Sebastian Thrun // Google X

Discover the power of radical transparency🧐 with Charles Gorintin, CTO of Alan (a French InsurTech) and founding force behind Mistral. He may work in a regulated space, but there is nothing typical about Alan’s setup when it comes to internal matters. Public Salary Framework ✅Searchable Board Meetings ✅4 Managers for 90 FTE✅ Listen to find out: - Why the Manager Role is split into Leads🧑‍💻 and Coaches 🪔 - How Transparent Compensation 💸works with public Salary Levels and Performance Reviews - How he hires 🤝: talent density, culture add and more specialized than him - Why he saw the need for Mistral 🇪🇺 - + How they leverage GitHub Discussions for public decision-making, ownership, and Chesterton’s Fence Brought to you by Instaffo and DoiT

Become a better CTO/CPTO with these insights from David Gebhardt, CTO (and former CPTO) of mobile.de (Germany’s largest car vehicle marketplace). Originally the Head of Tech, David evolved into CPTO, eventually leading the 400-strong Product +Tech teams before evolving business needs led him to bring on a CPO and go back to being ‘just’ the CTO (“only” 250 people). He shares why in this great CTO podcast. Listen to find out: - Why he went from CTO to CTPO and back 🤔 - Self-Efficacy as CTO ✅: How to be effective and FEEL effective - Where innovation 💡 comes from (+ mobile.de’s Innovation Days Format) + Why PHP isn’t all that bad Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/95-david-gebhardt-cto-mobilede Brought to you by Instaffo - https://instaffo.com/cto

Let’s hack cybersecurity in 2024 with Melanie Rieback, Co-founder & CEO of Radically Open Security, the world’s first not-for-profit cybersecurity consultancy with a focus on PenTesting🔏. Melanie is on a mission to fix cybersecurity consulting by putting people before profits and empowering internal teams “how to fish” 🎣. Tune in to hear about the current cybersecurity landscape from the person who not only authored a viral RFID paper (“Is Your Cat Infected with a Computer Virus?”), but also PenTested Tor, Homebrew and Greenpeace. Listen to find out: - What is the business model💸 behind Post Growth Entrepreneurship (90% of profits go towards Open Internet Initiatives via NLNet) - What to prioritise 🕵️‍♀️ in realistic internal IT policies (passwords, backups, updates..) - Internal vs. External Security Teams + Why she uses “Forgot My Password” as a “magic link” to access infrequent sites (and doesn’t remember the password on purpose) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/94-melanie-rieback-co-founder-ceo-at-radically-open-security

Embrace the technical side 🔧 of the CTO role with Allan Leinwand, CTO of Webflow 🖱️ who has combined technical know-how with great products on every layer of the OSI Model: from setting up HP’s first ethernet, CISCO’s early networks, building the world’s first CDN at Digital Island, and continuing up the stack to enterprise cloud ☁️ (ServiceNow), social gaming​​ 🎮 (zynga), communications 💬 (Slack), eCommerce 🛒 (Shopify) and now webdesign 🎨(Webflow). Listen to find out; - Why deep technical knowledge 🧠 allows better products - How a monolith can combine individual code ownership and great deploy times 🤔 - How to attract 🧲 talent with a ‘boring’ stack (+ Innovation Lab 101) - How to embrace the role of a pre-IPO CTO 🧑‍🚀🚀 - How to stay technical as a CTO 🧑‍💻 - Why he ships small fixes from their #UX-Papercut channel Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/93-allan-leinwand-cto-webflow BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Want to become a better manager? Then manage yourself better! From managing the time you spend managing, and all the way to managing how you give your team new tasks... Let's get real with Johanna Rothman, whom they don’t call the Pragmatic Manager for nothing. You will love her straight-talking approach to management. After almost 40 years in management, she can boil down things to sharp principles that will make you either hand pump💯, shoot the link to your buddy🤣… or smile sheepishly🫣. Yip, she got you. (Don’t worry, we won’t judge. Patterns exist because everyone does them. Which is why we need people who have been around the block to call us out 📢on them). Listen to find out: - Why you need to manage yourself to better manage others - Micromanagement: A recipe for multitasking chaos🤯 and WIP overload. - Why Gantt Charts are bad👎. Use Flow Metrics and PERT instead. - Who actually needs to be in the C-Suite (HINT: Not 25 people 🤣) - + how things have changed since the 70s: from the CTO Role to Feedback loops. Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/92-johanna-rothman-the-pragmatic-manager BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius (https://link.alphalist.com/work) and codecentric (https://link.alphalist.com/cc)

