Managers Club

Interviews and Resources for Engineering Managers and Leaders

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Interview with Debjani Sarkar, Director of Engineering at Nuance Communications

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Location: Reston, Virginia
Current Role: Director of Engineering in Nuance Communications

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I am not just an engineer by training but one by heart! After my undergraduate degree in engineering, I started my career in Digital Image Processing / Graphics engineering and in a couple of years transitioned into Software engineering. I spent over a decade designing and developing software products and solutions for a wide range of business domains including Telecommunication,

Interview with Bella Kazwell, Web Engineering Lead at Asana

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Location: San Francisco, CA
Current Role: Web Engineering Lead

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I received my undergraduate degree in CS from Carnegie Mellon University, after which I spent more than six years as a software engineer at Google, where I worked on internationalization and Gmail frontend. I made the move to Asana because I was ready to learn more and grow as an engineer.

Interview with Jocelyn Goldfein, Managing Director, Zetta Venture Partners (former Engineering Director at Facebook)

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Location: SF Bay Area
Current Role: Managing Director, Zetta Venture Partners (aka I’m a VC now)

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

Started my career as a software engineer, worked for a variety of startups, and stumbled into management early in my career. My first job out of college was with a startup; the team was growing quickly and we had very few seasoned managers. I was prone to organizing things around me and taking point on group projects,

Interview with Raylene Yung, Head of Payments at Stripe

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Location: San Francisco
Current Role: Head of Payments, Stripe

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I first joined Facebook after completing my MS at Stanford in theoretical computer science and AI. I started off as an individual contributor, but transitioned into engineering management after realizing how much I enjoyed leading projects and helping other engineers develop. I got some early exposure to management even as an IC—I was a tech lead on News Feed where I worked on a rewrite of the product and internal API infrastructure,

Interview with Natasha Vinnik, Senior Engineering Manager at Google

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Location: Mountain View, CA.
Current role: Senior Engineering Manager at Google for Places API. I am building a team that’s focusing on providing Places data to enterprises and 3rd party developers.

What is your background and how did you get into management?

I moved to America from Russia after high school in 1999. It was the middle of the tech boom and I quickly joined a startup company, Live365, that focused on allowing anyone to create music stations.

Interview with Isabel Nyo, Engineering Manager, Technologist, Writer, Speaker, Mother

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Current role: Development Manager and Head of Front-end Engineering at eBay
Location: Sydney, Australia

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I graduated with a bachelor and master of Computer Science from the University of Wollongong in Australia and worked in hands-on technical roles before becoming a manager.

My journey to management is not unusual but not one that I had anticipated or planned for.

Interview with Sue Nallapeta, Sr. Director, Engineering/Acting Head of Engineering at Zoosk

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Location: San Fransisco Bay Area
Current Role: Sr. Director, Engineering/Acting Head of Engineering

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I started my career as a Software Engineer back in India and moved to the United States to get my Masters degree in Computer Science and AI/ML. I continued my career as an individual contributor for a few years in a small company which had a very flat structure.

Interview with Katie Womersley, Director of Engineering at Buffer

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Location: Vancouver, BC
Current Role: Director of Engineering

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

My background is completely liberal – I studied Economics and Philosophy and am a self-taught developer! I really loved coding and building little websites and that’s how I got into software (and web) development. I was a web developer for a while and joined Buffer as a full-stack engineer, but transitioned to an engineering manager in my first six months on the team.

Interview with Erin Kidwell, Build, CI & DevInsights Manager at Netflix

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Location: Los Gatos, CA.
Current Role: Build, CI & DevInsights Manager at Netflix

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I’ve worked in technology for 15+ years, starting in the finance industry, moving toward education and then consulting before joining Netflix. Earlier roles offered me the opportunity to act as an individual contributor in backend engineering before, at some point, being asked to manage a team. This path is not for everyone.

Interview with Johanna Rothman, Managing Product Development–Author, Consultant, Speaker

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Location: Arlington, Massachusetts
Current role: Managing Product Development–Author, Consultant, Speaker

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I started work as a developer. I became a tester, a project manager, a manager, a program manager, a director, a developer and a VP. No one has a linear career and mine certainly hasn’t been linear.

As I project-managed small projects, I realized I liked project management. I had an opportunity to manage one person (!) as a young manager.

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