From Apple to BlaBlaCar - building a high-performance culture at scale with Olivier Bonnet

Our guest today is Olivier Bonnet—though he’ll also accept “Oliver”—currently CTO of BlaBlaCar in Paris. Getting his hands dirty with engineering work first and then moving onto leadership roles, Olivier jumped into his tech career at Apple and then spent 12 years there in the US soaking up some of the world’s best engineering secrets.

This is a rich episode where Olivier shares what it’s like to work in a variety of environments—from the USA to Europe, or large companies like Apple vs. high-growth scale-ups like BlaBlaCar.

We dug into his personal leadership style, which is a great example of the classic principle “lead by example.” Olivier is a master of “walking the talk” so we’re excited to share his highly actionable leadership advice with you!

In this episode you’ll learn:

🌎 What’s it's like to work in high-performance tech environments in both the US and Europe

🚶 How to walk the talk every day, as a leader

🛠 How to grow and lead a 200+ people engineering team

Timecodes:

02:03 - Engaging Before Leading
07:16 - Scaling Up a Software-Oriented Business
0:11:29 - Impact of Quality on Release Timelines
14:12 - Maximizing Meeting Efficiency
25:54 - Making the Most of Office Days
28:11 - Measuring Employee Feedback in Changing Environments
36:55 - Leading by Example
50:07 - Insights From Olivier's Personal Journey

Connect with Olivier:

Connect with Darja:

LinkedIn | Twitter | Substack

Connect with Anthony:

LinkedIn | Twitter

Follow Bunch:

LinkedIn | Twitter

Hey there. Welcome to another episode of Teams at Work. My name is Darja Gutnick and I'm the CEO and Co-founder of Bunch. I'm co-hosting the show with Anthony Reo, who is also my co-founder and our COO. We are on a mission to help anyone become a great leader, and together with our team, we're building an AI leadership coach to achieve exactly that.

This podcast is for a new generation of. Every episode we talk to an inspiring guest who is running a high performance team or a company to learn about their journey and what they do and their day-to-day to be an effective leader. So no matter if you're leading a team already or simply interested in becoming more effective at work, you can build your leadership skills by investing as little as two minutes a day with our AI leadership.

If you're curious, download it for free on the Apple App Store today by simply searching bunch leadership coach. Your journey starts with a quick assessment of what kind of leader you are today, and then you'll receive personalized daily leadership tips to help you grow faster into the leader you wanna become tomorrow.

Our guest today is Olivier Bonnet. Olivier is currently CTO of BlaBlaCar in Paris, but got has started Apple after spending the first 12 years of his tech career there in the us, soaking up some of the world's best engineering secrets before moving back to France and into his current role. Not only does he share with us what it's like to work in high performance tech environments in both the US and Europe, but also walks us through a lot of the tactical day-to-day differences between large companies like Apple compared to high-growth scale-ups, like BlaBlaCar.

Olivier also offers clear and actionable tips on how he has led his 240 person engineering team through 2020, including how explicit you need to be on teamwork and collaboration in such a fast changing world. His personal leadership style is an inspiration to me personally and is a great example of a classic principle lead by example, and he gives really actionable advice on how to actually walk the talk.

So we're excited to jump in and share it with. Cool. So glad to have you here, Olivier today. Welcome once again. Thank you. And I'll just jump right in. I was so excited about this conversation because I saw many things that you've been sharing with the community of tech leaders lately, and I really, really enjoyed your kind of you on things.

And, uh, when I reached out, I was really excited that you, that you agreed to, to speak to us. I was actually curious before we kind of jump right into the meat, I've seen that you studied computer science, but I couldn't really find an engineering job on your CV actually. Um, I see that you have been managing engineers at Apple and of course now leading the tech crew at BlaBlaCar.

Did you actually start your career as an engineer? No, no, no. I did start, my first job was absolutely an engineering role, software developer at Apple. But yeah, no, I didn't jump in as an engineering manager. Right. In, I'm, I'm not even sure how anyone would do that. It feels to me that kind of like engaging with the actual work first before, uh, leading people doing the work is, uh, is, is really an important step.

