Building a culture of trust - with Metrics - at Slack

**Rukmini Reddy** (0:00)
I wake up every morning, get my coffee, and look at some dashboards. That's the kind of leader I am.

**Dan Lines** (0:05)
You're like my best friend now.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:07)
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**Dan Lines** (0:41)
Hey, everyone. Welcome to Dev Interrupted. I'm your host, Dan Lines, and today I'm joined by Rukmini Reddy, VP of Engineering at Slack.
Rukmini, thanks for joining us today.

**Rukmini Reddy** (0:55)
It's great to be here, Dan. Thanks for having me.

**Dan Lines** (0:58)
Awesome to have you here. Super pumped to have you here.
Now, you've been a VP of Engineering for several years now. What led you to become a developer and now an engineering leader? How did you even get on this career path?

**Rukmini Reddy** (1:14)
That's a great question. Eight, that is how old I was. I was sitting in my convent in India in Needlepoint and I hated it.
And I remember a teacher coming over and saying, we're opening a new computer lab and you want to try that out? And you don't have to do Needlepoint if you go there.
And I raised my hand. I was the only one of the 60 girls who raised my hand to do it. And I've never looked back. I loved Logo. That was like my first introduction to programming. And that's when I knew I wanted to be an engineer. So being a developer, being an engineer has always been a dream of mine ever since I was a little kid.

**Dan Lines** (1:57)
What a great opportunity. So Needlepoint is like you're sewing something. And they said, who wants to leave this sewing area and come and work on the computer? Good thing you raised your hand.

**Rukmini Reddy** (2:08)
Yes, I did. It just opened the door to so many more opportunities for me. And I just kept going. I did my bachelor's in computer engineering back home in India.
And that's how I moved to the United States to get my graduate degree in computer engineering. And that began my career as a developer. You also asked about how I became an engineering leader. Which was maybe like an accident or maybe luck. I really loved being a developer. I was a senior engineering contributor in my organization. And a CTO I reported to then came to me and said, you seem to be good at this people stuff. Do you want to try to be an engineering leader? And I went through all the stages of grief I see usually go through when someone mentions the word management. And I was like, I don't know, I'm going to lose my technical chops. I'm going to lose my technical skills.
Become irrelevant. Scary. It's scary and people's stuff is hard.
He assured me that if I hate it, I can always go back. Which looking back now was quite advanced for the time in which we were living then.
And I tried it and I never looked back. And I find this combination of people and product and engineering and technology to be so fascinating. So love it. That's how I got into this.

**Dan Lines** (3:27)
Yeah, you never look back. You only went forward. One thing that I see with successful people that come on our podcast is when they're presented with an opportunity, it seems like they're always saying yes, even though they're afraid to do it.
And that seems to be resonating with you as well for your career.

**Rukmini Reddy** (3:45)
100%. I think it's really hard. Like most of us feel a lot of fear and a lot of courage at the same time.
It's when you have new opportunities. In my case, when I moved to this country as an immigrant and I got on a plane, my very first plane ride just was a plane taking me away from everything and everyone I had known.
It was all, it's crazy, but in moments like that, you lean into the opportunity and you push through it. And that's when you learn and you grow. And growing is uncomfortable.

**Dan Lines** (4:16)
Yeah, very uncomfortable. The whole time it feels painful until you get to a certain plateau and you look back and say, oh, I've just grown.