Jerry Krikheli's guest appearances

Jerry Krikheli

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

Reid Hoffman

Kim Scott

John Kim

Max Levchin

Jordan Adler

Will Larson

Andreessen Horowitz

Ryan Petersen

Jonathan Raymond

Fred Kofman

Ashton Kutcher

Claire Lew

Aileen Lee

Sarah Guo

David Silverman

OwlTail

Farhan Thawar

Welcome to our community’s FIRST DEBATE! Farhan Thawar (VPE @ Shopify) &amp; Jerry Krikheli (Sr. Director of Engineering @ Facebook) hash out which org structure should rule them all… Should you go flat? Or should you become a hierarchy? You’ll hear how each structure impacts culture, innovation, and velocity!FARHAN THAWAR, VP OF ENGINEERING @ SHOPIFYFarhan Thawar is currently VP, Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of Helpful.com where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. He is an avid writer and speaker and was named one of Toronto's 25 most powerful people. Prior to Xtreme, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, Celestica, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Farhan is also an advisor at yCombinator and holds a board seat at Optiva (formerly Redknee). JERRY KRIKHELI, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING @ FACEBOOKPrior to Facebook, Jerry was VP of Engineering at Houzz where he oversaw all infrastructure, platform, and engineering across Consumer, Marketplace, and Industry Solutions initiatives. Jerry was also an engineering director at Google responsible for developing early versions of the display ad serving infrastructure and launching YouTube ads as well as video ads on mobile apps. He has a passion for building high-performing systems, products, and people. SHOW NOTESThe rules of the debate (2:45)Opening Statement: Why hierarchical organizations? (3:39)Opening Statement: Why flat organizations? (6:25)Culture in flat organizations (9:09)Culture in hierarchical organizations (10:55)Culture rebuttals (14:19)Innovation in flat organizations (19:49)Innovation in hierarchical organizations (22:01)Innovation rebuttals (24:57)Velocity in hierarchical organizations (26:05)Velocity in flat organizations (28:42)Closing Statements on Flat vs. Hierarchical (30:16) BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner Mesmer! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit mesmerhq.com/ELCLooking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at sfelc.com!

Welcome to our community’s FIRST DEBATE! Farhan Thawar (VPE @ Shopify) &amp; Jerry Krikheli (Sr. Director of Engineering @ Facebook) hash out which org structure should rule them all… Should you go flat? Or should you become a hierarchy? You’ll hear how each structure impacts culture, innovation, and velocity! FARHAN THAWAR, VP OF ENGINEERING @ SHOPIFYFarhan Thawar is currently VP, Engineering at Shopify via the acquisition of <a href="http://Helpful.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Helpful.com</a> where he was co-founder and CTO. Previously he was the CTO, Mobile at Pivotal and VP, Engineering at Pivotal Labs via the acquisition of Xtreme Labs. He is an avid writer and speaker and was named one of Toronto's 25 most powerful people. Prior to Xtreme, Farhan held senior technical positions at Achievers, Microsoft, Celestica, and Trilogy. Farhan completed his MBA in Financial Engineering at Rotman and Computer Science/EE at Waterloo. Farhan is also an advisor at yCombinator and holds a board seat at Optiva (formerly Redknee). JERRY KRIKHELI, SENIOR DIRECTOR OF ENGINEERING @ FACEBOOKPrior to Facebook, Jerry was VP of Engineering at Houzz where he oversaw all infrastructure, platform, and engineering across Consumer, Marketplace, and Industry Solutions initiatives. Jerry was also an engineering director at Google responsible for developing early versions of the display ad serving infrastructure and launching YouTube ads as well as video ads on mobile apps. He has a passion for building high-performing systems, products, and people. SHOW NOTES<ul><li>The rules of the debate (2:45)</li><li>Opening Statement: Why hierarchical organizations? (3:39)</li><li>Opening Statement: Why flat organizations? (6:25)</li><li>Culture in flat organizations (9:09)</li><li>Culture in hierarchical organizations (10:55)</li><li>Culture rebuttals (14:19)</li><li>Innovation in flat organizations (19:49)</li><li>Innovation in hierarchical organizations (22:01)</li><li>Innovation rebuttals (24:57)</li><li>Velocity in hierarchical organizations (26:05)</li><li>Velocity in flat organizations (28:42)</li><li>Closing Statements on Flat vs. Hierarchical (30:16) </li></ul>BROUGHT TO YOU BY...Special thanks to our exclusive accessibility partner <a href="https://bit.ly/3eU0hky" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">Mesmer</a>! Mesmer's AI-bots automate mobile app accessibility testing to ensure your app is always accessible to everybody. To jump-start, your accessibility and inclusion initiative, visit <a href="http://mesmerhq.com/ELC" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">mesmerhq.com/ELC</a>Looking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at <a href="https://sfelc.com/" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">sfelc.com</a>!

