Balancing Engineering Craft with Customer and Company Needs with Ryan Graciano

Ryan Graciano got his start working for a small company that was acquired by IBM. Having been on the employee side of a large merger, Ryan has been able to take what he learned to his role as CTO at Credit Karma. On today’s episode of CTO Connection, Ryan talks to Peter about his distaste for terms like microservices and technical debt as well as how to craft an environment that values both craft and customer.

Listen in as Ryan discusses managing large teams of engineers while stressing a culture of agility and experimentation.

[00:21] - How Ryan started his career in software development[01:40] - Transitioning to Credit Karma[02:50] - Building an engineering team[05:26] - Staying connected to the code[06:36] - Recruiting talent[11:13] - Moving from IC to manager[15:19] - Drawing the line at microservices[17:32] - Technical debt[22:31] - Communicating with business stakeholders[24:19] - Company, customer, craft[27:18] - What to look for in a great engineer[29:37] - What to look for in upper management

CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!

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Podcast episode production by Dante32.