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Stories from VPs of Engineering

Interview with Saminda Wijegunawardena, VP, Engineering @ Box

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Location: San Francisco Bay Area
Current Role: VP of Engineering

What is your background and how did you get into management?

My background in both management and engineering management is pretty unconventional. In college, I started out as a business major. After taking electives my first year, I took an accounting course in my second year and quickly realized that it was not for me. Ultimately, I took a bunch of science and philosophy of science courses that really reinvigorated me so I decided to go pre-med.

Interview with Lei Yang, VP of Engineering at Quora

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Location: Mountain View, CA
Current role: VP of engineering at Quora

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I was born and raised in China. I got my Bachelors degree from Peking University and then came to the US for grad school. I started my first full time job at Google after I got my PhD. After seven years at Google, I joined Quora. In my professional life,

Interview with Mike Oliver, VP of Product Engineering at Runkeeper / ASICS Digital

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Location: Boston, MA
Current Role: VP of Product Engineering at Runkeeper / ASICS Digital

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I have a traditional technical background with a Computer Science degree from Northeastern University.  When I graduated, I can’t say I thought much about leadership or my career path; my goal was simply to work on interesting projects and solve hard problems.  I was tapped for my first management role at a reasonably early stage in my career,

Interview with Brent Baisley, VP of Engineering at Ticket Evolution

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Current role: VP of Engineering at Ticket Evolution
Location: Greater New York City Area

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I’ve been in tech for about 30 years now. I’ve been a Programmer (front and back), Sysadmin, Network Admin, DBA, Technician, and worked the Help Desk. I’ve always loved connecting the dots and understanding how things work end to end.

I slipped into the role of Tech Lead on a number of jobs,

Interview with Nat Fast, VP Software Development at Viscira

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Location: San Francisco
Current Role: VP Software Development, Viscira

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I have always been a leader. From my childhood to today it has been my fortune to see people as they are and deal with them from that perspective. The good, the bad and the in-between. Organizing, directing, conceptualizing, playing. I have always taken a humanist’s perspective.

From Wikipedia: Humanism is a philosophical and ethical stance that emphasizes the value and agency of human beings,

Interview with Michael Lopp, VP of Engineering @slackhq

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Location: Los Gatos, CA
Current Role: VP of Engineering @slackhq

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I’ve been working in the Silicon Valley my entire life. In order, I worked at Borland, Symantec, Netscape, Icarian, Apple, Palantir, Pinterest, and now at Slack.

I got into management at Netscape. Tony asked me to lead a team and I said “Yes” not knowing what he was asking.

Interview with Dr. James Stanier, VP Engineering at Brandwatch

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Location: Brighton, UK
Current role: VP Engineering, Brandwatch

What’s your background and how did you get into management?

I did Computer Science as an undergraduate and then took an interest in compilers, which became the subject of my Ph.D. After completing my thesis, I joined a fairly small company called Brandwatch in my university town, and 6 years and 3 rounds of VC funding later, I find myself as one of the senior engineering managers in the department.

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