And, and actually, and maybe we'll dive in deeper on that, but. That's what I advise people to do if, if they wanna to engage on a longer term, entering leadership role, understanding what kind of problems your teams are struggling with on a daily basis, I think is absolutely key to help them.

This is super interesting. Why would you say is this important and what would be approximately like a good timeframe when someone's thinking about their kind of final destination being management and tech leadership in particular? What would your advice would be a good timeframe? Which after being IC two management, couple of years, 2, 4, 6, uh, I, I, I don't think there's an upward limit, like if, if you had a great time as a senior individual contributor, I think that's, that's, that's great.

And, and certainly like, well, I, I guess the main advice I give people is like, don't feel that you have to become a manager. And if, if you have this tension of like, oh, I don't want to, but. This feels like the only way to grow. I think there's a bigger problem that's not just with you, but maybe how like the decisions are made or how the responsibilities are are, are split in the group of people you are working with.

So I think it's, it's more when you think you are ready, you're ready and, and then let's go. But I would advise people to, to give it a real shot, uh, at, uh, like individual contributor role and, and also like touching. What they can bring as individuals to a larger, um, group. Uh, in terms of impact, influence, which does not require a management role, uh, I often see people.

Wanting to jump directly to a major role because they felt they'll have more impact. And I'm not sure that's true or I, I don't think it's, it, it's necessarily true. So I think it's always interesting to challenge people wanting to become a manager of like, okay, what kind of impact do you want to have?

And are you one hundred percent sure that you can't have this type of impact in your current role as an ic, as an individual contributor. And often like, they'll realize that they're making a shortcut and that there's, uh, there, there's more to it, uh, on, on the IC side and that jumping to a management role is not the only way to have more impact. It's not the only way to have influence over, uh, a team or over a broader group of people working on the same product. And Olivier, you decided to join BlaBlaCar coming from Apple, as you said. And, uh, what convinced you to go from, you know, big enterprise life or corporate life, I guess, to, uh, scale up?

I'm not sure I can answer that because I don't think at the time I knew exactly what I was signing up for. I think the, uh, the dynamic back then was that Apple had been my first job ever. I had been at Apple for 13 years. And, uh, I had moved from France to the us. Uh, I, I spent seven years, uh, in the small air in the office that Apple has in Paris.

And then, uh, I relocated to Cupertino, the, the Apples headquarter in California, and I spent five years there. I was getting to a point where it's like, hmm, this is my first job and I've already been 13 years, uh, uh, in, in that company. I had many jobs, obviously at Apple. Uh, uh, mentioned I, I started as an engineer and, and I had the number of roles.

Um, so it was never like, it, it was certainly not the same job for 13 years, but still it was like one single company and a pretty, I would say, like special one at that. And so I was like, I wasn't sure what was life out there for, uh, entering managers and what kind of opportunities I could have outside of Apple.

And to some extent I was a bit worried of like, okay, after 25 years at Apple, People still want to hire me or what's, would I still want to try out something new? So I wanted to, to get outta my comfort zone and try something completely different. Uh, and so when Black Car reached out because they were looking for, uh, for, for, for the, the role I currently have.

Um, it, it sounded like a, a good opportunity to, to, to kick myself out of my comfort zone and try something completely different. And one thing I was very interested in and, and which turned out to be, uh, to be happening was, like at Apple, I was one engineer among like thousands and thousands of engineers.

And I was interesting in seeing a more global picture of like, okay, how does. Scale up that has put software at, at its core. How does it operate as a whole? How does the entering department interact with finance people? Product design, extra, uh, which I was only seeing a very small part of at Apple as, uh, as again, as.

One engineer among thousands. This is quite like a change, even though of course, BlaBlaCar isn't like a small startup and at, it wasn't at the time, I think when you, when you joined them, but I, I'm super curious what. You find to be different actually. Like what are the biggest differences in terms of working for Apple and working with Blavar?

