The Tech Trek

Highlights of my conversation with Joshua: Educating the organization on the benefits of improved reliability and observability capabilities Setting up an SRE book club The answer isn’t always “do what Google does” Wearing your on-call “pain suit” Getting involved in business discussions earlier Sometimes it's about showing out the team’s abilities (celebrating the wins) SRE has always been a culture shift Asking for the right outcomes and letting things shift SRE is a core business partner If you have any questions for Joshua, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/coderjoshua/ 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 Sagar: Different personas have their own definition of quality Quality is baked in by shifting the process left The QA team is involved in planning and grooming Developers spend half of the sprint on QA Each pod is a self-sufficient team Meet: Sagar Anand works as a Sr Engineering Manager at Twin Health, leading the Platform team to help reverse chronic metabolic diseases. He takes pride in building customer-centric products while cultivating a positive culture & team spirit. Before Health Tech, he developed marketplaces & Big data platforms for different industries, including RPA and Enterprise Software. If you have any questions for Sagar, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanand1989/ 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 from my chat with Ken: Being deliberate about who and what you are Doubling a team and the change in how a team operates Incorporating different technical skill sets Bringing in external expertise and disseminating the knowledge Opening information silos and increasing transparency Meet: Ken Pickering is the VP of Engineering at Starburst Data, where he's looking to help companies make better, faster decisions on more complete data. Before that, he was the CTO of Hopper and made travel easy and affordable. If you have any questions for Ken, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kenpickering/ https://twitter.com/kpick 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 from my conversation with Brian: Niche industry but not niche skills Working with other teams to partner where there is a skills gap Realizing which parts of the tech stack you can “let go” to broaden the candidate pool Software engineering foundations go a long way Building an ecosystem around the Windows platform Meet: Brian Jackson ​​is a DevOps advocate currently helping create immersive Star Wars experiences at Lucasfilm. Currently, Brian is the Manager of DevOps Engineering at Lucasfilm. Previously helped Apple Pay and ESPN.com be more productive through delivery automation. If you have any questions for Brian, please feel free to reach out via: https://twitter.com/jaxzin https://www.linkedin.com/in/brianrjackson/ https://www.instagram.com/jaxzin/ 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

Highlights of my conversation with Kinshuk: Bell curve of seniority on the team Monitoring the manager to engineering ratio; targetting 1:5 Promoting people into management roles leads to internal credibility to lead the team Building an engineering program to give back to the organization Many times career frameworks are introduced too late in the hyper-growth phase Cedar’s Distinguished Engineer Program (DEP): https://decode.cedar.com/our-engineering-growth-framework/ Meet: Kinshuk Mishra leads the product engineering and data teams at Cedar in his role as VP, Engineering. Cedar is a healthcare financial engagement platform that addresses all of the challenges consumers face when paying for care. Kinshuk started his career as a backend engineer in Seattle working for Expedia and Amazon for the first few years of his career. He then joined as one of the founding engineers of Spotify’s Ads Engineering team in NYC, and witnessed the hyper-growth of Spotify’s product and the organization during his stint leading the Ads Engineering team—learning the strategies one needs to navigate a rapidly scaling company. He then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area to lead engineering for a small startup in the video communication space, Houseparty. And just prior to Cedar, Kinshuk led teams at YouTube in the music streaming space. Through his experience of managing teams at companies large and small, he has learned valuable management lessons through both successes and failures. If you have any questions for Kinshuk, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kinshukmishra/ 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

Some of what Arie covers: The rising importance of AB testing Measuring the impact of localization AB testing relationship with product management Archive testing recommendations as a knowledge repository Meet: Arie Polycarpou is the Manager of Digital Analytics and A/B Testing at Total Wine & More. He was raised in the Midwest and attended Indiana University Kelley School of Business with Majors in Marketing and Entrepreneurship, but was always interested in a career in business insights. He has worked in Digital Analytics and A/B Testing for the last 5+ years with experience in major B2C Industries. He has helped to build up A/B Testing practices into full-scale programs with a 10x increase in velocity and statistical rigor. In his current role at Total Wine & More, Arie works with his team to translate business insights into tangible ideas to improve the business If you have any questions for Arie, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ariepolycarpou/ 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

