The Top 10 Challenges Engineering Leaders Face: A Sneak Peak

After surveying hundreds of engineering leaders, we’ve pinpointed the top 10 challenges engineering leaders face! Exciting news - next week marks the launch of our 4-part series, sharing some of the best insights from hundreds of ELC events, podcasts & conference sessions. The finale? A dynamic rapid-fire session with Shopify's VP of Engineering, Farhan Thawar, tackling each challenge head-on.Have solutions of your own? Share your strategies and help spread knowledge throughout our community. Reach out at [email protected] or tag ELC in a post/comment on LinkedIn.Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Today’s conversation focuses on building scalable hiring processes as your org grows and creating systems that promote operational excellence, featuring Stephen Poletto, CTO @ Lattice. He shares examples of how they introduced & scaled their hiring processes to better articulate employee value propositions, implement experience differentiators, and created hiring rubrics & loop documentation. Stephen also reveals strategies for defining what operational excellence looks like within your org, how certain rituals impact company psychology / behavior, and steps for ending & replacing rituals that are no longer working. Additionally, we dissect frameworks for adding incentives within your eng org that improve organizational impact – and how to avoid bad incentives.ABOUT STEPHEN POLETTOStephen Poletto is the Chief Technology Officer at Lattice, where he leads the company's product development, and where he scaled the engineering team from 20 to 150 team members. Stephen began his career at Apple before spending eight years building and growing technical teams at Dropbox. Stephen has had the opportunity to incubate new products such as Dropbox Carousel and Dropbox Paper, and also work on at-scale products such as the Dropbox mobile app and Dropbox's platform infrastructure. Stephen lives in San Francisco. In the winter, you can find him snowboarding in the mountains."Even very simple things like a candidate's been in back to back interviews. You hop on. 'Hey, how are you? Do you need a five minute break?' We would train interviewers on some of those tactics, right? At the beginning of the call, set the agenda. ‘We're going to spend this amount of time on these topics. We're going to spend this amount of time to give you space to ask questions of me.’ Now the candidate knows what to expect. They're put at ease. It's simple stuff but it really colors the way that people feel about the interview itself. What kind of feeling do they have about the company coming out of it?”- Stephen Poletto   Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountSHOW NOTES:Stephen’s primary goal when he first joined Lattice (3:15)Steps for building out a systematic & repeatable hiring process (5:51)Defining & articulating employee value propositions during the hiring process (8:00)Strategies for presenting company culture via hiring / onboarding (10:21)Hiring experience differentiators & how to make them the norm (13:27)Training the engineering team on how to effectively hire (16:53)Stephen’s process for creating a hiring rubric & loop documentation (20:06)How hiring systems can be tweaked / evaluating current hiring needs (22:20)Identifying what operational excellence means for your org (24:22)Rituals / dilemmas to focus on that influence psychology & behavior (26:13)Examples of ending & replacing processes / operations (29:58)Signals that a ritual is no longer serving your needs (32:12)Frameworks for applying incentives / rewards within an eng org (34:57)Navigating the balance between output vs. input (38:57)First steps toward better organizational impact & avoiding bad incentives (41:07)Rapid fire questions (43:37)LINKS AND RESOURCESProduct-Led AI - Greylock partner and former product builder Seth Rosenberg talks with founders about their inspiration and process to build, test, and continually reimagine how AI and humans work together.The Holloway Guide to Equity Compensation - Stock options, RSUs, job offers, and taxes—a detailed reference, including hundreds of resources, explained from the ground up, for both employees and managers.Steve Bartel’s blog - Steve Bartel is the co-founder and CEO of Gem. Prior to founding Gem, Steve was an engineering leader at Dropbox where his experience working closely with the recruiting process allowed him to see the lack of technology in the space. This inspired him to co-found Gem, which allows recruiting teams of all sizes to source talent, engage with talent, and use data to improve recruiting processes.