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PODCAST

The Tech Trek

The Tech Trek is a podcast for founders, builders, and operators who are in the arena building world class tech companies. Host Amir Bormand sits down with the people responsible for product, engineering, data, and growth and digs into how they ship, who they hire, and what they do when things break. If you want a clear view into how modern startups really get built, from first line of code to traction and scale, this show takes you inside the work.

technology

All Episodes

00:19:41

Clarence Chio - Being a cofounder and an engineering...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/08/18

Highlights of my conversation with Clarence: Moving from a lead IC role to a co-founder Leading through influence Giving up the building hat Realizing that you need to let go earlier than you think Look at processes when you see a law of diminishing returns Trial by fire when you don’t know when to ask for help Finding peer groups were a great resource to help deal with similar problems When you start, take your time to find out what you want to do The role of the founder is to

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00:27:34

Clay Alvord - Organizing and managing the work to get...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/08/16

Highlights of my conversation with Clay: What does a full stack DevOps Developer do Managing SW engineers as a non-SW engineer Engaging your employees to maintain a high degree of performance and innovation Helping people stay focused on their core competencies Managing different types of engineers/skillsets on a team Being transparent about your own weaknesses with the team Making sure that everyone can see a path forward for their career Survey your team quarterly with their

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00:22:56

Ana Lebron - SRE is an engineering function with a...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/08/11

Highlights of my conversation with Ana: The intersection of SRE/business Complex systems always fail Reliability is a feature of the system SLAs are a partnership with the customer Managing SLAs in proactive and reactive situations Measure everything Impact of outages and communicating to business Collaboration with Security Involving SRE at the beginning of the implementation is important Planning for future tools Celebrating team wins Learning opportunities from

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00:26:49

Moitree Rahman - Building a cross-functional...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/08/09

Highlights of my conversation with Moitree: Building an analytics team to support the company's digital transformation initiatives The skill sets of an analytics team have become diverse Investing in emerging technologies and using them Evaluating resourcing to be able to get the most out of your investment Business vs technical chops Finding hybrid skills is a challenge to growing teams Define your requirements to drive the skill set you need on your team When do you add new

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00:24:20

Laku Adedoyin - Communicating the “why of engineering...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/08/04

Highlights of my conversation with Laku: Aligning work to the broader company goals Engineers like to work on things that actually get used CTO should focus on customer success channels Focusing on what impact we can bring to the customer Translating that to daily motivation Distilling the message into the simplest form Not using release dates as motivation Explaining technical debt to the broader organization Engineering bandwidth as a pie chart Meet: As CancerIQ’s CTO, Laku

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00:24:33

Cindy Chu - Growing your engineering team with...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/28

Highlights of my conversation with Cindy: Starting as the only female engineering hire in a startup Bring up diversity hiring plans before you are hired Transparency is at the center of inclusivity Putting women on interview panels is important, but making sure it’s not just a check box Be careful not to reward the wrong traits Advice for female engineers looking to move into management Ask for the opportunity; don’t wait for it Educational opportunities to move into STEM Meet: With

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00:44:23

Alonzo Benavides - Growing an engineering team at a...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/26

Highlights of my conversation with Alonzo: Drivers for leaving a large public company for a startup Moving into the blockchain information space Trying to maximize time zone overlap in a remote-first strategy Avoiding information lag for remote employees Innovating the hiring process to fit your needs Throwing out the 2-week sprint and redesigning the process Building autonomous teams and trust Meet: Alonzo is SVP of Engineering at The Block and is focused on leading the Product

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00:24:18

Jeff Gabriel - Balancing research and coding in the...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/21

Highlights of my conversation with Jeff: An idea can come from a one-off problem or a long-term strategic issue to tackle Relationship between research and product management Impact on roadmaps Investment grows as you prove the value Moving from research to POC When a hypothesis doesn’t work out (building corporate memory) Finding the balance in an engineer between implementing and researching Nurturing the kernel of an idea Meet: Jeff Gabriel has been delivering software one way or

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00:30:32

Fabian Frank - Planning for and hiring the right mix...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/19

Highlights of my conversation with Fabian: Hiring the best talent vs a specific seniority level Hiring “scrappy” technologists Allowing your senior engineers to grow Calibrate team mix based on organizational goals Find a balance as you need to shift your hiring needs (avoid whiplash) A roadmap update shouldn’t require a complete alteration of the hiring plan Revisiting interview questions quarterly as you grow your team Meet: Fabian Frank is the VP of Engineering at Airkit, a customer

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00:30:46

Dehron Hite-Benson - Spirit vs letter of the law in...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/14

Highlights of my conversation with Dehron: Be an advocate for your engineers Typing methodology changes to values People want scrum to drive autonomy and accountability Let people make mistakes to drive better project management skills Culture is an “output” (ask the why) Use bottom-up feedback Giving away control leads to a better scrum team Pilot ideas (tweaks vs grenades) Meet: Dehron Hite-Benson is an engineering leader with driving engineering teams. He is focused on the future

