Being VP of Engineering is Harder than Being CEO
We’ve all heard that it’s lonely at the top. For me though, having held both CEO and VP Engineering roles, I’ve often found VP Engineering to be even harder than the notoriously challenging role of CEO, and lonelier. For me this was due to spending the lion’s share of my time translating between two completely disparate worlds - the engineering and the business. As the VP Engineering our peer executives see us as technical, while our teams on the other hand perceive us as business. Being the bridge between these worlds places us in a unique position to help our company succeed.
Over the years, I’ve found that the most valuable competency a great engineering leader brings to the role is being a great translator. An excellent tech leader will be able to provide much-needed context about the business to the developers, while continuously educating non-technical stakeholders on how software gets made.
In this session I will share how to translate engineering concepts to execs, why it is important to provide non-technical leaders with more technical detail than you’re giving them now, and which metrics to share with your business every week. You’ll leave with actionable tips for achieving alignment with your business, negotiating for more headcount and non-functional investment, and having more constructive conversations with your CEO. Plus every attendee will get a copy of the engineering metrics scorecard I share every week with our exec team.
Ori Keren is CEO and Co-founder at Linear B. Prior to starting LinearB, Ori Keren was VP of Research and Development at CloudLock (acquired by Cisco). Prior to joining CloudLock, Ori managed an engineering group at Interwise (acquired by AT&T). With more than 13 years of experience, Ori has a solid track record of building excellent engineering organizations from the ground up and leading innovative software projects that drive mission critical value to large enterprises around the globe.
Ori brings 20+ years of software engineering experience ranging from engineer all the way up to his most recent position as VP of R&D at Cloudlock (acquired by Cisco). As CEO of LinearB, Ori is on a mission to help companies build data-driven engineering organizations.