Hardware Podcasts

S5E17 Shobana Radhakrishnan | Blameless Post-Mortems, Google TV, & Engineering Leadership

Being an Engineer · 26 Apr 2024 · 48m · Episode 17

What this episode covers

Shobana Radhakrishnan, Senior Director of Engineering at Google TV, discusses her career journey through tech giants like Netflix, Roku, and Yahoo, focusing on engineering leadership and diversity. She details the architectural challenges of building Google TV's recommendation engine, balancing user data with content provider inputs to create personalized interfaces. Radhakrishnan emphasizes the importance of blameless post-mortems, psychological safety, and proactive communication to manage risk and accelerate engineering productivity in large organizations.

Most relevant to

large enterprises

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Netflix, Roku, Yahoo, Symantec
Products
Google TV, YouTube, Amazon Prime, IMDB

Related episodes from other shows

Other shows on the same ground, closest first.

  • How I Built This · 34m

    HIBT Lab! Google: Sundar Pichai

    Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, reflects on his journey from a semiconductor-focused engineering student in India to leading one of the world's most valuable companies. He discusses the evolution of Google's product portfolio, including Chrome and Drive, and details the company's strategic pivot to an 'AI-first' approach across its ecosystem. Pichai also addresses the future of work, emphasizing flexible hybrid models, and explains how Google fosters innovation by rewarding effort and ambition over guaranteed outcomes.

    AI & machine learningLeadership, teams & culture
    9 chapters

  • TRADEOFFS · 48m

    T-24-004 : Tom George - Hardware Startup Engineer to Google Product Lead

    Tom George, now a Product Team Lead at Google leading the Pebble initiative, recounts his journey from early hardware startups like Maritime Broadband and QuadLogic to his current role in Sustainable Cities. He details the engineering trade-offs of building satellite communication systems for cargo ships, including the failure of using commercial stepper motors in marine environments, and the organizational challenges of separating R&D from sustaining engineering at QuadLogic. George explains his decision to halt production at Sidewalk Labs when the Pebble sensor was not ready for scale, and his subsequent pivot at Google away from hardware manufacturing toward policy and urban planning solutions.

    Mechanical engineeringLeadership, teams & culture
    10 chapters

  • Moore's Lobby · 2m

    Tune in for Season 3 of Moore's Lobby

    Host Daniel Bogdanoff introduces Season 3 of Moore's Lobby, highlighting upcoming conversations with industry leaders from NASA, IBM, and Google. The episode features clips from Season 2, including Massimo Banzi, co-founder of Arduino, and Luis Barroso, Senior VP of Engineering at Google, who describes early data center redundancy methods. It also showcases Steve Sanghi, CEO of Microchip, discussing his turnaround of the company from near-bankruptcy to a $5.5 billion tech giant.

    Careers & educationConnected products & IoT
    4 chapters

  • Moore's Lobby · 58m

    Ep. 27 | Two Google Senior VPs of Engineering: From Shipping Containers to Today's Data Centers

    Google Fellows Luiz Barroso and Amin Vahdat discuss the evolution of Google's data center infrastructure, from early 'broom closet' colocation facilities and shipping container prototypes to modern, energy-efficient warehouse-scale systems. They explain how Google shifted from relying on commodity hardware to designing custom domain-specific accelerators like TPUs for machine learning and video processing to overcome the limits of Moore's Law. The conversation also covers the critical importance of energy proportionality, Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), and the cultural philosophy of 'healthy hubris' that drives Google's engineering decisions.

    Energy & climate techChips, FPGAs & semiconductors
    8 chapters

  • Embedded.fm · 1h 15m

    386: Not Managing Robots

    Ingo Muschenetz, VP of Architecture at Axway, discusses his transition from startups to enterprise management, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety, mentorship, and maintaining a 'shield' for engineering teams. He shares insights on managing remote teams during the pandemic, the challenges of monetizing open-source developer tools, and the value of listening to podcasts for context-switching and inspiration. Muschenetz also reflects on his career path, starting at Harvey Mudd College and founding Zamlon (which became Aptana), and offers advice on finding mentors and avoiding burnout.

    Leadership, teams & cultureCareers & education
    8 chapters

The summary, chapters and topics are generated from the episode’s audio by this directory, not written by Being an Engineer. The episode itself belongs to its publisher.