Today we are talking to Jean-Denis Greze, the Head of Engineering at Plaid.  And we discuss optimizing your teams for impact and treating them right in the long term, thoughts on privacy engineering, and how they’ve operationalized employee mobility within their organization.

All of this, right here, right now, on the Modern CTO Podcast!

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About Jean-Denis:

Jean-Denis is the Head of Engineering at Plaid and a co-investor at ASDF Ventures.

He lives in San Francisco with his wife and son. He’s been lucky to call Boston, Chicago, Lausanne (Switzerland), Los Angeles, New York City, Paris (France), Santiago (Chile), and Shanghai (People’s Republic of China) home over the last four decades.

About Plaid:

Plaid is a financial data network that powers the apps and services millions of consumers rely on to live healthier financial lives. Plaid is used by thousands of digital financial apps and services like Betterment, Expensify, Microsoft and Venmo, and by many of the largest banks to make it easy for consumers to connect their financial accounts with the apps and services they want to use. Plaid connects with over 11,000 financial institutions across the U.S, Canada and Europe. The company was founded in 2013 by Zach Perret and William Hockey and is headquartered in San Francisco, CA.

TOPICS:

• There are no short-cuts when managing people. You cant condense 10 years experience in to 1 year. It’s humbling to look back and see how much you’ve grown and the mistakes that have been made.
• How to scale yourself as the engineering team grows beyond the point where you can know everyone individually.
• How Plaid has operationalized mobility in their organization to encourage team members to experience other parts of the company.
• Building teams that optimize for impact while taking care of the individual over the long term.
• Plaid’s mission to make moving money easier for everyone in the world.
• How the pandemic has accelerated peoples digital experiences.
• Thoughts on privacy engineering and making sure security is built in from the beginning of a product.