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In today’s episode, we’re highlighting one of our favorite past conversations, featuring Wade Chambers, CTO & SVP of Engineering @ Included Health. We cover tools for increasing your capacity to win as an eng leader, getting unstuck in your career / moving forward, and applying “conscious growth” and neuroplasticity principles to the career. Wade shares stories of success – and failure – as an eng manager, best practices to measure success as an eng leader, and how to increase your team’s performance & potential.ABOUT WADE CHAMBERSWade Chambers (@wadechambers) is the CTO and SVP of Engineering at IncludedHealth, a company that provides technology solutions to improve the way patients get healthcare matched to their needs. He has over 25 years of engineering leadership experience, both advising companies and being hands-on in key leadership positions at companies such as Twitter, TellApart, Yahoo, Proofpoint, and Opsware. He is a deep technical expert with a proven track record of scaling teams and leaders, market-defining technology innovations, and business growth.“The more that you can recognize that, ‘Oh, I feel uncomfortable...’ and you can just sit with it a minute. As opposed to react to it. There's always a feedback mechanism in that. That willingness to be in the discomfort a little bit longer. You're actually going to learn so much about yourself in that moment. And if you can act on that, that's what unlocks you to move forward.”- Wade Chambers   Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountSHOW NOTES:Wade’s background in building a habit of conscious growth & digging deeper (4:14)Overcoming early failures as a first-time manager (8:11)Why it’s hard to unhear the truth & how to incorporate feedback as a manager (13:08)How understanding neuroplasticity impacts career development (18:11)Moving along the spectrum of unconscious incompetence to unconscious competence (19:30)Align your growth to impact your company AND move your career forward (24:37)Why eng leaders need to truly understand their org’s business needs (29:49)Strategies for both winning & increasing your capacity to win (35:30)How to increase the potential of individuals & your overall team (40:52)Factors that are keeping you stuck in career growth (44:39)Turning to books to maximize learning / growth (52:11)How to identify core principles & why they drive your behavior (55:37)Final thoughts on closing the gap between where you are & where you want to be (58:54)This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

We revisit an episode from the podcast archives – Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ Fox) shares her experience representing the tech org during the biggest deal in entertainment history! We cover Melody’s most important lessons negotiating on behalf of the tech org plus how they leveraged the M&A event to accelerate innovation and productivity.Melody will be joining us as one of our featured speakers @ ELC Annual 2024 (our two-day conference on 8/27-8/28! Check out our incredible line up of speakers, other conference experiences & tickets at sfelc.com/annual2024 Use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discount.ABOUT MELODY HILDEBRANDTMelody Hildebrandt (@mhil) is Chief Technology Officer for Fox Corporation, where sets set the comprehensive technology strategy for the Company. She previous served as the company’s Chief Information Security Officer and as the President of its research and development subsidiary, Blockchain Creative Labs.In her current role, Hildebrandt leads the development, design and implementation of emerging technologies across the FOX enterprise, spanning FOX Sports, FOX News, FOX Entertainment, FOX Television Stations, and Tubi Media Group. Her current focus is on future planning, including developments in artificial intelligence and authenticating and monetizing premium content via blockchain technology. She also continues to oversee the cyber-security posture of the business and leads technology M&A efforts, identifying areas for investment and growth.Prior to FOX, Hildebrandt held the role of Global Chief Information Security Officer at 21st Century Fox, where she was responsible for the cyber security posture of 21CF businesses, including 20th Century Fox, FOX Networks Group, National Geographic Partners, FOX News, Star India and others.Before 21CF, she was Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies, where she helped start its commercial work and led Palantir’s business in cyber security, anti-money laundering and rogue trading detection. Prior to that, she consulted US and international governments with Booz Allen Hamilton, where she designed military and strategy wargames.Hildebrandt is the Executive Sponsor of Women in Technology at FOX."One thing that we intervened on very quickly because we were AT the table for (the conversation), "How should we structure the deal?" Was to do something that was quite counter-intuitive I think, and very controversial... Which was to say ‘Let's essentially value all of our current technology assets at near-zero... And make them part of the deal.’"