Episode Description:
Are you trying to decide if software engineering is the right path for you? Are you currently an engineering manager and want tips on how you can grow and foster a better team? Join me as I speak with Chief Operator of the Rube Goldberg machine (CTO at Kajabi), Mahesh Guruswamy, as he guides us through how he measures success in his role as CTO, his 6 tenants of conflict resolution, ways to build a learning culture, how to know if engineering management is right for you, and much more.
Mahesh has been in tech for over two decades and has held many different positions ranging from software engineer to Director of Architecture, to VP of Engineering at companies like Vanguard, Fidelity Investments, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, Amazon Alexa, and Smartsheet. While in graduate school before he started his career in tech, he was a cashier at McDonald’s and through his interactions with the diverse clientele he discovered his knack for connecting and empathizing with all walks of life. As a self described “non-traditional” engineering leader he is a builder of product development teams and an angel investor.
Kajabi, an all-in-one business platform to create and scale your knowledge business. They are hiring all types of positions including engineering, head over to their careers page to learn more.
Connect with Mahesh
Show notes and helpful resources:
- The Rube Goldberg Machine
- Three ways to measure success: program outcomes, talent help, and system health
- Turn office politics into a way to explore people’s true intentions in order to help build better products
- Success as a manger is:
- Navigating discussions with teams
- Shipping features
- Low employee attrition
- Build a framework that allows your team to make the right decisions (through operating tenants)
- New managers should get 360 feedback in the Continue, Start, Stop, format
- Management is right for you if you get a warm and fuzzy feeling when your team succeeds
- Be close to the code as a manager if you have time is a good thing if it helps the team deliver
- Suggested Readings:
- Mahesh’s favorite book - How To Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie - changed his perspective on how to approach teams and relationships
- First Break All The Rules by Marcus Buckingham
- Executive Management books by Peter Drucker
- Emotional Intelligence 2.0 by Travis Bradberry
- Building Teams
- Turn The Ship Around by L. David Marquet
- Leadership is Language by L. David Marquet
- Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari
- Explore new things and step out of your comfort zone - take an improv class
- Take time to share something with people you have never shared before
- Conflict Resolution - Mahesh’s 6 tenants here
- Face conflict head on
- Don’t be a mediator instead give advice and let your team resolve it on their own
- How do you talk this through and resolve the conflict - tenants 2-6
- Build empathy by getting to know your coworkers outside the work context especially those you work with on a daily basis
- Have an experimental culture in order to learn from failure - this is very important
- Build culture around company values and then live and breathe those values in everything you do from hiring to everyday conversations and processes
Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com
Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.