54 - How Dropbox Measures Real AI Impact with Ali Dasdan

But before we jump into that, I'd like to talk a little bit about, so we have a lot of listeners who are IT leaders or lead IT organizations.

So I'd like to talk a little bit about your leadership, your organization, and a little bit about your team culture.

So when building your engineering and technology teams at Dropbox, what kind of qualities do you look for in your team members?

So we have a couple of sayings.

One is speed is the only advantage of any company.

So we are definitely, you know, people are number one priority.

But within that, we want to make sure that we move as fast as possible as a company, as well as as a team.

Look for accountability, you know, full ownership.

We treat everybody as adults.

We want to make sure we are colleagues.

It's not like managing versus, you know, employee, but we are all colleagues for United for the same big goal.

And that's what comes with that, taking ownership, technical excellence, focusing on definitely outcomes, the team mentality and how you actually speak up and contribute to that kind of a growth for the overall company, how we collaborate, not only within your team, but within your peers, as well as product and engineering.

So it's not a single attribute, but all of these have to come combined.

But high level, basically, one thing I look for is, I literally look up to you as my... colleague or somebody who is in my team, right? And I'm going to do everything to remove all the barriers for you to move forward.

And looking up to you also means I'm learning from you, also means that you are leading something so that I'm actually behind and supporting you.

If I am all the way way ahead in terms of technology or skill or learning, and I have to be intervening all the time, then we have a problem.

This applies to everybody, basically.

And fortunately, we have amazing leaders like that, that I have to support and learn from.

But before we jump into that, I'd like to talk a little bit about, so we have a lot of listeners who are IT leaders or lead IT organizations.

So I'd like to talk a little bit about your leadership, your organization, and a little bit about your team culture.

So when building your engineering and technology teams at Dropbox, what kind of qualities do you look for in your team members?

So we have a couple of sayings.

One is speed is the only advantage of any company.

So we are definitely, you know, people are number one priority.

But within that, we want to make sure that we move as fast as possible as a company, as well as as a team.

Look for accountability, you know, full ownership.

We treat everybody as adults.

We want to make sure we are colleagues.

It's not like managing versus, you know, employee, but we are all colleagues for United for the same big goal.

And that's what comes with that, taking ownership, technical excellence, focusing on definitely outcomes, the team mentality and how you actually speak up and contribute to that kind of a growth for the overall company, how we collaborate, not only within your team, but within your peers, as well as product and engineering.

So it's not a single attribute, but all of these have to come combined.

But high level, basically, one thing I look for is, I literally look up to you as my... colleague or somebody who is in my team, right? And I'm going to do everything to remove all the barriers for you to move forward.

And looking up to you also means I'm learning from you, also means that you are leading something so that I'm actually behind and supporting you.

If I am all the way way ahead in terms of technology or skill or learning, and I have to be intervening all the time, then we have a problem.

This applies to everybody, basically.

And fortunately, we have amazing leaders like that, that I have to support and learn from.