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
Making Better Decisions with Denise Iglesias
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When you join a team in a management role, you may find yourself grappling with bad decisions made by your predecessors. Today on CTO Connection, Denise Iglesias, Senior Director Software Engineering at Comcast, spoke to Peter about how she has dealt with poor decisions and her recommendations for transitioning records.
Denise discusses why she strives to create a one-page template that explains the history of a team’s decision making. She also shares her experience restructuring the Austin office of Comcast to fit within the larger organization in a way that made sense for her team.
- [00:22] - How Denise found her love for programming
- [02:02] - Engineering leadership at National Instruments
- [04:25] - Making an impact at Icontrol Networks
- [07:14] - Acquisition by Comcast
- [08:55] - Xfinity Home automation lift and shift
- [12:17] - Why good people make bad decisions
- [14:15] - Operating from insufficient data
- [15:18] - Platform consolidation
- [21:14] - Formally recording decisions
- [26:03] - The art of zeroing in on relevant data
- [28:45] - Be open-minded
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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