How to Build an Inclusive Culture with James Turnbull

Many companies see the benefits of diversity and inclusion but don’t know that their own policies and culture are often the reason that women and people of color don’t come on board. James Turnbull, VP of Engineering at Glitch, is passionate about this issue and offers advice on how he advises companies to bring on more diverse talent.

James also talks to Peter about how he approaches growing individual contributors to team lead positions and why he would never stay at the same company for ten years. 

• [00:20] - Moving up the hierarchy in early-stage startups
• [02:41] - Leading cross-functional teams at Puppet Labs
• [04:47] - Growing the engineering team at Kickstarter
• [11:50] - Getting people to think about their work differently
• [13:30] - Stepping out of the comfort zone
• [15:27] - Attracting the best engineers
• [18:46] - Building a pipeline of diverse talent with an inclusive culture
• [22:43] - Communicating with teams as they start to scale
• [25:17] - Developer advocacy, education, and hiring
• [29:19] - Do more listening than talking

CTO Connection is where you can learn from the experiences of successful engineering leaders at fast-growth tech startups. Whether you want to learn more about hiring, motivating or managing an engineering team, if you're technical and manage engineers, the CTO Connection podcast is a great resource for learning from your peers!

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Podcast episode production by Dante32.