And also would you consider this experiment successful? Actually, you mentioned that you kind of wanted to try out something different. So how is your bottom line so far? Bottom line is, is great. Uh, it's been four years, so obviously it, if, if, if I had any. Ex colleagues and friends at Apple are, are pinging me on a regular basis.

Like, Hey, are you coming back? And I'm like, no. At this point I don't think I am. Uh, but thanks for asking. So no, like, I think the experiment has been, has been really interesting. Part of that in, and maybe like, uh, uh, maybe one difference is I wouldn't be here today chatting with, with you Arian Anthony if I was at Apple, because Apple is, is, is, uh, famously secretive about how they do things and, and they don't encourage that kind of discussion.

And so I've enjoyed that quite a bit. Um, I, I, I do mentoring, I do coaching. I like to, to chat with other CTO. And one thing I've realized is that most engineering leaders face very similar problems. The solutions are not always the same, but the problems are very similar and it's always super interesting to, uh, chat with other people that might have.

Faced or are facing the, the, the same problems as you are and, and discuss what's like, insights or, or solutions are being tried. So I think for, for one, that's, that's something I really enjoy and I'm, I'm trying to do, uh, uh, quite a bit. Um, you asked about like what was the biggest difference? Mm-hmm. Um, I, I.

I think the biggest difference, um, is in how software is released, uh, between like those, those, those, those different kind of companies. And, and what does it mean in terms of how you build software? Uh, so typically at Apple, I was part of the operating system teams, uh, which, so the teams that build the, uh, the macros, iOS, iPad, os.

And I was contributing, uh, code that was running on pretty much all operating systems that Apple was shipping, including the watch, including uh, apple TV extra. And Apple typically ships like maybe four times a year, like, uh, uh, four releases per per os that do have new features. The rest of the time is really like just bug fix security updates extra and if you are like, you are going to be working pretty much like for six or even sometimes nine to 12 months on a new feature that's, that's not gonna ship anytime soon. Which is very different from, um, like car, like all the backend teams are releasing multiple times a day. Um, we, uh, we upload, uh, new iOS, Android apps to the stores, like every week, extra, extra.

So I think the, the rhythm is completely different. And so what does mean to. Uh, for instance, uh, not make the deadline or, or, or, or change the timeline that you had set for yourself like Athar. It's, I, I'm, it's, it's kind of a no-brainer of like, okay, if we need one more week to make sure this feature is ready for users, um, like in 99% of the cases, it's a no-brainer.

Um, at Apple, like, no, this would trigger a question of like, okay, well maybe we should not try to release this new feature like this year because it's, uh, it's too risky. And we'd rather, um, uh, give it more time to bake because it'll, it'll, uh, we we're taking a lot of risk if we're, uh, trying to shift.

Features are not ready. So it, it completely changes how. Thinking about quality, how you're thinking about, like, AB test. You can't really do ab test if you are, uh, if you are, uh, shipping four times a year, uh, extra, extra. Like it, it, it takes a lot. Like it changes the rhythm of release and thus how you think about, uh, uh, pushing, uh, your product to your.

It is kind of like you would expect it. I think we all know Apple, of course, for uh, like amazing user experience and high quality, but also of course for, you know, the long wait for things to happen. So I'm not surprised and I'm really glad you can talk to us, uh, today. So I agree it probably was a good move and I think, uh, probably a lot of engineers and team members at Publica will agree as well.

And on that note, actually, I was kind of, um, researching. What you've been up to recently, and I found the Medium post, um, on Bravo Park Car's, uh, medium, um, publication, and you wrote about the challenges you encountered kind of leading the team through the pandemic. Could you share a little bit of those lessons learned with us?

Like what have you experienced that was difficult? What have you been able to implement to work around? Yeah. Just share a bit of your journey from 2020 and 2021. Yes, the, the, the past 18 months have been kind of crazy for everyone, I guess. So couple, maybe, couple of highlights or, and or lowlights on, on our side.

