Meet Plato Mentors from Amazon to Zendesk (And Many Companies in Between!)
Here at Plato, we’re strong believers in the power of mentorship. That’s why we’ve organized several events to gather new engineering managers with more experienced engineering leaders. Keep reading to learn more about the Plato mentors who spoke at the “Traits of Exceptional Engineering Leaders” event.
THE SPEAKERS
Shivani Sharma — Senior Engineering Manager @ Slack
I’m Shivani Sharma, currently a Senior Engineering Manager at Slack on the Growth Engineering team. Previously, in my first year at Slack, I focused on test automation for iOS/Android/Web applications. In my 10 years working in Silicon Valley, I have worked at Google, BigFix, and IBM. I am passionate about leadership and leveling up people on my team to accomplish great things!
Christian McCarrick — Vice President of Engineering and CTO @ Telmate
My name is Christian McCarrick and I am the VPE at Telmate — managing ~125 Engineering & Operations folks. I have been in technology for about 20 years with the last 12 in engineering management roles. I have become very interested in improving the craft of software engineering leadership and I hope Plato can make a difference.
Vincent Mo — Engineering Manager @ Google (Google Home)
Hi everyone, I’m Vincent Mo, an Engineering Manager at Google for 5 years. I built the Google Photos Android/iOS/Web/Desktop teams and am now working on home automation for Google Home.
Yi Huang — Senior Engineering Manager @ Facebook
I am Yi Huang, and I support 50+ humans at Facebook in Menlo Park. I work on ads and previously worked at Google, Oracle Research, and Bell Labs all very briefly.
Allen Cheung — Director of Engineering @ Affirm
I’m a director of engineering at Affirm. Previously I was an engineering manager at Counsyl and Square. I enjoy mentoring both ICs and managers, as well as figuring out how to scale out engineering organizations and enabling them to run more efficiently.
Matthew Tippett — Engineering Manager @ Amazon
Hi, I’m Matthew. I’m currently an engineering manager on the devices side at Amazon. I’ve had leadership experience at companies such as Amazon, AMD, Palm, and Juniper. My roles have been manager, director, and chief of staff. I’ve been in management for 15 years, having led teams from 5–40 people both locally and across national boundaries. I occasionally blog (https://use-cases.org/) and post on Quora regarding software management topics. I’m also very hands-on having experience or understanding in low level to high level, front end to back end.
Shawn Zeller — Principal Architect @ NatureBox // Formerly First engineer @ Echosign
I’ve been in software engineering for 17 years now at a variety of Bay Area startups large and small including EchoSign/Adobe, Netflix, Reputation.com, Logikcull, and now NatureBox, with about 7 of those roles as a people manager. I’ve built and managed backend systems, frontend teams, QA automation, and devops. Currently, I’m principal architect at NatureBox and get to spend more time giving people management advice than actively managing people myself. :wink:
Joseph Perla — Engineering Manager @ Lyft
I’m Joseph Perla, Engineering Manager of Passenger Acquisition in the Growth org at Lyft. We have offices in SF and Seattle. I used to work as a tech lead at Facebook Newsfeed, and have been involved in a number of startups including Turntable.FM. I have a couple years of management experience, and am most excited about mentorship and helping my reports grow personally.
Rhada Shenoy — Director of Engineering @ TuneIn
I’m Radha Shenoy, Director of Product Engineering at TuneIn. I manage TuneIn’s mobile (iOS & Android) teams, the Web team, and Monetization team. I’ve been at TuneIn for the past year and 3 months. Prior to that I was Director of Engineering at Zinio (a magazine subscription company).
Sacha Arnoud — Senior Director of Engineering at Waymo/Google
Hi all, I’m Sacha Arnoud and currently Director of Engineering at Waymo. I provide leadership to minimize risks, differentiate, and shorten time to market by means of world-leading innovation. I was more recently involved in the fields of autonomous cars, deep learning, AI, computer vision. My passion is creating and managing strong engineering teams, driving pertinent technical trade-offs.
Gautam Prabhu — Vice President of Engineering @ Zendesk
Hello! I’ve been leading engineering teams for about 12 years now. I’m currently the VP of Engineering for Shared Services/Infrastructure for Zendesk, and based in San Francisco. I’ve been here for about 6 years. Before Zendesk, I was VP of Engineering at a small startup called PowerReviews, which I helped start with 3 others.
Watch the keynotes and panel discussions featuring these Plato mentors on our YouTube channel!
