The Engineering Leadership Podcast

We discuss the four modes of coaching and navigate career growth in expanding / contracting companies with James Birchler. James shares highlights from the recent coaching / mentoring workshop he facilitated, and breaks down how each mode of coaching differs tactically. We also cover the dilemma of linear career/leadership growth vs. exponential company growth, different common communication challenges eng leaders face, why people / organizational challenges are harder than technical issues, and how to prepare for & execute uncomfortable conversations. James also shares his unique journey to technical leadership & how past management roles – even in non-tech spaces – have helped shape his thoughts on coaching & eng leadership today.ABOUT JAMES BIRCHLERJames Birchler is an engineering and product development leader, technical advisor, and an accredited Executive Coach from the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business Executive Coaching Institute.In his coaching practice, James focuses on self-awareness, integrity, accountability, and fostering a growth mindset that supports continuous learning and high performance.He focuses his technical advisory practice on common mechanisms and playbooks required at different phases and inflection points of startup growth and scaling: Hiring and interviewing, product development methodologies including Lean Startup and Agile, operational meeting cadence and communication flow, people management, technical leadership, vision/mission development, alignment, and execution.James implemented the Lean Startup methodologies with Eric Ries at IMVU (literally the first Lean Startup), where his team helped start the DevOps movement by building the infrastructure to ship code to production 50 times a day (which was a lot at the time!) and coining the term “continuous deployment.”He has more than 20 years of experience leading high-performance teams in growth environments, including startups and scaled organizations, including Amazon. He has delivered great consumer software products and implemented product development and innovation processes based on continuous learning and improvement.Presently James advises and coaches Series A+ startups in the US and Europe, and leads innovation practices in hyper-growth areas of last mile delivery technology for Amazon. Previously my roles included VP of Engineering & Operations, VP of Engineering, and Founder at several technology startups including IMVU, Caffeine.tv, SmugMug, iCracked, The Arts Coop, and Letters & Science.You can find James at jamesbirchler.com, LinkedIn, and Substack.SHOW NOTES:Highlights from James’ recent coaching & mentoring workshop (2:41)Shared challenges around building trust in eng teams (5:25)The differences between coaching vs. mentoring (7:01)Building trust in order to best support your team members as a manager (9:38)Defining the advising mode of coaching (11:54)How supporting differs from advising (14:29)The story behind James’ technical leadership journey (16:55)Transitioning from a PhD program & environmental planning career into tech (20:19)The dilemma of career growth: linear leadership growth vs. exponential company growth (23:53)Why organizational challenges are more complicated than technical puzzles (26:49)Navigating career growth during company contraction from the employee perspective (28:02)Preparing for uncomfortable conversations as a coach / manager (31:50)Strategies for actually having those tough conversations (35:36)Frameworks for helping others identify what they want (37:58)Rapid fire questions (42:44)LINKS AND RESOURCESStop 'Coaching' Your Tech Team (And What To Do Instead) - James’ substack post on the four modes of development breaking down the core differences of coaching, advising, mentoring, and supporting roles and explaining how trust is the secret ingredient to all four.jamesbirchler.com - James’ website where you can find info about his executive coaching and resources for engineering leaders and founders.How to lead with radical candor | Kim Scott - NYT bestselling author, Kim Scott, has cracked the code on giving valuable feedback in a way that builds genuine relationships, drives results, and creates positive workplaces.What Are People For? - In the twenty-two essays collected here, Wendell Berry conveys a deep concern for the American economic system and the gluttonous American consumer. Berry talks to the reader as one would talk to a next-door neighbor: never preachy, he comes across as someone offering sound advice. In the end, these essays offer rays of hope in an otherwise bleak forecast of America's future. Berry's program presents convincing steps for America's agricultural and cultural survival.New Happy: Getting Happiness Right in a World That's Got It Wrong - Happiness expert Stephanie Harrison draws upon hundreds of studies to offer a life-changing guide to finding the happiness you have been looking for, all based on a decade of research and brought to life with beautiful artwork.Accelerate: Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Organizations - Through four years of groundbreaking research, Dr. Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble, and Gene Kim set out to find a way to measure software delivery performance—and what drives it—using rigorous statistical methods. This book presents both the findings and the science behind that research. Readers will discover how to measure the performance of their teams, and what capabilities they should invest in to drive higher performance.Conversations on Science, Culture, and Time: Michel Serres with Bruno Latour - Although elected to the prestigious French Academy in 1990, Michel Serres has long been considered a maverick--a provocative thinker whose prolific writings on culture, science and philosophy have often baffled more than they have enlightened. In these five lively interviews with sociologist Bruno Latour, this increasingly important cultural figure sheds light on the ideas that inspire his highly original, challenging, and transdisciplinary essays.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/

Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo joins us for a conversation on unleashing potential in your employees! We discuss practices that have helped Duolingo create a meaningful path for hiring & developing engineers through their onboarding & internship programs. We also cover topics including scaling your eng org, upskilling recent grads / new hires, balancing meaningful work with measurable impact, communicating alignment within your org, formal & informal steps for building eng leadership capabilities, and essential skills for managers of all types.ABOUT NATALIE GLANCENatalie is a lifelong learner and seasoned leader with extensive experience at startups and established companies. She’s currently the Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo.At Duolingo, Natalie ensures engineers can help set product direction and strategy. She’s championed a culture of extensive A/B testing, and is excited about the ways generative AI can both build new features and accelerate content creation for these features. She oversees many of the efforts dedicated to scaling Duolingo’s technology to new subjects, like Math and Music.Natalie is passionate about mentorship and education. She co-founded the Int’l AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), which offers an annual Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award for a promising young independent researcher in the field of computational social science in the early stage of their career.SHOW NOTES:Natalie’s eng leadership background & journey scaling Duolingo (2:41)Duolingo’s approach to eng leadership & passion for unleashing potential (5:42)Implementing a mentoring program to improve eng development / retention (6:42)How the mentoring process changes as an org scales (8:51)Duolingo’s onboarding process & tips for building an onboarding program (10:12)Ways Duolingo has crafted a successful internship program (12:43)Frameworks for intern hosts to collect meaningful projects for interns (15:38)Behind the Thrive intern program (HootCamp) for rising juniors (17:44)How Duolingo’s guiding principles drive Duolingo University (21:08)Strategies for upskilling new grads into strong technical contributors (22:13)Best practices for unlocking potential & contributing to people’s growth (25:40)Natalie’s approach to balancing meaningful work with measurable impact (26:44)Practices for creating alignment within your org (28:30)Duolingo’s thought process for role training & growing leaders (30:44)Breaking down the formal & informal steps for building leaders within the org (32:41)Essential skills for role managers to develop (34:22)Addressing challenges faced by managers of managers (36:47)Rapid fire questions (38:24)LINKS AND RESOURCESThe 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/

In this episode, we explore building an AI-first company and engineering org with Rong Yan (CTO @ HeyGen)! We dive into the potential of HeyGen’s interactive avatars, imagining how they can help engineering leaders scale their impact, foster team alignment, coach effectively, and accelerate decision-making. Rong shares insights on the structure of an AI-first company and optimizing for AI teams with engineering capabilities. Plus what it means to “lead with speed” and balance product quality and velocity in an AI-first company and key leadership principles, like why it’s crucial to invest in your top performers and how to act as a productivity multiplier.ABOUT RONG YANRong Yan is HeyGen’s Chief Technology Officer. He brings the company's technological mission of making visual storytelling accessible to everyone, to life. Rong has nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience from companies including IBM, Facebook, Square, Snap, and HubSpot.Most recently, Rong was the VP of Engineering at Hubspot where he led the Data Intelligence and Automation product line and spearheaded the development of an intelligent CRM platform using data and AI. He was also the Director of Engineering turned Senior Director of Engineering at Snap, where he led a product engineering team of over 250 engineers across six locations, responsible for developing, optimizing, and maintaining core Snapchat features, including Camera, Messaging, Stories, Discover, Memories, and Identity.He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Tsinghua University and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.SHOW NOTES:Introducing HeyGen’s