Track Overview
“Don’t Mess Up The Culture!”—Scaling with Sanity
Why do small, tight-knit, high-performing companies become large, anonymous, inefficient juggernauts? Is there any way to avoid the silos, fiefdoms, duplication, frustration, duplication, and crazy expense policies of Big Enterprise?
In this track we invite veterans of effective scaling to share their stories, advice, cautionary tales and embarrassing secrets, always keeping in mind the default survivor bias advice of “We have no idea, it just sort of worked!”
From this track
Building and Scaling a High-Performance Culture
As the research in Accelerate and in the DevOps Handbook shows, high-performing organizations deliver more rapidly, more repeatably, and more reliably. And far more important than any tool or technology, it is the culture that differentiates a nimble and innovative organization from a lumbering...
Randy Shoup
VP Engineering @WeWork
People Are More Complex Than Computers
Equal Experts is a consultancy founded and run by software people. We try to take the principles we use when building products and apply them to building a company. In just over a decade we’ve grown to an 1300 person network with many great clients. We’ve learned that there are some cultural...
Mairead O'Connor
Partner and Engagement Manager @EqualExperts
Variety: The Secret of Scale
When we talk about “scale,” the conversation tends to be restricted to talk about scaling the size of the organization. What if negative consequences of scale eg silos, frustration, and even cumbersome expense policies are actually a consequence of attempting to scale the size of an...
Cat Swetel
Agile Methods Coach & Advocate for Woman in Tech
Discovering Culture Through Artifacts
Congratulations! You've just got off the phone with the recruiter and you got the job. You can't wait to start and show them what a great engineer you are. This is the opportunity you've been looking for. You love the position, you've met the team and you understand the...
Mike McGarr
Engineering Leader, Frontend Infrastructure @Slack
Culture Open Space
Ian Robins
Why Culture Change Can Blow Up in Your Face, and How to Prevent It
Ever wondered why changing culture is so difficult? And why anyone trying to turn culture around can rapidly burnout? Or why every work culture eventually seems to degrade and dysfunction over time? Are you wanting to make a change to culture but want to avoid the usual...
Katherine Kirk
Independent Consultant - Transformation in Tech
Speakers from this track
Randy Shoup
VP Engineering @WeWork
Randy is a 25-year veteran of Silicon Valley, and has worked as a senior technology leader and executive at companies ranging from small startups, to mid-sized places, to eBay and Google. Randy is currently VP Engineering at WeWork in San Francisco. He is particularly passionate about the nexus...
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Mairead O'Connor
Partner and Engagement Manager @EqualExperts
Mairead is a member of the Equal Experts leadership team and is responsible for managing relationships with some of Equal Expert's largest clients. She works with high-performing software development teams to effectively solve business problems by delivering sustainable, maintainable...
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Cat Swetel
Agile Methods Coach & Advocate for Woman in Tech
Cat Swetel specializes in using Lean techniques to increase the agility and adaptability of large and long-historied technology organizations. Specifically, she has worked with several Fortune 100 companies in highly regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare. Cat has been...
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Mike McGarr
Engineering Leader, Frontend Infrastructure @Slack
Mike McGarr is an engineering leader who resides in the heart of Silicon Valley. Mike currently leads Slack’s Frontend Infrastructure team, focused on building a great JavaScript client. Prior to Slack, Mike lead Netflix’s Developer Productivity team, who was focused on building tools and...
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Katherine Kirk
Independent Consultant - Transformation in Tech
Katherine Kirk describes herself as a ‘student of difficulty’ and specifically focusses on how to transform ‘hell scenarios’. She specializes in adapting new ideas, solutions, lenses, and practical techniques from eastern philosophy in order to help reduce difficulty and increase...
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Track Host
Dan North
Originator of BDD
Track Host
Dan North
Originator of BDD
Dan North uses his deep technical and organisational knowledge to help CIOs, business and software teams to deliver quickly and successfully. He puts people first and finds simple, pragmatic solutions to business and technical problems, often using lean and agile techniques. With over twenty...
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