SWIMM UPSTREAM

Extending End-to-end Platforms as Companies Scale with Basia Mucha

This may come as a surprise, but Compass’ engineering organization has over 1000 developers powering their end-to-end tech platform that supports real estate transactions across the United States. Basia Mucha, Director of Engineering at Compass, joins the show to share her experience scaling a platform across different geographies and the art of balancing new features while also growing your team.

Implementing and Shipping Design Systems With Brian Douglas

Brian Douglas is the Director of Developer Advocacy at GitHub and a familiar face (or voice) in the world of software development and community. Based on Brian’s experience building Netlify’s first design system, he shares his perspective on knowing when a start-up can build their own tool versus using one that’s available on the market.

Making Organizational Level Changes to Achieve Product-Market Fit With Jenna Quindica

Changes and pivots are bound to happen, especially in the early days of a start-up. Jenna Quindica, Staff Software Engineer at Square, shares a story from early on in her career where a complete pivot was required to achieve product-market fit. Jenna also delves into what it takes to be an effective Staff SWE today.

Part 2: Making Calculated Risks With Jason Gauci

The conversation with Jason Gauci continues. Jason breaks down the day after you’ve succeeded with your initial champion. What comes next? How do you motivate your team? And how to successfully promote your ideas within an engineering organization. Jason is the host of the Programming Throwdown podcast.  [https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/]

Part 1: Identifying User-champions With Jason Gauci

Jason Gauci is Argo AI’s Director of Engineering and has led machine learning teams at Facebook (now Meta) and Google. Jason also hosts the Programming Throwdown podcast [https://www.programmingthrowdown.com/].  Looking back at his experiences leading a research lab at Facebook, Jason reflects on the challenges of disruptive technological changes. Hint: Sometimes, being on the vanguard is indistinguishable from failing.