The Tech Trek

Some of what Jeff talks about: Upscaling the relationship between testing and SRE Ensuring the quality of the platform Being error-free is the lowest bar The first mandate is to protect the health of the production environment Moving from quality assurance to quality engineering Meet: Jeff Vier - Technical Operations Leader.  Metrics enthusiast.  Testing evangelist. If you have any quest...

Some of what Jeff talks about: Making the decision to move to a larger organization Making decisions when things aren’t greenfield Finding interesting opportunities by uncovering legacy work Managing technical debt within a larger organization Meet: Jeff Byrnes is the SRE Manager at athenahealth. Jeff is a musician turned web dev turned ops/infrastructure engineer turned engineering manager. If yo...

Some of what Ali talks about: Handling the hiring process to overcome the challenges of hiring remote Adjusting the software development process to minimize the impact of employees that might leave Paying attention to context switching Building a team post-pandemic Shifting the development process from Scrum to Kanban Meet: Ali Hosseinkhani is the Director of Software Engineering at Next Trucking...

Chad dives into everything data platform product management including: Why does your org need a data product manager Origin of where the role comes from Measuring the impact of the data platform product manager What to look for in hiring a data platform PM Take advantage of internal-facing PM roles Meet: Chad Sanderson is the Head of Product for Convoy’s Data Platform team, which includes the data...

Some of what Juan Pablo talks about: Lean into potential An early-stage startup can take risks to let people grow into roles Hiring someone with experience means you are hiring someone that has already made mistakes Experience can be a double-edged sword People grow linearly; organizations grow exponentially Interviewing is part of building software and you must account for that process Meet: Juan...

Key takeaways: Gap analysis to forecast data pipeline needs Work backward from the end-user point of view Every system has to have some human involvement Going beyond the initial scope of work to learn about a new industry Working with stakeholders to help them understand what goes into getting analytics to them Meet:  Trenton Huey is the Director of Data at Vida Health, which provides access...

Key takeaways: Optimize resource allocation by examining maturing applications Find ways to offload activities to 3rd party services to help scale Being remote requires an open work culture Meet:  Aniket Soneji is passionate about solving the world's most important and difficult problems with innovative engineering solutions. He holds multiple engineering degrees from UC Berkeley, and spent h...

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...

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 Fra...

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 Octo...

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 Offi...

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 prod...

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 a...

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,...

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...

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 produ...

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...

Key takeaways: Don’t be too technology-focused without identifying the customer value it should provide The “connecting tissue” isn’t always obvious Conversations around the “art of the possible” Meet: Kishore Aradhya is currently the Head of Data Engineering, AI & Data at Bose. If you have any questions for Kishore, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/karadhya/ I ho...

Key takeaways: Team behavior and measuring impact Looking at a 3 sprint rolling average to gauge velocity Keeping the workplace fun by focusing on skill mastery and being given autonomy Modeling behavior on core values You want people to be truthful and speak up Meet: Mark DiAntonio is Vice President of Engineering at HqO, overseeing engineering operations and accelerating the development and deli...

Key takeaways: Look at a job’s deliverables to find the right hire The new data analyst needs to understanding core CS concepts Don’t let the process define the hire If you have any questions for Andy, please feel free to reach out via: https://www.linkedin.com/in/awowens/ I hope you enjoyed the episode, the best place to connect with me is on Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amirbormand (Am...

Key takeaways: Good data pipeline, “bad data” problem Investing in data observability - it will cost you one way or the other Being proactive vs reactive Data engineering and data product manager would be best to own observability Meet:  Barr Moses is CEO & Co-Founder of Monte Carlo, a data reliability company backed by Accel, GGV, Redpoint, and other top Silicon Valley investors. Previou...

Key takeaways: Ramifications of waiting to implement security Consider alignment before jumping to tools Look within your current team to see if skills are currently covered Tradeoffs of allocating resources to build tools vs buying Meet:  Johnathan Hunt is the VP of Security for GitLab, an open-source code repository and collaborative software development platform for large DevOps and DevSec...

Key takeaways: Build vs buy in the security industry Focusing on speed to get value out of tooling Avoiding tools that tie you into a rigid structure Carrying over Anwar’s software engineering background to security Meet: Anwar Reddick is a 15+ year computing technology veteran. He started his career in software engineering and computer science research and quickly pivoted into information securit...

Key takeaways: Aligning the security roadmap to business objectives Preparing for the initial requirements  assessment Making sure you understand what is important to the business and not just 1-2 people Assessing internal capabilities Iterating and collaborating on the roadmap Coming into the job with a blank slate view Meet:  Noah Beddome is the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO...

Key takeaways: Building and improving data quality through more testing Dividing work among geographically remote teams Quality decline as a symptom of team burnout Honing in on understanding the team's emotional and mental health Meet:  Josh Scherbenski is the VP of Data at Zeus Living, where he leads the analytics, machine learning, data engineering, and pricing teams. His teams are located...