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Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Josh Nesbit (Founding Member, Widespread Care) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Jim O’Leary (VP of Engineering, Signal) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Sam Quigley (CEO, Kicho Inc) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Max Roser (Researcher at University of Oxford / Founder & Director of Our World In Data) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.

We’re going to take a breath on the CTO Connection podcast for the next 3-4 weeks. When we first started the podcast, it was a “startup CTO podcast”. We’ve really enjoyed sharing the wisdom and experience of our guests on building and managing engineering teams at startups. However, we’ve seen over time that the challenges of running (say) a 5-20 person engineering team are very different from those involved when running a 200+ person org. And as many of our original startup CTOs have scaled their orgs to 200 people and beyond, we’ve decided to follow them.
Because of that, we’re going to refocus the podcast, the content, the summits, and the community on “geeks who lead at scale” - senior engineering leaders in larger companies with 200+ full-time employees in product/engineering. In that way, we’ll be able to provide information that is more consistently tuned to one of the most challenging tasks out there - leading engineering orgs at scale.
At the same time as we make the community more exclusive, we’re also going to make it more inclusive. Whether you’re running data, security, IT, or software development, there are many similarities when you’re working within a company of around 500 - 10,000 employees. I’ve been involved with a number of “CTO” clubs across the US and in each case, I’ve seen the benefits of having a range of roles (from CIO and CISO to CDO and CTO - as well as directors and VPs of Software, Platform, Data/Analytics, and Security), as many of the challenges are the same, and it means the community has deeper expertise in a number of key topics if a CDO wants to learn more about engineering best practices for their data team or a CTO needs a hot take on an AppSec challenge they’re facing.
I am disappointed that - given our limited resources - we won’t be able to continue the focus on content specifically tailored to startup CTOs, but I look forward to refining our focus so we can scale our ability to share experiences and insights from and between geeks who lead at scale.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Laura Edelson (Postdoctoral Researcher at NYU, and Co-Founder of Cyber Security for Democracy Project) about what it looks like to be mission driven in her work.

In part two of my interview with Jason Wodicka, Staff Software Engineer at Karat, we dig deeper into the process of creating predictive, fair, and efficient interview loops. In this episode we start with culture - how do you identify the cultural attributes important to help someone thrive in your environment and how do you interview for culture fit/culture add. We then discuss approaches to blending cultural and functional tests into an interview loop. We then take a little time to discuss how and when to provide hints for candidates during an interview and the surprising value of allowing candidates a redo. 

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Fred Diego (Co-Founder & CTO, Streetwide) about what it looks like to be mission driven in his work.

Especially in the early days, too many companies still have ad-hoc interview processes or over index on things like resumes which aren’t super predictive of likely performance and tend to exclude many great candidates. In this episode, I get to chat with Jason Wodicka, Staff Software Engineer at Karat about their experiences in structured interviewing for engineering roles. We talk about ways to do an inexpensive but predictive initial technical screen, avoiding “pedigree bias”, structuring tests for functional competence and how best to build a lightweight, quick but predictive loop with independent assessments and clear rubrics for everyone involved.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

I was lucky enough to attend a dinner during which Hilary Mason dropped more wisdom about hiring in one course than many people do in a 90-minute talk. In this week's episode, I get to chat with Hilary, learning how she thinks about screening for judgment, identifying the requirements for a role, the value of creating a humane, fun, structured interviewing process, and the importance of valuing a mix of talents and perspectives on the team (hackers and scalable systems builders, optimists and pragmatists, etc).

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Raffi Krikorian (CTO, Emerson Collective) talks with Ariel Ekblaw (CEO, Aurelia) about what it looks like to be mission driven in her work. 

Jesse White grew with the company over at OpenNMS, from developer through to hands on CTO. He started with a team of just five, but as the company and the team grew, he founds himself working longer and longer hours until he finally burned out. After taking time to get back in balance, he returned to continue running the org. In this interview, we discuss the journey and the lessons learned.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

In this very special episode, I get to introduce and interview Raffi Krikorian about his new podcast series - mission driven - that we’ll be hosting and distributing on a regular basis.  

From VP Engineering at Twitter and leading the self driving group at Uber to being the CTO of the Democratic National Committee and now the CTO at Emerson Collective, Raffi has had an impactful and varied career in tech. 