Some of what Christian covers: Horizontal service teams enable and collaborate The balancing point between innovation and confidence in roadmaps Timeboxing approach to provide capped flexibility to explore Rotational engineering programs grow cross-functional relationships Integrating the learned knowledge from the rotational engineering program Creating a feedback loop via a service-oriented mindset Using the Focused Innovation pillar Meet: Christian Yang is an engineering manager at Zoox for two software infrastructure teams: High-Performance Compute and 3D Vehicle Run Visualization Platform If you have any questions for Christian, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/yang-christian/ 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

Some of what Dina talks about: Finding a way to connect with your team in a way you haven’t before Building safe spaces to allow people to be heard All slack channels are public Create a culture committee to have employees be a part of the solution Break down assumptions that have been made Time and space introduce attribution error Meet: Dina Bruzek has over 31 years of experience in technology with more than 23 years of experience leading teams in the development of market-leading cybersecurity products. At Huntress Labs, Dina is Senior Vice President of Product and Engineering and is responsible for guiding the execution of the company’s product strategy across the engineering and product management groups to bring enterprise-grade solutions to Mid-Market and SMB partners. Prior to joining Huntress Labs, Dina was also the SVP of Product and Engineering at NSS Labs and The Media Trust. Prior to that, Dina led Cisco’s Network Threat Defense (NTD) group, where she was responsible for a $1.5 billion product portfolio. Dina joined Cisco through the 2013 acquisition of Sourcefire for $2.7 billion. At Cisco, she led the company’s strategy to deliver the first threat-focused next-generation firewall. In addition, she led the integration of the Sourcefire and Cisco development teams and the agile transformation of the development and test organizations to form the NTD group, which consisted of more than 800 engineers. Before joining Cisco, Dina was the Vice President of Product Development at Sourcefire, where she was responsible for software and hardware development for Sourcefire network security products. She has also held various technical, strategic, and management roles in Internet security at Secure Computing Corporation and Network Associates. She started her career as a communications systems engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Dina holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University and an MS in Engineering from Johns Hopkins University. If you have any questions for Dina, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dina-bruzek-997941/ https://twitter.com/dbruzek 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

What Cliff covers: Data as an indicator Don’t put process above purpose Data-driven culture Using analytics to frame the story Storytelling in analytics Time for the data plumbing Meet: Cliff Kim brings more than 10 years of experience to his role as Director of Insights and Analytics for Fender Musical Instruments Corporation (FMIC), one of the world’s leading musical instrument manufacturers, marketers, and distributors. A digital storyteller, Cliff is dedicated to growing Fender's physical and digital business through data-driven insights, conversion rate optimization, marketing, and product analytics, and continuous consumer research. During his tenure at Fender, Cliff helped build PlayThrough, an initiative where Fender offered a free three-month subscription of Fender Play®, the complete online learning app for guitar, bass, and ukulele, to support the community during social distancing. This initiative brought nearly one million new players to the app. He also led a study that brought insights into how the guitar business has changed because of these new players. Learnings from the data gathered helped the team launch Beginners Hub, a network of online resources that includes every tool a new player needs to start, stick with and eventually master their guitar, bass, or ukulele. Prior to joining Fender, Cliff held leadership roles at Live Nation Entertainment, ESPN, Yahoo!, among others. He is a UC Riverside alumni and currently resides in Los Angeles California. If you have any questions for Cliff, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cliffkim/ 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.

Some of what Nilesh talks about: Joining a fast-growing NFT startup Managing blockchain at scale More freedom to build Greenfield Factors to consider selecting the tech stack Constantly measuring and sizing Watching the growth and emerging tech in the NFT space Meet: Nilesh Nimkar has 23+ years of experience in FinTech specializing in Blockchain Technologies, Cloud Native Architecture, DevSecOps, and Technology Management at Scale. He currently works as Sr. Director of DevSecOps at Voice.com If you have any questions for Nilesh, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nimkar/ https://twitter.com/nimkar 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 would like me to cover certain topics with future guests.