Corey Gilmore

It's probably no surprise to anyone that knows me well, that I love self-development podcasts. One of my favorite is Ramit Sethi's I will teach you to be rich (aka Money for Couples). I recently got this email newsletter When I ask people what their Rich Life looks like, most people say something like: "I want to do what I want, when I want."   Success is rarely a dollar amount. Most people want a lifestyle. In the workplace, this means having a flexible job.    Which might look like: -Never having to do the daily commute to the office -Having a schedule that lines up with when you’re most productive -Taking a spin class in the middle of the day -Picking up your kids from school every afternoon -Living in different countries for several months at a time If this describes your idea of a great job, Pinterest is for you. Check out the 75 open roles in engineering: https://lnkd.in/gapDB_u3 At Pinterest, we hire smart people and trust them to do a good job. We don't track how often you badge into a building or how many days you show up in the office. We care about the business impact your code generates. We know that in person collaboration is useful, and we come in the office about 1/week. This isn't an unbreakable rule that you will get punished for violating. We want you to be your best you and to do your best work. We believe that flexibility enhances creativity and productivity. If you see something that calls to you, reach out and I am happy to answer questions.

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Looking forward to talking with Jeff Harris, who's been through it here at Yotascale. From the why and what of how GenAI can impact your product and business, to the how (and how not) of smart architecture and implementation, it should be an excellent conversation.

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Every leader of a Tech Organization should strive for making that org better: More productive, more customer-focused, more fun to work in. 🌟 There is tons of things you can do (and equally many to avoid) when it comes to: ➡ structuring your org, ➡ aligning its teams around common goals, ➡ dealing with technical challenges, ➡ getting ready for leveraging AI, ➡ leading your org through changes. As also leadership is most fun when it's done together in a group, I will host a full-day workshop "How to Build and Run a Successful Tech Organization". 😃 In a group of like-minded tech leads we will discuss the above topics at Digitale Leute Summit 2024 in Cologne. A few spots are left. Get yours now at https://lnkd.in/dXyFnvGi (The discount code "DLS24JAN20" gives you 20% off. 😉) 🗓 14.11.2024 📍 STARTPLATZ Cologne ⌚ 9:00 - 17:00 Have a look at the several other amazingly valuable workshops as well: - Design Sprint for AI solutions with Markus Maass and Lars Becker - Product Discovery workshop with Frederik Vosberg and Timothy Krechel - OKR workshop with Christina Lange - Effective Product Strategy workshop with Tim Herbig - Masterclass on Team Topologies with Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais (Team Topologies) 🇺🇦 🇵🇸 from Team Topologies #dlsummit

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I've been toying with this idea for the past few weeks: there's a limited number of production lines of code a team can have per engineer before quality starts to suffer through unexpected bugs or reliability issues. Let's call it team's carrying capacity :-) Teams can increase their carrying capacity by investing in testing and integration practices, reducing model complexity, and as their engineers learn more about the domain and the tech stack. Carrying capacity probably drops temporarily as you add more people to the team or add more external dependencies to the project. This framing is interesting because it opens up interesting trade-off discussions as: * is adding engineers to the team worth it? our carrying capacity will drop for the next 6mos so we won't do new stuff or will start seeing bugs in existing stuff if we were already at capacity * not deprecating a project will either decrease our quality or prevent us from building new features * is it worth adding a dependency to the project instead of doing it ourselves? It feels intuitive, but obviously needs more digging. I'd be curious to see if tools like Sourcegraph or Swarmia could be used to start measuring the ratio of production lines of code / engineer and see if there's something useful there. Has anyone seen attempts at measuring something similar?

