Building for Billions: A Conversation with Chris Slowe (CTO and Founding Engineer @ Reddit)
““In thinking about an organization as an engine, strategy and culture are the knobs to adjust to get it working.””
Last week, Enrich members and selected guests had the rare opportunity to ask Reddit CTO and founding engineer Chris Slowe anything. Chris has a PhD in experimental physics from Harvard and, in addition to two impactful stints at Reddit, was the former Chief Scientist at Hipmunk. He’s also a founding member of Enrich.
Last week, Enrich members and selected guests had the rare opportunity to ask Reddit CTO and founding engineer Chris Slowe anything. Chris has a PhD in experimental physics from Harvard and, in addition to two impactful stints at Reddit, was the former Chief Scientist at Hipmunk. He’s also a founding member of Enrich.
If you’d been there, here’s what you’d still be thinking about today:
The key to a remote org: every manager needs to do two full days with their team every 6 months. Reddit is a remote company, and they’ve settled on this management approach that has worked. One of those team days is structured, the second day is unstructured. On the second day people can leave exhausted and feeling like they got to be fully themselves.
Try to pick technology that is the standard to mitigate your risk. "As much as it's fun to choose bleeding edge technology because it's really clever, the bleeding edge can cut both ways." Chris once deployed a noSQL database to store data before its pre-release, and it was total disaster.
AI tools are more likely to replace PMs then engineers. Engineers are valuable because they have taste; they ship what has to fit into the system. The LLM doesn't know what will fit. Maybe the tools will be able to solve technical debt at some point, but Chris doubts it. And until then, human engineers are necessary.
We also took some great notes on the best uses for AI in scaled engineering organizations, how to make executive hires without regrets, the best way to collect information from your team to get the full picture, and how to avoid disastrous re-orgs. To get access to the complete notes and attend future Enrich events with incredible experts like Chris Slowe...join Enrich!
