This week, I sat down with Neha Batra, VP of Engineering for Core Productivity at GitHub. Our conversation is about the value of taking calculated risks in engineering leadership, using a “risk budget," and how you can leverage your social capital to take risks that help your career.

Neha also shares her insights on senior engineering leaders' challenges when aligning business needs with talent and product execution. She discusses her framework for strengthening company alignment and engineering efficiency using established communication paths.

Episode Highlights:
00:26 Frameworks that strengthen company alignment
03:11 How should you channel frustration into creation?
05:58 Conceptualizing your risk budget
12:53 Strategies for building communication pathways
16:04 Conducting AMA's with your team
21:47 How do you get team members to take accountability?
25:27 How do you gather signals from your team?
29:13 Mistakes leaders make you can learn from
36:32 Building curiosity into mundane experiences like dating

Show Notes:

• Starting Your Engineering Metrics Program
• nerdneha (Neha Batra) · GitHub
• Neha Batra
• Neha (@nerdneha) / X
• GitHub: Let’s build from here · GitHub

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Offers:

• Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream
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In the last few years, disengagement at work has become a massive issue. We learned from Dr. Andre Martin’s episode that 53% of managers are burnt out and 1 in 3 employees leave their jobs in the first 90 days.

This week, we sat down with Chuck Lafferty, VP of CRM at ADP, to discuss ADP’s approach to employee engagement and innovation. Chuck dives into building trust within teams, innovative techniques like ‘Survey Roulette’ to incorporate user feedback into development, and the critical role of understanding and caring for individuals.

When employees feel valued, heard, and engaged in meaningful work, you see improved productivity and increased job satisfaction. The episode concludes with actionable steps to improve employee engagement through personalized interactions and empathetic leadership.

Episode Highlights:

• 01:51 How does Chuck define employee engagement?
• 04:06 Can you measure employee engagement?
• 12:05 How can managers engage individual developers?
• 17:16 Survey Roulette and how it helps engage engineering teams.
• 22:31 Winning in the workplace
• 23:45 The importance of separating the problem from the person
• 25:30 How can you improve employee engagement?

Show Notes:

• Starting Your Engineering Metrics Program Workshop
• Chuck Lafferty
• Payroll, HR and Tax Services | ADP Official Site
• Confident Coder
• ChuckLafferty (@ChuckLafferty) / X

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• Subscribe to our Substack
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Offers:

• Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream
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This week, our host Dan Lines sits down with Tara Hernandez, VP of Developer Productivity at MongoDB. Together, they explore the nuances of developer productivity and the impact of AI in engineering environments.

Tara emphasizes that achieving developer productivity requires a focus on outcomes, reduced noise for developers, and a healthy balance between technology, processes, and communication. She also touches on the strategic framework of the 'three horizons' for conceptualizing your investment breakdown across different projects and how to maintain focused on meaningful development work.

Episode Highlights:

01:43 How should you think about developer productivity?
09:09 Three pillars to improve developer productivity
16:07 Automated does not equal autonomous
24:46 Making the golden path the easy path for developers
27:51 What’s exciting in developer productivity and AI?
29:57 The three horizons
38:34 Developer performance vs productivity data
40:23 What is the right way to think about goal setting for noise reduction?

Show Notes:

• Starting Your Engineering Metrics Program Workshop
• Tara Hernandez
• MongoDB
• GitHub
• CloudBees
• CircleCI
• Atlassian
• Evergreen CI in GitHub

Support the show:

• Subscribe to our Substack
• Leave us a review
• Subscribe on YouTube
• Follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn

Offers:

• Learn about Continuous Merge with gitStream
• Get your DORA Metrics free forever