Engineering leadership is undergoing a seismic shift, requiring playbooks to be rewritten, in real-time. In this special episode, hosts Patrick Gallagher and Jerry Li give you an inside look at the ELC Annual 2025 experience, and how the two-day conference will equip you with new mental models, skills, and frameworks required to lead.

Get a preview of tactical takeaways from deep operational dives into companies like OpenAI, Amplitude, and HeyGen. Discover how the conference will help you redesign your innovation engine, transform your team's workflows, and blur the lines between engineering, product, and business to drive impactful change. Through a unique mix of tactical sessions, peer-led roundtables, and curated mentorship, you'll learn how to find the community and coaching needed to lead through uncertainty and invest in your own career growth.

To learn more & get tickets, go to sfelc.com/annual2025

Use code podcast15 for 15% off tickets - group tickets / discounts available.

The playbook for engineering leadership is being rewritten. ELC Annual 2025, happening September 10-11 in San Francisco, is where you'll gain the insights, strategies, and deep connections needed to lead in this new era. 50+ speakers, 50+ peer-led roundtables discussions, 1:1 matching to expand your network. Insights, connections & support.

Join the community of engineering leaders who are co-creating the future of our field.

Listener Discount → Use code podcast15 for 15% off

Group Tix → For teams looking to attend together, special group discounts can be found under the 'Tickets' section of our website!

Secure your ticket at sfelc.com/annual2025

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!

• The ground is shifting: Why the old playbooks for engineering leaders are being rewritten (0:55)
• Moving beyond AI hype to harnessing its real power in your products and workflows (2:44)
• How are teams & workflows changing? Redefining roles and upskilling your team for the AI era (9:06)
• Why the smartest insights don't come from the stage, but from deep, honest conversations with peers in roundtables (13:36)
• How curated one-on-one matches help you build a trusted network to rely on for years to come (16:08)
• ELC Annual isn't a tech conference; it's a career conference to invest in yourself and your leaders (17:49)

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/

What if your engineering team didn’t just write code, but owned product discovery, wrote the launch messaging, and handled early sales? In this episode, Michael Grinich, CEO and founder of WorkOS, deconstructs their playbook for collapsing the product/engineering stack: no design leads, only one PM, and engineers who own product end-to-end. Michael breaks down how they teach product thinking, build with deep customer insight, and why his most important job is often to "cut scope." You’ll learn how to remove the "lossy translation layers" between teams, build a culture of curiosity and customer obsession, and ship higher-quality products, faster.

Michael is the founder and CEO of WorkOS, a developer platform that enables companies to become Enterprise Ready through features like Single Sign-On (SAML). Their customers include many of the fastest-growing startups including Webflow, Drata, Loom, and +200 others. Before WorkOS, Michael co-founded Nylas and studied CS at MIT.

So you’ve invested in AI agents for code generation, but they’re limited to experiments or even stuck on the shelf. To do real, valuable work, those AI agents need access to your data and systems.

ToolHive helps you confidently connect the pieces by making it simple and secure for you to use the Model Context Protocol (MCP).

ToolHive includes a pre-vetted registry of MCP servers, containerizes every MCP server for consistency and leans on built-in security to keep your secrets safe.

Leaders trust ToolHive to put MCP into production and put their AI agents to work.

ELC Annual is the premier event for engineering leaders. This is our biggest event of the year: 1,000+ CTOs, VPs & Directors in San Francisco @ ELC Annual 2025 for two days of leadership breakthroughs, tactical peer learning & curated connections!

• Marketing technical products exclusively to other tech companies (2:39)
• Building products end-to-end without PMs (6:36)
• How WorkOS utilizes fun, user feedback, and cohesive storytelling in their product-building process (9:31)
• Hiring engineers for curiosity & comfort operating in ambiguity (12:48)
• How engineers owning product discovery & directly engaging w/ users improve product insights (16:31)
• Using Slack for real-time integrated support & rapid product iteration (19:38)
• The complexities of creating simple, elegant products and marketing messaging (21:54)
• Cut scope ruthlessly to ship faster and better (26:20)
• Small, simple, deeply useful features make the biggest impact (30:30)
• The weekly cadence that keeps engineering aligned (32:52)
• Behind the scenes of MCP Night: A protocol party for devs (38:20)
• Rapid fire questions (41:29)

• MCP Night
• **WorkOS Launch Week**
• WorkOS AuthKit
• The Business Value of Computers: An Executive's Guide - Paul A. Strassmann addresses the practical needs of executives responsible for planning, budgeting and justifying information technology expenditures. It shows that there is no direct relation between spending on computers, profits or productivity.

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/