How to supercharge your engineering org | Kellan Elliott-McCrea (Adobe, Dropbox)

Kellan Elliott-McCrea is a Head of Engineering at Adobe, overseeing Frame.io, a newly acquired video review and collaboration platform. He is known for his experience and expertise as an engineering leader. He was previously a VPE at Dropbox, and CTO at Etsy where he built and led a team of 300 people, from tech and platform reboot through to IPO. Kellan also built and scaled teams at Flickr, and has a coaching and advising practice for companies looking to supercharge their engineering teams. 

In today's episode, we discuss:

How software engineering has changed in the last 10-15 years

The future of software engineering, and the impact of AI

The importance of alignment and tactics for achieving it

How to think about and enable engineering productivity

Lessons on culture from Adobe, Dropbox, and Flickr

Concrete tips for being a better manager

Rituals for building business literacy throughout an org

Referenced:
Adobe: https://www.adobe.com
Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/
Frame: https://www.frame.io/
How Complex Systems Fail, by Richard I. Cook, MD: https://how.complexsystems.fail/
How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year https://review.firstround.com/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year

Where to find Kellan Elliott-McCrea:
Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/kellan
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellanem
Website: https://kellanem.com/
Personal blog: https://laughingmeme.org/
Where to find Brett Berson:
Twitter: https://twitter.com/brettberson
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/

Timestamps:
[00:02:58] Engineering orgs now vs 15 years ago
[00:05:57] Why engineering teams are bigger despite better tools
[00:10:45] How to think about engineering productivity
[00:15:50] Questioning common compensation models
[00:19:39] Slow teams are misaligned teams
[00:23:56] How to achieve alignment in engineering teams
[00:29:12] How to co-ordinate better across teams
[00:35:23] Why so few companies successfully go multi-product
[00:38:02] Which elements of successful orgs replicate?
[00:41:53] How to approach a new org system at a new company
[00:45:48] The value of information sharing and coaching
[00:48:55] Best practices for communicating with and across teams
[00:51:05] How to approach disagreements
[00:54:27] What high-quality engineering management looks like
[00:58:37] How to increase organizational capacity
[00:63:20] Tactics and rituals for enabling effective teams
[00:66:05] How to build business literacy
[00:68:30] Kellan's biggest inspirations

Kellan Elliott-McCrea is a Head of Engineering at Adobe, overseeing Frame.io, a newly acquired video review and collaboration platform. He is known for his experience and expertise as an engineering leader. He was previously a VPE at Dropbox, and CTO at Etsy where he built and led a team of 300 people, from tech and platform reboot through to IPO. Kellan also built and scaled teams at Flickr, and has a coaching and advising practice for companies looking to supercharge their engineering teams. 

In today's episode, we discuss:

How software engineering has changed in the last 10-15 years
The future of software engineering, and the impact of AI
The importance of alignment and tactics for achieving it
How to think about and enable engineering productivity
Lessons on culture from Adobe, Dropbox, and Flickr
Concrete tips for being a better manager
Rituals for building business literacy throughout an org

Referenced:

Adobe: https://www.adobe.com

Dropbox: https://www.dropbox.com/

Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/

Frame: https://www.frame.io/

How Complex Systems Fail, by Richard I. Cook, MD: https://how.complexsystems.fail/

How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year https://review.firstround.com/How-Etsy-Grew-their-Number-of-Female-Engineers-by-500-in-One-Year

Where to find Kellan Elliott-McCrea:

Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/kellan

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellanem

Website: https://kellanem.com/

Personal blog: https://laughingmeme.org/

Where to find Brett Berson:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/brettberson

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brett-berson-9986094/

Timestamps:

[00:02:58] Engineering orgs now vs 15 years ago

[00:05:57] Why engineering teams are bigger despite better tools

[00:10:45] How to think about engineering productivity

[00:15:50] Questioning common compensation models

[00:19:39] Slow teams are misaligned teams

[00:23:56] How to achieve alignment in engineering teams

[00:29:12] How to co-ordinate better across teams

[00:35:23] Why so few companies successfully go multi-product

[00:38:02] Which elements of successful orgs replicate?

[00:41:53] How to approach a new org system at a new company

[00:45:48] The value of information sharing and coaching

[00:48:55] Best practices for communicating with and across teams

[00:51:05] How to approach disagreements

[00:54:27] What high-quality engineering management looks like

[00:58:37] How to increase organizational capacity

[00:63:20] Tactics and rituals for enabling effective teams

[00:66:05] How to build business literacy

[00:68:30] Kellan's biggest inspirations