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Stories from VPs of Engineering

Interview with Oliver Plattner, VP of Engineering at Codecademy

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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.

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