Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Hear the inside stories of the "geeks who lead at scale" - Directors, VPs and CTOs running software engineering orgs at larger companies with 100+ engineers, and interviews with domain experts who can help those leaders to manage their engineering orgs more effectively.
I'm your host - Peter Bell, I've been helping senior engineering leaders to connect with and learn from their peers since 2010!
This podcast is designed for engineering leaders who want to learn the latest good practices from their peers who are way too busy operating to write an article or publish a book!
Running a software engineering org at scale is hard! You need to manage stakeholder expectations, attract and retain top talent, align and structure your org effectively and keep up with the latest processes and tooling. And that's before we even try to make sense of the potential impact of LLMs and GenAI on managing technical teams.
Our podcast and weekly newsletter provide you with access to hard-won wisdom from top engineering leaders and relevant domain experts. Learn more at https://geekswholead.com/
Geeks Who Lead Podcast
Effective Mentorship in Early Stage Startups with Rob De Feo
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Rob De Feo has spoken to more than 500 startups over the last few years in his role as a startup advocate. These experiences have given him insider knowledge on the patterns leaders in startups face as well as best practices that have helped businesses reach scale.
This week on CTO Connection, Rob takes Peter behind the curtain of life as a startup advocate. They also discuss their biggest career advice: searching for roles based on tasks rather than titles. Tune in for Rob’s insights.
- (01:10) - How Rob got into the tech world
- (01:55) - Joining Expedia
- (05:37) - Becoming a co-founder and CTO
- (07:20) - Moving to Amazon Web Services
- (09:54) - Speaking to start-ups
- (10:45) - Building for now
- (20:17) - Lead geek personalities
- (22:37) - Patterns for early-stage teams
- (29:57) - Getting good advice
- (32:50) - Balance in mentorship
- (35:18) - Becoming a start-up CTO
- (36:51) - Training, coaching, and mentoring
Special thanks to our global partner – Amazon Web Services (AWS). AWS offers a broad set of global cloud-based products to equip technology leaders to build better and more powerful solutions, reach out to aws-cto-program@amazon.com if you’re interested to learn more about their offerings.
CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!
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