Managing Managers – Details, episodes & analysis

Meri has a tonne of experience managing managers as a serial CTO, and we chat about everything from being a non-executive director, common traps of first-time directors/VPs of Engineering, what they look for when interviewing managers of managers, and so much more.

Guest biography:

Meri is an experienced CTO and leader of technology organisations, currently leading the technology team at Pleo. They particularly enjoy helping others to level up as technical leaders and managers of organisations, and works as a CTO coach and tech advisor to various companies in this capacity through micro-consultancy ChromeRose. 

They have led teams ranging in size from 30 to 300, in a range of organisations from Procter & Gamble, to the Government Digital Service, award-winning online print company MOO, mobile-first challenger bank Monzo and patient-inspired AI-driven rare disease treatment discovery company Healx, amongst others.

A published author and international speaker, they are the chair of The Lead Developer conference, and a tech advisor for Kindred Capital. Together with their wife, they run micro-charity One Goes Up to help young women & enby folks pursue STEM education & careers.

Transcript and show notes: https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-029-meri-williams/

The Financial Times (FT) uniquely combines individual contributor and management responsibilities in senior engineering roles. In this episode, I talk to Tech Director Alice Bartlett about what that’s like for her, how tech skills (at that level) are not necessarily key skills, and how it’s more important to have strong leadership skills, which includes managing your energy (and your calendar!) Listen to this episode for more insights and to hear Alice’s leadership journey in tech.

Guest Biography:

Alice is a tech director at the Financial Times. She oversees the team that builds and maintains FT.com and the apps. She has been at the FT for eight years and managing managers for about 5 years. She lives in Brighton with her family.

Transcript and show notes: https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-028-alice-bartlett/

I really enjoyed a lot of the insights Claire shared with me in this episode - everything from getting comfortable with how other managers approach problems differently from you, the benefits of an external coach and having a physical outlet to balance out the intellectual stress and finally some insight into some of the ways that Claire runs her organisation.

Guest Biography

Dr Claire Knight is a Senior Director of Engineering; Ecosystem & Emerging Products at Netlify. She served plenty of time in the coal code mine before making the move into wrangling folks rather than just bits. With many years of engineering leadership at companies such as GitHub and Six to Start, Claire now leads many engineering teams at Netlify, defines strategy and expansion, with particular focus on the platform and SDK. Claire lives in Barkshire, UK, with her husband and three cats who from time to time also like to be involved in video calls. When not working, she likes to lift heavy things, only to put them down again and is a 2023 AWPC World Champion Powerlifter.

Social Links:

• Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/in/ckclaireknight/ 
• Twitter -https://twitter.com/krider2010 
• Threads - https://www.threads.net/@krider2010 
• Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/krider2010 
• Mastodon - https://hachyderm.io/@krider2010

Transcript and show notes available here: ⁠https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-019-claire-knight/

Thiago Ghisi covers his background of moving from a consulting career to a management role, his experience of onboarding in different contexts and why he thinks joining as a director is easier than joining as an engineering manager of a team. We also spent some time understanding his current role at Nubank, which has more than 2000 engineers and how he allocates his time effectively.

Guest Biography

Thiago Ghisi is an engineering leader who has worked at places like Apple, ThoughtWorks and Amex. He is currently a Director of Engineering at Nubank and also runs a podcast, “Engineering Advice You Didn't Ask For”

Social links:

• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/thiagoghisi 
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/thiagoghisi

Transcript and show notes available here: https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-018-thiago-ghisi/

I have worked with so many people who have followed a non-traditional route into tech and so really enjoyed hearing Sally’s journey into tech and how she found herself managing other managers. Given her experience, it’s also great to understand how she leads and manages areas of tech that are beyond her own individual contributor experience and love the concept of swirl and to be wary of this as a manager of managers. 

Guest Biography

Sally Lait is an Engineering Director for Trust & Safety at Bumble Inc. – encouraging kind connections that demonstrate integrity, equality, confidence, and respect during all stages of any relationship, through our apps like Bumble Date, Bumble For Friends, Badoo, Fruitz, Official etc. Prior to that she’s been VP of Engineering at Farewill, led engineering in Operations and Financial Crime as well as Monzo’s web discipline, ran a digital transformation consultancy, and worked for a global digital agency. What’s really important to Sally is building a strong culture, and creating supportive and inclusive environments for people and teams to thrive and do fantastic technical work. She’s a strong advocate for building software and teams alike with empathy, responsibility, and accessibility in mind.

