Natalie Glance, Chief Engineering Officer @ Duolingo joins us for a conversation on unleashing potential in your employees! We discuss practices that have helped Duolingo create a meaningful path for hiring & developing engineers through their onboarding & internship programs. We also cover topics including scaling your eng org, upskilling recent grads / new hires, balancing meaningful work with measurable impact, communicating alignment within your org, formal & informal steps for building eng leadership capabilities, and essential skills for managers of all types.

Natalie is a lifelong learner and seasoned leader with extensive experience at startups and established companies. She’s currently the Chief Engineering Officer at Duolingo.

At Duolingo, Natalie ensures engineers can help set product direction and strategy. She’s championed a culture of extensive A/B testing, and is excited about the ways generative AI can both build new features and accelerate content creation for these features. She oversees many of the efforts dedicated to scaling Duolingo’s technology to new subjects, like Math and Music.

Natalie is passionate about mentorship and education. She co-founded the Int’l AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media (ICWSM), which offers an annual Adamic-Glance Distinguished Young Researcher Award for a promising young independent researcher in the field of computational social science in the early stage of their career.

• Natalie’s eng leadership background & journey scaling Duolingo (2:41)
• Duolingo’s approach to eng leadership & passion for unleashing potential (5:42)
• Implementing a mentoring program to improve eng development / retention (6:42)
• How the mentoring process changes as an org scales (8:51)
• Duolingo’s onboarding process & tips for building an onboarding program (10:12)
• Ways Duolingo has crafted a successful internship program (12:43)
• Frameworks for intern hosts to collect meaningful projects for interns (15:38)
• Behind the Thrive intern program (HootCamp) for rising juniors (17:44)
• How Duolingo’s guiding principles drive Duolingo University (21:08)
• Strategies for upskilling new grads into strong technical contributors (22:13)
• Best practices for unlocking potential & contributing to people’s growth (25:40)
• Natalie’s approach to balancing meaningful work with measurable impact (26:44)
• Practices for creating alignment within your org (28:30)
• Duolingo’s thought process for role training & growing leaders (30:44)
• Breaking down the formal & informal steps for building leaders within the org (32:41)
• Essential skills for role managers to develop (34:22)
• Addressing challenges faced by managers of managers (36:47)
• Rapid fire questions (38:24)

• The Engineering Executive's Primer: Impactful Technical Leadership - Will Larson shows you ways to obtain your first executive job and quickly ramp up to meet the challenges you may not have encountered in non-executive measuring engineering for both engineers and the CEO, company-scoped headcount planning, communicating successfully across a growing organization, and figuring out what people actually mean when they keep asking for a "technology strategy.”

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In this episode, we explore building an AI-first company and engineering org with Rong Yan (CTO @ HeyGen)! We dive into the potential of HeyGen’s interactive avatars, imagining how they can help engineering leaders scale their impact, foster team alignment, coach effectively, and accelerate decision-making. Rong shares insights on the structure of an AI-first company and optimizing for AI teams with engineering capabilities. Plus what it means to “lead with speed” and balance product quality and velocity in an AI-first company and key leadership principles, like why it’s crucial to invest in your top performers and how to act as a productivity multiplier.

Rong Yan is HeyGen’s Chief Technology Officer. He brings the company's technological mission of making visual storytelling accessible to everyone, to life. Rong has nearly 20 years of engineering leadership experience from companies including IBM, Facebook, Square, Snap, and HubSpot.

Most recently, Rong was the VP of Engineering at Hubspot where he led the Data Intelligence and Automation product line and spearheaded the development of an intelligent CRM platform using data and AI. He was also the Director of Engineering turned Senior Director of Engineering at Snap, where he led a product engineering team of over 250 engineers across six locations, responsible for developing, optimizing, and maintaining core Snapchat features, including Camera, Messaging, Stories, Discover, Memories, and Identity.

He holds a Bachelor of Science in Computer Science from Tsinghua University and a PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University.

• Introducing HeyGen’s interactive avatar & what this means for eng leaders (3:40)
• How a visual layer for AI agents could scale your leadership & build alignment in your teams and orgs (5:58)
• The different levels of communication flow within a company (8:17)
• How interactive avatars can enable interactions and coaching at scale (10:46)
• The possibilities of interactive avatars for personalized coaching, habit building, and behavior change (14:02)
• Insights on building an AI-first company (20:29)
• What the structure of an AI-first company looks like (22:05)
• How leading with speed works within an AI-first company (24:10)
• Navigating the balance between product velocity & quality (27:23)
• The impact of the “leading with speed” paradigm on hiring (30:34)
• The role of an engineering leaders is to be a productivity multiplier (32:40)
• How AI impacts productivity as an eng leader (34:43)
• Where to start when it comes to improving productivity (36:38)
• AI’s role in blurring the lines between IC & management (39:48)
• Spend more time on your top people (42:45)
• Rapid fire questions (44:21)

• HeyGen - With HeyGen, businesses can simply write their script and generate their video. No camera, no budget, no headaches. We've helped over 45,000 companies and millions of people create, localize, and personalize videos at scale.

