What's the hardest habit for a top engineer to unlearn in a leadership role?
For Minh Nguyen, VP of Engineering at Transcend, it was breaking the "I'll do it myself" mentality. In this episode, she shares her impressive journey from individual contributor to VP at the same high-growth startup, offering a rare and honest look at this challenging transition. Drawing on her background in philosophy, Minh details the hard-won lessons of reorienting from hands-on coding to high-impact leadership, from learning to delegate to setting a clear, communicable strategy.
The conversation then shifts from personal growth to organizational design. Minh dives into the practicalities of scaling, revealing why Transcend structures teams around customer problems instead of technical stacks. She candidly discusses her experience pivoting away from a "catchall" platform team to a more effective, product-focused model. This episode is a deep dive for any leader on building a resilient, high-fidelity engineering culture that thrives under pressure, packed with invaluable insights for navigating the challenges of growth.
Check out:
- The DevEx guide to AI-driven software development
- Download: The 6 trends shaping the future of AI-driven development
Follow the hosts:
Follow today's guest(s):
- Connect with Minh Nguyen on LinkedIn
- Learn more about Transcend: Transcend.io
- Connect with Jennifer Riggins on LinkedIn
Referenced in today's show:
- This Start-Up’s $20 Billion Sale Died. It Came Fighting Back.
- Perplexity is using stealth, undeclared crawlers to evade website no-crawl directives
- If you're remote, ramble
- AI promised efficiency. Instead, it’s making us work harder.
- Writing code was never the bottleneck!
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