Career Journey 6: Your Invitation to the Boardroom

**Dan Lines** (0:00)
I would just kind of challenge us as a community. Like, maybe you ask yourself as a VP of Engineering, am I getting invited to the board meeting?
How many board meetings have I presented in?
And by the way, at my last role, when I was the VP of Engineering, I never went to the board meeting. I didn't get invited. I think that's the biggest gap, and I think you get there, you get that seat by practicing what I've been saying on this pod, on the business alignment. Come with data, come with allocation, come with project delivery, come with predictability, talk to your CEO about it. Show that you're worthy of that business conversation.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:38)
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**Dan Lines** (1:42)
Hey, what's up, everyone? Welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is your host, Dan Lines, Linear B COO. And today, I'm going to be interviewed by my co-host, Conor Bronsdon. Conor, thanks for sitting down with me, man. It's been too long since we did this together.

**Conor Bronsdon** (1:59)
Yeah, absolutely. It's great to be back on the show with you.
I'm sad we're not going to get more chances in the next few weeks because you've got this exciting Adventure of Parenthood round two coming up.

**Dan Lines** (2:12)
I do. I got baby number two on the way any day now. But what you and I were talking about, maybe we do a little like end of year, winter solstice type celebration episode.
I think that would be awesome. Let's do it. Let's do it.
But today, we are here to talk about, I think some of the lessons that I learned after having some amazing guests on the pod. And you were going to like at least switch roles for me. You're going to interview me.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:49)
That's exactly right. We've done this great engineering leadership series, something that we think anyone, whether they're one year in the career or 10 years into their career can benefit from going from an early stage engineer, senior engineers, up to engineering manager, all the way to VP of engineering, maybe founding. And we want to make sure that folks are listening to the show because we know that folks at all levels, including engineering leaders, but also people who are newer and want to learn. Over these multiple episodes, we've really looked down and said, okay, we're going to interview people who are experts in their field. And I know you've talked to a bunch of them, Tiago, Pavini, others, but how to put your best foot forward in the interview process, how to succeed your first month in a new role, what it means to lead a product led organization, all the way to how to think about and hire diversely when you're that founder, that CEO is trying to bring in top talent. We've had these amazing guests, and I know I've learned a lot listening to these episodes. If you're listening right now and you haven't checked them out already, you can't recommend it enough, you're going to find something relevant no matter your career stage. There's definitely an episode or two in there for you.
And yeah, we wanted to wrap it up by talking to you, Dan, and saying, okay, like, you've been in these roles. You've grown from an individual developer to now a co-founder and CPO. What's the advice that you have?
And I think it'll be a great way for us to dive in.

**Dan Lines** (4:09)
Yeah, it's awesome.
I'm ready to rock. And I think the cool thing about it is I'm learning too. Like, the guests that are coming on, I think like the industry is evolving still super rapidly, especially when it means to be a leader, even since I was really an engineering leader. And so I was just like really happy to keep, you know, my learning going.