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The Engineering Leadership Podcast

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

De: The Engineering Leadership Community (ELC)
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We share the most critical perspectives, habits & examples of great software engineering leaders to help evolve leadership in the tech industry. Join our community of software engineering leaders @ www.sfelc.com!327413 Economía Gestión Gestión y Liderazgo
Episodios
  • What is leadership in the AI Era? w/ Bill Coughran & Bret Reckard #243

    What is leadership in the AI Era? w/ Bill Coughran & Bret Reckard #243
    Jan 6 2026

    This is a special episode, highlighting a session from ELC Annual 2025! Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital & former SVP of Engineering @ Google) and Bret Reckard (Talent Partner @ The General Partnership) deconstruct the evolving role of engineering leadership in an era dominated by AI hype. Bill is a legendary leader who joined Google right after the .com bubble and has seen every major industry shift since. Drawing on his experience scaling Google and advising world-class startups, Bill shares why the best leaders are "catastrophic thinkers," how to balance servant leadership with the need for decisive action, and why AI is forcing every leader to return to their technical roots. Plus they cover enduring companies and real value capture in the AI era, the nuances of organizational design, the "apprentice model" for mentorship and the dangers of over-layered hierarchies that stifle speed. Bill also provides a candid look at leadership transitions, offering a tactical guide for those moving from Big Tech to early-stage startups.

    ABOUT BILL COUGHRAN

    Bill Coughran works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security.

    ABOUT BRET RECKARD

    Bret Reckard is Talent Partner at The General Partnership (TheGP), a hands-on venture firm working alongside ambitious founders in talent, engineering, go-to-market, and product. He leads TheGP’s Talent vertical, matching foundational leaders, early engineers, and key specialists across the portfolio. Before this role, Bret spent over a decade at Sequoia Capital leading Talent and Network, where he helped hundreds of founders at companies like Stripe, Confluent, Retool and DoorDash build their early teams.

    This episode is brought to you by Span!

    Span is the AI-native developer intelligence platform bringing clarity to engineering organizations with a holistic, human-centered approach to developer productivity.

    If you want a complete picture of your engineering impact and health, drive high performance, and make smarter business decisions…

    Go to Span.app to learn more!

    SHOW NOTES:
    • Introduction and Bill Coughran's background at Sequoia and Google (1:36)
    • Hiring pitfalls and the biggest mistakes made as a leader (3:49)
    • Managing crises: Acting as a dictator during the 2010 Google hack (5:25)
    • Building for the AI world without chasing "shiny objects" (7:09)
    • Developing context: How to learn AI without relying on LLM summaries (9:02)
    • Identifying enduring companies and real value capture in the AI era (10:53)
    • The debate on coding assistants and the future of junior engineering talent (13:23)
    • Transitions: Making the leap from large organizations to early-stage startups (15:59)
    • Staying curious and finding excitement in the next professional challenge (18:23)

    LINKS AND RESOURCES
    • Link to the video for this session
    • Link to all ELC Annual 2025 sessions

    This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

    Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

    Jerry Li - Co-Host

    Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

    Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

    Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/


    Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
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    21 m
  • From Research Lab to Record-Breaking Product: How OpenAI Engineered for Unprecedented Scale w/ Sulman Choudhry, Samir Ahmed & Lawrence Bruhmeller #242

