Edward Kim, co-founder & CTO @ Gusto shares the different forms that “fear of failure” can take in your engineering org. Eddie shares incredible stories to help you spot the different signs of “fear of failure.” And you’ll hear different ways you can change your team culture, process and operations to reduce fear of failure.

We’re launching our new season next week! Check out this trailer for a preview of our first few guests Eddie Kim (Co-Founder/CTO @ Gusto), Wendy Shepperd (GVP Engineering @ New Relic), and Will Larson (CTO @ Calm). Our first episode with Eddie Kim will be released on Tues 2/23, discussing how to remove fear from failure in your organization! Looking for other ways to get involved with ELC? Check out all of our upcoming events, peer groups, and other programs at sfelc.com!

Erica Lockheimer shares with us her imperfect path to engineering leadership, why the unconventional path matters, and what you can do as an individual leader & organization to empower engineering leaders with unconventional backgrounds. Plus you’ll also hear how to overcome self-doubt, and launch an apprenticeship program.

Craig Martell shares the biggest mistakes leaders of machine learning teams make, what to do if you have no experience leading an ML team, key skills your ML team needs, plus different models/approaches to building an ML team. You’ll hear the most expensive and time-consuming parts of machine learning, how to estimate timelines, unique tech debt, and how to manage expectations.

“Giving up control” is about empowering other people to scale yourself, and scale your effectiveness. Maria Latushkin shares with us why you need to give up control as an engineering leader and what holds people back. Plus you’ll learn tons of different ways to influence and manage your performance when it’s dependent on other people’s effectiveness.

A dynamic conversation between 4 current and past VPs of Engineering who cover all things about becoming 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.

We were overwhelmed by questions from our event with Doug and Emma! This is a bonus follow up conversation to further dig into measuring productivity through “Waterlining” and Kaplan Meier estimating, hashtags in communication, remote 1:1 best practices, and Doug shows us some of the creative ways he applies Zapier integrations for his personal productivity!

Doug Gaff and Emma Tang discuss high-bandwidth communication, innovation accounting, preventing developer burnout, influencing teams, and communicating priorities. They’ll help you move from frustration and survival in remote work, back to optimized productivity!

Martin Casado and Sonal Chokshi explore what makes a great VP of Engineering at startups! You’ll hear how successful VPEs are evaluated, the ideal experience, and success criteria. You’ll hear rapid-fire responses covering how to scale yourself, KPIs, the ideal VPE hiring time for startups, and what VPEs should definitely NOT do.

Your job as an engineering leader is to win, and increase your capacity to win. In Part 2, Wade Chambers discusses how to measure success for engineering leaders, what great looks like, AND how to increase your team’s performance and improve their potential! You’ll also hear how to identify where you're stuck and what to do to move your career forward.