We apologise in advance for the sound quality in this episode

Kenneth is a VP, Engineering. A global engineering leader who left school at 14 to begin his career as a Software Engineer. Kenneth started a business at 17 which he ran for a number of years and went onto sell in 2011. Having performed multiple roles since then at the Perform Group, Kenneth delivers impact in his role as VP Engineering.

DAZN is the leading global sports streaming service. Created by fans, for fans, it is leading the charge to give affordable access to sport anytime, anywhere. DAZN is available on most internet-connected devices, including smart TVs, smartphones, tablets, PCs, game consoles, streaming sticks and set-top boxes. DAZN launched in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Japan in 2016, Canada in 2017, Italy and U.S. in 2018 and Spain and Brazil in 2019. In 2020, DAZN expanded to more than 200 countries and territories, reinforcing the commitment to becoming a global sports destination platform. The first phase of DAZN’s global expansion is an English-language service focused on boxing, building on the company’s significant investment in the sport over the past two years.

The conversation flows through many topics and Kenneth shares his unique and honest perspective on things.

If you a CEO of a product company, a Founder of a company, a person simply looking to better understand product and engineering there is something in this conversation for you.

Tech Vision:

• To you, what is technology?
• What do you think we are doing well in the world right now with technology?
• What innovation excites?
• For a start-up founder who is not a technical minded leader - what would your advice be? Where would you focus?
• What are the tech pitfalls you can make as a starting entrepreneur ?
• Starting from scratch - what would your first hire be?
• As a VP, Engineering what do you feel your purpose is a leader?
• How do you decide to internalise vs externalise?
• Tell us about the highest technical project failure you experienced?
• How do you interact with product management?

Creating tech:

• What is the role of engineering in a product company?
• How should a company be set up to optimise/leverage engineering?
• What is best practice engineering?
• What is the ideal SDLC, in your opinion?

Building teams:

• How do you design your engineering teams?
• How do you set them up for success?
• How can teams focus on solving the short term and long term problems?
• How do you organise your teams to focus on tackling improvement (tech debt), BAU and innovation?
• How do you keep the innovation mindset in the team?
• What does a high performing engineering team look like?
• What does it take to attract and retain tech talents?

Mind of tomorrow:

• For someone thinking about choosing tech as their career, what would you advise?
• If you had the power through the use of technology to solve one of the world's problems/opportunities what would it be and why??

References:

Conways law: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conway's_law

Daniel Pink: https://www.danpink.com/

Jim Collins: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Good-Great-Jim-Collins/dp/0712676090

Cloud Guru: https://acloudguru.com/

O'REILLY: https://www.oreilly.com/

Failure parties: https://hbr.org/2011/04/strategies-for-learning-from-failure

The power of vulnerability: https://www.ted.com/talks/brene_brown_the_power_of_vulnerability?utm_campaign=tedspread&utm_medium=referral&utm_source=tedcomshare

Udemy: https://www.udemy.com/

What Kenneth could not recall in the podcast is the following: https://www.udemy.com/course/the-web-developer-bootcamp/