E24 Ludo Antonov: Growing, Sustainably Diverse Teams

Wecome to Episode #24, where we hear from another heavy hitter.

Ludo and I start our conversation with the thought that there is a lot of very capable talent out there. He has been at really large shops and understands the importance of diversity equity and inclusion from a growth perspective.

Ludo shares that one of the big challenges that he personally wants to see more done with is accountability among tech executives and founders. In many cases, companies are biased towards action and then they jump into execution mode. Ludo thinks that with something like diversity and inclusion when you pick a little bit more of a slow approach you gain a better chance of success. He recommends a solid foundation on which one can make sure that future decisions are well-made. There's an assumption made that the only way to gain the skills of a CS degree is to go to a four-year university when the reality these days is some of those concepts about data structures and algorithms are free and available online.  There's this kind of invisible line around 30% diversity within a team after which point the team becomes self sustainably diverse going forward.

Ludo is an insightful and creative engineering leader. He’s a graduate of Virginia Tech and interned and worked early at MIT & CalTech. From rebuilding the production systems that deliver all of Hulu's content to all client devices, to leading an organization of world-class engineers that have taken Pinterest from 20MM to 300MM users worldwide. Ludo Antonov is now the Head of Growth at Lyft. He is adept at scaling products and teams.

• Ludo Antonov: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lantonov/
• Lyft: https://www.lyft.com/careers
• Dev Color: https://www.devcolor.org/
• More episodes of the SnackWalls Podcast: http://podcast.snackwalls.com

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