From Engineering Leader to the Hand of the King: My Tour of Duty by Viraj Mody
After spending my entire career as an engineer, and having spent the last several years leading engineering organizations at Dropbox and Convoy, I jumped into an individual contributor role, as Technical Advisor to Convoy's CEO. A detour into a staff role is unconventional for an engineering leader, so I'll spend some time talking about my motivations for making this move, and also talk about what I've learned so far (spoiler alert: I think I'll be a much more effective engineering leader when I return)
Viraj Mody
Viraj has scaled and led engineering teams at Dropbox and Convoy, in San Francisco and in Seattle. Currently, he is leveraging his engineering leadership skills to help solve business, organizational, operation and marketplace problems as Technical Advisor to the CEO of Convoy. Viraj previously co-founded Audiogalaxy, which was acquired by Dropbox, and did a stint as Microsoft too. He has been advising start-ups in Seattle and San Francisco in recent years.
