The Blind Ambition with Jack Kelly

Larry Gadea, Founder and CEO of Envoy Larry has an untraditional background for a Silicon Valley CEO, including getting smuggled out of Romania to Germany before settling in Canada at the age of 3. We explore how his experience growing up led him to work at Google while a full-time student and how open-source projects opened doors for him. Next, we dive into the a-ha moment behind Envoy and its ub...

Michael Griffiths, Workforce Transformation Offering Leader at Deloitte Michael didn't always know he wanted to get into consulting. Before he rose through the ranks of strategy and management consulting, he was a London school teacher. We explore why developing skills has become more important than job titles and the promotions that make up the traditional career ladder in today's job mar...

Mahe Bayireddi, Co-Founder and CEO of Phenom Mahe spells out how employers use artificial intelligence, machine learning and data to hire employees. He explains that job-seekers and other professionals should focus on highlighting their core competencies, skills and behaviors and dives into the tactics to stand out in the job application and job interview processes. We explore how some companies a...

Pato O'Ward, IndyCar Racer at The Arrow McLaren Team Pato O'Ward is one of the youngest motorsport athletes in the world at 23 years old. In this exclusive interview for Blind, he recalls how he became a professional race-car driver and what it was like getting started on a world stage at a young age. We then take a deep dive with Pato into the business of motorsport, including how drivers...

Brad Porter, Founder and CEO of Collaborative Robotics Until recently, Brad was a vice president and distinguished engineer at Amazon, working on some of the internet giant's most ambitious projects like Amazon Prime Air, Amazon Prime Now and Amazon Robotics. We ask Brad to walk us through his career arc and how he became one of the few technologists in the tech industry to crack the "L10...

Jack Kelly and Rick Chen react to Elon Musk's rant about remote work and the white-collar professional. Musk thinks professionals who want to continue working remotely need to stop living in "La La Land" and get back into the office. We discuss whether he's right about working from home and why it might depend on your career level or tenure. Next, Rick recalls the early days of h...

Donald Knight, Chief People Officer at Greenhouse Donald breaks down the questions that professionals should be asking in job interviews. We explore how to uncover a company's real culture, including their leadership team's approach to layoffs and other difficult decisions in tough times, what types of actions and behaviors they reward, and how people get promoted or recognized. Next, Dona...

Fredrik Johnsson, Owner and President of Race of Champions Fredrik has never shied away from big, audacious goals. We explore how he conceptualized the Race of Champions, recruited the first athletes and secured the first venues for the first-of-its-kind motorsport event. Race of Champions pits the best racing and rally drivers from the 24 Hours of Le Mans, Formula 1, IndyCar, NASCAR, the World Ra...

Jack Kelly and Rick Chen explore whether pay packages have decreased in the tech industry because of the recent high-profile layoffs at Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Salesforce and more. Notably, new, exclusive research from Blind shows that a majority of job-seeking software engineers in the U.S. are now willing to accept the same or lower pay in a new role. We dive into the data, run some num...

Cai GoGwilt, Co-Founder and Chief Technology Officer at Ironclad Cai explains why professionals need to demonstrate integrity at work. He outlines how engineers and technologists can earn the trust of their teammates and how entrepreneurs can create better, more successful businesses through trust. We also explore how Cai and Ironclad discover a job seeker's integrity in the job interview proc...

Ashwinder Ahluwalia, Former Head of Product Management at Google Ash spent more than 10 years leading product management at Google Ads and Google Cloud before becoming the head of product management and acting general manager of an internal stealth artificial intelligence startup within Alphabet. We get the inside scoop into how Google approaches product management and how to tell the difference b...

Rod Adams, U.S. and Mexico Talent Acquisition and Onboarding Leader at PwC Rod is a bit of a unicorn. He's been at the international "Big Four" firm PwC for nearly 30 years and has grown his career from an associate to a principal with global impact. We explore the secret to his career arc, including the importance of having a mentor and the pathways for career development available...

