There has been a lot of conversation in the tech community about how to build a pipeline of computer scientists for the next generation, bring awareness to groups that aren’t current represented and improve diversity numbers.

While there’s been a lot of work and initiatives that have cropped up over the years, there’s still a lot to be done.

Whether you believe in diversity or are skeptical about it, at some point your organization is going to want to scale its recruiting efforts.

In today’s episode, Jessica McKellar (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessica_McKellar) and I are going to skip past the usual complaints, and get down and dirty into what is and isn’t working and why.

Jessica is currently an engineering manager at Dropbox (https://www.dropbox.com/) and was previously the Director of the Python Software Foundation (https://www.python.org/psf/). Jessica has also co-authored two books about computer programming (Twisted Network Programming Essentials - https://www.amazon.com/Twisted-Network-Programming-Essentials-Event-driven-ebook/dp/B00BT0IEJE/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1481592423&sr=1-1&keywords=jessica+mckellar and Introduction to Python - http://shop.oreilly.com/product/110000448.do), and was previously an early engineer at Ksplice (http://www.ksplice.com/) and founded Zulip (https://zulip.org/) which was eventually acquired by Dropbox.

Given how challenging the recruiting environment is in tech, you’ll want to watch this episode and learn from Jessica:

-Why interviews are a terrible proxy for determining if a technical candidate will be successful in your organization

- How to perform an audit to measure who you’re attracting, how effective you are at retaining them, and how to scale your efforts as your organization grows

- The steps people often overlook that prevent them from building sustainable engineering organizations

This was our final episode for season two of FemgineerTV. You can watch previous episodes from this season on our YouTube Channel, and be sure to subscribe to our channel to receive episode for season three starting in January 2017.

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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

I’m a HUGE proponent of working for an early stage startup, having already done it three times in my career.

I even did a series a couple years ago to showcase the benefits of being an early stage startup employee, which you can watch here.

However, early stage isn’t the only stage.

It would be unfair of me to or anyone else to lead you astray based on what has worked for us.

You’ve got to find a stage that fits your needs.

To help you out, in today’s episode, I’ve invited a guest who has oodles of experience working at growth stage technology companies, Pedram Keyani.

Pedram is currently the Director of Global Growth Engineering at Uber. He’s grown the engineering team from around 20 to 250 engineers in the past couple of years. Prior to Uber, Pedram was the director at Facebook and began working there when it was a 200 person company, and was there during the IPO. Pedram began his career working at Google as a software engineer right around the time it was IPO’ing.

This was a really fun episode to do with Pedram because of his fun, goofy, and creative energy, but it’s also super valuable. No matter what stage company you decide to work at, in the episode you’ll learn the following from Pedram:

• What to do if you can’t convince other people to pursue your project idea
• How he dealt with the challenge of having to build a lot of infrastructure even though he didn’t know how to
• Why growth is a delicate balance of developing your employees and building product
• Why his preferred coaching style is the “dumb manager”
• How to handle the communication overhead as your team and company grow
• Why his goal is to hire as slowly as possible
• Why he prefer to cultivate talent that’s been around longer, rather than always hiring experienced people from the outside
• How he manages his time between work, staying healthy and his growing family and encourages his employee to as well

Working on teams is great because we get to share our skill sets and learn from one another as we build.

However, there are moments that prove to be challenging like…

… when you think you’re in agreement with your team, get to work, then days later the decision gets shot down. All that wasted time, energy, and effort!

Or…

… when you’re excited to try something new, but you can’t because you have to get approval from multiple people, some who don’t even know who you are!

Dealing with the all the drama can be demotivating and stifle innovation.

So how do you get groups people out of their own way in order to make decisions, deliver on innovations, expose weaknesses in strategy, and is it even possible?

Yes, it is and my goal in today’s episode is to show you how!