I think so we actually closed our offices kind of like before all of Europe suddenly, uh, uh, locked down. And so it felt like we were not like reactive and, and, and we're ready for this. I had been pushing for more, uh, I would say more written culture in like how you prepare a meeting, how you share, like how you write documentation, how you share your thoughts with, uh, uh, with the rest of the team xray.

And so it's obviously was super useful and, and we doubled down on this of like, okay. Uh, so for instance, at Black car we have, one of our intro principle is dream decide Deliver. And one thing that I really enjoy and I think is super powerful, When we have a meeting, like the, the agenda items that we want to cover in the meeting are clearly labeled, like dream, decide, or Deliver Dream.

It's like, it's gonna be a brainstorm, and it's like, okay, let's, let's collect all the ideas of the room. Uh, we're not going to make decisions today. It's just about like, uh, uh, creativity. Decide is about, like focus is about making the decision. And so if we have a decide agenda item in the meeting, um, then that means someone has prepared that decision.

Uh, and, and we need, like everyone in the room need to be clear about like, what is the decision that needs to be made today? What are the alternatives? Uh, what's maybe the recommendation of the person that's, uh, taking the decision to group extra. And deliver is more of like the um, like status update, progress report, extra.

Um, and, and, and one thing we realized is we are labeling those very explicitly because the, the worst meeting are when someone thinks they're in a decide meeting, but someone else is in a dream meeting. And so like, they can't really agree on, on, on what they're trying to achieve in the meeting. So making sure we're, we're.

We're very disciplined and, and very clear about like, what is it that we're gonna be doing in this meeting, uh, makes it, uh, make, makes meeting more efficient overall. Uh, I think we've, we've all experienced like zoom fatigue, uh, in, in the past two years. Uh, and so I think it's super important that if we're going to have a meeting, if we're going to have a sync Synchron.

Meeting where everyone needs to be together at the same time in front of their computer. Uh, it needs to be well prepared and, and, and no one should feel that, that it's a waste of their time. And so that's, that's one thing that we've really doubled down, uh, in, in the past two years. Maybe a different, uh, on a different dimension.

We decided very early on that. Um, after looking at what was happening, uh, we asked ourself like, Hey, is this changing fundamentally our roadmap? Is this changing our vision for, uh, how people will travel with black car? Um, and we decide that it didn't. We decide that, um, like, because we don't do business travel, uh, like it's, it's mostly leisure and, uh, and, and tourist.

It's a pretty young, uh, passenger audience extra. Um, we decided to stay focused on our long-term vision and to kind of like double down on it and accelerate and use the, uh, can of downtime because like very few people or, or no one could really travel, um, uh, last year between like March and May, June, uh, and again over this, uh, the past winter.

This was actually a good time to, to accelerate on some of the uh, um, like long-term migrations that we had started. So for instance, we migrated from on-prem servers to, uh, cloud provider in, uh, in May last year. It was actually a great time for us to do that as an engineering team because we had a lot less traffic than usual, uh, at that time of year.

And so it made the migration much easier. Um, so I, I like to always look at the silver lining and, and try to make the best of, uh, of, of whatever is being thrown at you. And I think that was a good example of, uh, us being able to not. Stick to our plan to actually actuate accelerate on it and, and, uh, and um, and double down on, uh, on, on some of the long-term, uh, migration long-term efforts that we had been working on already.

This is really cool to hear because I think, of course, we've been all watching the travel industry kind of, you know, um, responses to. The changes in consumer behavior in particular, like temporary changes of course. And it was really interesting to see how different players reacted, like Airbnb kind of pivoting the offering to a degree and nice to see that. There's also companies that are kind of saying, no stakes in the ground, our bets that people will travel again and even maybe more so than before, and we don't have a reason. Kind of, um, changed it all together. So thank you so much for sharing this. I actually have a follow up question on the first example you gave.