Empower your team with the right type of autonomy 🚀 as we define the balance in this CTO podcast with Andy Walker, who has years of experience leadings teams at Skyscanner and Google. After 30 years in tech, Andy finally has the time to share what his hard won insights about tech leadership. You will enjoy his nuanced approach to autonomous teams, team size and work-life balance. Listen to find out: Why the more senior you are, the less decisions you should make 🤔 How to give the right amount of autonomy by career stage 🧑‍💻 (and how to have the right conversations about it 💬) How to empower 🚀and support an autonomous team What is the ideal team size?🍕 (What happens beyond Dunbar’s Law?) What motivates your team? 🤗 (SPOILER: Autonomy, Mastery🌟, and Purpose ala Dan Pink) + why Daily Active Users is the Wrong Metric 🫣 Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/91-andy-walker-former-senior-tech-leader-skyscanner-google BROUGHT TO YOU BY: WorkGenius and code-centric

Invest your engineering resources better by truly understanding the core problem your product needs to solve with this CTO podcast featuring Bob Moesta, co-architect of the Jobs to be Done Theory. As an engineer-turned-product-guru, Bob’s explanation of Product Discovery will delight your nerd brain 🧠 (complete with references to set theory, push-pull forces, and the problem space) while being super practical 🔧about the challenges CTOs are dealing with (like scope creep and tradeoffs). Listen to find out: - Why “Build and They Will Come” is a Myth 🫣 - SAM (Serviceable Addressable Market) vs. TAM - Why engineers should be involved in product discovery 🧐 - Customer Interviews: Who to Ask and What to Ask - Why tradeoffs should be influenced by the opinions of those who already bought 🫠 - Hypothesis Building Research vs Hypothesis Proving Research + go inside Tobi’s brain to understand his purchase of his expresso machine. ☕Was it a sudden purchase or were years of ‘forces’ at play? (“The Force(s) made me buy it” 🌬️) Listen here: https://alphalist.com/podcast/90-bob-moesta-co-architect-of-the-jobs-to-be-done-theory

Craft the ideal product strategy in this CTO podcast episode with Melissa Perri, author of “Escaping the Build Trap” and “Product Operations”.Find out how to become truly product-led: from your strategy to your metrics to your tooling. Listen to find out: - How to balance qualitative 😍 and quantitative data 🧪 in product - Were the mass layoffs caused by overhiring? 🫠Is it a natural part of growth or can companies avoid over scaling? - What does the ideal product strategy 🎯look like? - What is ProductOps⚙️ and why you need it - + how to handle your fellow exec’s "greatest idea ever" (AKA Build Trap Alert) 🚧 WARNING: LISTENING TO THIS PODCAST MIGHT CAUSE YOUR PRODUCT STRATEGY TO ACTUALLY BE SUPER FOCUSED AND USED. ONLY LISTEN IF YOU ARE NOT SCARED OF RESULTS. BROUGHT TO YOU BY: [codecentric](https://link.alphalist.com/cc), [Sipgate](https://link.alphalist.com/sipgate) and [WorkGenius](https://link.alphalist.com/work).

Stay on top of your professional development with these learning and productivity tips from Luca Rossi, whose refactoring.club newsletter 🌀 is read by 50k subscribers every week. After scaling Wanderio to 25M users 🚀 as founding CTO, Luca sat down to distill his experiences and in the process created the tech leadership content 📰 he so badly needed. With diagrams. 🖼️ In this alphalist CTO podcast, Luca shares what he has learned about leadership - including the self-leadership needed to structure one's time and effectively harvest the plethora of ideas published online into action. Listen to find out: - What is the flaw in the 'State of Flow"?🌊 - Why CTOs should write more ✍️ - How he structures his day 🌞 - Should CTOs be generalists?🤔 - How he organises his tech leadership 'news clippings' 🗂️ - Tobi getting real 🫣 about recurring 1:1s Listen here: Thank you to our sponsors codecentric, instaffo and WorkGenius

Reimagine version control systems with Scott Chacon, Co-founder of GitHub and GitButler. Because, even Scott, a Git Veteran, will admit it: ``` Git is a pain sometimes. 🫣 ``` There is a serious Merge Conflict ⚔️ between how modern developers code and the workflow ordained by Git in the Linux mailing list days. Version Control Systems need to be taken apart by First Principles 🧩 so they can be better adapted to the needs of modern software teams. And this is the branch he is busy with at GitButler 🔧 - which he invited us to checkout. Pull this episode to find out: - Is the Git Protocol still useful? Does it just need a better client? 🤔 - How to maximize the benefits of centralized version control systems 🫀 - Can we stream🚿 our code and commit less? + T180 calculator hacks Is there life beyond merge conflicts? 🌈 😅 Listen here to find out: https://alphalist.com/podcast/87-scott-chacon-co-founder-of-gitbutler-and-github