I’ve invited Janice Fraser who is the Director on the People Team at Pivotal Labs. Janice has a rich 16-year career with notable accomplishments such as being the CEO and Founder of Luxr, CEO of Adaptive Path, and more.

We’ll be focusing the conversation on showing how to govern teams that are self-governing through a concept known as balanced teams, and much of what we’re going to be showcasing is based on the principles and practices of Extreme Programming  by Kent Beck.

While much of what we’ll cover applies to building software products, Janice has also applied it to creating policies and processes for enterprises and the Obama administration.

This is a really meaty episode, where we’ll be getting into the weeds and covering:

• How to make decisions in the face of inadequate information
• How the old way of creating limited ownership and understanding, and balanced teams have shared ownership based on vertical and horizontal expertise
• How extending an invitation to NOT buy releases pressure from a team feeling like they need to change or adopt new approaches immediately
• Why decisions often don’t stick and how the UBAD model (understanding, belief, advocacy, decision) leads to decision making that lasts
• How to create your “Island of Freedom” where you can have autonomy with boundary conditions you’ve agreed upon with your team and boss
• Why trust is a two-way street: gaining the trust to experiment and sharing news even if it’s bad
• Why trust includes a safety net of knowing that people are going to make mistakes

If you’ve been wondering how to make a shift in your organization, and have struggled to get people onboard, then you’ll want to watch this episode!

One of my favorite quotes from Janice from the episode is the following:

“Agreement happens when people agree to stop talking. People stop talking when they feel understood.  Understanding happens between individual pairs of brains.”

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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

What’s THE best problem to have hands down?

Most people would say growth.

And I’d agree 100%.

But it’s not as rosy as you’d imagine. Whether you’ve gone from a five-person garage startup to 15, 50 or 500 person team, there will be some challenges.

And at each stage tackling those challenges can leave us feeling like growth is more of a burden than a boon.

We have to learn to balance the pressure to satisfy customer demands while managing and nurturing a team.

This requires hiring new people who fit into the culture, altering our development process to include them, and learning to delegate tasks that have become too much for one person to handle.

Easier said than done.

But don’t worry because, in today’s episode of FemgineerTV, you’re going to learn how to handle the great problem of growth from our special guest Darin Swanson who is the VP of Engineering and Platform at New Relic.

Darin is going to share some valuable lessons from his experience growing the New Relic team over the past 4+ years.

As you watch the episode you’ll learn:

- What it was like to transition from being a software engineer to a manager and then a VP of Engineering
- Darin’s test for deciding on whether or not you should go down the management track
- The WORST advice Darin ever received regarding scaling teams
- How Darin and the New Relic team screen their engineering candidates for culture fit

This episode is full of nuggets of wisdom from Darin, and I highly recommend watching it whether you’re experiencing a growth curve in your company or are thinking about joining one that is growing.

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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer (http://femgineer.com/) and Pivotal Tracker (http://www.pivotaltracker.com/). San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA (http://www.startmotionmedia.com/design/).

Did you take a risk and then realize, “OMG I am in too deep?”

But by the time you realized it, it was too late.

There was no time for a do-over.

You were stuck and really the only logical thing to do next was to throw in the towel and call it quits.

Or was it?

Well in this episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to be tackling the topic of how you can rescue yourself from a risky setback.

And to help us out I’ve invited Jessica Mah who is the CEO and Co-Founder of InDinero. She has grown InDinero from zero to multi-million dollar revenues with nearly 200 full-time staff and has been on the cover of Inc Magazine, featured in the Forbes and Inc 30 Under 30 Lists. Jessica studied computer science at U.C. Berkeley.

Jessica went from engineering to entrepreneurship right out of college, but it hasn’t exactly been a bed of roses for her.

She’s had to overcome a number of setbacks along the way, including being on the brink of bankruptcy!

