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
From Private Company to IPO: Managing through Transformation with Rachana Kumar
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When companies transition from private to IPO, there are bound to be challenges and learning curves. Rachana Kumar has worked in five countries, two of her positions were in the non-profit sector. These experiences helped her roll with the punches as her current employer, Etsy, has undergone a massive change over the last few years.
Rachana is preparing for a talk on helping leaders navigate large organizational changes. In this week’s episode, she explains to Peter the three foundational tools that can help any leader work through changes and challenges.
- [01:34] - Rachana's transition to management
- [03:47] - Co-founding Shaadi Karma
- [06:37] - Changes at Etsy
- [11:57] - Leading through rapid change and transformation in tech
- [13:09] - Compliance in a public company
- [22:27] - Feature flagging
- [24:38] - Three tools to lead teams through external changes
- [25:38] - Focus & resiliency
- [30:43] - Communication & transparency
- [35:09] - Managing up & down
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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