    From Research Lab to Record-Breaking Product: How OpenAI Engineered for Unprecedented Scale w/ Sulman Choudhry, Samir Ahmed & Lawrence Bruhmeller #242
    Dec 30 2025
    This is a special episode, highlighting a session from ELC Annual 2025! OpenAI evolved from a pure research lab into the fastest-growing product in history, scaling from 100 million to 700 million weekly users in record time. In this episode, we deconstruct the organizational design choices and cultural bets that enabled this unprecedented velocity. We explore what it means to hire "extreme generalists," how AI-native interns are redefining productivity, and the real-time trade-offs made during the world's largest product launches. Featuring Sulman Choudhry (Head of ChatGPT Engineering) and Samir Ahmed (Technical Lead), moderated by Lawrence Bruhmeller (Eng Management @ Sigma). ABOUT SULMAN CHOUDHRYSulman leads ChatGPT Engineering at OpenAI, driving the development and scaling of one of the world’s most impactful AI products. He pushes the boundaries of innovation by turning cutting‑edge research into practical, accessible tools that transform how people interact with technology. Previously at Meta, Sulman founded and scaled Instagram Reels, IGTV, and Instagram Labs, and helped lead the early development of Instagram Stories.He also brought MetaAI to Instagram and Messenger, integrating generative AI into experiences used by billions. Earlier in his career, Sulman was on the founding team that built and launched UberEATS from the ground up, helping turn it into a global food delivery platform. With a track record of marrying technical vision, product strategy, and large‑scale execution, Sulman focuses on building products that meaningfully change how people live, work, and connect.ABOUT SAMIR AHMEDSamir is the Technical Lead for ChatGPT at OpenAI, where he currently leads the Personalization and Memory efforts to scale adaptive, useful, and human-centered product experiences to over 700 million users. He works broadly across the OpenAI stack—including mobile, web, services, systems, inference, and product research infrastructure.Previously, Samir spent nine years at Snap, working across Ads, AR, Content, and Growth. He led some of the company’s most critical technical initiatives, including founding and scaling the machine learning platform that powered nearly all Ads, Content, and AR workloads, handling tens of billions of requests and trillions of inferences daily.ABOUT LAWRENCE BRUHMELLERLawrence Bruhmuller has over 20 years of experience in engineering management, much of it as an overall head of engineering. Previous roles include CTO/VPE roles at Great Expectations, Pave, Optimizely, and WeWork. He is currently leading the core query compiler and serving teams at Sigma Computing, the industry leading business analytics company.Lawrence is passionate about the intersection of engineering management and the growth stage of startups. He has written extensively on engineering leadership (https://lbruhmuller.medium.com/), including how to best evolve and mature engineering organizations before, during and after these growth phases. He enjoys advising and mentoring other engineering leaders in his spare time.Lawrence holds a Bachelors and Masters in Mathematics and Engineering from Harvey Mudd College. He lives in Oakland, California, with his wife and their three daughters. This episode is brought to you by Span!Span is the AI-native developer intelligence platform bringing clarity to engineering organizations with a holistic, human-centered approach to developer productivity.If you want a complete picture of your engineering impact and health, drive high performance, and make smarter business decisions…Go to Span.app to learn more! SHOW NOTES:From research lab to record-breaking product: Navigating the fastest growth in history (4:03)Unpredictable scaling: Handling growth spurts of one million users every hour (5:20)Cross-stack collaboration: How Android, systems, and GPU engineers solve crises together (7:06)The magic of trade-offs: Aligning the team on outcomes like service uptime vs. broad availability (7:57)Why throwing models "over the wall" failed and how OpenAI structures virtual teams (11:17)Lessons from OpenAI’s first intern class: Why AI-native new grads are crushing expectations (13:41)Non-hierarchical culture: Using the "Member of Technical Staff" title to blur the lines of expertise (15:37)AI-native engineering: When massive code generation starts breaking traditional CI/CD systems (16:21)Asynchronous workflows: Using coding agents to reduce two-hour investigations to 15 minutes (17:35)The mindset shift: How rapid model improvements changed how leaders audit and trust code (19:00)Predicting success: "Vibes-based" decision making and iterative low-key research previews (20:43)Hiring for high variance: Why unconventional backgrounds lead to high-potential engineering hires (22:09) LINKS AND RESOURCESLink to the video for this sessionLink to all ELC Annual 2025 sessions This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick ...
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    25 m
  • The AI Distribution Shift, Navigating PMF Collapse & Building AI-Native EPD Systems w/ Brian Balfour #242