Matt Fitzgerald, Chief Marketing Officer at Tend Matt has dedicated his marketing career to focusing on the fundamentals—listening and solving real problems for real people. We explore his storied track record of creating and marketing challenger brands into recognizable household names from scratch. He explains why it's still an excellent time to get into marketing and why companies might be...

Christine Deputy, Chief People Officer at Pinterest Christine reveals how employers and company executives think about employee retention and turnover. We look into how executives and managers are evaluated at some of the top companies and how to think about promotions. Finally, we dig deep into the weeds to learn what professionals should know about their total compensation and how pay connects t...

Shanee Ben-Zur, Chief Growth Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Crunchbase Shanee shares how everyone can use marketing best practices to land their next job, even if they're not a marketer. We dive into the weeds to learn how to stand out in a tough job market and in your current role. Finally, we explore why it doesn't make sense that some of the largest tech companies have decided t...

Garima Sahai, Former Director, Engineering, Google Local and Google Map Ads at Google Garima was one of the earliest employees at Google. She reflects on how the company has changed from its startup days nearly 20 years ago to becoming the internet giant it is today. We tackle everything from being one of the first female engineers in Silicon Valley, how Google co-founder Larry Page approached pro...

Mark Sherman, Managing Partner at Telstra Ventures Saad Siddiqui, General Partner at Telstra Ventures Mark and Saad take us through how venture capitalists decide what to invest in and how they find startup founders, including an inside look into some of the data science and models they use to predict success. (Hint: We all could use the advice, even if we aren't startup executives looking for...

Andrew Seaman, Managing Editor for Jobs and Career Development at LinkedIn Andrew leads job search and career development content for LinkedIn News and is one of our go-to experts on the job market. We break down the latest trends as we see them, from the incredible competition for remote jobs, the return-to-office movement of many companies, and the decreasing pay and total compensation in some i...

Dan Schiappa, Chief Product Officer at Arctic Wolf Dan shares his tried-and-true framework for pivoting your career, recalling his successful shifts that resulted in leadership roles in everything from engineering, CEO, business development, finance, and, most recently, product. We explore what being a category-creator in business and your professional life is like, including how he became a princ...

Cosmin Nicolaescu, Chief Technology Officer at Brex Cosmin has enjoyed a meteoric rise as a software engineer. In less than 10 years, he's led global engineering teams at two multibillion-dollar startups. We explore his career trajectory and how a Microsoft software engineer intern becomes the CTO of a more than $12-billion valuation financial-technology juggernaut. Finally, in an exclusive for th...

Oren Barzilai, Founder and CEO of EquityBee Every day professionals miss out on the opportunity to build wealth through stock options and other stock-based compensation. Some professionals might not understand how they work or can't afford to exercise stock options when they leave. Don't miss Oren's master class about stock options and how they might affect your total compensation offer at a start...

Abakar Saidov, Founder and CEO of Beamery Abakar is not a typical founder. He didn't have a lifelong interest in computers or coding, and he had never worked in tech before starting his multi-billion-dollar startup. Instead, curiosity led him down the paths of AI and HR. We explore the founding story of Beamery and Abakar's perseverance that made it all possible. https://blindap.onelink.me/ttCg/cc...

Eugene Zhang, Founding Partner at TSVC Eugene has seen it all in Silicon Valley from his vantage point as an engineer-turned-venture capitalist. We get him to break down the last 30 years of the tech industry, everything from the different boom-and-bust cycles to the latest new trends he's excited about as an investor. He would know, too, as he was an angel investor in Zoom long before the COVID-1...

Tim Armandpour, Chief Technology Officer at PagerDuty Tim is a rare CTO: Before leading engineering and tech teams, he was responsible for product development at YapStone and then PagerDuty. The duo-role experience informed his leadership today, helping him understand how a tech company operates from soup to nuts. He explains how professionals earlier in their careers, especially software engineer...

Jeanniey Walden, Former Global Chief Innovation and Marketing Officer at DailyPay Jeanniey breaks down personal branding and how to build one to advance your career. She also explains why applying for a job on LinkedIn or a jobs board isn't the best thing to do. We also ask her how to use personal and professional networks the right way. Finally, she shares some financial tips about making the mos...