In this episode, we’re back with more insights from our local community leaders — discussing leadership insights on strategic decision-making, managing technical debt and fostering true cross-functional partnerships! Funmi Oludaiye (New York City) shares strategies for building strong cross-functional relationships between eng & business leaders. Ketan Gupta (London) breaks down the STIR framework for managing tech debt & aligning it with business value. And Sasha Hall (Toronto) works through examples of how to balance decisive (fast) vs. thoughtful (slow) decision-making. You’ll also learn some of these leaders’ best tips for diving in & getting involved with your local ELC community!

Jon Hyman (Co-Founder and CTO @ Braze) shares the pivotal moments that shaped the company - from being the only person on call in the early years to identifying (and pivoting) product-market fit. Jon discusses how they navigated early-stage failure modes, carved out areas of product ownership, and made the shift to enterprise customers. Plus how leadership priorities evolve pre- vs. post-IPO and the next evolution of Jon’s leadership growth after almost 14 years at Braze.

During this session, we discussed automating delivery pipelines, managing technical debt, driving change with new technologies, demonstrating engineering’s business value, and developing future leaders who prioritize operational excellence.

We explored metrics, business stakeholder partnerships, data processing reliability, chaos engineering, and the importance of continuously measuring and improving system performance.

We sit down with James Campbell, CTO & Co-Founder @ Great Expectations, to discuss his founding journey, considerations for starting open source, making community-driven decisions, and navigating the tension between your product vision & product roadmap. We also cover the phases that Great Expectations has cycled through, balancing the role of personal biases when making product / business decisions, how making an open-source product impacts marketing decisions, and James’ best recommendations for building out the product function as a product-involved founder.

David Mytton (CEO @ Arcjet & Co-founder @ Console) shares insights on “what makes a great DevTool company!” We unpack lessons on bootstrapping vs. seeking VC funding & why it’s important to stick with one; building prototypes; considerations for selling your company; and his founder journey with Server Density, Console & now with Arcjet. David also highlights GTM practices for finding reliable channels & distribution, why documentation can make a critical impact on dev tool sales, the impact of design, and translating the benefits of dev tools for finance teams vs. developers.

In this episode, Rajashree Pimpalkhare (VP / Engineering leader for Unified Builder platform and experiences @ Twilio) reflects on her experiences re-defining engineering’s relationship with the business throughout her career. We cover how the role of engineering varies across industries, why it’s paramount for engineering leaders to find their seat at the business table & rethink how engineering can drive the org’s strategic goals. Rajashree shares insights on how to unlock the creative side of product & business leaders, lessons learned from solving various customer problems, frameworks for eng orgs to combat & overcome learned helplessness, communication practices for framing decision-making, and adjusting from a “no, but” to a “yes, and” mindset.

In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration between product & engineering, and how to achieve greater productivity.