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Hello my beautiful Woman Inc. Listeners! My guest this week is Cathy Polinsky, a seasoned technology executive with over 20 years of industry experience and happens to be a VP of Engineering at Shopify. Cathy was most recently the Chief Technology Officer at Stitch Fix, an online personal shopping service. Cathy helped take Stitch Fix public and led the Engineering, Product and IT organizations through rapid growth. Prior to Stitch Fix, Cathy led a variety of engineering organizations and initiatives at Salesforce for seven years, including her role as SVP of Engineering. She also built robust, large-scale systems and led engineering teams at top companies like Amazon, Yahoo! and Oracle. She is currently an independent board director at Aetion and graduated from Swarthmore College with a special major in computer science and is a member of the Swarthmore College Board of Managers. I am a huge Shopify fan— which I probably mentioned a hundred times in this episode, but it the platform my team and I have used to build a multimillion dollar business and I was so excited to meet the woman who is engineering much of the tech that I get to use every day. Cathy is not only brilliant, but also incredibly down to earth and my favorite part was probably talking about her role as a mom. I hope this conversation brings you the one little bit of inspiration that you need to hear. Now, let's get over to my conversation with Cathy.
A dynamic conversation between 4 current and past VPs of Engineering who cover tons of patterns and anti-patterns about being a VPE! You'll hear how leadership is different in large vs. small companies, mental models to determine your greatest leverage, why you DON’T need to act like an owner, how to put trust into practice when you’re transitioning into a new role, and about the imperfect path to become a VPE. SPEAKERS: CATHY POLINKSY CTO @ Stitch Fix JERRY KRIKHELI VP of Engineering @ Houzz RICHARD WONG SVP of Engineering @ Coursera ERICA LOCKHEIMER VP of Engineering @ Linkedin Learning And CLAIRE LEW CEO @ Know Your Team SHOWNOTES What Cathy means by “the best leaders spot patterns, understand problems, then build systems to solve them” (3:55) Jerry’s view on how the practice of leadership is different at large companies vs. small companies (7:30) Erica’s perspective on how the transition to VPE is different than other eng leadership roles and how to put trust into practice (12:27) Why Richard resonates with “act like an owner” and what it actually looks like in practice as VPE (16:40) Cathy’s top 3 priorities as VPE that determine how she spends her time and how to refocus your team (23:50) Richard's mental model to determine where he has the most leverage for impact and why being technical isn't always about writing code (26:16) Jerry's 3 key hiring traits and how to create an environment where you're the first to know when something's wrong (30:10) The imperfect path to become a VPE and Erica’s advice for engineering leaders with an “unconventional” background (34:01) The common struggle to balance being a problem solver and being the bottleneck as a VPE (39:11) How they cope with and manage stress (42:55) Takeaways (45:00) ELC SUMMIT 2020 Accelerate your growth as an engineering leader at the ELC Summit! Learn from 100+ incredible speakers. Talks cover tons of well-rounded curated topics. There will be opportunities for hands-on practice through workshops (+ other programs), and speed networking with other eng leaders through our own custom-built platform! More details and tickets @ http://elcsummit.com Join our community of software engineering leaders @ https://sfelc.com/ --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/engineeringleadership/message
Ever been promoted into a manager role you didn't feel ready for? Wondering how to make the switch from individual contributor? The Girl Geek X Team has been through it too. For this episode, we're talking manager transitions, from how your job changes as a manager to how to create your manager playbook. Featuring speakers from Stitch Fix, Branch and Ground Truth. Hosted by Angie Chang, Sukrutha Bhadouria and Gretchen DeKnikker. Produced by Rachel Jones. Recorded by Eric Brown. Featuring Cathy Polinsky, Zeesha Currimbhoy and Lauren StevensonSupport the show (https://girlgeek.io/attend/)
As the CTO of Stitch Fix, Cathy Polinsky is using everything from mobile apps to internal software to completely disrupt the world of online shopping. IT Visionaries is brought to you by The Lightning Platform by Salesforce. The Lightning Platform is a leading cloud platform that makes building AI-powered apps faster and easier. With Salesforce, now everyone is empowered to build apps for their organization! Learn more at salesforce.com/buildmobileapps. Salesforce and MIT recently teamed up to create a whitepaper exploring what happens when AI meets CRM. Read: AI Meets CRM: An MIT Tech Review Whitepaper The Mission publishes the #1 newsletter for accelerated learning. Join our community of hundreds of thousands at themission.co/subscribe.
Today we are talking to Cathy Polinsky, the CTO of Stitchfix. And we discuss solving problems by seeing the bigger picture, staying humble with a team first mentality and how delivering results in small situations leads to delivering in larger situations down the road. All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!
Stitch Fix is a company that recommends packages of clothing based on a set of preferences that the user defines and updates over time. Stitch Fix’s software platform includes the website, data engineering infrastructure, and warehouse software. Stitch Fix has over 5000 employees, including a large team of engineers. Cathy Polinsky is the CTO of The post Stitch Fix Engineering with Cathy Polinsky appeared first on Software Engineering Daily.
In this episode, we discuss an Einstein opinion article removed from the Oracle blog, the pitfalls of adding workflow rules in production, organizing trigger logic, Steve Balmer's comments on buying Salesforce.com, and the recent Macbook Pro product.Salesforce Says Einstein, I Say FrankensteinThe Best-Performing CEOs in the WorldGeorge Lucas' museum designs for L.A. and S.F.: A first look at competing plansOracle Deal to Purchase NetSuite Provides a Reason to CelebrateSteve Ballmer: Salesforce Is 'Too Expensive'Stitch Fix has hired top Salesforce engineering exec Cathy Polinsky as CTOAfter Apple's Disappointing MacBook Pro Refresh, What's an Engineer to do?Amazon Cloud Posts Another Blowout QuarterApple just told the world it has no idea who the Mac is forAnother New MacBook Pro Problem: Tests Reveal Compatibility Issues With Current Thunderbolt 3 Devices