Social links:

• Website - https://sallylait.com/
• Mastodon - ⁠https://mastodon.social/@sally
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sallylait/

Transcript and show notes available here: ⁠⁠⁠https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-017-sally-lait/⁠

I’ve been a big fan of Dan’s writing for a while. You might have read some of his articles on management in my Level Up newsletter. In this episode, he shines a light on how he found himself in his first managing managers role, how he sees management as his true calling, how management might not be everyone’s cup of tea and how to deal with the ambiguity of the role.

Guest Biography

Dan Na is the Engineering Director of the Market Expansion organization at Squarespace in NYC. Previously he was a Staff Engineer at Squarespace and an Engineering Manager at Etsy. He loves learning and teaching in a collaborative environment and solving both the technical and people problems of shipping software. He’s a weather-agnostic iced coffee drinker, a mediocre golfer, an NBA basketball fan and loves spending time with his family.

Social links:

• Website - https://blog.danielna.com/
• Twitter - https://twitter.com/dxna
• Mastodon - @dxna@mastodon.social

Transcript and show notes available here: https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-016-dan-na/

I’ve been really lucky to meet Maria several times at conferences in real-life and in this episode, we were able to shine a light into parts of her 20 year journey in tech. I love how she thinks about management, structure and she has so many great insights on what it means to be a manager of managers. Her past few roles have also been focused on Product and Engineering Operations, so listen in if you’d like to learn more about that too. 

Guest Biography:

Maria Gutierrez is an Engineering executive and advisor with over 20 years of experience working at companies ranging from early-stage to large public tech companies. A big focus of her work is building healthier and more impactful Product and Engineering organisations at scale.

Social links:

• Twitter - https://twitter.com/mariagutierrez
• LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/mariagutierrez/

Transcript and show notes available here: https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-015-maria-gutierrez/

If you’re interested in what it means to be manager of managers in a fully remote environment, this episode is for you. As author of the book, “Remote Engineering Management”, Alexandra shares some tips of what to focus on in a manager of managers role. We explore how she naturally grew into her first managing managers role and she shares where she spends her time and what she focuses on in her role.

Guest Biography:

Alexandra Sunderland is an engineering leader with over a decade of experience working in both hybrid and remote roles, at companies ranging from 10-person startups to public corporations. She is currently a Director of Engineering at Fellow.app, where she is helping to build the future of work. She prides herself on building emotionally-intelligent processes for teams, and sharing her knowledge of management through conference talks and written works. Alexandra is the author of the book “Remote Engineering Management”, the guide for empathetic and people-first management in a remote world.

Transcript and show notes available here: ⁠⁠⁠⁠https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-014-alexandra-sunderland/

Anjuan taught me a few new concepts in this chat such as the saying of digging your well and what that means, what the unusual title of Staff Engineering Manager is and also some practical tips on managing burnout, especially important for manager of managers. Listen to this episode to find out more.

Guest Biography:

Anjuan Simmons has led software development teams for over two decades, and he excels at shipping features that customers love while also managing healthy teams. Anjuan’s goal is to help everyone he meets become the best possible version of who they are meant to be.

Transcript and show notes available here: ⁠⁠⁠https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-013-anjuan-simmons/

When managers leave and you inherit their team, you can suddenly find yourself managing multiple teams and shortly after, a manager of manager. Find out how Vitor Reis navigated this quick transition and learned to be an effective manager of managers on the job.

Guest biography:

Vitor Reis is a hands-on engineering lead with 14 years of experience in multiple industries. For the past 7 years he has been developing a platform for logistics at Delivery Hero, creating teams that work well together and deliver impactful things on time, developing products & tech running on over thousands of hosts in 5 data centers serving 50+ countries.

Transcript and show notes available here: ⁠⁠⁠https://managingmanagers.tech/episodes/episode-012-vitor-reis