Developing Leadership
Follow Jason Warner (MD at Redpoint Ventures and former CTO of GitHub) and Eiso Kant (Founder of Athenian) as they chat about the biggest lessons they’ve learned about Engineering Leadership throughout the years.
Episodes
Jason and Eiso explore the implications of Mark Zuckerberg's plan to flatten Meta's management layers and examine the current ratio of engineers to managers, questioning if this balance is truly efficient or if it's simply a byproduct of Silicon Valley culture.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at developingleadership.substack.com/p/how-many-ems-to-change-a-lightbulb
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Eiso and Jason discuss how engineering leaders can fall into the trap of midwit thinking (the infamous bell curve meme) where they have a surface level understanding of complex topics and use buzzwords to sound knowledgeable. Why do managers become overly obsessed with specific tools? Why do companies encourage this behavior? What should leaders really be focusing on? Listen and find out! Deep dive into the topics discussed in th...
Former Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath shares his lessons on engineering leadership, such as aligning goals, handling difficult situations, and optimizing team metrics. Jason, Eiso and Sri talk about their experiences with system failures and the importance of technical mentors and CTOs in promoting better leadership.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep42
Jason and Eiso share their love-hate relationship with OKRs and discuss the pedantic nature of setting objectives and how they ultimately help to align and empower organizations. They talk about setting and tracking goals, the often performative nature of OKRs, and the dangers of abstracting oneself away from the product you’re building.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep.41
Jason and Eiso explore the intersection between finance and engineering leadership and discuss the importance of position sizing in engineering orgs. From promotions to product initiatives and technology choices, leaders are constantly making bets. So the guys delve into decision making, risk management, trust, and the dangers of placing the wrong bets.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership....
Jason and Eiso get real about censorship culture in the tech industry. From free speech to the rights of employees and the role of companies in society. They chat about privilege in tech, whether we need democracy within tech companies, the role of culture stewards, and more.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep39
Watch this episode YouTube > https://youtu.be/BvFpe2mlWWw
Jason and Eiso deep dive into corporate politics, hierarchies, and the sociopaths that often sit at the top as they analyze the behaviors of famous C-Level leaders, such as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and pick apart what Engineering Leaders can learn from them.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep38
Join our Engineering Insights Series on Feb 9th! > rebrand.ly/eis1-pod
Phil Calçado is the Global CTO at PicPay, one the largest engineering orgs in Latin America. He joins the podcast to re-tell his war stories as an engineering leader at SoundCloud, Digital Ocean, SeatGeek, MeetUp, and more celebrity-tier tech companies.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep37
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Happy 2023! or is it?…
Jason and Eiso talk about the economic recession and share their predictions for the year ahead. They chat about what happened in 2022 that set the stage for 2023, what the hiring halt means for software engineers, what will happen to those that didn't prepare, and more!
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep36
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devlea...
Allison McMillan, VP of Engineering at Quota Path, joins us to talk about the transformation engineering leaders go through when they become parents and the lessons we can take parenting to our day-to-day as managers. From communication to rewards vs. consequences to dealing with other humans and their unique challenges.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep35
Alexandra is a Senior Engineering Manager at Fellow.app and the author of Remote Engineering Management: Managing an Engineering Team in a Remote-First World.
She joins us to discuss creating an excellent remote work foundation and the challenges of jumping back into in-person interactions when needed. We also chatted about how remote emotions translate to in-person ones, segmenting emotional reactions, wearing different masks, and...
Bethany Foote is the Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Outschool and has had a hell of a journey as a software engineer. She joins us to talk about how diversity makes companies better, share the stories she's heard from women in tech over the years, and how they taught her how to be a better leader, mentor, and coach.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep33
Shannon Vettes is a transversal Product and Engineering Leader and self-proclaimed "process nerd" with a knack for reorgs (as long as you reaally need them!) and for making engineering leaders' lives easier. She joins the podcast for a deep dive into the PMOs and Program Manager's roles and when's the right time to introduce these roles and processes in your organization.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.de...
Adrienne Lowe shares her journey as an empathetic leader and how her goal to give people energy (rather than take it away) paved her way through a success engineering leadership career.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep31
Watch this episode on youtube: https://youtu.be/pmldFEnT7Xc
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
Jason & Eiso talk about Velocity in Software Engineering, what it means, how to measure it, why data and metrics won’t magically solve all your problems, and what engineering leaders can do for their teams to go faster.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep30
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
Developing Leadership is a podcast presented by Athenian. We are i...
Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator of Jenkins, pulls back the curtain on building tech companies in Japan. He shares his lessons from Cloudbees and how building two very different engineering organizations from the ground up showed him the importance of diversity in engineering teams.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep29
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
Join Chad Fowler, Jason Warner, and Eiso Kant in a heartfelt existential episode on what it means to be an engineering leader that will have you question if the manager path is the right one for you. An essential listen for anyone trying to find meaning in their role.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep28
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
Cesar Lugo, Software Engineer and founding member of the Engineering Intelligence team at Typeform, joins us to talk about the power of engineering metrics and how data can help influence how organizations behave. Learn about continuous improvement frameworks that work and why industry benchmarks fall short of their goal to help engineering organizations thrive.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingle...
Jason and Eiso ad lib on a variety of topics. From consensus-driver cultures, the trouble with software engineering endorsements and capacity planning best practices.
Warning: Eiso recorded this episode from a boat out at sea (ahoy!), so that’s why you can sometimes hear background noises coming from his side. We apologize for this and will try to keep all recording sessions on land from now on.
Craig Kerstiens joins us for a chat on decalcifying engineering teams, why you need to get your teams to ship more, and finding A-Players. Craig runs product and engineering at Crunchy Data and has been incredibly influential in the Postgres community.
Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep25
Join the discussion and follow us on twitter @ devleadership_
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