---
aliases: ["Podcast recording — 2024-02-01"]
Is A: Event
Date: "2024-02-01"
Belongs to: "[[2024-02]]"
Related to: ["[[person-sarah-oconnor]]"]
Tags: ["Work", "Podcast"]
---
# Podcast recording — 2024-02-01
Recorded episode with Sarah O'Connor. Great conversation.

## Notes
- Episode theme: building resilient engineering cultures in hypergrowth startups
- Sarah shared her experience scaling the platform team at her previous company from 12 to 80 engineers in 18 months, including the organizational pain points that emerged around the 40-person mark
- Her background in both infrastructure engineering and people management gave her a unique lens on why technical leaders often underestimate the cultural debt that accumulates during rapid hiring
- Excellent chemistry throughout the session — the conversation flowed naturally and we barely needed to redirect; ran about 15 minutes long but the extra material is strong
- Memorable insight: "The best architecture decision you can make at scale is hiring someone who will disagree with you and giving them the authority to act on it"
- Audio quality was clean on both ends; recorded via Riverside with local backup tracks

## Follow-up
- [ ] Send thank-you email to Sarah
- [ ] Draft show notes and pull key timestamps for chapter markers
- [ ] Schedule editing session with [[person-paco-furiani]]
- [ ] Create social media clips — the quote about hiring disagreeable people is highly shareable
