cto.coffee - Let's talk humans & tech

cto.coffee podcast is back! And I'm re-starting the podcast with a truly special guest! I spoke with Lena Reinhard about the concept of 'first teams' for leaders - what they are, why they're important, and how to implement them effectively

In this episode I talked to Abadesi Osunsade, the CEO and founder of hustlecrew, and also the VP of global community and belonging at Brandwatch. We talk about all kinds of aspects of belonging in the workplace.

A conversation with Vivian Acquah, an independent workplace wellness advocate from Amsterdam. Vivian's mission is to make the world a better place for all and future generations. She tackles that by humanizing the workplace.

In this episode, I spoke with Jessica Greene and we talk about a subject dear to my heart and what keeps our podcast going. Coffee. It's time there's an episode that lives up to the name, and Jessica helped do just that! We talked about how Jessica fell in love with coffee and became a barista, the history of coffee, the roasting process, brewing and so much more. Jessica is a Software Developer at Ecosia and a Co-Organiser at PyLadies Berlin. So of course, we also talk a bit about tech and community building.

In this episode, I spoke with Tobias Leonhardt. Tobias helps organizations scale by coaching them to nurture trusting cultures and helping them establish scalable organizational models, where individuals are trusted with high autonomy.

In this episode I spoke with James Bedford. James started his career in construction, later became a self taught Frontend Developer and is now an Engineering Manager at Monzo.

In this episode I spoke with Joanna Moćko-Łazarewicz and Beren Van Daele, from Isle of IT, a human centric company rooted in the testing community in Europe and the organizers of the ITMatters conference series.

For this episode I spoke with April Matias, a Senior Quality Assurance Engineer from Berlin. April has a background in arts and humanities, worked in quality assurance for several years and has recently taken a developer bootcamp to expand her knowledge and skills.

For episode 10 I spoke to Daniel Jilg, a freelance CTO and developer. The main theme of our conversation was building team trust. Daniel shares his learnings and mistakes as a leader and CTO. We learn about his background of how he has grown from these learnings and used them to become a better leader.

In this episode, I spoke with Stephen Lewis, CTO at Palatinate Tech at the time of the recording. While we touch on a lot of topics, I think the main themes of our conversation are being intentional in your leadership, failing and the multiple benefits you get by building a trusted network of peers.

In this episode, I spoke with Alex Schladebeck, CEO at BREDEX GmbH, explored her working hypothesis of empathic management, which she shortly describes as "servant leadership with hearts".

For this episode, I had the honour to sit with Yulia, who works on Firefox's Developer Tools at Mozilla and is also Co-Chair of Ecma's TC39 in 2019. We talk about symbolic and observational thinking, what it is, how it relates to software development and how it can shape the way we think about learning and teaching.

Marcus Blankenship, long-time management and leadership coach, agreed to join me for a chat about Engineering Management. About 'management as a profession and leadership as a skill' and to discuss the shift in Engineering Management over the last years, what this new or not-so-new kind of Engineering Management is, what it's practices are and some opinions and pointers where it's coming from.

This time David Morgantini joined me for a chat about engineering ladders and career growth frameworks. David is currently building SkillsMap, a company focused on creating tools that reduce the cost of creating a growth culture in organizations.

Felicitas Kugland joined me for a chat. Feli is a Principal Product Engineer at an agency. And while that title sounds like you've heard it before at other companies, Feli and her employer are interpreting that position in a very interesting way. Besides working on client projects, Feli's is effectively working as a Developer Relations person, as one of the first in the company, and as such is also building the meaning of Developer Relations for the company.

A chat with Christian Uhl about the why, what and how of 1on1s, the practice of two people (usually a manager and their direct reports) meeting regularly for various reasons.

A relaxed chat about interviewing with Raimo Radczewski, Freelance Software Developer and Coach from Berlin.