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We're looking for a senior-staff PM now at Honeycomb, who will drive and own a multi-year vision for a net-new, permanent and significant expansion of Honeycomb's product surface area: https://lnkd.in/g2sM_TfC I’ve sat in this role for 3.5 years now, on and off, so you’ll be inheriting a lot of my regretful decisions. But I’m here to help you navigate that! It involves big data (for real), deep OSS involvement, lots of customers who love the product, and a great team to boot. If you like the idea of thinking through how you’ll turn 10M events per second into 100k, without breaking the bank, and making it as semi-automatic as possible, without losing signal on that data, and building a compelling UI that lets people build and monitor this stuff, this might be up your alley! Wanna talk with tons of customers and spicy sales engineers who have to sometimes commit code crimes to make stuff work, and then tell you about it? Wanna make painful prioritization decisions? Wanna find a way to execute on a multi-year vision and not get lost along the way? Click the link above. Wanna eat shit in front of a customer whose exact set of constraints violates every tradeoff decision you made? And then go back to them 4 months later with the good news that you’ve fixed it all? Come say hi! Wanna try to wrap your head around someone's perceived notions of how observability works, and find creative ways to reorient their worldview? Hi hello please apply. Wanna get deeply involved in the #opentelemetry community, become a core contributor, attend lots of community events, and be continuously infused with customer problems and feedback and also overall industry directions? You know what to do. Wanna work with a very product-minded engineering team who will push you to get stuff done? Wanna be a part of a group that is usually fast, usually right on the first go of things, and isn't afraid to try things and maybe pull them back if they're not working? Wanna have fun too? Clicky clicky.

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One-on-ones have been one of the tools I’ve relied on most consistently as a manager. They’re not just about updates—they’re about building trust, aligning on priorities, and creating space for real conversations that drive growth. In my latest post, I share insights from over 1,500 of these meetings, inspired by Andy Grove’s High Output Management and my own experiences in engineering leadership. It’s a practical look at how to make one-on-ones a cornerstone of effective management. If you want to make your one-on-ones truly impactful, take a look: 👉 https://lnkd.in/g-R2uhVv #EngineeringLeadership #OneOnOnes #Management #TechLeadership #CareerDevelopment #EmployeeEngagement

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Last Tuesday, Malsgufa, our legacy CMS backend, was shut down. This milestone for BI's Tech and Product team culminated years of planning, effort, and execution. Malsgufa's first commit was on July 25, 2014, leading to 5,186 commits across nearly 30 repositories. Built and maintained by scores of engineers, its deprecation represents significant cost savings (20 production replicas, 3 instances of Solr, and an insane number of Zookeeper instances!), reduced security risk, and the elimination of an often-blamed boogeyman. The journey began in January 2020. Our challenge: moving traffic off Malsgufa without rebuilding everything in Muse. Initially, we tried GraphQL as an intermediary between Viking and our services, but progress was limited by Viking's complex Angular/Vue architecture. In January 2023, we pivoted to the strangler fig pattern with a shim. This approach proved far more effective – all Malsgufa traffic went through the shim first, with verbose logging to track unhandled requests. Meanwhile, we built Story Versioning API (SVAPI), incorporating lessons learned from Malsgufa's limitations around history and publishing states. We ran four major migrations (stories, custom pages, slideshows, and videos), building support in Muse and shimmed compatibility for Viking. Traffic gradually decreased from a torrent to a trickle, leading to the gloriously uneventful shutdown. Next, we will deprecate Viking by Q2 2025, unifying our users in the Muse ecosystem to create the industry's most innovative CMS. Special thanks to the entire Story Creation team: Chase Gruber, Chris Speziale, Daniel Arita, Danny Feliz, Dasha Lary, Dawin Camillo, Eric Saam, Frederica Chen, John Laslo, Kelly Filush, Morgan Cohn, Sarah Pai, Tyler Greenfield! Thanks also to DaD, Engagement, Helpfulness, Cloud Engineering, Test Engineering, and Operational Excellence! Finally, we recognize Malsgufa itself. Developed as a unified CMS backend to support Business Insider's expansion into new markets, it served our global newsroom reliably for a decade, publishing millions of stories despite no major changes in recent years. While it became less sustainable as our business evolved, it deserves our respect. Thank you, Malsgufa. May you rust in peace.

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A handy visual guide for Product folks about to contemplate and communicate, well, just about anything. As with so much in our domain, simple at surface, elaborate to execute, but priceless when proper.

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If you're investing in building the expertise of your employees, it'll enable you to run a leaner, and more collaborative organization. A great way to invest in building expertise is through the lens of retrospecting past "uh-ohs", incidents, or unexpected situations. However, in order to do this, it's important that there aren't just engineers in the room of a post-incident review. You'll need have representatives from various teams related to a contributing factor of the incident both involved AND talking in the incident review. Invest in facilitation of this, keep this as a habit, and over time you'll notice your culture shifts: from various departments operating on their own agendas ➡️to one organization: understanding each others' worlds a little more deeply, marching in lockstep, and less reliance on individual expertise.