She’s been kind enough to share her story openly with us, and as you watch the episode you’ll learn:

• Why it’s important to set goals but not too many!
• Why being direct with teammates and customers can help you work through a risky setback.
• How partners can be helpful, but those relationships need to be nurtured to withstand setbacks.
• How you can feel fearless and confident, but it’s like a gas tank and needs to be replenished.

If you’ve agonized over a significant setback, then I highly recommend listening to this episode!

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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.

Have you contemplated leaving the comforts of a company to strike out on your own to pursue a creative calling?

Perhaps you have an idea for a product or service.

While there’s a strong pull to pursue it, hesitation maybe holding you back.

You’re worried about being good enough, attracting customers and clients, and how to make it all come together to find fulfillment, but also tend to the practical side of things like paying the bills!

You’ve probably heard plenty of stories around striking out to build a startup, raise capital, and pursue a BIG idea. While that sounds exciting, you’re looking for an alternative approach...

Well in today’s episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to be tackling all these topics. To help us out, I’ve invited Jessica Hische, who is a letter, illustrator, and type designer.

Jessica began her career working for a design studio HeadCase. Then went on to work for a prominent designer, Louise Fili, and eventually struck out on her own. Jessica has had notable clients like Wes Anderson, David Eggers, Tiffany Co, and Nike just to name a few.

As you watch this episode you’ll learn:

• Steps you can take early in your career, such as how to reach out to people or companies you want to work for and learn from
• Why a day job can be immensely valuable and how to find one that is nurturing
• Why you don’t have to run a 10+ person design studio or a 100+ startup, and can be a solopreneur
• How to reconcile your client’s vision with your own creative desires
• How to get compensated fairly by conveying the price and value of your work
• Why learning tangential skills as a creative can be helpful when it comes to hiring
• Balancing side projects and attracting work with the day-to-day work that pays the bills

Whether you’ve been in your career for 6 months or 6+ years, and have toyed with the idea of doing your own thing but weren’t sure how to set your own terms, this episode is for you!

For those of you who are interested in design and typography, check out Jessica latest book In Progress. We also talked about her popular post The Dark Art of Pricing, which you can read here.

Risk can mean a number a number of things. It could mean speaking up. Or striking out on your own.

But taking a risk is hard.

What’s easier is following a known path.

Creating what we’re told to create. Doing what we’re told to do.

So why not just go for the easy path?

Because it doesn’t always lead to us to feeling fulfilled in our careers and everyday lives.

What does is pushing our creative limits, and that’s where risk comes in.

The reason risk is hard is because it’s surrounded by fear.

Anytime we want to take a risk by sharing ourselves or pursuing a new experience, our inner critic: that little voice inside our heads stops us dead in our tracks. It fills us with fear...

Fear of criticism, rejection, and failure.

It’s hard to put the inner critic in its place because of the way we’ve been educated and conditioned: to not make mistakes.

So what does it take to get over our fears and take a risk?

Creative confidence.

Creative confidence is a mindset, a way of being, that comes from design thinking. Design thinking allows you to be experimental, make mistakes, let go of perception, embrace testing to see what happens, and be detached from outcomes.

In today’s episode of FemgineerTV, we’re going to be talking about how to manage the various fears we come across and gain creative confidence.

To help us out I’ve invited a good friend of mine Maria Molfino who is a women’s leadership coach and helps women gain the creative confidence to lead. With a Masters in Design from Stanford, she has worked with top managers and professionals at companies such as Facebook, Twitter, and IDEO.

Maria says, “If you care about growing and expanding then you have to find out how to relate to your fears.” She continues, “If fear isn’t coming up, you’re not playing at your edge.”

As you watch the episode you’ll learn:

- Why the fear of failure is bigger than actually experiencing failure
- Why we’re sensitive to feedback and how to remove the sting of it
- How to deal with criticism from ourselves, bosses, peers, and loved ones
- Why it’s important to create space between yourself and your creative work
- How to reframe self-promotion

This is a must watch episode if you find want to grow, but feel stuck, and especially if you are looking to help others grow!

