140 episodes

The Develomentor podcast is an interview-based show designed to help you find your path in technology. Each interview explores the career path and lessons learned of individuals who have built successful careers in technology across a range of roles, including software engineering, data science, engineering management and sales engineering. A monthly bonus episode features a panel discussing timely topics in technology, like compensation, freelancing, joining a startup and much more.

Develomentor Grant Ingersoll

    • Technology
    • 5.0 • 30 Ratings

The Develomentor podcast is an interview-based show designed to help you find your path in technology. Each interview explores the career path and lessons learned of individuals who have built successful careers in technology across a range of roles, including software engineering, data science, engineering management and sales engineering. A monthly bonus episode features a panel discussing timely topics in technology, like compensation, freelancing, joining a startup and much more.

    Jody Mulkey - C-Level Exec at Shopzilla, GoodRx & Ticketmaster (edited)

    Jody Mulkey - C-Level Exec at Shopzilla, GoodRx & Ticketmaster (edited)

    Prior to GoodRx, Jody Mulkey (@jodymulkey) was the Chief Product Officer at Aspiration. An accomplished technologist and inspirational engineering leader, Jody is known for building high-performance systems and teams.
    Prior to Aspiration, Jody spent 5 years as CTO of Ticketmaster leading the global product and technology transformation. Prior to Ticketmaster Jody spent over 14 years at Shopzilla, now Connexity, a leading source for connecting buyers and online sellers that reaches a global audience of over 40 million shoppers monthly. Jody was the CIO of Shopzilla and part of the inaugural team building the company’s data platform, analytics, and infrastructure.
    Born in Texas, Jody attended military school and got his degree in shenanigans before moving to California. Jody studied Business Administration at USC with dual emphases in Entrepreneurship and Information Systems.
    Outside of work, Jody is an active startup investor, Laker fan, Trojan fan, and tennis enthusiast. Jody lives in Westwood, CA with his saint of a wife, 2 amazing children, and 2 obstinate yet adorable pugs.
    Click Here –> For more information about tech careers

    Episode Summary


    “With good leadership, good people on your team, clear expectations and clear systems for accountability in a really beautiful, positive way that solves most of the management problem.”
    —Jody Mulkey

    In this episode we’ll cover:
    How Jody ran a consulting business from his fraternity house in collegeWhat it’s like working for Ticketmaster, Aspiration, and GoodRxWhy Jody quit his job at Sony Pictures after just 23 days

    You can find more resources in the show notes
    To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/
    To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/



    Follow Jody Mulkey
    Twitter: @jodymulkey
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/jodymulkey/

    Follow Develomentor:
    Twitter: @develomentor

    Follow Grant Ingersoll
    Twitter: @gsingers
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll
    Support the show

    • 53 min
    Eric Bowman - Video Game Developer of THE SIMS (edited)

    Eric Bowman - Video Game Developer of THE SIMS (edited)

    Welcome to another episode of Develomentor. Today's guest is Eric Bowman. 

    Eric Bowman is SVP Engineering at TomTom, which he rejoined in 2019 to help shape TomTom’s engineering culture for an increasingly online future. Previously, Eric was Zalando’s first VP Engineering, where he drove Radical Agility and led the engineering team into the cloud and oversaw huge growth and change at the company. A 25-year industry veteran, Eric has been a technical leader at multiple startups as well as global companies including Gilt Group, Three, Electronic Arts, and Maxis, where he was one of the three amigos who coded The Sims 1.0
    Click Here –> For more information about tech careers
    Episode Summary
    "I'm constantly humbled when I look back at just how very difficult it was to create this sort of immersive experience. Essentially the standard is to recreate something that matches reality. It is humbling to try and do that."
    —Eric Bowman
    In this episode we’ll cover:
    What it was like being one of 3 programmers working on The SimsWhy going into video games is a super risky ventureTimeless principles that helped Eric come into organizations and change the cultureWhy the west coast is unique in terms of tech entrepreneurshipKey Milestones
    [2:01] – Eric wanted to be a physicist but programmed on the side while in school. His first job was at Maxis, the sim city franchise. Eric decided to join the team for what would eventually become 'The Sims'.
    [4:30] – After leaving Maxis, Eric worked at plenty of companies including a startup, a phone company, a fashion flash sale company as well as others. He's currently at Tomtom.
    [10:38] – Eric talks about what it was like working on The Sims in the early days. Unlike today, back then teams for videogames were small! He explains why video games are a risky venture and most video games fail.
    [15:33] – It took some time for Eric to transition from programmer to engineering manager. Though it was a challenging move or him, it came down to making a greater impact.
    [20:34]- What Eric looks for when hiring? Leadership, impact and growth mindset are major pillars to consider.
    [25:29] – Why are more and more people hiring senior managers to change the culture of their company? Eric often looks for timeless principles when managing his teams and organizations, not necessarily new ideas. How can slack and chat ops change the culture?
    [30:09] – What are the pros and cons of the tech culture in the US versus Europe. Why the Europe tech scene can be more stable but the boldness of Silicon Valley and the West Coast is unlike any place in the world.
    You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

