Can you tell us about your current role and the aspects you find most fulfilling and least satisfactory?

What’s Working Well

1. Technical Excellence:

• The team maintains a strong culture of code quality, rigorous testing, and thoughtful technical design. Regular code reviews and discussions around technical debt ensure that we deliver maintainable and scalable solutions.

2. Open Feedback Culture:

• Feedback flows openly in all directions, fostering a transparent and supportive environment. Leaders and team members alike are receptive to constructive input, which helps drive continuous improvement.

Areas for Improvement

1. Long-Term Strategic Planning:

• While execution is a strong suit, we could benefit from dedicating more time to long-term planning. This would help us balance immediate deliverables with the need to prepare for future challenges and opportunities.

2. Technical Debt Management:

• Although technical debt is acknowledged, it often takes a backseat to feature development. Allocating dedicated sprints or time to address technical debt would ensure better system scalability and maintainability in the long run.

How I’m Contributing to Improvements

• Advocating for strategic planning sessions to align the team on long-term goals.

• Proposing a structured approach to manage technical debt, such as a quarterly “tech debt day” or allocating a fixed percentage of sprint time for debt reduction.

The most fulfilling is that I value my ability to make change at Eventbrite. It's what's kept me there for 10 years. I can understand the high-level needs of the business or sometimes infer and then creatively solve those needs. An example of this creativity was working with the mayor's office in Nashville. Helped to get non-stop flights to the bay area. Nobody told me to do this. We needed a business, and I filled it.

For the least satisfactory areas, I'd say it's been a change towards top-down leadership.