- What’s your background and how did you get into management?
- What are the biggest challenges you face?
- What are your thoughts on diversity?
- What is your approach to hiring?
- What’s your advice for managers who are just starting out?
- What’s your workday like and how do you manage your time, emails, etc.?
- What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?
Stories from VPs of Engineering
Interview with Robby Russell, VP Engineering, Partner at Planet Argon, LLC
Current role: VP of Engineering, Founder Partner at Planet Argon
Location: Portland, Oregon
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
It’s not conventional. In the second half of the 90s, I began dabbling with open source technologies. In particular, with Linux and Perl. During this time, I was also a high school dropout painting houses for three years.
The idea of working in tech didn’t appeal to me.
Interview with Oliver Plattner, VP of Engineering at Codecademy
Location: New York
Current Role: Codecademy VP of Engineering
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I’ve been working in technology since I was 15 years old and initially started by working with computer networks and data centers. After graduating with a computer science degree, I took my technical skills to build out technical pre and post sales teams. It was early on in my career that I realized it was much more rewarding and empowering to set others up for success and see them achieve their goals as opposed to being an individual contributor.
Interview with Saminda Wijegunawardena, VP, Engineering @ Box
Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Current Role: VP of Engineering
What is your background and how did you get into management?
My background in both management and engineering management is pretty unconventional. In college, I started out as a business major. After taking electives my first year, I took an accounting course in my second year and quickly realized that it was not for me. Ultimately, I took a bunch of science and philosophy of science courses that really reinvigorated me so I decided to go pre-med.
Interview with Lei Yang, VP of Engineering at Quora
Location: Mountain View, CA
Current role: VP of engineering at Quora
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I was born and raised in China. I got my Bachelors degree from Peking University and then came to the US for grad school. I started my first full time job at Google after I got my PhD. After seven years at Google, I joined Quora. In my professional life,
Interview with Mike Oliver, VP of Product Engineering at Runkeeper / ASICS Digital
Location: Boston, MA
Current Role: VP of Product Engineering at Runkeeper / ASICS Digital
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I have a traditional technical background with a Computer Science degree from Northeastern University. When I graduated, I can’t say I thought much about leadership or my career path; my goal was simply to work on interesting projects and solve hard problems. I was tapped for my first management role at a reasonably early stage in my career,
Interview with Brent Baisley, VP of Engineering at Ticket Evolution
Current role: VP of Engineering at Ticket Evolution
Location: Greater New York City Area
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I’ve been in tech for about 30 years now. I’ve been a Programmer (front and back), Sysadmin, Network Admin, DBA, Technician, and worked the Help Desk. I’ve always loved connecting the dots and understanding how things work end to end.
I slipped into the role of Tech Lead on a number of jobs,
Interview with Nat Fast, VP Software Development at Viscira
Location: San Francisco
Current Role: VP Software Development, Viscira
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I have always been a leader. From my childhood to today it has been my fortune to see people as they are and deal with them from that perspective. The good, the bad and the in-between. Organizing, directing, conceptualizing, playing. I have always taken a humanist’s perspective.
From Wikipedia: Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings,
Interview with Michael Lopp, VP of Engineering @slackhq
Location: Los Gatos, CA
Current Role: VP of Engineering @slackhq
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I’ve been working in the Silicon Valley my entire life. In order, I worked at Borland, Symantec, Netscape, Icarian, Apple, Palantir, Pinterest, and now at Slack.
I got into management at Netscape. Tony asked me to lead a team and I said “Yes” not knowing what he was asking.
Interview with Dr. James Stanier, VP Engineering at Brandwatch
Location: Brighton, UK
Current role: VP Engineering, Brandwatch
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I did Computer Science as an undergraduate and then took an interest in compilers, which became the subject of my Ph.D. After completing my thesis, I joined a fairly small company called Brandwatch in my university town, and 6 years and 3 rounds of VC funding later, I find myself as one of the senior engineering managers in the department.