    To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

    To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

    Follow Eric Bowman
    Twitter: @ebowman
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/boboco/

    Follow Develomentor:
    Twitter: @develomentor

    Follow Grant Ingersoll
    Twitter: @gsingers
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll
    Support the show

    • 41 min
    Daniel Tunkelang - The Founding Story of Endeca (edited)

    Daniel Tunkelang - The Founding Story of Endeca (edited)

    Daniel Tunkelang is currently an independent consultant or, in his words, a 'high-class consultant' for technology companies. Previous to this, he was a data science and engineering executive who has built and led some of the strongest teams in the software industry.
    Daniel studied computer science and math at MIT and has a PhD in computer science from CMU. He was a founding employee and chief scientist of Endeca, a search pioneer that Oracle acquired for $1.1B. He led a local search team at Google. Prior to this, he was a director of data science and engineering at LinkedIn, and he established their query understanding team.
    Daniel is a widely recognized writer and speaker. He is frequently invited to speak at academic and industry conferences, particularly in the areas of information retrieval, web science, and data science. He has written the definitive textbook on faceted search (now a standard for ecommerce sites), established an annual symposium on human-computer interaction and information retrieval, and authored 24 US patents. His social media posts have attracted over a million page views.
    Daniel also advises and consults for companies that can benefit strategically from his expertise. His clients range from early-stage startups to "unicorn" technology companies like Etsy and Flipkart. He helps companies make decisions around algorithms, technology, product strategy, hiring, and organizational structure.
    Click Here –> For more information about tech careers
    Episode Summary
    "Well it started with pretty much the people that reached out to me were trying to persuade me to take full-time jobs and I'd say, Hey, I have a better deal for you. You could just have me one day a week"
    —Daniel Tunkelang
    In this episode we’ll cover:
    How Endeca got started? Why did the founders reach out to Daniel?The pros and cons of being an independent contractor versus a full-time employee What made Daniel interested in search?Why Daniel became lost while working at Google
    You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

    To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

    To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

    Follow Daniel Tunkelang
    Twitter: @dtunkelang
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/dtunkelang/

    Follow Develomentor:
    Twitter: @develomentor

    Follow Grant Ingersoll
    Twitter: @gsingers
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll
    Support the show

    • 59 min
    Caine Tighe - DuckDuckGo and Search Privacy (edited)

    Caine Tighe - DuckDuckGo and Search Privacy (edited)

    Caine Tighe is the CTO and first employee of DuckDuckGo, the Internet privacy company that empowers you to seamlessly take control of your personal information online, without any tradeoffs. This private search engine is #4 in the U.S., Germany, Australia and dozens of other countries, answering over 9 billion queries in 2018.
    Prior to DuckDuckGo, Caine founded and ran opensesame labs, a startup consultancy focusing on companies with great ideas struggling to execute them.
    For other tech roles and descriptions click here.