How many engineers do you currently actually kind of have in the, in the total organization? Uh, so right now, uh, black car engineering team is around like 230, 240 engineers. That's quite a crew. Of course. And I was actually curious, I was assuming it's a couple of hundred and I was curious how you can quickly establish or change norms around meetings, for instance, or how much intention goes into the preparation?

Um, How did you actually manage to kind of implement this substantially or like quickly and with Yeah, with rigor? One thing I, I, I often say to my team is there's no substitute for hard work. I think that's very much true here. Uh, as, as well, I think it's, it's, it's a more global, like what's the culture, what's the mindset of the team?

But I think if there's one thing that I would. Point at, I think it's like leading by example. And so I think all the managers starting with me need to be setting the, the right example, need to be leading by example and, and, and showing the norm and, and, and pointing out when we see something that's kinda like deviating from the norm and doesn't have to be like, oh my god, disturb, but it's just like, Hey, can you.

Reformulate the agenda item, or can you clarify whether like this, this topic that you want to discuss in the meeting is a, is a dream, decide or deliver topic. Um, I think that's enough. Like it sends the very explicit message like, yeah, this is, this is how we're operating and this, those are my expectations.

Uh, going forward. I also find that really, really cool. Oliver, I, I think internally here at bunch two, we, we try our best to differentiate between, I guess what we call our, like generative, generative discussions. And then there's sort of decision making meetings. That mental model sort of changed the game for me, but, but real quick, just sort of a, a follow up as well.

You're saying that there, it, um, at that scale too, If there is a meeting and you show up, it's not clear whether it's dream, decide, or deliver, what do you do? Do you not have the meeting or do you just sort of quickly regroup or what's like the follow up norm? The norm we try to establish is that the meeting, uh, the agenda, uh, for the meeting is sent in advance, like typically a day in advance.

As with the content, which could be either slides or, uh, like a document to read, and if that's been sent in advance, then the, the expectation is that everyone, when they arrive in the meeting have looked at the slides or the document. Might have started like commenting or asking Quest clarifying questions in the document extra if it's not obvious.

Like, cause sometimes it's like, Hey, we're meeting to make this decision. Even if the agenda item was not labeled, decide. Like, it's pretty obvious that there's a decision to be made. Uh, I, uh, I, so if it's not obvious, I try to clarify like, okay. Are we trying to get out of the room with a clear decision today or is this about exploring our options?

Uh, but, but try to make sure that everyone has the same expectation in terms of, like, I, I think that's the key thing, and, and not just with meetings, but uh, uh, more generally is like making sure that the group has the right expectation. It's shared expectation, I think is the most important thing you can do, uh, as a leader.

If you feel that there's a risk, that's, that's not the case. Like, Articulating what you're seeing and saying like, Hey, I'm seeing that Darja is behaving as if this was, uh, we were about to this decision, but I'm.

We probably shouldn't be doing in the same meeting. Like just pointing out what you are seeing and making explicit that you feel that there is not a shared, uh, understanding or, or a common, uh, expectation I think is super helpful. Uh, when you see a group kind of like go sideways or, or a meeting or, uh, uh, go sideways.

No, I couldn't agree more. Of course. And that's, I think a huge, I mean, just in general, a huge topic. Things have, so things have changed so much since in the last 18 months, as you said. And, and, um, so another sort of, uh, a two-part question. Have you seen these norms get challenged over the last 18 months?

Like, have they, have they become, has it been harder to lead remote? This is obviously a huge topic for us here at bunch with our community, so have like, what's that been? You know, making that switch to remote question that's important for a lot of folks too is also how do you keep people connected to sort of, how do you keep people aligned but connected to something bigger when you're remote, when you're operating such a, such a large remote organization?

Yeah, I think we're, we're all learning and, uh, and, and I don't think block car is, is perfect and there are plenty of things where I wish we. We would go faster or would be better at, uh, at this, but I can share some of my learnings. I think the people I'm most worried about are the people that we've onboarded in the past 18 months, because to some extent they never really had a chance to see any other culture or to create the connection with the, the rest of their teams or the, the rest of the.

