain. You want to minimize coordination between teams and dependencies on teams. And then something that gets often overlooked as you scale is... aligning the organization with the architecture. The organization's growing, the architecture is evolving, but you have to consciously align those two things if you want to maintain a highly functioning engineering team as you grow...”- Ryan KingABOUT CLARENCE CHIOClarence Chio (@cchio) is the co-founder and CTO at Unit21, a Google-funded startup in San Francisco building tools to fight fraud, money laundering, and online abuse. He authored the O’Reilly Book “Machine Learning & Security” and is also an adjunct lecturer at U.C. Berkeley, teaching a graduate course on the same topic.This episode is brought to you by OrgspaceOrgspace is a management ops platform for software teams that helps your leaders scale. Easily create team configurations, propose org charts, visualize cost projects & create headcount plans - so you can spend less time on spreadsheets & more time on humans.Sign up for a free trial today, at orgspace.io/registerCheck out our friends & sponsor Coderpad!CoderPad is a technical interview platform built for all scales of business, whether you’re a startup or large global company!Do you want to improve your candidate experience & hire the right people faster? Learn more at coderpad.io/elcSHOW NOTES:Ryan’s story of how Chime first started (2:00)How Ryan’s role as CTO changed over time (4:17)How Chime’s engineering org structure & team topologies evolved (6:37)When should you deviate from your existing team structure? (9:06)When do you know you need to bring in a VP of Engineering? (10:23)How did new VPEs build trust and credibility when first starting? (14:32)How does Chime set goals today? (16:14)How do you measure engineering team and org performance? (19:22)What Chime does different to hire great engineers (23:03)Final advice for engineering leaders running teams who have yet to find product-market fit (27:20) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.