Developing Leadership

May 02 2023 44 ep. 40 mins 81
Developing Leadership Podcast artwork

Follow Jason Warner (MD at Redpoint Ventures and former CTO of GitHub) and Eiso Kant (Founder and CEO of Athenian) as they chat about the biggest lessons they’ve learned about Engineering Leadership throughout the years.

  Technology  Business
RSS feed Share
Copy RSS


Subscribe on Podcast Addict


How Many EMs to Change a Lightbulb?

May 02 2023 35 mins  
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 developingleadership.substack.com/p/how-many-ems-to-change-a-lightb

The Midwit Trap, & Why Tech Companies Are Falling For It

Apr 18 2023 20 mins  
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 behavior? What should leaders really be focusing on? Listen and fin

Mastering Leadership for High-Performing Teams with Sri Viswanath, former Atlassian CTO

Apr 04 2023 54 mins  
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 dive into the topics discussed in this episode at go.developi

OK. Let’s talk about OKRs.

Mar 21 2023 21 mins  
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 product you’re building.

Placing Bets & Building Trust as an Engineering Leader

Mar 07 2023 41 mins  
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 dangers of placing the wrong bets.

Walking The Tightrope of Language & Culture (and why it’s hurting companies)

Feb 21 2023 44 mins  
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.

Can Sociopathic Leaders Teach Us Anything?

Feb 07 2023 39 mins  
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.

Creating Alignment in Superstar Engineering Teams with Phil Calçado

Jan 24 2023 48 mins  
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.

F*ck Around and Find Out: The Recession & Engineering Leadership in 2023

Jan 10 2023 43 mins  
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!

From Bottle-feeding to Bottlenecks: Parenting & Engineering Leadership with Allison McMillan

Dec 27 2022 43 mins  
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.