In the episode Maria shares her Creative Confidence Playbook to help you overcome obstacles such as perfectionism, comparison, and more. You can download her playbook here: http://www.mariamolfino.com/free-playbook

Maria also recently launched a podcast called Heroine where she interviews creative women leaders in art, business, design, science, and tech. Listen to the podcast here: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/heroine-womens-creative-leadership/id1100949693

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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer http://femgineer.com/ and Pivotal Tracker: http://www.pivotaltracker.com.

San Francisco video production byStartMotionMEDIA: http://www.startmotionmedia.com/

Raise your hand if you’ve ever had a boss you just didn’t quite get along with. Both of mine are reaching for the stars!

I always thought it was me…

Until one day I met up with a previous boss I had, who saw all the work I had done since leaving the company and told me, “Wow we were really holding you back!”

That statement was vindicating.

But I didn’t want vindication. What I had wanted all along was a boss who would lead me by providing consistent guidance and feedback to help me improve.

I’m sure my story is not unique, but it has become an accepted leadership style, because we’re told that the best products and companies are led by bossholes people who rule through fear.

While there maybe a few of those lurking out there, it’s actually a pretty big myth, and one that we’re going to debunk in today’s episode of FemgineerTV!

We’ll also talk about how the boss who is a buddy aka Michael Scott, is even more damaging that the bosshole, because they are holding back the criticism you need to perform better.

So what does it take to be a great leader and boss?

Radical Candor.

It’s a framework for providing constructive guidance to employees, even when employees have screwed up, and was created by Kim Scott.

Kim has a rich background in tech. She formerly led Online Sales and Operations for a number of products at Google such as AdSense, YouTube, and Doubleclick. She’s also an advisor to a number of Silicon Valley startups such as Dropbox, Kurbo, Qualtrics, Rolltape, Shyp, Twitter, and more.

Through all these roles Kim has had first-hand experience with radical candor and is writing a book and building a company based on it. I’ve invited her on the show to help us explore the framework and learn how to practice it.

As you watch the episode you’ll learn:

• How great leaders actually give a damn about their employees AND challenge them directly
• Why the well-intentioned “nice” bosses do their employees a disservice by withholding criticism
• Why people have learned to speak candidly the hard way
• Why criticism has a short half life and so does praise
• How to get through to employees using the Radical Candor framework

Even if you aren’t a leader or a boss, I’d highly recommend watching this episode, because it showcases how employees can spot toxic cultures, how to change them, and the traits to spot in great leaders.

You’ll recall in that in the last episode of FemgineerTV, I interviewed Maria Giudice the VP of Experience of Autodesk and author of The Rise of the DEO. We talked about how traditional CEOs have been replaced by a new breed called DEOs.

In the latest episode of FemgineerTV, I’ve got a great example of a DEO for you: Lily Sarafan, the CEO of HomeCare.

Lily began her career when HomeCare was just a startup, and has been integral to its growth and eventual acquisition.

But that’s not all, Lily is also very active in the tech community as a startup advisor, mentor, and investor, she’s also involved with a number of nonprofits, holds a political office, and avidly travels.

As you watch the episode you’ll how she manages all her projects and has learned to cultivate a leadership style over the years that resonates with her personality. Lily definitely exhibits many of the DEO traits such as:

- Evaluating and take risks
- Being a systems level thinker
- Using her intuition to guide her decision-making
- Having a high level of social intelligence
- Caring about getting shit done!
- Influencing and shaping a company’s culture through her unique leadership style

Even if you aren’t a leader, this is a very valuable episode to watch, because you’ll learn the following from Lily:

- Why it’s OK if people don’t expect much from you and how you can use that to your advantage
- Why having a leadership oriented personality is very different from being an effective leader
- Why the best advice isn’t necessarily what you’re supposed to follow
- How you can lead and built a support network even if you’re shy or introverted
- Why it’s important to value people over product

If you're interested in working for HomeCare check out their opportunities: http://homecareassistance.com/apply

Episode credits
FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker: http://pivotaltracker.com/
FemgineerTV is videographed by StartMotionMedia: http://www.startmotionmedia.com/

In this episode, we’ll be talking about why traditional CEOs have been replaced by a new breed called DEOs, design executive officers, and how companies are basically being led by executives who embrace design thinking.

