How engineering leaders can better drive business outcomes & increase alignment between product and engineering w/ Gokul Rajaram #198

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

In this episode, Gokul Rajaram illuminates how eng leaders can better impact business outcomes & become key players in business strategy! We also address strategies for better goal setting & decision making, shifting to a customer-centric structure, recommendations for building alignment between cross-functional groups, positive collaboration between product & engineering, and how to achieve greater productivity.

ABOUT GOKUL RAJARAM

Gokul Rajaram is an investor and company helper. He serves on the boards on Coinbase, Pinterest and The Trade Desk. Most recently, he was an executive at DoorDash, a food ordering platform. Prior to DoorDash, he worked at Block as Product Engineering Lead, where he led several product development teams and served on Block’s executive team. Prior to Block, he served as Product Director of Ads at Facebook, where he helped Facebook transition its advertising business to become mobile-first. Earlier in his career, Gokul served as a Product Management Director for Google AdSense, where he helped launch the product and grow it into a substantial portion of Google’s business. Gokul is also on the board of The Trade Desk and Coinbase. Gokul holds a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur where he received the President's Gold Medal for being class valedictorian. He also holds an M.B.A. from The Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a Master of Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin, where he received the MCD University Fellowship.

SHOW NOTES:

• Why it’s critical for eng leaders to drive business outcomes (2:04)
• How to shift your leadership to impact organizational changes (4:18)
• Facilitating conversations around setting numerical / time-driven goals (6:56)
• Navigating the shift to a customer-centric structure & approach (9:18)
• Recommendations for building around this customer-oriented model (12:04)
• Decision-making strategies when approaching customer outcomes (13:25)
• Understand the role of confidence in the decision-making process (15:40)
• Challenges faced by eng leaders when making this customer-centric shift (18:06)
• How eng leaders can introduce / reinforce accountability in eng orgs (20:11)
• Bridging the gap between PMs & eng leaders (23:07)
• Challenges / dysfunctions that prevent product & engineering alignment (25:01)
• Establishing trust, open dialogue, and mutual respect from the get-go (26:39)
• Communication frameworks that increase alignment between product & eng (32:39)
• How eng leaders can better approach “move fast & break things” demand (35:37)
• Rapid fire questions (40:19)

LINKS AND RESOURCES

• Gokul’s website - Contains a collection of Gokul’s writing that covers a wide range of topics related to product development, hiring, strategy, leadership, and more!
• The Mistborn Saga - Brandon Sanderson’s high fantasy saga which chronicles the efforts of a secret group of Allomancers who attempt to overthrow a dystopian empire and establish themselves in a world covered by ash.

This episode wouldn’t have been possible without the help of our incredible production team:

Patrick Gallagher - Producer & Co-Host

Jerry Li - Co-Host

Noah Olberding - Associate Producer, Audio & Video Editor https://www.linkedin.com/in/noah-olberding/

Dan Overheim - Audio Engineer, Dan’s also an avid 3D printer - https://www.bnd3d.com/

Ellie Coggins Angus - Copywriter, Check out her other work at https://elliecoggins.com/about/