Develomentor

Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Eric Bowman.
Eric Bowman is SVP Engineering at TomTom, which he rejoined in 2019 to help shape TomTom’s engineering culture for an increasingly online future. Previously, Eric was Zalando’s first VP Engineering, where he drove Radical Agility and led the engineering team into the cloud and oversaw huge growth and change at the company. A 25-year industry veteran, Eric has been a technical leader at multiple startups as well as global companies including Gilt Group, Three, Electronic Arts, and Maxis, where he was one of the three amigos who coded The Sims 1.0

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Episode Summary

"I'm constantly humbled when I look back at just how very difficult it was to create this sort of immersive experience. Essentially the standard is to recreate something that matches reality. It is humbling to try and do that."

—Eric Bowman

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. What it was like being one of 3 programmers working on The Sims
2. Why going into video games is a super risky venture
3. Timeless principles that helped Eric come into organizations and change the culture
4. Why the west coast is unique in terms of tech entrepreneurship

Key Milestones

[2:01] – Eric wanted to be a physicist but programmed on the side while in school. His first job was at Maxis, the sim city franchise. Eric decided to join the team for what would eventually become 'The Sims'.
[4:30] – After leaving Maxis, Eric worked at plenty of companies including a startup, a phone company, a fashion flash sale company as well as others. He's currently at Tomtom.
[10:38] – Eric talks about what it was like working on The Sims in the early days. Unlike today, back then teams for videogames were small! He explains why video games are a risky venture and most video games fail.
[15:33] – It took some time for Eric to transition from programmer to engineering manager. Though it was a challenging move or him, it came down to making a greater impact.
[20:34]- What Eric looks for when hiring? Leadership, impact and growth mindset are major pillars to consider.
[25:29] – Why are more and more people hiring senior managers to change the culture of their company? Eric often looks for timeless principles when managing his teams and organizations, not necessarily new ideas. How can slack and chat ops change the culture?
[30:09] – What are the pros and cons of the tech culture in the US versus Europe. Why the Europe tech scene can be more stable but the boldness of Silicon Valley and the West Coast is unlike any place in the world.

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/
Follow Eric Bowman
Twitter: @ebowman
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/boboco/
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Twitter: @develomentor
Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

Daniel Tunkelang is currently an independent consultant or, in his words, a 'high-class consultant' for technology companies. Previous to this, he was a data science and engineering executive who has built and led some of the strongest teams in the software industry.

Daniel studied computer science and math at MIT and has a PhD in computer science from CMU. He was a founding employee and chief scientist of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired for $1.1B. He led a local search team at Google. Prior to this, he was a director of data science and engineering at LinkedIn, and he established their query understanding team.

Daniel is a widely recognized writer and speaker. He is frequently invited to speak at academic and industry conferences, particularly in the areas of information retrieval, web science, and data science. He has written the definitive textbook on faceted search (now a standard for ecommerce sites), established an annual symposium on human-computer interaction and information retrieval, and authored 24 US patents. His social media posts have attracted over a million page views.

Daniel also advises and consults for companies that can benefit strategically from his expertise. His clients range from early-stage startups to "unicorn" technology companies like Etsy and Flipkart. He helps companies make decisions around algorithms, technology, product strategy, hiring, and organizational structure.

Click Here –> For more information about tech careers

Episode Summary

"Well it started with pretty much the people that reached out to me were trying to persuade me to take full-time jobs and I'd say, Hey, I have a better deal for you. You could just have me one day a week"

—Daniel Tunkelang

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Endeca got started? Why did the founders reach out to Daniel?
2. The pros and cons of being an independent contractor versus a full-time employee
3. What made Daniel interested in search?
4. Why Daniel became lost while working at Google

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/
Follow Daniel Tunkelang
Twitter: @dtunkelang
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dtunkelang/
Follow Develomentor:
Twitter: @develomentor
Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

Caine Tighe is the CTO and first employee of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. This private search engine is #4 in the U.S., Germany, Australia and dozens of other countries, answering over 9 billion queries in 2018.

Prior to DuckDuckGo, Caine founded and ran opensesame labs, a startup consultancy focusing on companies with great ideas struggling to execute them.

For other tech roles and descriptions click here.
Episode Summary

"We did 9 billion searches in 2018 with less than 70 people. We're at 40 million searches a day now"

—Caine Tighe

Caine Tighe is the CTO of the upstart web search company DuckDuckGo that is slowly and surely taking a bite out of Google through laser-sharp focus on their one big weakness: privacy.

Along his journey in tech, he’s transformed from a computer programmer to CTO to a leading thinker on privacy, all while living outside of the usual tech hubs.

In this episode we’ll cover:

1. How Caine met his partner and co-founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel Weinberg
2. The culture at DuckDuckGo and the amount of effort Caine puts in to ensure his employees are happy
3. How DuckDuckGo is competing against Google
4. Why understanding how you spend your time is absolutely essential

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/
Follow Caine Tighe
Website: https://opensesame.st/
Twitter: @cainetighe
DuckDuckGo: @DuckDuckGo
Follow Develomentor:
Twitter: @develomentor
Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

Today's guest is Dr. Chris Bouton. Dr Bouton is the CEO of Vyasa Analytics, applying novel deep learning (ie A.I.) approaches for life sciences and healthcare clients.
"Deep learning algorithms are basically the reason that everyone is talking about AI right now."

--Dr. Bouton

As a kid, Chris Bouton loved sharks. Sharks turned into biology and biology turned into molecular biology, which evolved into computational biology. Chris followed his curiosity and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University.

In this episode we’ll also cover:

1. Why did Chris bootstrap instead of raising money when starting Entagen
2. Why AI is just a fancy word for deep learning
3. Important personality traits for any entrepreneur
4. How Chris's Ph.D. in molecular neurobiology makes it extra satisfying to build AI algorithms

You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes
To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/
Follow Chris Bouton
Twitter: @chrisbouton
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cbouton/
Follow Develomentor:
Twitter: @develomentor
Follow Grant Ingersoll
Twitter: @gsingers
LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll

Camille joins us on Develomentor to talk about her path in technology. She offers incredible insight to anyone navigating the world of technology with an engineering background, especially those looking to manage and lead.

Camille was on the fast track to becoming a booming success in technology - she graduated from a prestigious university with a shiny master's degree and had experience working for a major company. But instead of looking for a cutting edge tech company, Camille chose to work for Goldman Sachs. Paradoxically, she attributes this decision to saving her career in tech.

After succeeding at Goldman Sachs, Camille joined a startup ‘Rent The Runway’ where she learned to manage and lead people. After wearing many hats in the organization, Camille became the CTO. But the startup life came with a cost, and Camille found herself overworked and drained.

Instead of jumping into another job, Camille took some time to reflect and eventually decided to write her first book ‘The Manager’s Path’. The book offers practical advice to technical managers solving problems in the real world. It was a success, and not only for managers, but also, somewhat surprisingly, for younger employees interested in management.

Camille currently works as the head of platform engineering at Two Sigma, a tech hedge-fund.
For full episode show notes click here

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