Scaling yourself ‘down’ as an engineering leader

Posted Nov 14, 2023 | Views 1.1K

James Everingham

CEO @ Guild.ai

James is the CEO and co-founder of Guild.ai, the control plane for AI agents where engineers build, reuse, and evolve intelligent software together.

Most recently, James was the Vice President of Engineering at Meta Devinfra, responsible for building and running the core developer tools, services, and platforms that power Meta's products. He and his team built Meta's first internal AI agent, which delivered immediate impact on how Meta engineers use AI tooling. During his time at Meta, James co-created Diem and served as Instagram's Head of Engineering.

With a 40-year career as a manager, entrepreneur, and technology developer, James has led numerous world-class engineering teams. At Yahoo, he served as Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo's media properties after the acquisition of Luminate, an interactive image technology company he founded. His previous roles include co-founder and SVP, Engineering, at Lightspark; CTO and founding team member at LiveOps; Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft); and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications, where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International.

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Summary

James Everingham, co-founder and VP of Engineering @ Lightspark, joins our podcast to share his best tools for scaling yourself down – not up – as an engineering leader. He discusses his latest career move shifting down in scale and how that impacts your risk tolerance as a leader. We also cover some of James’ favorite leadership methods, including the Socratic method, principle-based decision-making, and creating narratives as a product / eng org goal-setting tool, plus how he’s employed those tools effectively throughout his career. We also address navigating the balance between process & anti-process, approaches to product planning & finding PMF, and adapting your communication style to work within a smaller vs. large org.

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Transcript

ABOUT JAMES EVERINGHAM

James Everingham ( @jevering ) is co-founder and VP of Engineering at Lightspark. Lightspark is building core infrastructure on the Lightning Network. Most recently he was Vice President of Engineering for Novi (Meta) and co-creator of Diem. Previously, James was the Head of Engineering at Instagram. James has led many world-class engineering teams throughout his 35-year career as a manager, entrepreneur, and technology developer. At Yahoo, he was Vice President of Engineering for Yahoo media properties after acquiring Luminate, an interactive image technology company he founded. Other previous roles include CTO and founding team member of LiveOps, Senior Director of Engineering at Tellme (acquired by Microsoft), and Senior Director of Engineering at Netscape Communications, where he was responsible for the flagship Netscape browser. Before joining Netscape, James held engineering and management positions at Oracle and Borland International.

"We had a great story in our head of like if we can simply make money flow or value flow fast and free frictionlessly around the world like a lot of good is going to happen but then that's the ending. That's the happy ending. Like, what are the chapters that we're going to write in between to get there? The first one was, 'Well, we're going to build this new infrastructure. Let's start getting it out there and getting it quickened in an area where it's already accepted.' And that's what we did. You know, that was the first one and we worked backwards from that. They're trying to make the story happen. They're not trying to make a list of tasks happen. And I think that's a really important distinction.”

- James Everingham

SHOW NOTES:

James’ latest experience scaling down in his career (2:44)

Increasing your risk tolerance as an eng leader (5:15)

Surprising ways eng leaders operate in a smaller org vs. a larger org (7:16)

Optimizing communicating patterns when scaling down as a leader (10:23)

Strategies for creating high-impact conversations within teams at a small org (12:12)

How to use the Socratic method effectively as an eng leader (14:04)

James’ framework for anchoring decision-making principles (17:05)

Why focusing on customer problems before business problems is a key principle (19:30)

Layering the Socratic method approach & principle-based decision making (21:43)

Tips for implementing these approaches early on & scaling them up (24:31)

The trap of “process” & knowing when / where to introduce processes (25:41)

Navigating the balance between complete process & anti-process (27:59)

Deconstructing James’ approach to product planning & goal setting (29:51)

How James introduced the product planning narrative @ Lightspark (34:15)

Advice for newcomers looking to identify & share a product narrative (36:38)

Rapid fire questions (38:31)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

How to Scale Yourself Down — Not Up — as a Leader - An article outlining the narrative goal setting framework that James discusses in the episode.

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know - Adam Grant’s book about the benefit of doubt and how we can get better at embracing the unknown and the joy of being wrong.