Lead Time Chats

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Duretti Hirpa, a principal engineer at Zipper, about mentoring and coaching junior and mid-level engineers. 

Jean and Duretti discuss:

• What junior and mid-level engineers most need.
• Why women and people of color can't always take the advice they're given
• What it means to be over-mentored and under-sponsored
• The difference in level-setting when you're coming into a new company vs. going up for promotion
• How internal promotions can be highly political
• What engineering managers can do to best support people earlier in their career

Jean Hsu, VP of Engineering at Range, talks to Will Larson, CTO at Calm, about getting into management early in his career and how it impacted his professional evolution and his books An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management and Staff Engineer: Leadership Beyond the Management Track.

Jean and Will discuss: 

• Negotiating their first tech jobs (or not negotiating their first tech jobs)
• The false expectation that the staff engineering route will be more predictable than the management route
• How getting external support is key
• Increasing difficulty of switching between the paths as you become more senior
• How to approach non-work work (books, talks, blog posts, etc).