The Engineering Leadership Podcast

In this episode, we’re joined by Eric Ries, creator of The Lean Startup, to discuss insights from his latest book, Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad… and How Great Companies Stay Great. Eric shares what inspired him to write the book and why we need to move beyond and redefine what true profit looks like. He shares the history behind businesses transitioning from serving public interests to shareholder primacy and why leaving behind a people-first business approach can actually reduce profitability. Additionally, Eric discusses financial gravity, the “harder is easier” principle, and how these practices connect to AI & current engineering leadership challenges.

 

ABOUT ERIC RIES

Over the last two decades, Eric Ries’s ideas about continuous innovation, long-term thinking, governance, and market reform have reshaped company building and management practices. He is the creator of the Lean Startup method, and the author of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Startup; The Leader’s Guide; and The Startup Way.

As a founder, he has put his own ideas into practice with The Long-Term Stock Exchange (LTSE); Answer.AI, an AI R&D lab; Virgil, a legal services startup; and IMVU. On The Eric Ries Show, he talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, and executives building for the long-term. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three children.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

The inspiration behind Eric’s new book Incorruptible (5:22)

What it means to redefine profit (8:03)

Understanding profit considerations like externality, ethics, and inputs (10:44)

Why human life / value can never be an input factor of production (12:31)

The history behind business practices benefitting the public (15:00)

When businesses transitioned to shareholder primacy over public interest (17:16)

Navigating the tension between mission vs. fiduciary responsibility (21:01)

The role of financial gravity & shareholder primacy in the Silicon Valley bank story (25:04)

Using Eric’s book to build a mission-driven roadmap (29:12)

How committing to a principled way of business can drive profitability (31:15)

An example of the principle “harder is easier” (33:40)

How this connects to AI & emerging eng leadership challenges (36:53)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Incorruptible: Why Good Companies Go Bad and How Great Companies Stay Great - Drawing on two decades of work with founders, CEOs, and investors, best-selling author Eric Ries reveals the forces that make companies vulnerable to destruction from within and without. Then he offers solutions that safeguard against them for the long-term. Incorruptible is the blueprint for companies that will prosper and endure without losing their soul. Its lessons and tools are designed to help founders, executives, investors, and citizens of all kinds build organizations – and a society – truly aligned with human flourishing.

https://news.theleanstartup.com/ - Eric’s newsletter with ideas about how and why to build companies focused on human flourishing — and stories of the people who are doing it.

The Eric Ries Show - Founder, entrepreneur, and best-selling author of The Lean Startup Eric Ries discusses how to build profitable companies for the long-term benefit of society. Ries talks with world-class technologists, thought leaders, executives, and others working to create a new ecosystem of trustworthy organizations with limitless potential for growth and a deep commitment to purpose. Together, they uncover the tools and methods to ensure the next generation of companies are designed to maximize human flourishing for generations.

 

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/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

In this episode, Geddes Munson (SVP of Engineering @ Affirm) joins us to discuss operational / engineering excellence, scaling, and AI-native transformation! We explore Affirm’s approach to operational and engineering excellence and how a 2024 outage became a turning point in refining that focus. We deconstruct “AI retooling week”, the internal tools it inspired (including an incident tracing system), how the AI-native transition is impacting operational / engineering excellence, and how to connect these projects to business goals. Plus, we take a look at their early work building in agentic commerce, infrastructure decisions they made years ago setting them up for success now, how they’re thinking about designing for agent-first experiences.

 

ABOUT GEDDES MUNSON

Geddes Munson serves as Affirm’s SVP, Engineering. Previously, Geddes held several engineering leadership roles at Affirm, including oversight of the merchant engineering group, where he was responsible for the development of Affirm’s solutions for key partners including Amazon, Shopify and Walmart. Prior to Affirm, Geddes held various technical leadership roles at rapidly growing startups including Mixpanel, SingleStore and EasyPost. He received his B.A. from Haverford College, where he started the Linux club on campus. Geddes lives in New Jersey with his wife and three children.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

Defining operational excellence & what it looks like @ Affirm (4:36)

Understand why your company / product matters to your customers (8:11)

Key pivot points around engineering excellence @ Affirm (11:10)

Creating a genuine culture change of operational / engineering excellence (14:27)

Adopting agentic models @ Affirm (16:30)

Navigating the balance between transformation, safety & reliability (18:30)

Affirm’s AI retooling week & hackathon setup (20:57)

How the hackathon helped quickly change the company culture (23:15)

Ensuring your practices serve your overall organizational vision & goals (26:11)

Insights on scaling & increasing CICD investment @ Affirm (28:28)

Approaches to building agentic commerce products (30:11)

Strategies for building an agent-first experience (33:33)

Bridging the gap between engineering & business goals / outcomes (35:44)

Rapid fire questions (38:46)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in History – and How It Shattered a Nation - New York Times bestselling author Andrew Ross Sorkin takes readers inside the chaos of the crash, behind the scenes of a raging battle between Wall Street and Washington and the larger-than-life characters whose ambition and naivete in an endless boom led to disaster. The dizzying highs and brutal lows of this era eerily mirror today’s world—where markets soar, political tensions mount, and the fight over financial influence plays out once again.

Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - a best-selling 2010 memoir by former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh detailing his entrepreneurial journey and outlines his core philosophy: building a phenomenal corporate culture and focusing on the happiness of employees and customers ultimately drives long-term profits and business success.

 

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/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Andrew McNamara, Director of Applied Machine Learning @ Shopify, joins the ELC podcast to share insights on building agentic platforms at scale, like Sidekick, that must keep reliability for its users at the forefront. Andrew describes the building philosophy behind Shopify and what it means to cultivate a culture of prototype-first while prioritizing hiring early-stage talent. We cover Sidekick’s development journey and how user feedback impacted its product vision, why evaluation is so important for determining ground truth sets, and the benefit of user-driven use cases. Andrew also dissects how they went about making product design decisions, such as building proactive agents and identifying subagent specializations.

 

ABOUT ANDREW MCNAMARA

Andrew McNamara is Director of Applied Machine Learning at Shopify, where he leads the team behind Shopify Sidekick, an AI co-founder that gives merchants access to the e-commerce expertise they need to run and grow their business. With 16 years of experience building AI assistants, he brings a rare combination of applied research depth and production-scale thinking to some of the hardest problems in AI: getting systems to work reliably for people who depend on them. Andrew's work pushes Shopify to measure AI quality by whether it achieves what the user set out to do, a core standard in building AI that merchants trust. Outside Shopify, he runs Setting North, a small Canadian maple syrup brand built on the same platform he helps make for everyone else.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

How Shopify utilizes reflexive AI & Andrew’s building philosophy (2:38)

Developing a prototype-first company culture (5:07)

Andrew’s reflections on building AI-enabled projects like Sidekick at scale (7:25)

Translating customer surveys into Sidekick’s product vision (9:34)

Key inflection points while scaling out Sidekick (11:23)

Strategies for evaluation / building a ground truth set (13:26)

Analyzing the good & bad within ground truth sets (15:27)

Shopify’s system openness model to drive user-discovered use cases (17:47)

How subagents fit into the Sidekick’s model (19:55)

Prioritization conversations around subagent specializations (23:06)

Designing an agent with high-impact prompt optimization (27:22)

Considerations for building highly reliable systems (29:40)

Andrew’s perspective on latency (31:24)

Rapid fire questions (33:49)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Cradle - a New York Times best-selling series from Will Wight following a character's growth as he goes from one of the weakest users of his world's magic to among the strongest. The series features an original magic system inspired by Chinese cultivation and martial arts novels, with a heavy emphasis on anime-style super-powered battles.

 

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/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Inbal Shani (CPO and Head of R&D @ Twilio) deconstructs the transformation of the R&D org at Twilio! We explore the shift from a GM-led model to a unified platform strategy and “why structure must always follow strategy.” Inbal shares her framework for moving from output-focused metrics to input goals, prioritizing “time-to-value,” and the nuances of measuring AI products. We discuss using "R&D roadshows" as a strategic company transformation tool and why engineering leaders must master product positioning. We also dive into mental models for future-proofing your business, from "working backwards" to solve customer problems, to embedding systems thinking into the DNA of your engineering team, and critical questions to identify and optimize decisions around your company’s moat. 

 

ABOUT INBAL SHANI

As Chief Product Officer, Inbal leads Twilio's R&D organization, encompassing product, engineering, and R&D operations. She is dedicated to driving platform-wide innovation, empowering customers, and delivering transformative, customer-focused solutions.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

Catalysts for Twilio's R&D transformation and the shift away from organizational silos (2:49)

Strategy Drives Structure: The lightbulb moment at a strategy offsite that demanded structural change to execute vision (5:14)

Why structure must follow strategy and creating a "change-constant" culture (7:23)

Implementing the “working backwards” methodology and the internal power of the PRFAQ (13:52)

Tactical ways to filter customer signals and find real unmet problems versus feature requests (16:35)

