Part 2: Making Calculated Risks With Jason Gauci

This may come as a surprise, but Compass’ engineering organization has over 1000 developers powering their end-to-end tech platform that supports real estate transactions across the United States. Basia Mucha, Director of Engineering at Compass, joins the show to share her experience scaling a platform across different geographies and the art of balancing new features while also growing your team.

Brian Douglas is the Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub and a familiar face (or voice) in the world of software development and community. Based on Brian’s experience building Netlify’s first design system, he shares his perspective on knowing when a start-up can build their own tool versus using one that’s available on the market.

Changes and pivots are bound to happen, especially in the early days of a start-up. Jenna Quindica, Staff Software Engineer at Square, shares a story from early on in her career where a complete pivot was required to achieve product-market fit. Jenna also delves into what it takes to be an effective Staff SWE today.

The conversation with Jason Gauci continues. Jason breaks down the day after you’ve succeeded with your initial champion. What comes next? How do you motivate your team? And how to successfully promote your ideas within an engineering organization. Jason is the host of the Programming Throwdown podcast. 

Jason Gauci is Argo AI’s Director of Engineering and has led machine learning teams at Facebook (now Meta) and Google. Jason also hosts the Programming Throwdown podcast. Looking back at his experiences leading a research lab at Facebook, Jason reflects on the challenges of disruptive technological changes. Hint: Sometimes, being on the vanguard is indistinguishable from failing. 

Amir Shevat has led teams at some of the most well known tech companies out there, including Slack, Google, and Twitch. Today, Amir is Head of Product at Twitter’s Developer Platform. Amir joins the show to share his experience of the effectiveness of a GM model and just how important it is to listen when joining a new team.

Get ready for Season 2 of Swimm Upstream, a podcast dedicated to engineering leaders and devtool enthusiasts. This season we're breakinng down stories of change within engineering organizations. Stay tuned...

In episode 7 of Swimm Upstream, Host Tom Ahi Dror speaks with Assaf Cohen about his experiences as a network engineer and a training manager and finding the right balance in creating guardrails, protocols, and best practices for security breaches. Assaf is Training Delivery Manager at Amazon Web Services.

In episode 6 of Swimm Upstream, Host Tom Ahi Dror speaks with Liran Tal about inspiring education and empowering developers to increase awareness of application security. Find out two of Shiran's tricks as well. Liran is Director of Developer Advocacy at Synk.

In episode 5 of Swimm Upstream, Host Tom Ahi Dror speaks with Yuval Perry about managing one of the guilds responsible for Wix's backend as Head of Backend Engineering. Yuval talks about ensuring his team is on the "paved road" and how guilds help software organizations scale quickly and efficiently.