In this interview (and podcast), with Pei-Chin Wang, Senior Director of Product at Redfin, we discuss the relationship between engineering and product management, challenges in creating process as your company scales, some excellent interview questions, and a fun tip to disconnect over the weekend.
Interview with Shilpi Sanchetee, Engineering Manager at Slack
Location: San Francisco
Current Role: Senior Engineering Manager @ Slack
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I was a software engineer for most of my career. At my first job in a small startup, I grew my team from 1 to 20 in 1.5 years in India and San Francisco. My manager at the time strongly believed in my leadership and put me in front of our main customers,
Interview with Alexandra Paredes, Head of Engineering at Code Climate
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I studied Computer Science in Caracas, Venezuela. Before finishing college, around 2009, I was working part-time building mobile applications for BlackBerry and Android using Java and PhoneGap (currently known as Apache Cordova). Building things that others found useful was thrilling. I treasured this experience because it served as a good introduction to understanding that “shipping” a product is more than coding.
In the following years,
Interview with Lena Reinhard, Director of Engineering CircleCI
Location: Berlin
Current Role: Director of Engineering
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
After a career in finance, arts, and media, I got into tech. I started out in marketing and key account management in a small SaaS company, and at age 26 co-founded my first software company and became a CEO. As part of a longer-term consulting project with our company, I started managing distributed, fast-scaling engineering teams,
Inspiring Women Leaders in Tech
Read these inspiring interviews from 23 different women leaders in tech sharing their experience to help other leaders improve. The interviews are from in 2018-19.
Click here: https://www.managersclub.com/tag/womenintech
Learn how they got into management. What are the biggest challenges they face? What is their advice for managers who are just starting out? And answers to many other questions.
Interview with Pei-Chin Wang, Senior Director of Product at Redfin
December 26,
Interview with Allison McMillan, Engineering Manager, GitHub
Location: Washington, DC
Current Role: Engineering Manager, GitHub
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I actually have a degree in political science! After college, I worked in nonprofit management for a while managing an organization working with college students. There were a lot of things that I loved about management. It’s great to watch people grow and learn and help them develop skills they’ll use for the rest of their lives.
Interview with Kate Wardin, Senior Engineering Manager at Target
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I just celebrated 7 years at Target Corporate in Minneapolis, MN. I’ve had the opportunity to work on a lot of exciting technology initiatives and projects. A couple of my favorite projects include an app refactor to prepare for the launch of Cartwheel, integrating various systems after Target’s acquisition of cooking.com & chefscatalog.com and helping my team build a homegrown API Platform to support the hundreds of APIs that exist within our ecosystem.
Interview with Karen Cohen, Engineering Manager and Product Architect at Wix.com
Location: Tel Aviv, Israel
Current Role: Engineering Manager and Product Architect at Wix.com
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
My first encounter with management was at age 21, working as an officer and software developer in the Israeli army. I led a team of developers who worked on multiple applications I had little to no knowledge about. To lead the team well, I had to find ways to provide value and gain their trust despite not being an expert in their focus areas.
Interview with Kelly Kendall, Managing Director of Cordant People on Hiring and Recruiting
Location: United Kingdom
What’s your background?
I have worked in the recruitment industry since 1997. I started out as a Consultant and after 3 months in the role an opportunity arose to manage the branch that I was in. From there I went on to open new locations and became an Area Manager. I was then tasked with driving performance in existing locations and gained promotion to Operations Manager. I mastered the art of remote management and was then asked to take on the role of Operations Director managing 38 locations across the UK.
Interview with Rachel Neasham, Director of Product at Lola.com
Role: Director of Product at Lola.com
Location: Greater Boston Area
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
I’m a former Army officer and had my first opportunity to manage when I was 23. I was an engineering platoon leader deployed to Iraq and was given the honor of leading 30 soldiers. Together with my platoon, we improved the quality and protection of Soldiers living facilities across Northern Iraq.
Since leaving the Army and joining tech startups,