We do have a pretty strong culture, but it, it was around like, uh, Thursday evening, get to get our hq. It was around like, uh, yearly, uh, trips all together in, uh, in a specific part of the world and, and regrouping all of, uh, 700 engineer, sorry, not engineers, all the 700 employees in, uh, somewhere for, uh, like a long weekend or a couple of days extra.

And obviously we haven't been able to do any of that in the. Uh, two years. And so I think my, my question too is like, and I see that some of the rituals are helping, but also I, it's pretty obvious when people are able to get together and, and connect more, more directly that, uh, that it accelerates some of the, uh, uh, connections, some of that, uh, that onboarding.

Um, so I'm, I'm super careful. I think that my own personal experience is, which has been pretty positive, like having been at black car for like more than two years before the pandemic started, uh, and managing pretty senior engineering leaders. Is ob obviously like very different from. Uh, the experience of an engineering manager that maybe is onboarding one or multiple junior engineers, uh, out like fresh out of, uh, uh, freshly graduated, whose black car is their first, uh, um, experience, uh, professional experience.

Uh, it's, it, it's, it's obviously a very different thing. And so we try to adapt for like those different profiles. And for instance, one thing we did pretty early on is try to reopen our. Not to have people come back to it in, uh, in any mandatory fashion, but as a place that people could go to if they didn't have good working condition at home.

Uh, whether it's like, I have poor internet or I have a baby at home, or, I don't really have a, uh, my apartment is so small that, uh, I really can't stay like all day, all day long in, uh, in the same place. And I wanna, I wanna see people, I wanna extra. And so we, we've reopened our offices as co-working place and that's been working pretty well for a small portion of our.

Employees that truly needed to have a different place to work and better working conditions. And maybe the second thing I'm noticing and, and one thing that I think going forward we'll try to keep is if you are only coming to the office a couple of days per month, Then I think those days in the office like need to be special.

Like you are not, you shouldn't be spending those days in the same meetings and the same video meetings that, uh, uh, you, uh, you have the rest of the day. And so the question is like, okay, what do you. How do you invest that time together physically in, uh, in the best possible way? Is it to do team building activities, which like team building in the, in the broader sense, like not just games and, and getting together and having fun, though.

That's certainly part of it, but more generally, like maybe that's the opportunity to have like, Uh, share trainings together. This the opportunity to, uh, kind of like do, uh, long-term thinking, uh, discuss the long-term strategy, do brainstorms extra. Some of the things are maybe harder to do when, uh, uh, not everyone is in the same, uh, place physically.

Um, so yeah, I think there's, there's, there's plenty of things that we still need to learn and experiment with, but I think it's, uh, and, and for all of those, like I think what's important to be self-aware, so. Being on the lookout of like, okay, this seems to be working well. Can we expand on that? Or, Hey, we tried this.

This didn't really work out in the way we're hoping for. Why is that we should. Should we tweak it? Should we just stop doing this extra, but like be very, pretty much all the time, like observe what's happening and, and trying to, to adjust because again, like this is brand new for all of us or for most of us.

And so I think we're, we're, we're obviously still learning. Uh, so you want to accelerate the learnings and, and, and, and not just do the same mistakes over and. I, I often tell my teams like, it's only okay to make a mistake. What's the problem is like, and then let's make sure we, we learn about the, the, the, about what happened and, and don't make the same mistake over and over again.

So I think that's, that's certainly true here for, uh, how we adapt to, um, remote work or hybrid work or, uh, extra. There's a lot to unpack. Thank you so much for walking us through kind of the recent learnings and developments. Maybe my first follow up question would be, You mentioned you like learning is really important and of course right now with new environments and kind of many more decisions to be made, how do you actually measure that feedback?

So, um, our audience is always super interested in very tactical advice and kind of really try to understand how do I actually, how can I implement that in my team, et cetera. So, Do you use particular tools? Do you have kind of like that part of normal retrospectives? How do you keep tabs on what of these experiments culturally actually is landing well and what do you need to.

