Lead Time Chats

In Season 2, Episode 10 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Jack Danger, VP of Engineering at Pathstream, about technical debt — when to take it on, when and how to pay it down, and how to think about it.

Jack and Jean discuss:

• How to think about technical debt as you might think about financial debt - when do you take it on, and when do you pay it down?
• Why you don't actually want your startup's codebase to have no technical debt
• How to strategically take on technical debt so that you can make higher-ROI investments
• What 0% interest technical debt looks like versus high interest rate technical debt
• How to align product, engineering, and design behind common goals and metrics

In Season 2, Episode 9 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Indrajit Khare on what it's like to be at a startup acquired by Google.

Indrajit was a lead engineer at Bump when it was acquired by Google, where he led the engineering team that built Google Photos and scaled it from 0 to 1 billion users.

Indrajit and Jean discuss:

• Only having a day or two to prep for a standard Google engineering interview
• The multiple factors, including clear purpose and mission, that led to a successful acquisition and integration of the Bump team into Google
• Startup mindset of doing things that don’t scale, and what that looks like at a big company
• Inner workings of Google’s acquisition of Bump, integration of the team, internal dog-fooding of Google Photos v1, and public launch.
• The vast difference of launching a product as a startup vs at Google

In Season 2, Episode 8 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Beau Lebens, Head of Engineering of WooCommerce at Automattic, about meetups for distributed teams. 

Beau has been at Automattic for over 12 years, a company which has been fully distributed and pre-pandemic, had regular in-person team meetups for team bonding and alignment.

Beau and Jean discuss:

• The purpose and structure of a standard Automattic in-person team meetup
• Different ways Automattic teams have connected socially this past year, including a zoom cocktail class, escape rooms
• BBC Dad and now normalized it is now to see a more personal glimpse into people’s family lives
• How distributed teams can find a mix of NIRL (not in real life) events and physical meetups to build culture and belonging

Additional Resources

• Inside the Grand Meetup - Hear from Automattic's CEO Matt Mullenweg and other Automatticians about the annual all-company meetup
• How We Work - More from Automattic's blog about how the company works
• Beau's Blog - More insights from Beau about his work at Automattic

In Season 2, Episode 7 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Lynne Tye, about how the engineering hiring landscape has changed over the past year and predictions for the months to come.

Lynne is the founder of Key Values, a company that helps engineers find new roles on teams that are aligned with their own values.

Lynne and Jean discuss: 

• The different phases of engineering hiring over the past year, from sheer survival to the Great Resignation
• How the pandemic has helped people clarify what’s truly important to them, both in work and their personal lives
• The current confusion around remote work - where are teams actually hiring, and will what hiring managers are saying now still be true in a few months?
• Just how hot the hiring market is right now for engineers!

In Season 2, Episode 6 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Chris Bee, CTO at Lessen, about the common behaviors of effective engineering leaders.

Chris and Jean discuss:

• The difficulty in delegating and letting go of control - and why it's so important
• Dialing in your judgement in making decisions that keep the business needs front and center
• Common mistakes, such as over-doing it with structure and processes when you become a manager
• Coaching and career development conversations as ways to amplify your impact

In Season 2, Episode 5 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, chats with Rachael Stedman, engineering manager at Asana, about IC manager work, or work that engineering managers do outside of directly supporting their team.

Rachael and Jean chat about:

• When to focus on supporting your team as a manager, versus investing in longer-term, more strategic initiatives
• Finding initiatives that you’re personally excited about and that give you energy
• Benefits of organizing a task force around initiatives versus doing it alone
• The importance of sharing updates on initiatives, same as you would for other projects.
• Taking on projects to create a role for yourself that is energizing and enjoyable

In Season 2, Episode 4 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Sumeet Arora, Chief Development Officer at ThoughtSpot, about the challenges of moving on after a long stint at a large tech company.

Sumeet joined Cisco almost straight out of school and spent over two decades there, growing his career and the company. More recently, he made the decision and leap to leave for a different professional adventure.

Sumeet and Jean discuss:

• The fear and difficulty of leaving the comfortable bubble of a large tech company
• The importance of learning and adapting, and finding comfort and growth in being slightly uncomfortable
• How his relationships with former coworkers has evolved after his departure from Cisco
• Anchoring on the knowledge that as a leader, your skills are transferable across domains
• Surrounding yourself with people who have growth mindsets
• How to leverage your experience, and look at your new role and company with fresh eyes - and not just copy everything that was in place at the larger company

In Season 2, Episode 3 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Kim Scott, author of Radical Candor and Just Work, about privilege and the importance of building for systemic justice.

Kim and Jean discuss:

• The three revelations that led Kim down the path of working on Just Work
• The importance of intentionally building for systemic justice
• Recognition of the role of privilege in how Radical Candor is practiced and received.
• Using “You” statements such as “You can’t talk to me like that” in response to bullying (and also how to respond to prejudice and bias)
• Using Hollaback’s 5 D’s of Bystander Intervention: Distract, Delegate, Document, Delay, and Direct

Additional Resources:

• Just Work: Get Sh*t Done, Fast & Fair
• Just Work

In Season 2, Episode 2 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Tess Rinearson, VP of Engineering at Interchain, about advice for early career engineering managers. 

Tess became an engineering manager at 24 and noted that she's been solicited for advice for even younger engineering managers - some as young as 21.

Tess and Jean discuss:

• The recent trend of earlier career engineers moving into management (sometimes as young as 21 or 22 years old)
• Working with mentors and coaches as ways to surround yourself with context, experience, and wisdom
• How to manage and support engineers far more senior than yourself
• The manager-engineer pendulum, and the challenge of leveling up both skill sets simultaneously

In Season 2, Episode 1 of Lead Time Chats, Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Camille Fournier, Managing Director of Two Sigma and author of The Manager’s Path, about boring stuff — specifically building boring tech and making boring plans. 

Camille and Jean discuss: 

• Limited innovation tokens and how to decide where to spend them (hint: it’s not on cool tech)! 
• What boring plans actually look like, especially when you do need to upgrade to more interesting tech so your team doesn’t fall behind. 
• Rolling out company-wide platform updates as rigorously as you would plan for an external launch 
• How to manage up and build credibility that you’re delivery value when undertaking long-running technical projects

Additional Resources: 

• The Manager's Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change  
• Make Boring Plans by Camille Fournier
• Choose Boring Technology by Dan McKinley