Nick Caldwell, Twitter's VP of Engineering

Equivalent to Magic

In this episode, we talk with Nick Caldwell, the VP of Engineering at Twitter.

Nick joined Twitter over the summer, after a long career building enterprise products. He now leads a team of 700 engineers on the consumer side. That presented him with a very different set of daily challenges.

“Enterprise versus consumer is a very different mindset and approach that I see people struggle with if they aren't comfortable with it. But enterprise, if done correctly, is more like chess. Consumer products are just gambling, as far as I can tell. It's gambling plus, it's maybe like fantasy football,” says Nick.

Nick was hired at Twitter because he’s really good at managing teams and setting product roadmaps. He got his start at Microsoft, where he worked for more than 15 years leading the data platform organization.

Quentin and Steve spoke with him about those early days working in enterprise -- and how they compare to his roles at Reddit and Twitter, which have very different cultures.

This podcast is produced by Post Script Audio in collaboration with General Catalyst.