    The AI Distribution Shift, Navigating PMF Collapse & Building AI-Native EPD Systems w/ Brian Balfour #242
    Dec 23 2025
    In this episode, Brian Balfour (Founder & CEO @ Reforge) deconstructs the two core, interconnected challenges leaders face in the AI age: deciding what to build and evolving the Engineering, Product, Design workflow to deliver it. We cover why you should avoid “the local maxima trap” and siphon off "skunkworks" teams to take high-risk, AI-native bets. Brian provides the blueprint for the "Great Distribution Shift," detailing how to reshape your product from the ground up to avoid being left behind as platforms close, and how to emerge as a winner in the new AI landscape. Plus, learn how to rethink what to build, avoid commoditization, compress product discovery from weeks to hours, scale feature variations & prototypes, evolve products to solve harder classes of problems and shift specialist roles from "inboxes" to system builders. ABOUT BRIAN BALFOURBrian Balfour is the Founder & CEO of Reforge, which provides expert training and tools for AI-native product teams. Previously, he served as VP of Growth at HubSpot, spearheading launches like HubSpot CRM and building the growth team that propelled the company’s next chapter. This episode is brought to you by Span!Span is the AI-native developer intelligence platform bringing clarity to engineering organizations with a holistic, human-centered approach to developer productivity.If you want a complete picture of your engineering impact and health, drive high performance, and make smarter business decisions…Go to Span.app to learn more! SHOW NOTES:Brian’s reaction to the 5:1 gap between AI coding usage and actual product quality challenges (1:57)Why your system only goes as fast as the slowest part, and how hyper-optimizing engineering moves bottlenecks elsewhere (4:53)The "Local Maxima" trap: Why turning designers and PMs into mediocre developers is a waste of opportunity cost (6:04)Siphoning off "Skunkworks" Teams for AI-Native Innovation (7:53)Moving from exploring two solution paths to ten by simulating "product reps" through AI prototyping (13:24)Reforge’s AI-native suite (Build + Research): Scaling prototypes, feature variations and compressing product discovery & validation from weeks to hours (15:43)Case Study: How Captions evolved to solve harder classes of problems, using a creator-tool wedge to fund custom AI emotion-models for the media studio market (19:54)Case Study: How Shopify reframed support agents as multimodal "Business Advisors" to provide outsized value (22:24)Navigating the great distribution shift: Understanding the lifecycle from open platforms to closed ecosystems (25:10)The lifecycle of distribution shifts: Navigating the "Open Phase" growth to "Closed Phase" monetization w/ examples from Facebook, Google, and Apple (29:30)OpenAI, memory & context as moat, and why you need to reshape your product from the ground up to win in this distribution shift (31:16)Strategic de-risking for EPD leaders: Building proprietary moats through memory, context, and specialized workflows (32:51)Optimizing EPD workflows and structures: Separate high-risk "skunkworks" from core product optimization, lean cross-functional teams for faster iteration / decisions, and avoiding too many specialized roles (35:25)Dissolving the "Octagon of Specialists": Shifting researchers and PMMs from "inboxes" to builders of self-serve systems (36:57)The five types of product work and why there is no "one-size-fits-all" system for EPD (41:25)Rapid fire questions (43:25)LINKS AND RESOURCESAbout Reforge: Expert training & AI-powered tools for product teamsReforge Build: The prototyping tool discussed for exploring multiple feature variations without designer constraints.Reforge Research: The AI-interviewer tool used to compress user discovery and validation from weeks to hours.Reforge Insights: The platform that aggregates qualitative customer feedback into a self-serve system for EPD teams.Brian Balfour’s Research & FrameworksBrianBalfour.com: Brian’s personal blog featuring deep dives into growth and product strategy.The Next Great Distribution Shift: The foundational article explaining the lifecycle of open vs. closed platforms.The Four Fits Framework: A refresher on the system of Product-Market Fit, Product-Channel Fit, Channel-Model Fit, and Model-Market Fit.Reforge Strategic Deep DivesAI Disruption Risk Assessment: A guide for engineering leaders to determine if their product is at risk of being commoditized.Product-Market Fit (PMF) Collapse: How to identify and avoid the risk of your core product losing relevance in the AI era.MentionsInvest Like the Best podcastThis episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-HostJerry Li - Co-HostNoah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her ...
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    46 m
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