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 Engineer to General Manager with Mike Reust
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
Mike Reust never pictured himself in management. But after several years at Betterment, the opportunity presented itself. Mike joins us this week on CTO Connection to discuss what it’s like to transition from engineering to a management role.
Listen in as Mike and Peter talk about the growing pains of transitioning roles as well as advice for those thinking of going into management.
- [00:54] - Making moves at Betterment
- [02:15] - Inflection point in accountability
- [04:11] - The next dramatic change
- [06:02] - Emotional weight
- [08:26] - Boss duality
- [08:57] - Change in responsibility
- [10:11] - Betterment Everyday
- [11:35] - Taking on a dual role
- [14:14] - Pushback
- [17:16] - Opportunity for impact
- [19:16] - Surprises about management
- [22:56] - Stepping back
- [25:13] - CTO vs. General Manager
- [27:03] - A greater level of empathy
This episode is sponsored by Clubhouse.io. Clubhouse lets you manage software projects with the perfect balance of simplicity and structure, so you and your team can be happier, less stressed, and hyper-focused on building products that customers love. It’s free for up to 10 users, plus you can get two free months on any paid plan at https://clubhouse.io/CTO.
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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Podcast episode production by Dante32.