new beginnings and how to scale w/ ryan burgess
guest: ryan burgess, software engineering manager at netflix
- when building a new team from existing people, invest the first few months in understanding how they work and what problems they see before proposing solutions
- pitch new internal projects by writing up the problem and proposal in a doc and asking for input instead of presenting it as already decided
- demonstrate the value of an idea by doing the work on the side before asking for permission to lead it
- when a company reorganizes, ask your manager and even skip level leaders why it happened and how you can help, since context matters more than control
- to judge if a company is scaling responsibly, ask whether an open role is a backfill and why the previous person left