To help us out, I’ve invited Maria Giudice formerly the founder of Hot Studio. Maria built and successfully ran Hot Studio through 3 tech busts, I’d say that’s enough of a reason for me to want to learn from this amazing design leader! Hot Studio was eventually acquired by Facebook. Maria’s latest role is as the VP of Experience Design at Autodesk and she has co-authored a new book called The Rise of The DEO.

Whether you’re a leader or aspire to be one, you won’t want to miss listening to this episode, because Maria and are I are going to be talking about how DEOs:

• Are different from traditional CEOs
• Evaluate and take risks
• Are systems level thinkers
• Use their intuition to guide their decision-making
• Have cultivated a high level of social intelligence
• Care about getting shit done!
• Co-create with their teams and manage different roles
• Give employees permission to fail
• influence and shape a company’s culture through their unique leadership style

In this episode we’re tackling a tough topic that isn’t talked about a lot: The Challenges Immigrant Tech Entrepreneurs Face.

Whether you’re an immigrant, thinking of immigrating to the US, or just a startuper, you’re sure to be inspired by this episode, because we talk about what it takes to overcome a number of obstacles and setbacks over a 4 year period before breaking into the US market with big customers and investors!

Agustina Sartori, the CEO & Co-Founder of Glam St shares how she began her career as a software engineer in Uruguay working at a startup, and then decided to strike out on her own with her co-founder Carolina Bañales to build Glam St.

Watch and learn:

• How she and her co-founder landed their first big client L’Oreal before building anything!

• How they built their first prototype.

• Alternate sources of funding they pursued because there aren’t a lot of investors in Uruguay.

• How cultivating a level of self-awareness when talking to potential customers and investors is beneficial to attracting them.

• Why it’s important to build relationships with organizations who can help you grow your business like accelerators.

It’s the final episode of FemgineerTV for the 2015 season!

It felt like just yesterday I was waking up at 5am on a January morning to buy bagels for Ben Congleton our first guest. Then driving up with him to SF to beat the traffic on 101. Still can’t believe we made it one piece for the live pilot episode!

Since then we’ve produced a total of 11 episodes with guests who are changing the landscape of technology in the way they design, engineer, and lead product innovation and their companies. If you’ve missed even one episode, then take some time this holiday season to watch them all here.

Of course none of these episodes would have been possible without the support of our sponsor Pivotal Tracker. Specials thanks to Ronan Dunlop, Charles Springer, and Dan Podsedly for believing in my vision for FemgineerTV and continuing to support it. These are some of the BEST guys in Silicon Valley to work with!

I also want to thank my team: Michael Zeligs (videographer), Nathalie Arbel (editor), Christy Buckland (editor), and Gary Kirk (video editor). They are such a pleasure to work with, and go out of their way to make the episodes look and sound amazing! 

Now on to the final episode of FemgineerTV for the 2015 season!

In this episode we’ll be exploring the theme of what it’s like to start building a technology company and product with little to no experience.

We’ve all heard stories about tech founders who started their careers as engineers, designers, product managers and sales staff, while supporting a tech company. But can someone from outside tech successfully launch a tech product? Sandi MacPherson is proof it can be done! She’s the founder of Quibband has a unique story of how she became a founder.

In the latest episode of Femgineer TV, Sandi shares how she went from working in eastern Canada as a scientist, studying climate change, to completing her MBA, and eventually moving to California to start a technology company.