interactive avatar & what this means for eng leaders (3:40)How a visual layer for AI agents could scale your leadership & build alignment in your teams and orgs (5:58)The different levels of communication flow within a company (8:17)How interactive avatars can enable interactions and coaching at scale (10:46)The possibilities of interactive avatars for personalized coaching, habit building, and behavior change (14:02)Insights on building an AI-first company (20:29)What the structure of an AI-first company looks like (22:05)How leading with speed works within an AI-first company (24:10)Navigating the balance between product velocity & quality (27:23)The impact of the “leading with speed” paradigm on hiring (30:34)The role of an engineering leaders is to be a productivity multiplier (32:40)How AI impacts productivity as an eng leader (34:43)Where to start when it comes to improving productivity (36:38)AI’s role in blurring the lines between IC & management (39:48)Spend more time on your top people (42:45)Rapid fire questions (44:21)LINKS AND RESOURCESHeyGen - With HeyGen, businesses can simply write their script and generate their video. No camera, no budget, no headaches. We've helped over 45,000 companies and millions of people create, localize, and personalize videos at scale.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 this episode, Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences @ Twilio) reflects on her experiences re-defining engineering’s relationship with the business throughout her career. We cover how the role of engineering varies across industries, why it’s paramount for engineering leaders to find their seat at the business table & rethink how engineering can drive the org’s strategic goals. Rajashree shares insights on how to unlock the creative side of product & business leaders, lessons learned from solving various customer problems, frameworks for eng orgs to combat & overcome learned helplessness, communication practices for framing decision-making, and adjusting from a “no, but” to a “yes, and” mindset.ABOUT RAJASHREE PIMPALKHAREERajashree is the VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences - the world's most flexible customer engagement platform, that powers customer facing sales and service teams with the context, data, and channel flexibility they need to turn ordinary conversations into opportunities to drive repeat sales.Previously, Rajashree led product development at Quizlet - the popular student application that helps over 60 million learners worldwide every month study, practice and become an expert in whatever they are learning. Prior to Quizlet, Rajashree led engineering for Intuit’s 3rd party Developer Platform and app store – enabling a thriving ecosystem of thousands of small business applications that connect to Intuit’s QuickBooks Platform. Prior to Intuit, she held several engineering leadership roles at PayPal building innovative global payment products for consumers and merchants. Rajashree started her career at Intel as a design engineer and subsequently worked on industry changing software solutions for semiconductor chip design at Synopsys.Rajashree is passionate about building purpose-driven teams that exhibit engineering excellence, customer-first thinking and an inclusive culture. She is a strong advocate for women and under-represented minorities in technology; and takes a personal interest in coaching and mentoring talent at all levels to balance the playing field and help them grow in their careers.Rajashree received a B. Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, and an M.S. in Electrical Engineering from University of Maryland, Baltimore.SHOW NOTES:Why engineering’s role in the business varies across industries (2:21)Finding a seat at the business table & elevating the strategic role of engineering (5:32)How Rajashree’s experiences shape her approach as an eng leader (8:54)Strategies for unlocking product / business leaders’ creativity (11:53)Shifting from a “no, that won’t work” to “yes, and here’s how” mindset (14:13)Rajashree’s experience in her global services role (16:46)Lessons learned on solving problems for different customers (19:52)Insights on scaling & productizing (21:17)Deconstructing the concept of learned helplessness in eng orgs (23:13)Frameworks for helping overcome learned helplessness (26:29)Communication practices for eng leaders to frame their decision-making (28:53)Improve your ability to ask better questions & improve dialogue bandwidth (32:16)Rapid fire questions (35:20)LINKS AND RESOURCESWorking Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon - Colin Bryar started at Amazon in 1998; Bill Carr joined in 1999. These two long-serving Amazon executives reveal and codify the principles and practices that drive the success of one of the most extraordinary companies the world has ever known. With twenty-seven years of Amazon experience between them, much of it in the early aughts—a period of unmatched innovation that brought products and services including Kindle, Amazon Prime, Amazon Studios, and Amazon Web Services to life—Bryar and Carr offer unprecedented access to the Amazon way as it was refined, articulated, and proven to be repeatable, scalable, and adaptable.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/