The Tech Trek

Highlights of my conversation with Clay: What does a full stack DevOps Developer do Managing SW engineers as a non-SW engineer Engaging your employees to maintain a high degree of performance and innovation Helping people stay focused on their core competencies Managing different types of engineers/skillsets on a team Being transparent about your own weaknesses with the team Making sure that everyone can see a path forward for their career Survey your team quarterly with their technology comfort level to see gaps in your team Planning work with the entire team and not just with the senior people Each person driving the project will create and maintain their own wiki (Confluence) page Driving personal ownership of the project plan will help increase the quality of the plan Meet: Clay Alvord, a Bay Area native, got his start in IT helping his dad out at Fry's electronics doing low voltage work. From there, he got a job as a sys admin at a startup that eventually sold to Oracle. At that point, he moved into hardware and data centers like Apple and VMware. Clay eventually landed as the Senior Data Center Engineer at Box and eventually became the Global Data Center Manager, managing data centers across the planet for Box. With a passion for infrastructure and automation, Clay built a tooling team to enhance and better scale the management of Box's physical infrastructure. As a Senior Manager, Clay now runs 2 DevOps teams that build software and tools to effectively manage Box's on-prem infrastructure and its vast public cloud presence. If you have any questions for Clay, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/clayalvord/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Ana: The intersection of SRE/business Complex systems always fail Reliability is a feature of the system SLAs are a partnership with the customer Managing SLAs in proactive and reactive situations Measure everything Impact of outages and communicating to business Collaboration with Security Involving SRE at the beginning of the implementation is important Planning for future tools Celebrating team wins Learning opportunities from outages Meet: Ana Lebron is the leader of the Site Reliability Engineering team at Enova International. She has been in the technology industry for the last 15 years in different roles. She started her career as a system engineer in the aerospace industry, working in Germany and Spain. In 2010 Ana undertook an MBA specializing in Technology Operations, and since then, she has worked at Enova International, leading change management, problem management, and site reliability engineering teams. Ana has co-organized Chicago Women in Tech Conference (Chiwitcon) and is passionate about DevOps and Agile practices. If you have any questions for Ana, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ana-a-lebron/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Moitree: Building an analytics team to support the company's digital transformation initiatives  The skill sets of an analytics team have become diverse Investing in emerging technologies and using them Evaluating resourcing to be able to get the most out of your investment Business vs technical chops Finding hybrid skills is a challenge to growing teams Define your requirements to drive the skill set you need on your team When do you add new capabilities vs keeping it with external partners Meet: Moitree Rahman is a marketing analytics and data professional with 12+ years of experience making an impact in data and tech strategy roles for Fortune 500 companies that span across diverse business verticals, including CPG (Colgate-Palmolive), Telco (AT&T), Media-Entertainment (AT&T/Warner Media/ Xandr) and SaaS (LiveRamp) companies. Currently leading the Digital Measurement transformation at Colgate-Palmoliveer efficiently and at scale. If you have any questions for Moitree, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/moitreerahman/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Laku: Aligning work to the broader company goals Engineers like to work on things that actually get used CTO should focus on customer success channels Focusing on what impact we can bring to the customer Translating that to daily motivation Distilling the message into the simplest form Not using release dates as motivation Explaining technical debt to the broader organization Engineering bandwidth as a pie chart Meet: As CancerIQ’s CTO, Laku Adedoyin leads a growing engineering team that is helping to end cancer as we know it by focusing on early detection and efficient screening. He has over 20 years of experience in software development, engineering, and product leadership. Before joining CancerIQ, he led engineering and product management teams that built electronic data collection and clinical trial management systems used by leading research centers, clinical research organizations, sponsors, research sites, and large health systems. Laku is very passionate about building products that bring value to customers and building engineering and product teams to deliver efficiently and at scale. In his free time, he spends time hiking, woodworking, cooking, and with his kids. If you have any questions for Laku, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lakuad/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Cindy: Starting as the only female engineering hire in a startup Bring up diversity hiring plans before you are hired Transparency is at the center of inclusivity Putting women on interview panels is important, but making sure it’s not just a check box Be careful not to reward the