Having no prior experience in tech, Sandi went through a series of steps and received a lot of hands-on help that led her to eventually start Quibb, a service that shares articles and reports that influencers and experts are reading, in a newsfeed and daily email.

In this episode, you’ll learn the following from Sandi:

• The risk she took that helped launch her tech career.
• How founders without a tech background can get started.
• How she turned to the users of Quibb for funding and how you can use this strategy, too.
• A special side project she is working on!

We know that funding is critical for the life of a startup, and founders can opt to bootstrap or raise capital from VCs. Many do both as we saw in episode 8 when I interviewed Melody McCloskey.

Then in episode 9, I spoke to Shruti Gandhi, the founding and managing partner at Array VC, a fund that invests in early stage startups. Shruti shared with us the different ways investors can help a company grow, plus tips for dealing with different types of investors, and how to dig into an investor’s thesis to see if they’re the right fit for you.

In today’s episode, we’re going to expand beyond the mechanics of funding, and learn about a startup that’s helping investors and founders learn all they can to make decisions when it comes to investing.  Danielle Morrill is the CEO and co-founder of Mattermark, a data platform that keeps track of startups and their growth signals.

Danielle began her startup career working Pelago, then went on to become the first employee at Twilio, and recently launched Mattermark.  

Her goal is to make Mattermark the go-to source for information about startups and their investment potential.  Think of it as Bloomberg  for private companies.  

In this episode you’ll learn:

• How Mattermark compiles information about private companies and help investors make informed investment decisions
• What Mattermark’s Startup Index and Growth Score are, and how they benefit startups
• How startup founders can benefit from Mattermark using it as a one-stop shop for finding the right investors
• How Mattermark helps startup discover potential customers

If you’ve been following along with FemgineerTV, you’ll have learned what the investor-founder dynamic is like from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur. In the last episode, I sat down with the CEO & co-founder of StyleSeat, Melody McCloskey, to understand what it takes to raise capital at the various stages of a startup, from Seed to Series A and beyond.

In today’s episode, we’re going to get the opposite perspective by diving into an investor’s mindset. We’ll try to understand what compels them to write a check and, more importantly, how they add value beyond a check.

(That’s right, they’re not just a source of capital; they can be an indispensable partner!)

I’ve invited Shruti Gandhi to chat with us. Shruti is the founding and managing partner at Array VC, a fund that invests in early stage startups. She began her career as software engineer. Since then, she has been a startup founder and an investor in five funds; now, she has started her own.

Having been in many roles, Shruti understands the importance of capital, but she also knows firsthand that founders need help beyond the check.

During our conversation, you’ll learn:

• How investors can help you accelerate your company’s sales
• How investors test a founder’s commitment to their product and company
• How to work with different types of investors: corporate, institutional, and angels
• Why investors look for founders who have been an early employee at a startup before striking out on their own
• How to dig into an investor’s thesis to find out if they are a right fit for you

You’ve probably noticed the ongoing debate about whether or not we’re in a tech bubble. Headlines are always gushing about the latest companies with billion dollar valuations.

There’s a lot of investment capital out there right now, and if you’re a startup founder who hopes to raise money, you might be wondering what it takes to attract some of that capital to you .

You have to figure out what to say to attract investors, but here’s the thing: depending on whether it’s your first fundraise or a follow-on round, you have to take a different approach.

So, what do investors look for in a startup ripe for Series A versus Series B? When should you stop bootstrapping and search for seed funding?

To help us out with these questions, I’ve invited Melody McCloskey, the CEO & Co-Founder of StyleSeat, who has successfully raised $39.9M for her company through 4 separate fundraising rounds, ranging from seed to Series B.

Each round was different, and it wasn’t all smooth sailing for Melody. Hear how she succeeded in her 4 rounds and learn:

• Why it’s important to start bootstrapping before you consider taking capital;
• What investors are looking for at different stages, like seed, Series A, and Series B; and
• How to pitch investors who know very little about your industry.