Adjust. Yeah. I don't think there's one, just one tool that you can use for that. So it's a, it's a mix of different tools. We do, uh, we do retrospectives in the teams, uh, either regularly unlike, okay, here's, uh, in the past few weeks, here's what's been working well, here's what's not working so well. What could we try extra?

Uh, we do some on specific topics of like, Hey, we've had this meetings for the. Uh, like a couple of months. Um, can we sit down and, and check whether it's still meeting our expectations or if we need to stop it or change it? One, one tool that I kind of like, at least for companies like uh, of black car side size is, um, so we use a tool that's called Super Mood, but essentially that's measuring employee nps.

So Net Promoter Score, uh, every. And again, like in this is a very quick, like once a month, all the employees get a, Hey, how do you feel? And would you recommend Black car as a place to work? What's interesting there is really just the trends and seeing how like, maybe some teams evolve over time, or sometimes like people can add like free, uh, comments of like, Hey, this was great in the past couple of months, or, Hey, I, this, this sucks and I'm, I'm, I'm not being so happy about this.

Uh, but overall, What's interesting is to look at the, the, the overall picture, especially in. Cases like the past couple of, uh, the past two years were, there was a lot of external changes. And so seeing how different teams reacted and maybe what teams we need to, to help more proactively of like, Hey, this team seems to be in a bad shape, or maybe there's something else happening.

Let's dig into this. I think it's super helpful for someone that's matching like a team of like 50 plus, uh, people to have that, that view of like, that helicopter view of like, Hey, this is what's happening in my teams. It, it does not. Replace any other tool of like listening to what's happening, listening, like looking at what's happening, what kinda interactions people have on Slack, looking at like retrospective results extra, but it gives you, like over time it gives you like long-term trends of like, Hey, things are are good and going better, or things are.

At a really high level and flat, and that's fine. Or, hey, that was the sun deep at this month and, uh, we haven't really covered from that, what happened then extra. So being able to kind of like, uh, uh, observe what's happening really at the 10,000 foot view and, uh, and uh, and, and make sure you act on that.

Um, I think that's, that's been useful. But again, like. As a compliment to a lot of other tools and a lot of like other ways to, to listen to what, what's happening in the teams. Not as, uh, not as the only, uh, uh, not as the only tools. Certainly not. That makes total sense. Um, you mentioned also that you are actually opening kind of the offices up again and you are allowing people to return slowly.

We have lots of discussions in the community and many, many people actually coming forward with questions around it. I think there is, um, a lot of debate in the media as well, like who actually makes these decisions? Um, what principles do we go by? So is it like everyone chooses their own perfect, like work setup?

How do companies incorporate kind of the business needs next to the employees needs? I would really love to understand how this process is kind of, um, driven at BlaBlaCar. Like how do you. Decisions around which type of hybrid models you, um, deploy and more importantly also coming from a fellow product development peer.

Um, of course the focus time for engineers is really, really crucial. I think we all always try to create environments that allow people to. Be at their best and bring their best selves to work. Um, so I would really love to, um, hear a little bit more about kind of the conversations you had, but also how you make decisions around balancing the needs for individual kind of, uh, preferences in work environments and then what the business needs in terms of.

Work models for the future, if that makes sense. It's, it's a tough one because again, like I don't think there's a magic recipe or a silver bullet there. Uh, and. At this point, I certainly, uh, put myself in the still learning, uh, category of, uh, I, I think there's plenty of things that we still, uh, need to understand and learn.

Um, but I can tell you what we're doing at, at BlaBlaCar. We had like all the entering, uh, positions were opened as remote position. So that was not new, but like, There was an acceleration, uh, since many people, like for the past 18 months were, uh, worked remotely and realized that it was actually working well for them.

Uh, we're certainly seeing more, uh, more people wanting to, uh, to be in a, in a, in a full remote setup. To my opinion, there is like, actually, I think it's much easier to be full remote and. Don't not have an office at all than, than trying the hybrid model where like you have 40% of your workforce, uh, in the office, 60 remote or, or, or 60 40.

