40% Better - Engineering Leadership

Yu Dong went from IBM engineer to leader at Alibaba and now PingCAP, a global startup with teams across the US, Europe and Asia.Every time he inherited a lost team, the missing piece was the same: a vision.In this episode he shares the one-sentence vision that energized his observability team: “Make no problem difficult to diagnose.”Bill and Yu talk about handling conflict through direct, open communication, and why kindergartners beat MBA students at the marshmallow challenge.They also discuss what Yu’s day looks like running teams across more than a dozen countries, and why building a leadership pipeline matters for the company and for your family.Bill shares how a vision helped his team rebuild a whole tool suite months before his peers or CTO thought possible.Connect with Yu: Connect with Bill: https://40pb.com

Lee Atchison never set out to be a leader.He went from reading paper stack dumps at Hewlett-Packard and posting on Usenet in 1984 to naming himself “chief architect” when a startup’s lead engineer walked out.Later, at Amazon, he learned that the right data can change anyone’s mind.Bill and Lee talk about why accidental leaders often do best and why you don’t have to be the boss to lead.They also cover why everyone should work at a startup once, and what to do when a direct report says, “Stay out of my way for three more years.”Then they get into Amazon’s experiment culture, and why data takes the emotion out of the room.Lee closes with his new book, The Software Conductor, a short novel built on the idea that the conductor is the only person on stage who doesn’t make a sound.The Software Conductor on Amazon: https://a.co/d/0hspXuGzLee Atchison on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/leeatchison/40% Better: https://40pb.com

Leaders say failure is a learning opportunity.Their teams watch what they actually do when something breaks.Rachel Franco, founder of Fail Smarter, spent years in innovation enablement at Optum and researched the barriers leaders face in learning from failure.She explains what makes it truly safe to fail, how to measure psychological safety instead of guessing, and how to use innovation tools to turn failures into new solutions.Bill shares how he got quiet engineers to speak up by asking the loudest voices to sit out for six months.He also talks about a founder who shrugged off outages and fired abusive customers, and what he saw about playing it safe at Google.Rachel closes with the numbers: why psychological safety isn’t fluff, and why it decides whether an AI transformation succeeds.Connect with Rachel: https://www.fail-smarter.com/Connect with Bill: https://40pb.com

Jason Hamilton was leading a team in Hong Kong by his second week out of grad school.In this episode he explains how that trial by fire taught him to lead with humility.He also shares why a good leader wants their people to outgrow them, and a mentor’s line that changed how he thinks about decisions: “You’re not paid to be right, you’re paid to get to right.”Bill and Jason dig into the operator mindset and growth versus efficiency thinking.They also get into what happens when leaders bring AI into how software is built.That includes the 200-page plans nobody read, why vibe coding belongs in front of customers, the two questions that cut through AI hype, and why keeping a human in the loop makes people more valuable, not less.Connect with Jason: https://www.jasonshamilton.com/Connect with Bill: https://40pb.com

“If you’re not serving a customer, you’d better be serving somebody who is.”Bill talks with Marc Haine, a hospitality leader, culture builder and author of Lights, Camera, Action, who went from police training to owning three Montreal restaurants to turning around casinos and hotels.They dig into leading with love and kindness, the employee journey, why treating people as a labor expense backfires, managers as coaches, and whether your company is a family, a community or a sports team.Plus: the habit every leader can start tomorrow, being intentional in the moment.Connect with Marc: https://marchaine.comConnect with Bill: https://40pb.com

"You won’t automate yourself out of a job. You’ll automate yourself into a better one."Bill talks with Jackie Teran, VP of Engineering at Forerunner, whose path ran from class president to a layoff, the Peace Corps, a coding bootcamp and a rise from IC to senior manager at Coinbase.They dig into aligning teams with relentless retros, breaking deadlocks by treating ideas as experiments, inviting people to lead, letting go of your old job to grow, and rethinking hiring now that AI writes so much of the code.Plus: the candy-based campaign slogan that started it all.Connect with Jackie: https://withforerunner.comConnect with Bill: https://40pb.com

“You don’t report to me. You work with me.”Bill sits down to talk with Nir Valtman, co-founder of Arnica, whose leadership began when the Israeli Air Force told him the only way to teach was to become a commander.They dig into leading by example, inviting people to challenge you even at town halls, aligning leaders with conflicting goals, and knowing which disagreements are worth having.Plus: the mentor question that introduced Nir to the Wheel of Life, and his two pieces of advice for anyone moving into leadership.Connect with Nir: https://arnica.ioConnect with Bill: https://40pb.com

A failure that didn’t happen is worth zero, at least to most companies.Bill talks with Jeremy McEntire, a former Army officer candidate turned engineering leader and the author of The Cage and the Mirror.They dig into why companies reward what they can see instead of what’s good for them, why the engineers who prevent disasters rarely get promoted, why big companies default to safe decisions, and the 10/20/70 rule of how we actually learn.Plus: growing up off the grid in Oklahoma, why grandmasters just make better mistakes, and a guessing game that shows how far ahead people really think.Connect with Jeremy: https://perardua.dev/Get The Cage and the Mirror: https://a.co/d/08GMhJgLConnect with Bill / 40% Better: https://40pb.com

“Rather than asking for permission, say ‘I intend to.’”Bill talks with Emilie Schario, a product and engineering leader whose company was just acquired by Anaconda, about leading without a title, why a company is a team and not a family, and what customer obsession looks like when leaders race to answer support tickets.They dig into matching people to roles that fit their strengths, being decisive when a fit isn’t working, and treating the org chart like a World Cup lineup.Plus: why in a startup, every day is game day.Connect with Emilie: https://anaconda.comConnectd with Bill: https://40pb.com

If you step up and volunteer, you’ll get noticed.Bill talks with Barry Moline, a former pro hockey referee, two-time CEO of statewide utility associations, and author of Connect.They dig into how one raised hand at 16 led to NHL referee camp, how volunteering for a holiday party nobody wanted to plan led to a CEO job, why every conversation is practice, and why asking questions beats talking about yourself.Plus: the lesson in reciprocity hiding at a farmer’s market fruit stand.Connect with Barry: https:.//barrymoline.com