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00:24:08

Jose Asuncion - Growing your team from startup stage...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/07/07

Highlights of my conversation with Jose: Being promoted into a role too quickly Continuing education to grow and enhance leadership skills It's important to have strong routines within a team Identifying patterns and focusing on the optimal ones Consistent processes help establish team expectations Identify your hiring gap and find the strongest person to cover that Searching for your next hire might not always offer the team the best value Adding to your organization's core

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00:22:58

Amin Lakhani - Should you elevate your best engineer...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/06/30

Highlights of my conversation with Amin: Attributes of a strong engineer Technical excellence doesn’t always mean being the best coder Impacting the overall organization is a key attribute of a manager Empathy is a key attribute of technical leadership Look for opportunities to affect the larger organization Enabling collaboration between managers and principal engineers Having “operational rigor” Meet: Amin Lakhani is the Director of Software Engineering at ServiceLink after spending

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00:22:47

Leon Fayer - Navigating engineering career and...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/06/23

Highlights of my conversation with Leon: Is moving into management the right next step for an employee Create opportunities for an employee to gain some exposure to management Helping employees navigate different career tracks Finding the best fit for people you manage The (possibly false) allure of moving into management Keep evolving and growing your own managerial skills Easier to take an opportunity to lead than wait for it to be given Meet: Leon Fayer is a Vice President of

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00:32:38

Neil Bhay - Evolving from smaller to larger...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/06/16

Highlights of my conversation with Neil: Stakeholder’s level of technical sophistication impacts the level of planning Importance of the relationship with the product team Envisioning the team's growth past the current state Incubating a team until they are able to stand on their own Avoiding being too tactical Finding opportunities to piggyback new features into the existing work Helping new team members buy into the vision by providing the history behind the team/company

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00:42:42

Round Table 1 - Focusing on hiring while retaining...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/06/09

Topics we covered: Retaining Top Talent Understanding your employees before it's too late Safe Spaces Are more Engineering Managers better? Hypergrowth Hiring Diversity Hiring Time spent on Talent Acquisition? Offers strategy Meet the guests: Kirby Frugia - https://www.mural.co/blog/meet-kirby-frugia Kirby Frugia is MURAL’s SVP of Engineering and is responsible for Product Engineering, DevOps, and Data Engineering. He joined the company in October 2020, and since then, he has grown

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00:21:18

Felix Sargent - How to deal with “code smell” ie...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/06/02

Highlights of my conversation with Felix: Technical debt is a warning sign Liability in the code is not the same as technical debt Dealing with “code smell” Trying to quantify technical debt You need cause to dive into technical debt Very important to set your standards Define when things are “done” Why are you digging into the code? What things are and what they should be Meet: Felix Sargent is a Sr Software Engineering Manager at Truework. He has years of experience working on

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00:20:50

Jeff Smith - Understanding how the CTO role will...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/05/26

Highlights of my conversation with Jeff: Wanting to join a company to impact individual lives Adjusting to a HIPAA regulated industry Understanding all aspects of data flow Evolving to the strategic impact of the CTO role and shedding some hats (the last one being VP of Engineering) Switching between the different hats (strategic vs technical) Creating an organizational plan to balance the tech stack and career opportunities for growth Meet: Jeff has been working in the technology space

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00:24:22

Nikhil Desai - Employee engagement in the engineering...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/05/19

Highlights of my conversation with Nikhil: It takes a village (people, executives, everyone) for employee engagement to be successful Providing employees with safe spaces Leveraging trends from survey data (NPS style) Empower managers to align with individuals and their teams Allow teams to make decentralized decisions on how they implement certain processes Onboarding is a critical piece and starts before the start date Meet: Nikhil Desai is an experienced software engineer with 15+

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00:26:01

Ray Espinoza - Surveying and assessing the confidence...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/05/12

Highlights of my conversation with Ray: Historically security was done in the shadows Everyone is a partner to the security team Give people a sense of ownership and their part in the security program Drive surveys using tactical questions Do employees have confidence in the security team handling relevant issues If you have an external service, you should be thinking of security Go back and resurvey after incorporating security changes Share the security survey results with everyone

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00:22:06

Dhara Patel - Visibility and ROI of internal...

The Tech Trek ·

2022/05/05

Highlights of my conversation with Dhara: Try to adopt a product mindset for shared services Measure value in a tangible way Focus on developer adoption as a metric Direct impact on development life cycle Celebrating for the team With technical customers, a technical product manager would be helpful Get client stakeholder engagement to understand and drive platform requirements Building awareness around initiatives Meet: Dhara Patel is SVP of Engineering, leading multiple groups

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627 results

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