The Tech Trek

Some of what Brent talks about: Engineering management is made up of complex systems Provide your team with a playbook and make sure the playbook is being executed People are the most complex system Build up engineering management systems and refactor Meet: Brent Goldman is the VP of Engineering at Sisu Data, the industry's first decision intelligence engine helping companies make better business decisions with data. Prior to Sisu, Brent was an engineering director at Uber, where he founded and led teams responsible for dispatch, pricing, self-driving cars, measurement & inference platforms, and more. Before Uber, Brent co-founded Standard Treasury,  a YC-backed enterprise API banking platform acquired by SVB. Brent started his career at Facebook as an early engineer building the third-party Developer Platform, and he earned a B.S. in Computer Science & Economics from Caltech. Outside of work, Brent is an active angel investor with a portfolio of ~100 startups, as well as a conceptual artist building electronic & experiential art. If you have any questions for Brent, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brentgoldman 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.

In this episode, Gil talks about the impact that prebuilt integrations have on an organization and how these integrations have expanded opportunities for both end-users and software companies.  Meet: Gil Feig is the co-founder of Merge. Previously the Head of Engineering at Canvas, he’s led projects at Wealthfront and LinkedIn. A graduate of Columbia University, Gil lives and works in San Francisco. If you have any questions for Gil, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gilfeig/ https://twitter.com/GilFeig 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 we talk about on this episode: “Ship Wow, Ship Now” mantra Developer autonomy to drive process improvement Using your “I intend to” voice Focus on delightful experiences, high-quality products and act with urgency Perceived vs actual velocity Meet: Kirby Frugia is MURAL’s SVP of Engineering and is responsible for Product Engineering, DevOps, and Data Engineering. He joined the company in October 2020 and since then, he has grown his team from 48 MURAListas to over 200. Kirby first got into software engineering because he loves problem-solving and making things easier for people — whether that’s a process, a tool, or an experience. He’s always looking for ways to unlock someone’s creativity or ability to do more with what’s in front of them. Over the course of his career, Kirby has worked at numerous companies, including Hewlett-Packard, InVision, and New Relic, where he’s built both products and teams. While at HP, he built software for digital printing presses and realized his passion for managing teams. From HP, he transitioned to New Relic, where he found his niche growing and helping teams adapt to a high-growth start-up environment while staying true to who they are as a company. For Kirby, building products and building teams have something in common: They both involve a firm sense of the company’s values, scaling processes and practices, and lots of communication and listening. He holds bachelor’s degrees in business administration and computer science from Oregon State University. He lives near Portland, Oregon. If you have any questions for Kirby, please feel free to reach out via: https://twitter.com/kfrugia https://www.linkedin.com/in/kfrugia/ https://www.mural.co/blog/meet-kirby-frugia 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.

Key takeaways: Define when you should look to formalize the product role Look for a bottleneck in the decision-making process Creating an opportunity for people on the team to grow into new roles Look to internal staff to promote people into product positions Growing into a new role means owning the decisions and learning opportunities Meet:  Chris White is currently the Chief Technology Officer of Prefect, overseeing the design and implementation of the next generation of data workflow automation systems. Chris began his journey into data tooling while getting his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Texas at Austin, where he researched optimization guarantees for highly non-convex data-driven problems. Throughout his career, Chris has gained experience in a diverse number of roles - teacher, researcher, data scientist, software engineer, sales engineer, and security officer to name a few. In his spare time, he is an avid runner and loves spending time in the ocean. If you have any questions for Chris, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/whitecdw https://twitter.com/markov_gainz 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.

Key takeaways: Overcoming the perceptions of the healthcare and life sciences industry Mission-driven aspects of the industry is a massive draw from high-tech companies Ramping up on nomenclature Moving fast and saving lives Software engineering becoming a competitive advantage rather than a service organization Meet:  Over the past 15 years, Hamed Ahmadi has contributed to many software products in various industries impacting millions of users with very diverse needs. To name a few, Microsoft Visual Studio, Office & Windows, the data acquisition & monitoring systems for the largest fleet of renewable energy power plants in the world, the infrastructure and software systems for two pioneer Life Sciences companies leading the development of novel blood-based genomic tests for diagnosing the cause of cancer and infectious diseases. Hamed is passionate about our environment and positive social impact, which is projected in his work, volunteering activities, and photography as his hobby when not working on software systems. If you have any questions for Hamed, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/hamedahmadi 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.

Key takeaways: Product velocity and delivering with quality Strategic technical debt - making the trade-off of customer acquisition vs robust code Focusing on strategic projects to pay down debt Early-stage startups have external pressures that drive growth Shifting from sales-driven growth to product management driven growth Meet:  Bill Press is the SVP of Engineering at Iterable. He is an accomplished technology leader with over a dozen years in enterprise and on-demand software. He has strong leadership skills and deep technological background. Bill has a proven track record for shepherding organizations through technological and cultural shifts, for building strong, collaborative teams, and for directing a broad range of ambitious projects to high quality, on-time delivery. If you have any questions for Bill, please feel free to reach out via: http://linkedin.com/in/billpress 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.

Key takeaways: Talk about process changes and explain the reasons behind them Going through acquisition and staying agile Looking to managers as the canary in the coal mine Getting the team to leverage dashboards/metrics Anchor points to review the relevancy of metrics Meet:  Daniel Hood is the Director of Engineering at Action Network, a sports media company focused on delivering data, news, and analytics to fans and sports bettors.  Over the past decade, he has worked as both a developer and a manager to build and design engaging digital media products at scale.  Daniel graduated from the University of North Carolina with a degree in computer science. If you have any questions for Daniel, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/daniel-h-9aa77634/ 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.

Key takeaways: Balancing innovation with what is needed Managing stakeholder expectations and “excitement” Technology and business stakeholder partnership is key to success Meet:  Rashu Garg is the SVP and Enterprise Head of Data Products at Regions Bank. If you have any questions for Rashu, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/rashu-garg-93249812/ 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.

Key takeaways: Focusing on solving the right problem, not the most difficult Define the “north” star Seeing the most impactful project Positioning the need to deal with the “plumbing” before you seeing the reporting Meet:  Mike Ganz is a leader in the data space, currently serving as Senior Director of Data & Analytics at Optoro. There he focuses his time on differentiating Optoro's products through data and ensuring that the most difficult returns problems retailers and the environment face today are met with dynamic and robust data solutions. Prior to joining Optoro, Mike worked as an Engagement Manager at Applied Predictive Technologies, which was later acquired by Mastercard. In that role he helped Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries design, implement, and measure the impact of business experiments. Mike holds a BSE in Systems Science & Engineering from the University of Pennsylvania. If you have any questions for Mike, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-ganz-23989955/ 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.

Key takeaways: Never a perfect process, but the right process for the stage you are at Making an investment into a more efficient process The time horizon gest longer as you grow and mature Meet:  Thor Clark is a senior technology executive with broad experience building and leading engineering and product teams in public and private companies and has multiple successful exits as technical co-founder and early employee. In addition to being the CTO at WELL, he also serves as an advisor at Burner (Ad Hoc Labs). Before joining WELL, he was CTO at TigerText, a comprehensive clinical communications solution, and previously VP of Engineering at Barracuda. If you have any questions for Thor, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/thorclark 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.