- Melody Hildebrandt   Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountSHOW NOTES:Background on the Fox Disney “mega-deal” (03:39)How to structure an M&A to accelerate your tech roadmap (06:01)Motivating engineering teams with forcing functions (10:14)What it was like representing a tech org in deal structuring (13:13)How to develop an engineering org’s merger strategy (17:36)M&A negotiation tips for engineering leaders (20:07)A critical skill for eng leaders: converting tech pains into business goals (22:59)How to get executive buy-in on engineering initiatives (27:58)“Crashing” your way to a seat at the table (31:05)Melody’s process for setting the strategic direction of an engineering org (32:19)Managing engineering teams from high and low — the middle is death (34:35)Why this M&A event continues to accelerate innovation (37:37)Rapid-Fire Questions (42:26)LINKS AND RESOURCES(article) A super-powered approach to tech transformation - Melody Hildebrandt& Paul Cheesborough’s article on the untold story of the 21st Century Fox & Disney transaction(podcast) Conversations with Tyler esteemed economist Tyler Cowen engages with today’s most underrated thinkers in wide-ranging explorations of their work, the world, and everything in between.(book) Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir(reference) The Masked Singer NFT project - www.maskverse.com

We discuss how to navigate the delicate balance between meeting current customer needs while also preparing for future tech trends & opportunities with Evan Welbourne, Head of AI and Data @ Samsara. Evan dissects the rapidly transforming pace of developing AI/ML products, sharing strategies for merging conversations around differing product-building processes, tips for moving seamlessly / gaining approval between product development stages, defining what customer success looks like, methods for working backward from problems, and best practices for avoiding friction throughout the product development process. He also shares frameworks for envisioning & working toward future tech possibilities while simultaneously developing hypotheses that inform future direction, creating diverse AI/ML team composition, and effectively communicating with stakeholders.ABOUT EVAN WELBOURNEEvan Welbourne is the Head of AI and Data and Samsara, leading the organization’s machine learning, computer vision, data science, and data analytics teams – as well as data engineering and data platform for the company. He has a long-standing career in both machine learning and IoT. Before Samsara, Evan held various roles at Amazon, including the Head of Machine Learning for Alexa Smart Home and Manager of the Computer Vision Research Group. He also led research teams at Samsung and Nokia.Evan earned his Ph.D and M.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Washington and holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto."With AI, there's something new every week. You could stay in those stages forever. You can just keep iterating and trying new things, but at some point you have to kind of cut it off. You've got to time box it and just go with something that you know will work. You're constantly also calibrating between the quality of what you're delivering and the time it takes you to deliver it. A lot of that problem backs into this early stage of the process. We do want to do a good job of understanding opportunity but there's analysis paralysis. We don't want to just get stuck there.”- Evan Welbourne   Join us at ELC Annual 2024!ELC Annual is our 2 day conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world for a unique experience help you expand your network and empower your leadership & career growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountSHOW NOTES:Staying customer-focused while working toward the future @ Samsara (3:22)Merging forward-looking technology & customer-problem-focused product-building conversations (5:54)Defining customer success & working backwards from winning (8:38)How stage gates can confirm / assess feature accuracy & maturity (10:58)What the approval moment looks like while moving from stage to stage (15:29)Understanding what stages offer the greatest opportunity for risk / friction (17:11)Signals to watch for that allow you to move forward with confidence (19:30)Best practices for anticipating & preparing for future possibilities (21:13)Using smaller-scale projects to inform future direction of larger-scale products (23:12)Communication strategies for working with less technical stakeholders (25:22)Methods for effectively communicating complex, technical information (27:59)AI / ML team composition at Samsara (30:04)Frameworks for aligning & motivating folks to focus on customer needs (32:59)Strategies for introducing new technologies & scientific research into your teams (35:06)Introducing AI into mission-critical internal tools (36:34)Rapid fire questions (39:17)LINKS AND RESOURCESHuman Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control - Stuart Russell lays out a new approach to AI that will enable us to coexist successfully with increasingly intelligent machines.