In Action with Wendy Wendy Closson

Erick and David are West Coast CTOs and Advisors with an extensive background in negotiating. From Options to Lawyers, they have a well rounded strategy to ensure everyone wins in the deal. 
Episode Breakdown:
0 — introductions
5:00 — leadership and teams
8:15 — importance of negotiation beyond salary
9:15 — how to think about negotiation (“win win or no deal”)
12:30 — focus on goals
13:30 — Are these options valuable?
17:15 — Adjusting for market
19:40 — Changing perspective on where you add value
24:00 — when to bring in an attorney
26:00 — Losing fear of hearing “no”
28:00 — What does an unreasonable ask look like?
 
David Subar
 David has served as at Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer at several companies, including at Break Media (as CTO), before its merger with Alloy to become Defy Media, and at Zest Finance, where he served as CPO.
David has served as an interim CTO/CPO at a number of companies, including Lynda.com (sold to LinkeedIn for $1.5B), PlutoTV, AirMedia and a major studio, where he has advised on product development, recruiting, architecture and security.
 David has led teams of greater than 100 and has built products of over 600MM page views/month and greater than 1MM video views a day on mobile and a similar number on the web.
 
Erick Herring
 Erick has been building internet-based systems since before the advent of the commercial Internet. He has held executive roles for the last 15+ years and led teams of 100+ in the development of systems for Privlo, Local Corporation, Feedback, WebVisible, Toyota, LRN, California Federal Bank, Ticketmaster.com, Variety.com, Dell Computer, and many other Fortune 1000 and startup companies.
 In addition to his mainstay role as CTO (usually including responsibility for Product), Erick has served as Chief Technology & Marketing Officer (Privlo), Chief Security Officer (Digital Evolution/SOA.com, Zenith Insurance), General Manager (Adapt Technologies - sold to WebVisible - and Feedback.com), and Founder (Townloop, Adapt, Feedback.com).

What started as a discussion between some folks about the VW scandal, became inspiration for this episode about ethics.

Related Links:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocratic_Oath

http://www.agilemanifesto.org/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergey_Aleynikov

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Dark_side_of_the_Force

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_law

Uncle Bob is a software developer, speaker and author. He has been writing code for 50 years and has written several books about software craftsmanship.

 

Uncle Bob is a software developer, speaker and author. He has been writing code for 50 years and has written several books about software craftsmanship.

This is a great episode if:

You want to be a better developer

You want to better support your development team

You need a push to write better code and say "no"

 

What you will hear about:

Common mistakes developers make

The ethics of being a software developer

Impact of the fast growth of the software industry

 

Related Links:

Clean Coders

Randy Rayess is the co-founder of VenturePact, a service that helps companies build remote software teams and execute on software projects. He is passionate about remote work, outsourcing and software development. He previously worked in private equity at SilverLake Partners, in machine learning and in payments. 

This is a great episode if:

You are researching your offsite/offshore options

You want to understand how to ensure a good ROI from offsite teams

You want to understand how to mitigate the risks of offsite teams

What you will hear about:

The impact of cultural differences

The value of investing in the team

Ways to ensure alignment

 

 

Chad is a developer, founder, and the CEO of thoughtbot. He has coauthored the books Rails AntiPatterns and Pro Active Record, and presented at conferences around the world. Thoughtbot works with companies of all sizes to build successful products that people love to use.

 

This is a great episode if:

 

You are a leader who wants to create a strong culture in your company

You want to perform user testing in a sustainable and valuable way

You are looking to outsource a project

 

What you will hear about:

 

Thoughtbot culture, history and process

User Testing

What happens when you invest in your people

  

Related Interviews:

Robert Richman

Debbie Madden