wrong traits Advice for female engineers looking to move into management Ask for the opportunity; don’t wait for it Educational opportunities to move into STEM Meet: With over a decade of experience developing consumer web products, Cindy currently leads the engineering team at imgix. Previously, Cindy led the web and mobile engineering teams at Polyvore, which was acquired in 2015. She has a degree in computer science from Stanford. If you have any questions for Cindy, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cindywangchu/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Alonzo: Drivers for leaving a large public company for a startup Moving into the blockchain information space Trying to maximize time zone overlap in a remote-first strategy Avoiding information lag for remote employees Innovating the hiring process to fit your needs Throwing out the 2-week sprint and redesigning the process Building autonomous teams and trust Meet: Alonzo is SVP of Engineering at The Block and is focused on leading the Product Development department through the Growth stage. He is responsible for building software and data products that enhance users' experience while supporting the business as it grows and scales. Before joining The Block, Alonzo was Vice President of Software Engineering at Mastercard Data & Services. He is passionate about technology, innovation, people leadership, investing, and entrepreneurship. Alonzo earned dual degrees in Computer Science and Physics from Carnegie Mellon University and is committed to working in the Blockchain & Digital Assets space at this stage in his career. If you have any questions for Alonzo, please feel free to reach out via: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alonzobenavides/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/zobenavides I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please message me if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Jeff: An idea can come from a one-off problem or a long-term strategic issue to tackle Relationship between research and product management Impact on roadmaps Investment grows as you prove the value Moving from research to POC When a hypothesis doesn’t work out (building corporate memory) Finding the balance in an engineer between implementing and researching Nurturing the kernel of an idea Meet: Jeff Gabriel has been delivering software one way or another for the last couple of decades and is now primarily focused on helping our teams to deliver high-value products for customers of DataRobot's machine learning platform. When not at work, Jeff likes to spend time with his wife and their three grown children whenever they can get hold of them. If you have any questions for Jeff, please feel free to reach out via: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeff-gabriel-88395b/ I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Fabian: Hiring the best talent vs a specific seniority level Hiring “scrappy” technologists Allowing your senior engineers to grow Calibrate team mix based on organizational goals Find a balance as you need to shift your hiring needs (avoid whiplash) A roadmap update shouldn’t require a complete alteration of the hiring plan Revisiting interview questions quarterly as you grow your team Meet: Fabian Frank is the VP of Engineering at Airkit, a customer experience automation platform. Before Airkit, Fabian worked at Salesforce and Yahoo. If you have any questions for Fabian, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/fabianfrank87 I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Dehron: Be an advocate for your engineers Typing methodology changes to values People want scrum to drive autonomy and accountability Let people make mistakes to drive better project management skills Culture is an “output” (ask the why) Use bottom-up feedback Giving away control leads to a better scrum team Pilot ideas (tweaks vs grenades) Meet: Dehron Hite-Benson is an engineering leader with driving engineering teams. He is focused on the future of our software technologies and resource needs, as well as the governance model that drives everything. At the time of this recording, Dehron was working at DroneUp If you have any questions for Dehron, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dehron I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests or know someone that might want to be on the show.

Highlights of my conversation with Jose: Being promoted into a role too quickly Continuing education to grow and enhance leadership skills It's important to have strong routines within a team Identifying patterns and focusing on the optimal ones Consistent processes help establish team expectations Identify your hiring gap and find the strongest person to cover that Searching for your next hire might not always offer the team the best value Adding to your organization's core competencies by being able to identify future superstars Meet: For the past three years, Jose Asuncion has been honing the art and science of building software engineering teams that look corporate but carry a killer instinct. He was an early employee at two Silicon Valley startups that had successful exits of more than $100M. He still works at one of these companies and is enjoying the challenge of blazing new trails in engineering management. If you have any questions for Jose, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeunito I hope you enjoyed the episode. The best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Amir Bormand). Please send me a message if you want me to cover specific topics with future guests.