    Episode Summary
    "We did 9 billion searches in 2018 with less than 70 people. We're at 40 million searches a day now"
    —Caine Tighe
    Caine Tighe is the CTO of the upstart web search company DuckDuckGo that is slowly and surely taking a bite out of Google through laser-sharp focus on their one big weakness: privacy.  
    Along his journey in tech, he’s transformed from a computer programmer to CTO to a leading thinker on privacy, all while living outside of the usual tech hubs.
    In this episode we’ll cover:
    How Caine met his partner and co-founder of DuckDuckGo, Gabriel WeinbergThe culture at DuckDuckGo and the amount of effort Caine puts in to ensure his employees are happyHow DuckDuckGo is competing against GoogleWhy understanding how you spend your time is absolutely essential 
    You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

    To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

    To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

    Follow Caine Tighe
    Website: https://opensesame.st/
    Twitter: @cainetighe
    DuckDuckGo: @DuckDuckGo

    Follow Develomentor:
    Twitter: @develomentor

    Follow Grant Ingersoll
    Twitter: @gsingers
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll
    Support the show

    • 49 min
    Chris Bouton - Serial Entrepreneur In Big Data, Deep Learning, and AI

    Chris Bouton - Serial Entrepreneur In Big Data, Deep Learning, and AI

    Today's guest is Dr. Chris Bouton. Dr Bouton is the CEO of Vyasa Analytics, applying novel deep learning (ie A.I.) approaches for life sciences and healthcare clients.

    "Deep learning algorithms are basically the reason that everyone is talking about AI right now."
    --Dr. Bouton


    As a kid, Chris Bouton loved sharks. Sharks turned into biology and biology turned into molecular biology, which evolved into computational biology. Chris followed his curiosity and received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience from Johns Hopkins University. 
    In this episode we’ll also cover:
    Why did Chris bootstrap instead of raising money when starting EntagenWhy AI is just a fancy word for deep learningImportant personality traits for any entrepreneurHow Chris's Ph.D. in molecular neurobiology makes it extra satisfying to build AI algorithms
    You can find more resources and a full transcript in the show notes

    To learn more about our podcast go to https://develomentor.com/

    To listen to previous episodes go to https://develomentor.com/blog/

    Follow Chris Bouton
    Twitter: @chrisbouton
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/cbouton/

    Follow Develomentor:
    Twitter: @develomentor

    Follow Grant Ingersoll
    Twitter: @gsingers
    LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/grantingersoll
    Support the show

    • 29 min
    Camille Fournier - Engineering Manager at Startups & Corporations (edited)

    Camille Fournier - Engineering Manager at Startups & Corporations (edited)

    Camille joins us on Develomentor to talk about her path in technology. She offers incredible insight to anyone navigating the world of technology with an engineering background, especially those looking to manage and lead. 
    Camille was on the fast track to becoming a booming success in technology - she graduated from a prestigious university with a shiny master's degree and had experience working for a major company. But instead of looking for a cutting edge tech company, Camille chose to work for Goldman Sachs. Paradoxically, she attributes this decision to saving her career in tech. 
    After succeeding at Goldman Sachs, Camille joined a startup ‘Rent The Runway’ where she learned to manage and lead people. After wearing many hats in the organization, Camille became the CTO. But the startup life came with a cost, and Camille found herself overworked and drained. 
    Instead of jumping into another job, Camille took some time to reflect and eventually decided to write her first book ‘The Manager’s Path’. The book offers practical advice to technical managers solving problems in the real world. It was a success, and not only for managers, but also, somewhat surprisingly, for younger employees interested in management. 
    Camille currently works as the head of platform engineering at Two Sigma, a tech hedge-fund.

    For full episode show notes click here
    CONNECT WITH CAMILLE FOURNIER HERE
    Linkedin
    Website

    CONNECT WITH GRANT INGERSOLL HERE
    LinkedIn
    Twitter
    Support the show

    • 43 min

Customer Reviews

5.0 out of 5
30 Ratings

30 Ratings

kpotttts ,

Great job

Wow this host is amazing. Hope you continue with the show! Loved the interview style.

ACheyer ,

Great stories from amazing people!

I love to hear inspirational and practical stories from founders and pioneers who have achieved something important, and this podcast is chock full of exactly this!

borded. nv j ,

Meaningful career trajectories described well

I am a physician and find Grant's interviews meaningful for my own career goals, even though I come from a different professional domain. Hearing stories about personal growth in any field from someone who understands career paths is helpful and connective.

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