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
Engineering Apprenticeships and Ongoing Education with Andy Britcliffe
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The customer service reps at Holiday Extras spend their days talking to customers on the phone. Andy Britcliffe, CTO of Holiday Extras, had a wild thought: what if we had an engineering apprenticeship program that enabled these reps to learn the other side of the business?
On this week’s episode of CTO Connection, Andy talks to Peter about the success of the internship and apprenticeship programs at Holiday Extras. He discusses why education programs for employees lead to better retention and higher engagement. Listen in for Andy’s tips on how to start a program like this at your company.
- [00:46] - Holiday Extras
- [01:44] - Learning to be a tech leader
- [03:38] - Apprenticeship scheme
- [08:24] - Preparation and infrastructure
- [09:24] - Sandwich year
- [10:48] - Matrix management structure
- [11:57] - Dev coaches
- [15:28] - Foundations teams
- [19:53] - Team rotation
- [22:19] - Pod composition
- [23:17] - Optional participation
- [25:08] - Distributed nearshoring teams
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.