Interview with Rukmini Reddy, VP of Engineering at Abstract

Vidal: So, today I have with me, Rukmini Reddy. Hi Rukmini, welcome to Manager’s Club. RUKMINI: Thank you, Vidal. Thank you so much for having me. Vidal: My pleasure. Rukmini could you start out, maybe tell us a little about your current role, what you do. RUKMINI: Absolutely. So, I’m currently the VP of Engineering at a hyper-growth startup in the Bay area. I lead a team of about 45 engineers and we are a remote-first company. Vidal: That’s great. Rukmini I was looking through your background. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and I know you’ve been VP of engineering at many places. How did you get into management? RUKMINI: So, this is an interesting story. I think…I’m not going to say how long though because it’s going to make me look like a dinosaur. So, this is a very long, long time ago, I was…I joined a company to be a software architect/principal engineer. I was an individual contributor who was coding and about four months into my new role, my then CTO and VP of engineering came to me and said they saw I had a unique knack for people and building relationships and wondered if I would consider transitioning into engineering management. RUKMINI: Like most IC’s, I was very skeptical about that move because I was afraid I would lose my technical skills and it would become stale, but I asked them if I tried it, would I be able to go back to it if I hated it in six months. And, they gave me that security and they said I could. So, I tried it and I’ve never looked back. I worked my way to engineering manager, to VP of engineering. I have now been a VP of engineering for over four years in three different organizations. What are the biggest challenges you face? Vidal: That’s fantastic. Could you say, what are some of the biggest challenges you face as an engineering leader? RUKMINI: I think it’s just the state of hyper-growth startups these days. You face tremendous challenges and I think this is very common in Silicon Valley, especially in very dynamic marketplaces, of keeping your team motivated, engaged, driving through with the same success factors. Marching to the same North star, that’s a challenge most of us leaders face. Vidal: Is there anything, in particular, you do to try to keep your team motivated and marching towards that North star? RUKMINI: Absolutely. I think clarity is really critical for teams to do their best. So, it’s my job to set up as much processes I can to make some of these… I’ll give you an example. So, if there are several initiatives that are active at the same time in an organization and you’re in a hyper-growth startup, it becomes really difficult to keep up. So, one of the things I use is a RACI framework. So, most initiatives have a RACI framework attached and I leave assigned… I assigned DRIs, directly responsible individuals, to lead this initiative, so that it makes it very clear to everyone what their roles are, how they’re contributing to an initiative and who the primary responsible individual is. So, when I need information, I need to provide support, I know who to go to and this is especially important in a remote company. Vidal: Got it. Yeah, the RACI framework is popular. I’ve heard of it, so I’ll put a link to that. Since you mentioned a couple of times it’s a remote company.