Geeks Who Lead Podcast

When you join a team in a management role, you may find yourself grappling with bad decisions made by your predecessors. Today on CTO Connection, Denise Iglesias , Senior Director Software Engineering at Comcast, spoke to Peter about how she has dealt with poor decisions and her recommendations for transitioning records. Denise discusses why she strives to create a one-page template that explains...

Incubator or labs programs tend to come with various issues. How do you navigate failure? How do you source engineers? RC Johnson has helped create an innovative incubator program at Indeed. This week on CTO Connection, RC is discussing the challenges and lessons he’s learned in creating a successful labs program. RC talks about why he decided to model the program on the venture capital world and...

Feedback is an integral part of work performance across all industries. Effective feedback can help an employee improve at a job or skill. But at the end of the day, feedback is universally dicey. Emotions can run high and people can take feedback too hard. Chelsea Troy , an engineering consultant at RigorWorks, has given talks on her guidelines for effective feedback. Today, she joins Peter to of...

Many companies see the benefits of diversity and inclusion but don’t know that their own policies and culture are often the reason that women and people of color don’t come on board. James Turnbull, VP of Engineering at Glitch, is passionate about this issue and offers advice on how he advises companies to bring on more diverse talent. James also talks to Peter about how he approaches growing indi...

Joann Anderson , VP of Engineering at Scoop Technologies, had a unique childhood in that her mother was a programmer so it never seemed abnormal to Joann that she was a woman in a male-dominated industry. Because many women, particularly mothers, haven’t had that experience, Joann has made it a mission to be a model for others. In a wide-ranging conversation, Joann spoke to Peter about her creativ...

Randy Shoup has led engineering teams at a range of top companies including Oracle, eBay, and Google, as well as newer startups like Stitch fix and WeWork. Randy talks to Peter about how the history of engineering – from Bletchley Park to Xerox PARC can provide lessons that are still applicable to building and managing high performance engineering teams. If you’d like to see Randy sharing more abo...

There are many routes to c-suite but Andrea Goulet has taken one of the most non-traditional paths we’ve seen on CTO Connection. As the Co-Founder and CEO of Corgibytes , Andrea leveraged her experience in content and strategic communications to help a software remodeling company scale its business. Andrea is a big believer in the power of empathy – a word that’s not often prioritized in engineeri...

Cai GoGwilt took a fast-tracked, non-traditional road to becoming a CTO at Ironclad. As a non-traditional CTO, Cai sees his role as helping others on the team get unblocked from any issues in their way. This approach has required a bit of humility on Cai’s part as he’s helped cultivate a culture in which engineers have felt comfortable calling him out when he was wrong. On today’s episode of CTO C...

Dhruba Borthakur is the Co-founder and CTO at Rockset but still manages to write code, on a good week, 50% of the time. In today's interview, Dhruba explained his ethos, namely that he likes to code to add value to other developers’ lives, and discussed how it is essential to create a culture where every person on the team feels empowered to make decisions that bring the organization to the n...

According to Raghavendra Prabhu , CTO of Thumbtack, making the transition from programmer to manager isn’t too much of a stretch since you already understand the issues and stakes of your project. When you take it a step further and begin managing other managers, you’re getting further from the work and making a more indirect impact. On today’s episode of CTO Connection, Raghavendra discusses what...

Ryan Graciano got his start working for a small company that was acquired by IBM. Having been on the employee side of a large merger, Ryan has been able to take what he learned to his role as CTO at Credit Karma. On today’s episode of CTO Connection, Ryan talks to Peter about his distaste for terms like microservices and technical debt as well as how to craft an environment that values both craft...

Tech organizations with more than 100 employees have a unique set of challenges. When you’re in the business of innovation, it can be hard to say no to exciting new opportunities. In this week’s episode of CTO Connection, David Schwartz , CTO of Ripple stopped by to discuss why companies need to stick to their core competencies. Tune in as Peter and David talk about the challenges of blockchain, m...