The one common thread in his career has been a passion for mission driven work - whether trying to change the way the world communicated with each other back in 2009 at Twitter, or helping to solve the self driving problem to reduce the impact of automobile ownership, or more obviously in the political and then social good realms at the DNC and Emerson Collective respectively. 

In the episode, Raffi shares what it’s like to move from tech centric companies to an organization that was not at all tech focused, talks about what “mission driven” means to him, and then shares some heuristics for identifying missions that might matter to you and finding ways to apply your engineering leadership skills towards those missions.

These days it’s quite possible to be hacking on an idea in a dorm room one week, and just a few weeks later to be the CTO of a venture backed startup. Unfortunately, jumping straight from college to the C suite can be problematic as the organization scales and the CTO needs to bring to bear various types of management that they may not have experienced or practiced before.

This week, our guest - Ron Lichty shares his experiences of working with engineering leaders to help them to think about the various types and levels of management - from managing individual contributors through managing managers, functional areas, and eventually an entire function like engineering. He also shares some thoughts on how the things that can make you successful at one level can stop you from succeeding at the next. 

It’s a great model for decomposing the various kinds of management skills required by a CTO and much of it comes from the book “The Leadership Pipeline” which was designed as a book to help companies to grow their leaders but which also provides a very coherent framework for thinking about the various levels of management required as an organization scales.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

There is always a tension in a mature business between the need for certainty when engaging with the rest of the company and the need for flexibility and agility when dealing with the complexities of software development. In this episode, Matt Powell, CTO at FTD shares the details of exactly how he manages planning - from annual and quarterly planning down to the sprint. A great case study in aligning and prioritizing for a decent sized (250+) tech team in a mature org.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else. Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

It can be hard to think about your long term engineering talent pipeline when you need to hit your quarterly recruiting and product delivery milestones. But if you don’t start to invest in a talent pipeline you’re going to be scrambling every quarter to meet your numbers. At Code2College, Matt Stephenson and his team help engineering leaders at startups and enterprises to diversify and improve their talent pipeline by investing in high school internships. In this week's episode, hear Matt explain their program and the quality of work and loyalty that their companies are getting by investing in relationships with top talent earlier.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

In this week's interview, I get to chat with Maher Saba, VP of Remote Presence (and Head of Engineering) at Meta. Before Meta, Maher was a senior developer at IBM and a Dir Eng & Distinguished engineer at Microsoft. In our conversation, we discussed why he made the move to Meta, how he thinks about managing remote teams, and how his team at Meta is working on remote presence - for work and for play.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Francisco Larrain is the CTO and co-founder at Topsort - a company that provides auction-based ad infrastructure for multi-brand retailers and online marketplaces. Before that, he founded Zapped (payment tech) and ran local engineering at Groupon.

In this week's episode, we discuss what he looks for in hiring well rounded engineers for non-trivial domains, his approach to mentorship, and the value of provocations when interviewing engineers.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

From Amazon to Lockheed Martin, Steven Gaffney has helped a wide range of companies to improve the effectiveness of their teams. In this week's episode, we discuss the elements of a high achieving team - from having a clear north star purpose, goal, and strategy to promoting honest communications through emotional safety and improving cognitive empathy within the team.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.

Often, developers are just thrown into engineering management with little to no training. 'Congratulations, today you're the manager,' and they don't know what to do. It's a totally different job." Vidal Graupera has spent years gathering insights into and working through the challenges of being an engineering manager. Join us as we discuss lessons learned on transitioning into the role, methods to lessen the learning curve, and how he overcame some of his hardest challenges as an engineering manager.

PARTNER
Thanks to our partner CloudZero — Cloud Cost Intelligence Platform. Control cost and drive better decisions with CloudZero cloud cost intelligence. The CloudZero platform provides visibility into cloud spend without the typical pitfalls of legacy cloud cost management tools, like endless tagging or clunky Kubernetes support. Optimize unit economics, decentralize cost data to engineering, and create a shared language between finance and technical teams. CloudZero helps you organize cloud spending better than anyone else.
Join companies like Drift, Rapid7, and SeatGeek by visiting cloudzero.com/ctoconnection to get started.