Podcast profile
By Athenian
Follow Jason Warner (MD at Redpoint Ventures and former CTO of GitHub) and Eiso Kant (Founder of Athenian) as they chat about the biggest lessons they’ve learned about Engineering Leadership throughout the years.
Latest episode
36 min
Classification review pending
Topic, format, and audience-level labels are published only after a manual source review. This show remains fully discoverable by its researched technology sectors.
Listen from the original source
This directory never re-hosts or republishes podcast audio.
Official sources checked
Episode audio and show facts come from the checked-in refresh of the show’s public sources.
From the feed
Jason and Eiso explore the implications of Mark Zuckerberg's plan to flatten Meta's management layers and examine the current ratio of engineers to managers, questioning if this balance is truly efficient or if it's simply a byproduct of Silicon Valley culture. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at dev
Eiso and Jason discuss how engineering leaders can fall into the trap of midwit thinking (the infamous bell curve meme) where they have a surface level understanding of complex topics and use buzzwords to sound knowledgeable. Why do managers become overly obsessed with specific tools? Why do companies encourage this be
Former Atlassian CTO Sri Viswanath shares his lessons on engineering leadership, such as aligning goals, handling difficult situations, and optimizing team metrics. Jason, Eiso and Sri talk about their experiences with system failures and the importance of technical mentors and CTOs in promoting better leadership. Deep
Jason and Eiso share their love-hate relationship with OKRs and discuss the pedantic nature of setting objectives and how they ultimately help to align and empower organizations. They talk about setting and tracking goals, the often performative nature of OKRs, and the dangers of abstracting oneself away from the produ
Jason and Eiso explore the intersection between finance and engineering leadership and discuss the importance of position sizing in engineering orgs. From promotions to product initiatives and technology choices, leaders are constantly making bets. So the guys delve into decision making, risk management, trust, and the
Jason and Eiso get real about censorship culture in the tech industry. From free speech to the rights of employees and the role of companies in society. They chat about privilege in tech, whether we need democracy within tech companies, the role of culture stewards, and more. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this
Jason and Eiso deep dive into corporate politics, hierarchies, and the sociopaths that often sit at the top as they analyze the behaviors of famous C-Level leaders, such as Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer, and pick apart what Engineering Leaders can learn from them. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.d
Phil Calçado is the Global CTO at PicPay, one the largest engineering orgs in Latin America. He joins the podcast to re-tell his war stories as an engineering leader at SoundCloud, Digital Ocean, SeatGeek, MeetUp, and more celebrity-tier tech companies. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developi
Happy 2023! or is it?… Jason and Eiso talk about the economic recession and share their predictions for the year ahead. They chat about what happened in 2022 that set the stage for 2023, what the hiring halt means for software engineers, what will happen to those that didn't prepare, and more! Deep dive into the topics
Allison McMillan, VP of Engineering at Quota Path, joins us to talk about the transformation engineering leaders go through when they become parents and the lessons we can take parenting to our day-to-day as managers. From communication to rewards vs. consequences to dealing with other humans and their unique challenge
Alexandra is a Senior Engineering Manager at Fellow.app and the author of Remote Engineering Management: Managing an Engineering Team in a Remote-First World. She joins us to discuss creating an excellent remote work foundation and the challenges of jumping back into in-person interactions when needed. We also chatted
Bethany Foote is the Head of Infrastructure Engineering at Outschool and has had a hell of a journey as a software engineer. She joins us to talk about how diversity makes companies better, share the stories she's heard from women in tech over the years, and how they taught her how to be a better leader, mentor, and co
Shannon Vettes is a transversal Product and Engineering Leader and self-proclaimed "process nerd" with a knack for reorgs (as long as you reaally need them!) and for making engineering leaders' lives easier. She joins the podcast for a deep dive into the PMOs and Program Manager's roles and when's the right time to int
Adrienne Lowe shares her journey as an empathetic leader and how her goal to give people energy (rather than take it away) paved her way through a success engineering leadership career. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep31 Watch this episode on youtube: https://youtu.be
Jason & Eiso talk about Velocity in Software Engineering, what it means, how to measure it, why data and metrics won’t magically solve all your problems, and what engineering leaders can do for their teams to go faster. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep30 Join the disc
Kohsuke Kawaguchi, the creator of Jenkins, pulls back the curtain on building tech companies in Japan. He shares his lessons from Cloudbees and how building two very different engineering organizations from the ground up showed him the importance of diversity in engineering teams. Deep dive into the topics discussed in
Join Chad Fowler, Jason Warner, and Eiso Kant in a heartfelt existential episode on what it means to be an engineering leader that will have you question if the manager path is the right one for you. An essential listen for anyone trying to find meaning in their role. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode
Cesar Lugo, Software Engineer and founding member of the Engineering Intelligence team at Typeform, joins us to talk about the power of engineering metrics and how data can help influence how organizations behave. Learn about continuous improvement frameworks that work and why industry benchmarks fall short of their go
Jason and Eiso ad lib on a variety of topics. From consensus-driver cultures, the trouble with software engineering endorsements and capacity planning best practices. Warning: Eiso recorded this episode from a boat out at sea (ahoy!), so that’s why you can sometimes hear background noises coming from his side. We apolo
Craig Kerstiens joins us for a chat on decalcifying engineering teams, why you need to get your teams to ship more, and finding A-Players. Craig runs product and engineering at Crunchy Data and has been incredibly influential in the Postgres community. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developin
Meri Williams, one of the most inspiring engineering leaders in the world, joins us for a discussion on managers vs. leaders, coaching vs. mentoring, how leaders can advise team members from different backgrounds, and the power of sponsorship. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadersh
Jason and Eiso explore what motivates engineering leaders. They chat about how engineering value creation differs from other functions, what role ego plays as a motivating factor, engineering leadership role models, and more. Deep dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developingleadership.co/ep23 Join th
Charity Majors, co-founder, and CTO of honeycomb.io, joins us to talk about everything that's wrong with engineering cycles, how throwing money at the problem by hiring more people is making it worse, and what we can do about it. Find out: How to create systems that increase software engineering productivity, Which too
Dana Lawson, SVP of Engineering at Netlify and the human incarnation of sunshine, joins us on the podcast to share her lessons on hiring engineers and the interview process. We also spoke about the tech industry's changes in the last decade and how you can build inclusive software engineering teams. Deep dive into the
Andrew Conner, Co-Founder and Engineering Leader at Levels, joins us to share his journey of leading an engineering team at a company with a strong hardware component. We spoke about building remote asynchronous companies, the importance of feedback loops, deep work, and transparency as you collectively build software