Shifting from output-focused goals to input goals and prioritizing "Time to Value" (18:35)

Using weekly product reviews to align metrics with qualitative customer feedback (21:34)

Measuring AI Products: Why AI products require behavior-based measurement instead of traditional binary testing (23:24)

Building security by design with layered protection for AI-generated code environments (26:09)

Mental models for future-proofing your business by acting as a "fortune teller" for needs (28:45)

The R&D Roadshow: Enabling the entire company on new ways of working through storytelling (32:28)

Why engineering leaders must master product positioning to bridge the gap to market (38:33)

Relatable storytelling: Explaining Twilio’s value to your parents to sharpen your pitch (41:47)

Rapid Fire Questions (43:14)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion - In this lively journey through human psychology, bestselling author and creator of the You Are Not So Smart podcast David McRaney investigates how minds change--and how to change minds.

 

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/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Rajat Monga, CVP AI Frameworks @ Microsoft, joins the podcast to discuss his leadership and founder journey, from Google Brain / Tensorflow to inference.io and back to Microsoft. He dissects what it means to refound vs. start from scratch, the value of the open source community, and strategies for discovering what problem to solve when going the startup route. We also cover how to determine your users’ hidden incentives and what that means for both product development & marketing, along with navigating the balance between a product’s usefulness and consumers’ willingness to pay for it. Additionally, Rajat shares about what he’s currently up to at Microsoft and the emerging ML / AI technologies he’s most excited about.

 

ABOUT RAJAT MONGA

Rajat Monga is responsible for enabling an efficient AI stack at Microsoft from cloud to the edge. Before joining Microsoft, Rajat was founder and CEO of Inference.io, a smart analytics platform powered by AI. During his decade-long tenure at Google, he co-founded and led TensorFlow, and was a founding member of Google Brain. He’s built out and led many engineering teams, and designed large scale distributed systems including web scale crawling and eBay’s search engine. Rajat is a graduate of IIT Delhi.

 

Unblocked: The context engine your coding agents are missing.

Give your coding agents the context your best engineers have.

Your agents can read code, but they don’t know how your team works. Rules and MCPs give access to information but not understanding. That’s why you still have to tell them where to look and what to look for.

Unblocked gives your agents the history, conventions, and decisions behind your code so they generate mergeable output without the back and forth. It automatically surfaces the right context for every task, so agents stay on track without the set up tax or the correction loops.

getunblocked.com/elc

 

SHOW NOTES:

Rajat’s journey with Google Brain: Scaling deep learning from single PCs to thousands of machines with Jeff Dean & Andrew Ng (2:57)

Moving from Google Brain to TensorFlow: Why new hardware and architectures required a total system rebuild (6:02)

The "refounding" question: Choosing between starting from scratch or evolving an existing system (8:33)

Why Google open-sourced TensorFlow to set industry standards and avoid supporting external copies (10:16)

How open-source enabled global innovation, from Japanese cucumber sorting to African plant health (12:02)

Transitioning as a leader: Why Rajat left Google during the height of TensorFlow to found a company (13:57)

The discovery phase at inference.io: Navigating the pivot from IoT into solving data analytics gaps (15:31)

Lessons on PMF: Moving beyond a "useful" product to one that solves a truly critical customer pain point (16:52)

Why habits are harder to change than technology and the challenge of competing with established workflows (21:02)

Marketing strategies: Tailoring personas for top-down prestige versus bottom-up personal efficiency (23:19)

Deciding when to stop: A founder’s framework for re-evaluating bets based on current knowledge (24:57)

Rajat’s new role at Microsoft: Overseeing Edge infrastructure and large-scale Cloud AI inference (27:46)

Dissecting ML edge strategy: Using ONNX Runtime to unify AI performance across Windows, iOS, and Android (30:02)

Edge AI trends: Shifting from experimental models to production models optimized for cost and privacy (31:20)

The future of Edge: How on-device processing will power AI in robotics, smart glasses, and wearables (33:23)

Scaling inference: Treating multi-GPU clusters like a distributed operating system for AI models (34:25)

Rapid fire questions (37:45)

 

LINKS AND RESOURCES

Epic Disruptions: 11 Innovations That Shaped Our Modern World - Innovation expert Scott Anthony masterfully weaves together the fascinating stories behind history's most transformative disruptions—from ninth-century China to twenty-first-century Silicon Valley. Through eleven pivotal innovations, including the printing press, mass-produced automobiles, the McDonald's revolutionary food system, and the iPhone, Anthony reveals the hidden patterns behind world-changing breakthroughs.

 

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/

Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.