Episode 
11
August 28, 2024

Alex Solomon, PagerDuty CTO

Alex Solomon (CTO & Co-founder at PagerDuty) joins us to talk about the early days at PD and some critical decisions about transparency, documentation, employee experience, and more.

Alex Solomon

PagerDuty CTO

Listen this episode on your favorite platform!

Alex Solomon, PagerDuty CTO

Alex Solomon (CTO & Co-founder at PagerDuty) joins us to talk about the early days at PD and some critical decisions about transparency, documentation, employee experience, and more.

1:15  The story behind PagerDuty

8:00  Launching product before feeling ready

13:07  Employee experience in the early days

15:48  Dutonium: building PD’s internal directory

23:15  Transparency and being “open by default”

24:37  SaaS Sprawl

26:44  Alex’s advice to founders

30:45  The future of PD

“We went through this really rapid growth phase and there was this explosion of systems, and you end up like getting crushed by the weight of all of these things and all of these silos that don't talk to each other.”

Alex Solomon

PagerDuty CTO

Latest Episodes

Episode 
19

Jon Mort, CTO at The Adaptavist Group

Gareth Watts (Atolio CTO) interviews Jon Mort (CTO at The Adaptavist Group) about his career, the future of tech, and their partnership with Atolio.

Episode 
18

Andrea Gallego, Global CTO at BCG GAMMA

Andrea Gallego (Global CTO at BCG GAMMA) has taken her career from large financial institutions, to rapidly growing NGOs, and ultimately to this intersection of consulting and tech. Listen in to hear her thoughts on the value of mentorships between women, how she became interested in startup culture, possible new ways to leverage information at consulting groups, and more.

Episode 
17

Paolo Negri, Contentful Co-founder and CTO

Paolo walks us through his early career at startups across Europe, how he built a company solving a problem he faced at those very startups, why he encourages a culture based on experimentation at Contentful, and much more.

Episode 
16

Aaron Rankin, Sprout Social Co-founder and CTO

Aaron shares an open and honest reflection on how growing up in humble circumstances shaped him into the person he is today.

Episode 
15

Zane Lackey, Signal Sciences Co-founder and CSO

Zane is a Co-founder and Chief Security Officer at Signal Sciences, a web-application security company acquired by Fastly. Zane shares what his career has taught him about security, founding teams, and what the future holds for digital transformations.

Episode 
14

Chris Pesola, Plex Systems CIO

Chris Pesola is CIO at Plex Systems, a Rockwell Automation company. Chris talks with us about how his diverse career informs how and why he loves to mentor people.

Episode 
13

Shivani Govil, CCC Intelligent Solutions CPO

Innovation has been a central focus in Shivani Govil's career, including during her time at Silicon Valley Startups, SAP, and in her current role as Chief Product Officer at CCC Intelligent Solutions, a modern insurance solutions company. We dove into how she thinks innovation works at different scales, business units, industries, and more.

Episode 
12

Greg Tacchetti, State Auto Insurance CIO

Atolio's co-founder Mark Matta interviews Greg Tacchetti, CIO at State Auto Insurance. Greg shares his story, what he learned from his previous experience as a co-founder, which tech he's most excited about these days, and more.

Episode 
10

Karl Mosgofian, Gainsight CIO

Gainsight is building innovative customer-centric technology, so we sat down with their CIO, Karl Mosgofian, to hear about how he understands and supports the internal customer.

Episode 
9

Andrew Sopko, Twitter Head of IT

Andrew shares his experience translating the artistic process to IT.

Episode 
8

Steve Zerby, Owens Corning CIO

Fortune 500 CIO Steve Zerby talks with us about the culture of urgency that he is helping foster at Owens Corning and how it relates to ego, transparency, service, and more.

Episode 
7

Brad Pollard, Tenable CIO

Brad thrived in the punk-rock atmosphere of startups. Check out the full interview to hear some of the highlights (and struggles) from his exciting career.

Episode 
6

Jim Chilton, Cengage CIO

Jim shares stories about going from night-school student to five-time CIO, updating a 150 year-old data model, what technologies he thinks need to exist, and more.

Episode 
5

Dan Krantz, Keysight Technologies CIO

Dan talks leadership and startups, while also managing to bring up nuclear launch codes, 6G, and much more.

Episode 
4

Andrew Campbell, Terex CIO

Andrew talks with us about a number of topics, including the concept of purposeful innovation at Terex, the drawbacks to single-vendor environments, his reasons for being a servant leader, and more.

Episode 
3

Julie Cullivan, Former Forescout CIO

Julie (Board Director at Axon, HeartFlow, and AaDya) joins us to share how she handled leading both technology & people at Forescout, why she took the leap to become a first-time CIO at FireEye, what she learned from her go-to-market roles at McAfee & Autodesk, and more.

Episode 
2

Ramin Beheshti, Dow Jones CPTO

Ramin is the Chief Product & Technology Officer at Dow Jones, publisher of The Wall Street Journal, Barrons, Marketwatch, and more. He talks leadership lessons, the value of curiosity, his approach to working with startups, and more.

Episode 
1

Yousuf Khan, former 5x CIO

Our first guest is Yousuf Khan, who discusses what he learned on his journey from accidental CIO at companies like Automation Anywhere, Moveworks, and Pure Storage to unconventional VC at Ridge Ventures.