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When Klaviyo recruited me three years ago to help architect a system that would deliver hundreds of millions of email messages per hour on behalf of their customers, I thought, "Wow. That's a lot of mail. How could I *not* build that?" Now that we're doing it for real, I still think, "Wow. That's a lot of mail. We *built* that." $3 billion+ in Klaviyo-attributed value. 420 million messages sent in a single hour on #BlackFriday. And over 15,000 customers having their best day ever (🙌) on Klaviyo.  Read our full BFCM By The Numbers report to learn how Klaviyo customers achieved recording-breaking results this #BFCM.

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i have been thinking about the way a solutions design is really a direct mapping of the org that produces it. Thinking of all the unnecessary complexity introduced to reinforce team boundaries and protect rigid reporting structures... I was just introduced to this: https://lnkd.in/e7AMtkdd

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Feeling lost in your engineering leadership journey? Let me share a quick story: I once joined a company as a tech lead. I was in love with the tech stack, but I later discovered they were not solving any meaningful problems. I realized I had no direction, no clear roadmap, no north star. Like many of us, I was stuck. I then came across a mentor who introduced me to the concept of "career clarity". So, What's career clarity?🤔 It's simply knowing what you want and why you want it. It fuels you to take action, learn and grow continuously. With career clarity, you will: ✅ Have a sense of direction ✅ Make better decisions ✅ Know what to say no to ✅ Prioritize and focus on the right things. How can you achieve career clarity? 👉 Evaluate your own values, strengths and goals 👉 Talk to people who have career clarity 👉 Take calculated risks and explore 👉 Get a career coach With career clarity, you will transform from feeling stuck to feeling confident and fulfilled in your engineering leadership journey. ----- P.S. Click the link below when you read this to sign-up to my newsletter Rise Above. It's read by 10,000 people including Fortune 500 execs, founders, engineers, and investors from Silicon Valley to Wall Street. https://lnkd.in/ewb_2PhU

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on hiring an ea While companies like Athena and Wing are popular options, they come with challenges I didn't like: * Time zone differences * Cultural gaps * High initial costs ($3000+/month) Instead, leverage your network. Tell everyone you know that you're looking for an EA. You'll be surprised how many qualified candidates are already in your circle. Plus, working with someone who understands your culture and timezone is invaluable. Two crucial tips for success: Document everything. Create clear SOPs using tools like Notion or Loom. This makes onboarding smoother and sets clear expectations. Start small and scale up. Begin with a capped number of hours at a set rate. This lets you build trust and understand your needs. (Trust me - once you find someone great like my EA Maria, you'll wish you had more time with them!) Bottom line: Start with who you know, really just ask everyone for referrals first, document well, and scale gradually

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Great interview by MarTech Series with Actian's own, Jennifer Jackson! 🌟 Read about her journey from chemical engineering to CMO, her insights on B2B SaaS marketing, and insights on using data and AI for success. #Actian #Leadership #MarTechSeries

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Question for executives: if at the snap of your fingers your entire organization could embody the lessons of a single book, what book would that be?

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How do you keep engineering teams aligned with business goals while embracing innovation? Ada, the world’s leading customer service automation company, found the answer with Jellyfish. When pivoting to a generative-first strategy, Ada faced a key challenge: balancing innovation with supporting existing customers. They needed clarity on how their teams worked and invested their time. With Jellyfish, they achieved: 🚀 A 14% improvement in cycle times 🎯 Ranked in the top 97th percentile for “days with commits” 📈 Over 10% growth in technical investments “Jellyfish has become our go-to dashboard to understand how we’re operating as a team at a glance,” says William Mora, Head of Engineering at Ada. Now, Ada’s team is striking the perfect balance—focusing on reliability, experimentation, and investments that drive their business forward. Read the full story. Link in comments👇

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This is a concept I talked about in my latest conference talk. tl;dr When everyone focuses on solving the user's problem, everyone helps each other and everyone wins.

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