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What it takes to scale engineering

This week we’re talking to Rachel Potvin, former VP of Engineering at GitHub about what it takes to scale engineering. Rachel says it’s a game-changer when engineering scales beyond 100 people. So we asked to her to share everything she has learned in her career of leading and scaling engineering.

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Featuring:

Show Notes:

Something missing or broken? PRs welcome!

Timestamps:

(00:00) - This week on The Changelog
(00:55) - Sponsor: Sentry
(02:46) - Start the show!
(12:57) - Requested by name
(20:35) - How did you know or learn what to do?
(25:39) - Understanding constraints
(27:25) - 100 people is a game-changing threshold
(37:33) - Lead by caring for people
(39:56) - What's worth building now?
(47:42) - Using decision logs
(51:40) - Choosing the right tools for communication
(56:24) - This is NOT my problem
(1:04:12) - What is psychological safety?
(1:10:07) - Scaling, but maintaining code health
(1:21:29) - Wrapping up
(1:24:15) - It's been fun
(1:24:35) - Outro

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