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration between product & engineering, and how to achieve greater productivity.

Gokul Rajaram is an investor and company helper. He serves on the boards on Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Most recently, he was an executive at DoorDash, a food ordering platform. Prior to DoorDash, he worked at Block as Product Engineering Lead, where he led several product development teams and served on Block’s executive team. Prior to Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul is also on the board of The Trade Desk and Coinbase. Gokul holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being class valedictorian. He also holds an M.B.A. from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship.

• Why it’s critical for eng leaders to drive business outcomes (2:04)
• How to shift your leadership to impact organizational changes (4:18)
• Facilitating conversations around setting numerical / time-driven goals (6:56)
• Navigating the shift to a customer-centric structure & approach (9:18)
• Recommendations for building around this customer-oriented model (12:04)
• Decision-making strategies when approaching customer outcomes (13:25)
• Understand the role of confidence in the decision-making process (15:40)
• Challenges faced by eng leaders when making this customer-centric shift (18:06)
• How eng leaders can introduce / reinforce accountability in eng orgs (20:11)
• Bridging the gap between PMs & eng leaders (23:07)
• Challenges / dysfunctions that prevent product & engineering alignment (25:01)
• Establishing trust, open dialogue, and mutual respect from the get-go (26:39)
• Communication frameworks that increase alignment between product & eng (32:39)
• How eng leaders can better approach “move fast & break things” demand (35:37)
• Rapid fire questions (40:19)

• Gokul’s website - Contains a collection of Gokul’s writing that covers a wide range of topics related to product development, hiring, strategy, leadership, and more!
• The Mistborn Saga - Brandon Sanderson’s high fantasy saga which chronicles the efforts of a secret group of Allomancers who attempt to overthrow a dystopian empire and establish themselves in a world covered by ash.

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

Ryan Fox, CTO @ Super.com, joins us to dissect his leadership transition from Vice President of Engineering to CTO. He shares how he created his own job description and – perhaps most importantly – identified & found buy-in around his “not do” list. We also cover Ryan’s favorite strategies for coaching department heads, why it’s important to focus on strategic thinking as an eng leader, tips for instilling accountability & autonomy, and defining different levels of situational leadership. Patrick and Ryan also dissect Super.com’s MAT leadership approach and how it is incorporated into their engineering functions.

Ryan Fox is the CTO at Super.com, an all-in-one app that has helped millions of customers save, earn and put over $150 million back in their pockets. Previously, Ryan worked as both a SWE and SRE at Google.

• Ryan’s background / experience with Super.com (2:04)
• What sparked his transition from VP of Engineering to CTO (3:40)
• How Ryan tackled creating his own job description (5:50)
• Strategies for prioritizing responsibilities & developing a “not to do” list (8:20)
• Process for defining what not to do (9:32)
• Examples of building buy in for a “not to do” responsibility (11:45)
• Insights on prioritizing company wide outcomes vs. departmental outcomes (13:33)
• Transitioning from a department head to coaching other department leaders (15:26)
• Components of a successful coaching conversation about strategic thinking (18:48)
• Frameworks for instilling accountability & autonomy in department heads (21:25)
• Understanding situational leadership & S3 / S4 definitions (23:08)
• Incorporating mission-aligned teams into the engineering organization (25:37)
• Why the MAT leader focuses on business, not people aspects (27:52)
• Elements that contribute to the MAT model’s success (29:32)
• The intersection of MAT & functional leadership (32:04)
• Ryan’s advice to leaders new to the MAT approach (34:20)
• Rapid fire questions (36:29)

• MAT Resource Guide - A guide to understand the Mission-Aligned Team organizational structure, how Super.com rolled out MATs, and how such a structure may be able to help your organization.
• All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg - Hosted by Chamath Palihapitiya, Jason Calacanis, David Sacks, and David Friedberg, the show features insider takes on business, technology, and society and interviews with the world's most influential thinkers.

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

In this episode, we’re bringing listeners into the final conversations from the pop-up podcast booth at ELC Annual 2024! Patrick sat down with a few eng leaders attending the event to discuss takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 & eng leadership insights they want to share with others in the community. He chatted with Nick Hurlburt (Executive Director of the Aselo program @ Tech Matters), Manju Abraham (Vice President of Engineering, Primary Storage @ HPE), and Bhupesh Bansal (Head of Engineering - Product Server @ Square). These leaders share some of the guiding principles of their eng leadership careers, highlights from ELC Annual 2024, advice for first timers attending these types of events, and more.