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Welcome to a special episode highlighting ELC Annual 2024, our annual conference bringing together engineering leaders from around the world! Tune in to hear how we built this 2-day experience to be the ultimate accelerator of leadership and professional growth. We cover how the conference will expand your perspectives with curated peer-led roundtables and expert-led sessions with people like Thuan Pham (former CTO @ Uber & Coupang), Melody Hildebrandt (CTO @ FOX), James Everingham (VPE @ Meta) Marcel Weekes (VPE @ Figma), Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VPE @ Twilio) and 40+ more speakers! We promise that you will walk away from the event with meaningful connections and actionable strategies that will empower your career and leadership growth.Don't miss out on this incredible opportunity to expand your network, gain actionable insights, ignite new ideas, recharge, and accelerate your leadership journey!Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2024And use the exclusive discount code "podcast10" (all lowercase) for a 10% discountThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Lakshmi Baskaran shares insights on impromptu communication, why it’s important, and a framework for successfully navigating these tricky situations! We also cover team topology and why it’s so important to have the right composition of product-minded vs. technical-minded engineers within any eng team. Lakshmi shares how prioritizing team topology will impact hiring, influence engineering culture, and aid in eng team reorgs / restructures. She also discusses what the future of AI looks like for executive eng leaders & what to consider when adopting AI practices / technologies. And to bring it all together, we dissect how Lakshmi’s Triple-A impromptu communication framework operates in the context of both team topology & AI adoption.ABOUT LAKSHMI BASKARANLakshmi Baskaran is an accomplished business leader, entrepreneur, and an angel investor with over two decades of experience in the tech industry. She has built and managed high-performing engineering teams for startups, scale-ups, and publicly listed companies across North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia.She is currently serving as the VP of Engineering at Metadata, a SaaS company that offers a Marketing Operating System to prominent brands and businesses worldwide.Lakshmi is passionate about coaching and mentoring business leaders and empowering women to pursue careers in technology. With the right support, she firmly believes that any woman can unleash her potential and make a significant impact on the world, rising to the heights of a great leader, entrepreneur, and a board member.Lakshmi shares her insights on leadership and technology through her writing on Medium and Thrive.“Imagine you're presenting it to your executive leadership team or to your board. As an engineering leader, you want to spice up that message with how it is interesting to your customers. The framework that I use in scenarios like this is called 'What If And So That' framework. If you're running an email platform, what if you're able to search through millions of emails in a sub millisecond so that your users can have faster search abilities compared to our competitors? Build a dream scenario and tell them how the technology can help them meet their dream scenario.”- Lakshmi Baskaran   We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024 – Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store:An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Why the topic of effective impromptu communication is important (2:46)Dissecting frameworks & tools for impromptu conversations (7:16)An example of high-quality impromptu communication with a CEO (11:52)Implement the Triple-A framework (14:03)The impact of this communication method on peers (16:37)Lakshmi’s insights on team topologies & essential aspects of different eng teams (18:26)Considerations for eng team composition (20:56)How new hires play into assembling and/or reforming early-stage eng teams (23:44)Aligning with teams about what they’re looking for in terms of hiring / composition (26:12)The impact of product & tech-minded eng leaders on engineering culture (29:19)Opportunities to employ impromptu comm skills in the context of team topology (31:42)Lakshmi’s observations on AI adoption (33:47)Frameworks for effectively communicating about AI considerations (37:11)How eng leaders should apply these AI areas into their decision-making (40:40)The role of impromptu communication in AI conversations (42:33)Rapid fire questions (45:00)LINKS AND RESOURCESLakshmi’s blog post on identifying product-minded and tech-minded engineersThe Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership - Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy.”This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