Whether it’s private communications or a product that handles sensitive information, every company needs to foster a culture of security. Our guest this week, Nick Streaker , is the CTO of ID Agent , a Kaseya company, and was an intelligence officer in the military. Nick talks to Peter about how to make security a part of your company’s overall strategic plan from hiring to product launch. Tune in...

Mike Reust never pictured himself in management. But after several years at Betterment , the opportunity presented itself. Mike joins us this week on CTO Connection to discuss what it’s like to transition from engineering to a management role. Listen in as Mike and Peter talk about the growing pains of transitioning roles as well as advice for those thinking of going into management.    [00:54] -...

The customer service reps at Holiday Extras spend their days talking to customers on the phone. Andy Britcliffe , CTO of Holiday Extras , had a wild thought: what if we had an engineering apprenticeship program that enabled these reps to learn the other side of the business? On this week’s episode of CTO Connection, Andy talks to Peter about the success of the internship and apprenticeship program...

When James Kenigsberg immigrated to America, he quickly found that technology could make learning easier and more fun. This desire to create educational tools led him to help found 2U, a company that partners with universities to deliver online learning programs that are university quality. James sat down with Peter ahead of his talk at the New York CTO Summit to discuss the future of education te...

Technical due diligence is the process of studying a technology product and evaluating its value and feasibility. You’d think that such an important process would be part of the business plan from the outset, but most companies only undergo the process when they begin VC fundraising. Jason Mongue , founder of The Clover Group, is here to talk about the process and why it should start early.  [00:1...

As products and companies develop more name-brand recognition, expansion is inevitable. Prashant Pandey has experience working at companies large and small and in his current role as Head of Engineering at Asana, he knows what it’s like to navigate the growing pains of managing expanded teams. On today’s episode, Prashant talks to Peter about what to take into consideration when judging a team mem...

On CTO Connection, we mostly focus on the engineering side of tech, but today, we’re taking a break to look at product. Our guest Adam Nash , Vice President of Product and Growth at Dropbox, discusses the importance of defining the role of product in a tech company and why he believes delighting customers is just as crucial as making decisions based on metrics. Tune in to learn why Adam believes s...

According to Hector Aguilar , President of Technology at Okta , if you get too far away from technology, you can’t be an effective leader of technology. But when your day-to-day job is focused more on managing individuals, it can be hard to find the time to code. On today’s episode, Hector and Peter discuss how making coding mandatory for all managers can help instill company values and culture. H...

When Adam Miller joined the Roblox team as the Vice President of Engineering, he assumed everything would just get saved to the cloud. Instead, he found that the Roblox platform’s unique infrastructure needs would necessitate more in-house development and management in order to effectively scale. In today’s episode, Peter and Adam discuss the challenges of managing hundreds of employees drawing fr...

Scott Parker has seen a lot over his 15 year career having transitioned from engineer to manager to executive. In this episode of the CTO Connection podcast, Peter and Scott discuss Scott’s approach to people management, differences in building teams at small companies vs. large companies as well as how to demonstrate the value of personal growth to engineers. Note: Since the recording of this int...

This week Peter invites long-time technology leader and CTO Summit speaker Stacy Gorelik to the podcast. Stacy is currently the Director of Engineering at Flatiron Health, a health-tech company committed to fighting cancer. Peter and Stacy discuss her career from individual contributor to engineering management to director, what she looks for when hiring and her recent experiences speaking at the...

In this episode of CTO Connection, host Peter Bell sits down with Johnny Austin , Engineering Director of Navigation at Mapbox , to discuss the best and most challenging aspects of engineering leadership, practical tips for creating a solid onboarding program and ways to maintain a sense of connection within a distributed team. [00:30] - The road to engineering leadership at Mapbox [03:00] - It’s...

This week, Peter Bell is joined by SVP of Engineering at Upwork, Han Yuan. Han and Peter dive into what it’s like to run an engineering team that spans countries, building a good engineering culture for a remote team and how he brings on new engineers to the team. [00:21] - Differences in thinking about distributed teams across multiple companies[02:59] - Communication best practices across time z...