Like every other team-based profession, engineering needs leaders. But identifying a true, tested and proven road for taking a programmer and putting them in a position of managing projects & priorities is still a work in progress.

That’s why I was so excited to speak with Rajah Kalipatnapu, Global Head of Product Engineering at Equinix.

One of the most experienced minds in building world-class engineering orgs, Rajah credits his success with focusing on different ways to incrementally identify leaders and empower them to be the managers their business needs and their colleagues admire.

From his unique perspective on creating CEOs for features to dealing with beloved employees who can’t code up to the teams’ needs, Rajah’s theories on how and when to let your developers step up to the moment need to be heard.

Episode Highlights Include:

  • (2:03) Rajah's background 
  • (6:06) What does it mean to be the "CEO" of a feature?
  • (9:20) How features change when devs take charge
  • (11:11) Less micromanagement = less bad things happening
  • (14:57) Great employee! ...but not a great dev
  • (17:54) Molding managers