Mark Birch on his mission. To solve the toughest conundrum facing enterprises - How to create a software engineering culture that allows innovation to thrive
Perseverance Overrated With Deepthi Rajan
English - March 31, 2020 01:30 - 38 minutes - 26.5 MBBusiness Education digital transformation technology emerging technology marketing business strategy entrepreneurship leadership careers disruption personal development Homepage Download Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
In this episode of the Perseverance Overrated Show, Deepthi Rajan speaks with Mark Birch, an enterprise software tech entrepreneur, business development expert, and startup advisor based in Singapore and NYC.
Mark is the Founder of DEV.BIZ.OPS, helping enterprises build thriving software developer communities.
He is also the founder of the Enterprise Sales Forum, a global community of 25,000 B2B sales professionals that meet in local chapters to collaborate, network, and learn.
Previously, Mark was at Stack Overflow to help launch and commercialize their Enterprise Q&A platform and then led efforts to expand business in APAC working with C-level executives to help them understand how to build internal tech communities in order to improve software delivery performance.
Before that he worked at a diverse group of leading technology companies including Oracle, E.piphany and Siebel in contributor and leadership roles. He got his start in technology by accident as a programmer without any programming experience and then becoming a sales person by chance.
Mark also authors a hugely popular newsletter, DEV.BIZ.OPS, where he shares powerful insights into organizational change, developer culture, engineering productivity and community building.
Mark graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from Boston University.
In his non-working hours, he is a fund raiser for the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, he likes to tour around Chinatown exploring dumplings shacks, and he can generally be seen rocking out to extreme metal.
You can connect with Mark online at
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/marksbirch/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/marksbirch
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/marksbirch/
Blog: https://medium.com/@devbizops
Newsletter: http://eepurl.com/gVPb0v
Key Points From The Episode
Mark outlines the big customer problem he's solving with DEV.BIZ.OPS [00:04:02]
Mark shares the one reason why executives fail to engage effectively with software developers [00:06:00]
Must have skills for senior executives and software developers to build and sustain a culture of innovation [00:11:16]
An invaluable tip for developers to overcome perception bias [00:15:28]
Mark's take on the impact, the COVID-19 pandemic, is likely to have on the software industry [00:18:44]
On how his experience as an entrepreneur influenced his corporate career and vice versa [00:20:13]
The "why" and "how" of a career replete with diversity - Mark on charting his career trajectory [00:22:50]
The failure that defined a new course of action [00:26:49]
Advice on mastering the art of selling yourself [00:31:32]
Mark on how he plans to disrupt himself again [00:36:21]
Links Mentioned In The Episode
DEV.BIZ.OPS - https://devbizops.co/
DEV.BIZ.OPS Newsletter - http://eepurl.com/gVPb0v
ToastMasters - https://www.toastmasters.org/
Dan Pink's book "To Sell Is Human" - https://amzn.to/2UIOyv6
Dale Carnegie's book "How To Make Friends And Influence People" - https://amzn.to/33Zhm6A