Scaling Mountains and Metrics with Iana Vitkova (Wiser Solutions)

Host Gabriel Sundaram of Mission sits with guest Iana Vitkova, Senior Director of Engineering at Wiser Solutions, to discuss her journey from software engineer to leader, highlighting her passion for team development and high performance strategies. They discuss Wiser's innovative approach to leveraging data and analytics for retail optimization, the logistics of managing a global workforce, and the challenges of coordinating teams across different time zones. Iana also emphasizes the importance of early collaboration between engineering, product management, and design to align business objectives with user needs, offering valuable insights for anyone navigating software engineering leadership.

Key topics:

The value of being a product manager (11:27)

The benefits of low cost experimentation (23:39)

Why it's important for engineers to understand the business context (25:11)

Where Iana believes AI will land (28:53)

The leadership enhancing benefits of joining Toastmasters (31:14)

"it's an industry that really forces you to continue to grow and to learn" (36:17)