We dissect one of the biggest challenges that eng leaders face in their day-to-day – navigating the balance between going deep in technical work & maintaining a high-level view of business strategy. Oded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer @ BigPanda, shares examples from his experience, covering strategies for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology, bringing technical expertise to the executive team, bridging the gap between marketing & technology, and aligning customer expectations with a product’s actual capabilities. Oded also shares frameworks for prioritization conversations, valuable questions to pose during executive decision-making conversations, and approaches to changing past technical decisions.ABOUT ODED KEDEMOded Kedem, Chief Technology Officer at BigPanda, brings a wealth of experience in software from ground-up development to managing engineering teams and was also the founder of Zerto, a Cloud BC/DR company. Throughout his many years in the industry, Oded has developed a deep understanding of AIOps and the needs of customers. He recognizes that we are just scratching the surface with AI and automation.“As companies evolve, people change roles and the technology changes, the requirements change. We chose in the past, the product does it in method A. Let's ask, 'Okay, why did we choose A in the first place?' And once in a while, someone from engineering came up and said, 'Yeah, I have a great idea. Let's do B.' And I would always send them, 'Okay, go back to the documentation, because if you thought this through and you think that making these changes is worth our while and the risk and the instability it may bring, let's go, let's do it.'”- Oded Kedem   We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store:An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Keeping a high-level view while diving deep into the technology (2:48)The story of how Oded first connected to this particular problem (5:03)Oded’s process for prioritizing where to go deep into the technology (7:20)Prioritization strategies & why it’s sometimes hard to say no to jumping in (9:40)How to bring technical expertise / value to the exec team (13:57)Best practices for tough conversations regarding org direction & capabilities (17:40)Types of questions to ask in executive conversations (19:58)Oded’s favorite question to pose (23:33)Bridging the gap between marketing & technology (24:26)How an eng perspective helps shape a product’s marketing outcome (27:12)Frameworks for aligning customer expectations with a product’s capabilities (29:33)Approaches to changing past technical decisions as an eng leader (31:21)Rapid fire questions (35:25)LINKS AND RESOURCESTalking to Strangers: What We Should Know About the People We Don’t Know - Malcolm Gladwell, host of the podcast Revisionist History and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller Outliers, offers a powerful examination of our interactions with strangers -- and why they often go wrong.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Chris Cravens (Former VPE @ Splunk and CIO @ Uber) shares practical tips for applying professional strategies / tech performance tools into our personal lives - to increase intentionality, goal setting, and habit formation in all aspects of our lives. He shares why it’s so easy to dedicate 90% of your time & attention to work while only dedicating 10% to your personal life and reveals from his own experience how he discovered a better work-life balance by applying OKRs, goal setting, postmortems, and deep reflection. We also cover frameworks for identifying feeling-based goals, building habits & accountability within your personal life, combating negative self-talk, and rewiring your brain to focus on the present & not dwell on past failures.ABOUT CHRIS CRAVENSChris Cravens is an industry veteran with a quarter century of successes delivering measurable value for high-growth enterprises in San Francisco and Silicon Valley. An avid change agent and catalyst for transformation, Mr. Cravens has led major global scale-up and transformation efforts for Software Engineering, Information Technology, Security, Facilities teams. As the first CIO at Zynga and Uber, he led critical functions that enabled scale from small startups to major global enterprises in record time. Mr. Cravens led digital transformation at Splunk, scaling revenue from $800M to $2.2BN in three years by reimagining and supercharging Go to Market capabilities with automation and high value software capabilities that drove greater deal size and velocity. Currently, Mr. Cravens provides expert consulting supporting Private Equity and Venture transactions and transformations and is an active Strategic Advisor, Coach, and Investor to startups delivering innovative, disruptive technologies to accelerate digital transformation.“I would just keep doing things like that because of that philosophy of in the absence of clear leadership, step in, be the one who is responsible and it goes back to that anxiety from childhood. There are people who have much healthier outlooks, and I've just never been wired that way. So I have to kind of question each decision I make as I go to do a new thing or take on more stuff. 'Is this the right thing for me to do right now, or am I making my life harder?'”