remote work

Camille Fournier explains why engineering management is a technical discipline that becomes more important as teams grow. She offers practical advice for new managers: build regular one-on-ones and team routines, address interpersonal problems early, and help teammates collaborate. She cautions managers against trying to solve team problems by writing code, while encouraging them to stay technically engaged and use delegation, coaching, and clear expectations. She also discusses engineering team culture, hiring for shared values, recognizing good work, and how leadership can come from managers and individual contributors alike.

Sarah Nahm explains how her nonlinear path from design and Google led to co-founding Lever and becoming its CEO. She describes how startups can compete for talent through proactive recruiting, long-term relationship building, motivation-fit interviews, and job postings focused on impact. She also shares ways Lever worked to make its culture more inclusive, from rotating office chores to employee resource groups and manager coaching. Her central advice to founders is to treat recruiting and team building as a core part of the job.

Mike Knoop and Kevin Hale discuss how Zapier grew as a remote company and how its culture and processes support distributed work. Knoop explains the value of autonomy, written communication, explicit decision-making, and choosing when to move from async messages to calls. He describes how shared team OKRs, design reviews, internal tools, and retreats help teams coordinate while protecting focused work. The talk also covers Zapier’s early platform strategy and the lessons Knoop would give founders building a remote company.