Bharat Mediratta is the first Coinbase Fellow. Previously, he was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, CTO at AltSchool, and CTO at Dropbox.

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We focus this episode on the role of a senior technical individual contributor in a technology company and contrast that with the role of a technology executive (like a CTO) in a public company. We talk about how to explore what the right position is for someone, what drives their success, how to drive impact as a technical leader, and the trade-offs that have to be explored by both senior individual contributors and leaders.

Highlights

01:00 - The story behind switching from a CTO back to an individual contributor.

08:00 - What does a director/VP/CTO’s day look like? How do they drive impact?

14:00 - If a manager has to make effective decisions and has input from individual contributors, why do they need to have a computer science background? Why do tech companies frown on hiring non-technical (MBA) leaders?

21:00 - A manager is certainly thinking about business priorities, and a senior technical individual contributor also has to think about business priorities. But how much? What’s their approach in driving towards business outcomes? How much backing does a technical leader need from management in order to be effective?

28:00 - When should Heads of Engineering think about hiring senior technical individual contributors? At what stage/what shape of problems should they be dealing with?

32:00 - The initial transition from senior engineering at Google to CTO of AltSchool

47:00 - For the next person exploring a move from IC to management: how to go about exploring the move? What should they keep in mind?

Episode source