- Chris Cravens   We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store:An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:Chris’s experience of his first week @ Uber (2:02)Borrowing professional life tools & using them in your personal life (4:53)Why it’s easy to give 90% of time to work & only 10% to your personal life (8:26)How Chris navigated his own transition (14:34)Treat a sabbatical like a job (16:15)Adding OKRs to your personal life (19:36)Strategies for assessing feeling-oriented goals (22:05)Combating negative self-talk & treating yourself like you would a good friend (24:58)How Chris’s frameworks have shifted over time when setting personal life goals (27:11)Reflection questions to help illuminate where to center your focus (29:35)Applying positive self-talk within a work context to your personal life (32:39)Incorporate blameless postmortems into a personal context (35:38)Strategies for better habit formation (37:00)How to overcome feeling a lack of motivation to start a new habit (38:08)The significance of having both clarity & accountability (40:56)Tips for rewiring the belief that you can accomplish a goal (45:27)Rapid fire questions (48:21)LINKS AND RESOURCESChris’s Guide to Thinking ErrorsThe Satanic Verses - novel of Indian-born British writer Salman Rushdie led Ruholla Khomeini, the ayatollah of Iran, to demand his execution and then forced him into hiding.This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

This is a special episode from our show “Engineering Founders” - Jon Perl & Scott Wilson share the origin story of QA Wolf & deconstruct their best practices (and what to avoid) for early-stage cold outreach, how to add value to your cold email communications, and why experimenting with your cold outreach is important to early sales! We also dive in to the story behind QA Wolf’s strategic move to incorporate services into their business strategy & tangible ways to add accountability measures that will help drive growth in the early days of your company. Check out Engineering Founders - https://hubs.la/Q02tq5ym0ABOUT JON PERLJon Perl is the co-founder and CEO of QA Wolf, a startup building the QA solution every engineering leader wishes for. Prior to QA Wolf, Perl led engineering teams in the healthcare and home services space, where he learned firsthand how difficult automated regression testing can be — and how critical it is for teams to have. His interest in software engineering comes from an overarching desire to eliminate boring, repetitive tasks and give people their time back. He has a dog named Finn and enjoys hiking."Your goal is simply to book a meeting. You're not trying to close a deal through one email. It's like, 'How can I just get on the phone with somebody?' That's the goal.”- Jon Perl   ABOUT SCOTT WILSONAs co-founder and head of growth at QA Wolf, Scott Wilson is trying to upend 20+ years of stagnation in the QA industry. Before this he launched the marketing efforts at Wyze and helped acquire 6 million paying customers. If he’s not working, you might find him backpacking with Frank the dog, or learning a new illusion."It's not referencing the weather in Seattle or that you got promoted. Personalization is being contextually relevant to the person. This is how your mind should be thinking. It's like, 'I saw you're a hundred person company with nine engineers on your team and no QA engineers. You're probably going through this and here's a solution for it.'”- Scott Wilson   We’re less than one week away from GLOW 2024Attend GLOW 2024 - Jellyfish’s virtual summit for engineering, product, and finance leaders who are looking to deliver greater business impact while building great software and teams. Here’s a preview of what’s in store:An inspiring guest keynote by TIME Magazine’s Kid of the Year, Gitanjali RaoStrategies for engineering excellence from CTOs at Keller Williams, Genius Sports, and FanDuelJellyfish CEO and Co-Founder Andrew Lau’s keynote on the future of software engineeringExciting product roadmap updates from JellyfishRegister for this May 15 event today at jellyfish.co/glow!SHOW NOTES:The origin story of QA Wolf & the desire to build an automated QA system (2:08)What got Scott excited about joining the QA Wolf founding team (7:14)Scott’s experience as the non-technical cofounder on the team (9:13)Learn enough to be dangerous & be willing to persist as a founder (10:38)The approach of paying people you can learn from & its impact on QA Wolf (14:11)Lessons learned about cold emailing & effective strategies to implement (17:12)Cold emailing strategies that don’t work (21:00)How to add value to email communication & incorporate experimentation (22:24)Why they shifted the focus from coding to sales / outreach / identifying solutions (26:23)Make accountability mechanisms a key component of early-stage teams (29:09)The false signal of free users & expanding product into services (30:45)Identifying a gap in the business & being open-minded to new ideas (33:20)What the initial testing for QA Wolf’s services approach looked like (35:22)Jon & Scott’s perspective on dealing w/ investors in the automated services space (38:31)Rapid fire questions (44:01)LINKS AND RESOURCES$100M Offers: How To Make Offers So Good People Feel Stupid Saying NoHow to Hire a Product-Led Sales Leader – at Every StageThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/