Debate! Flat vs. Hierarchical Organizations w/ Farhan Thawar & Jerry Krikheli #60

Cathy Polinsky

Richard Wong

Erica Lockheimer

A dynamic conversation between 4 current and past VPs of Engineering who cover tons of patterns and anti-patterns about being a VPE! You'll hear how leadership is different in large vs. small companies, mental models to determine your greatest leverage, why you DON’T need to act like an owner, how to put trust into practice when you’re transitioning into a new role, and about the imperfect path to become a VPE. SPEAKERS:CATHY POLINKSY CTO @ Stitch FixJERRY KRIKHELI VP of Engineering @ HouzzRICHARD WONG SVP of Engineering @ CourseraERICA LOCKHEIMER VP of Engineering @ Linkedin LearningAnd CLAIRE LEW CEO @ Know Your TeamSHOWNOTESWhat Cathy means by “the best leaders spot patterns, understand problems, then build systems to solve them” (3:55)Jerry’s view on how the practice of leadership is different at large companies vs. small companies (7:30)Erica’s perspective on how the transition to VPE is different than other eng leadership roles and how to put trust into practice (12:27)Why Richard resonates with “act like an owner” and what it actually looks like in practice as VPE (16:40)Cathy’s top 3 priorities as VPE that determine how she spends her time and how to refocus your team (23:50)Richard's mental model to determine where he has the most leverage for impact and why being technical isn't always about writing code (26:16)Jerry's 3 key hiring traits and how to create an environment where you're the first to know when something's wrong (30:10)The imperfect path to become a VPE and Erica’s advice for engineering leaders with an “unconventional” background (34:01)The common struggle to balance being a problem solver and being the bottleneck as a VPE (39:11)How they cope with and manage stress (42:55)Takeaways (45:00)---Join our community of software engineering leaders @ https://sfelc.com/

A dynamic conversation between 4 current and past VPs of Engineering who cover tons of patterns and anti-patterns about being a VPE! You'll hear how leadership is different in large vs. small companies, mental models to determine your greatest leverage, why you DON’T need to act like an owner, how to put trust into practice when you’re transitioning into a new role, and about the imperfect path to become a VPE. SPEAKERS:CATHY POLINKSY CTO @ Stitch FixJERRY KRIKHELI VP of Engineering @ HouzzRICHARD WONG SVP of Engineering @ CourseraERICA LOCKHEIMER VP of Engineering @ Linkedin LearningAnd CLAIRE LEW CEO @ Know Your TeamSHOWNOTES<ul><li>What Cathy means by “the best leaders spot patterns, understand problems, then build systems to solve them” (3:55)</li><li>Jerry’s view on how the practice of leadership is different at large companies vs. small companies (7:30)</li><li>Erica’s perspective on how the transition to VPE is different than other eng leadership roles and how to put trust into practice (12:27)</li><li>Why Richard resonates with “act like an owner” and what it actually looks like in practice as VPE (16:40)</li><li>Cathy’s top 3 priorities as VPE that determine how she spends her time and how to refocus your team (23:50)</li><li>Richard's mental model to determine where he has the most leverage for impact and why being technical isn't always about writing code (26:16)</li><li>Jerry's 3 key hiring traits and how to create an environment where you're the first to know when something's wrong (30:10)</li><li>The imperfect path to become a VPE and Erica’s advice for engineering leaders with an “unconventional” background (34:01)</li><li>The common struggle to balance being a problem solver and being the bottleneck as a VPE (39:11)</li><li>How they cope with and manage stress (42:55)</li><li>Takeaways (45:00)</li></ul>---Join our community of software engineering leaders @ <a href="https://anchor.fm/dashboard/episode/ed44bj/metadata/sfelc.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://sfelc.com/</a>

Growing Into a VPE - Patterns & Anti-Patterns ft. Cathy Polinsky, Jerry Krikheli, Richard Wong, Erica Lockheimer & Claire Lew #25