Nick Hurlburt is the Executive Director of the Aselo program at Tech Matters, a nonprofit with a mission to bring the benefits of technology to all of humanity. Aselo is an open source contact center platform used by crisis helplines in over 15 countries. After completing an MS in Computer Science at the University of Illinois, Nick began his career developing early, large-scale AI software at Amazon. He then spent six years overseas working on conflict relief efforts in Burma and South Sudan before returning to the U.S., where he managed software teams at a San Francisco machine learning startup before building the initial version of Aselo as Tech Matters’ first engineer. He gets excited about systems thinking, understanding different cultures, and walking through forests reminiscent of his rural Wisconsin childhood.

Manju Abraham was VP of Engineering for Primary Storage products at HPE. She has over 25 years of experience leading Engineering organizations to deliver enterprise products of high quality, building, scaling and leading transformation, as an effective change catalyst, across companies like HPE, Delphix, NetApp, HP etc.

Entrepreneur and technical leader passionate about making a positive impact in the world. 18+ years track record of building teams, large-scale distributed systems, and consumer products scaling to 100M+ users.

• Why it’s important to incorporate non-eng principles into engineering (1:52)
• Don't run if the people can't run (4:20)
• The importance of iterating & identifying patterns that work (5:57)
• Nick’s ELC Annual 2024 highlights (7:35)
• Advice for first-time attendees to get the most out of ELC Annual (8:10)
• Challenges around cultural transformations (9:33)
• How transformations incorporate structure & order (11:35)
• Manju’s experience at / takeaways from ELC Annual 2024 (15:14)
• Advice for folks on how to get the most out of an experience like this (18:19)
• Bhupesh’s roundtable on managing yourself & learning to let go (20:17)
• When Bhupesh started to embody the principle of managing yourself (21:52)
• Frameworks for making the shift to identifying yourself as a leader (24:17)
• Top ways you can invest in yourself & final takeaways (26:27)

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/

This episode came live from ELC Annual 2024! Local ELC chapter leaders from across the globe share some of their favorite leadership principles, covering topics like how to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior leaders, how to manage yourself and your regulate emotions, how to leverage curiosity in tough conversations, how to build psychological safety and more! Thank you Ali Littman (VP of Engineering @ Modern Health), Mehmet Sencer Kardayi (CTO @ Dexter Energy), Tarik Kilick (Engineering Manager @ Booking.com), and Liz Sink (Director of Engineering @ Amount) for sharing your insights + a huge thank you to all of our local leaders for what you do to make community happen across the world! Check out all of our local chapters & get involved here: elc.community/home/clubs

Ali Littman is the Vice President of Engineering at Modern Health, a mental health technology company with a global workforce of both full-time and contracted staff. She has 15 years of experience in health tech and a business degree from Haas at Berkeley. She specializes in scaling organizations and has a track record in taking companies through hypergrowth, navigating major strategic product development pivots, as well as running major department reorganizations to optimize for current delivery and future-state architecture needs.

Tarik is an engineering leader who loves building products and teams that love building products. Currently @Booking.com, previously at SurveyMonkey and Heineken.

With 15+ years of experience in the tech industry, Mehmet has worked both as an individual contributor and a manager in big-tech(Booking, Meta) and as a software consultant in both the private and public sector. He likes to call himself a "failed serial-entrepreneur"(0 to 1) 😅 and nowadays is focusing on scaling tech startups(1 to 100). Outside of work, Mehmet has a diverse set of hobbies 🎱🏀♟️🥽🏓🛹🤹 and likes adding new ones to the set every now and then.

Liz Sink is currently a Director of Engineering at Amount, a digital origination and decisioning SaaS platform for deposits and lending. Liz also spearheaded the ELC Local Chapter initiative, collaborating with ELC to establish the inaugural chapter in Chicago, where she is working to build a community and leadership culture. Drawing on her diverse background in software engineering, education, and social work, Liz focuses on building cohesive, empowered teams, developing high-quality products, and driving progress and innovation in engineering leadership.

• How to sell your ideas & gain buy-in from senior eng leaders (1:37)
• Strategies to help someone start building this skillset (3:05)
• Why building ELC San Diego is meaningful to Ali (6:58)
• How to discover which metrics are most relevant for direct-to-consumer (8:26)
• Learn to manage yourself as a leader (10:21)
• Leveraging curiosity to make tough conversations collaborative (12:14)
• Tarik & Mehmet’s perspective on the Amsterdam ELC community (14:09)
• Creating psychological safety & trust for eng leaders (18:42)
• Why this topic is important for employee retention, satisfaction & innovation (19:19)
• An invitation to ELC Chicago (22:29)

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/