Like that's probably the most difficult, uh, setup to make work, uh, smoothly, which does mean that, uh, uh, we're not going to try it. But I think there's, there are. Very specific challenges with the hybrid mall. Um, so one thing we're doing at Black Car, which I think is, is more generally applicable, is like, is we said that we would take like, uh, uh, three to six months to just experiment and learn.

And so starting September, which is when we hope we'll be able to, uh, to have more people, uh, come to the office on a more regular basis. Uh, I mentioned up until now, and, and certainly over summer it'll be more. Come as you, uh, as you want, and as often as you need to. And starting September, we want to take the, the, probably the end of the year and maybe, uh, uh, beginning of 22 to kind of like experiment and observe what's happening.

How do we, uh, maybe try a number of, uh, different ways to organize hybrid meetings extra, but essentially like give ourselves the space to experiment and be clear that, hey, we're still learning. So it invites feedback from everyone. It invites new ideas. Um, and if there's something that people like, like Will, will hear about it and, and, and obviously it, it, it.

Give us a bit more room to, to try things out in the next couple of, uh, uh, months. Uh, and not, I, I, again, like, I think this is what it looks like when an organization puts itself in a learning mode. It's like, okay, we'll learn, we'll experiment and learn there because this is new for us as an organization.

So we're, we just need to try it out and, and see how it goes. Um, Depending, uh, those learnings, like, we'll, we'll, we'll try to find the right balance between, uh, okay. When, uh, when the people that are working remotely come to the office, what happens is that everyone at the same time is that, Or is that per team?

Is that, uh, per organization? Like for instance, do I, uh, want, or do I need all the engineering, all the engineers, uh, in the office like a couple of days per month? I don't think I do, but maybe trying that out and see how it. How it, uh, scales and whether that works, uh, might be useful extra. So I think there are many dimensions there, like, okay, when do people come to the office?

What do they do when they come to the office? Uh, how do we organize like the different types of meeting, whether it's like the daily standups to the all hands meetings with, uh, with the, the entire company extra. Which one of those meetings, uh, change completely? Which one of those maybe we need to invent something completely new, uh, which one already worked well today and there's no need to try and reinvent the wheel extra.

Like, I think there's, uh, there's plenty of learnings, Sarah. And, uh, and so that's what we'll be doing, uh uh, starting September. I think it's very, very impressive the, the level of detail and the thoughtfulness, Olivier, really, really cool. I'd love to, I'd love to zoom into you here now that we're sort of getting closer to the end.

We've been such, so big and so grand with the whole company and all the big teams. I'd love to zoom into you and ask you about your leadership principles. What do you, what do you lead by? What, uh, what drives you? What, uh, what, you know, what do you teach your teams? You've already shared a couple things with us actually.

So the top one I think I shared was like, lead by example. Uh, I think on that one, I'm, I, I can't really imagine like being good leader without leading by example, like saying something and doing it the other way around. I, I don't think that that works. Like, that doesn't really compute for me. Uh, so I think that's, The second one, which I'm always super clear on with my teams is teamwork and collaboration.

I'm super explicit when I see people like starting to kind of like. Uh, point at each other or trying to, uh, uh, not, not be the best team player. I'm like, no, no, no. Like we have, like, we have plenty of challenges. We have, uh, plenty of competition. Uh, let's make sure we point our energy, uh, in the right directions together, um, and not spend any time or any energy like fighting, uh, between teams.

Um, I, I've, I've. Work in, uh, growing, uh, companies in, in growing environments where essentially, like if you were doing a good job, uh, on a day-to-day basis, like opportunities would appear. And so I think there's zero excuse for someone, uh, like withholding information or, or trying too manipulate or extra.

So I, I, I have zero tolerance for. Um, and that's something that I'm, uh, I'm, I'm, I'm, I have a very strong opinion on, uh, there are actually few things I have a very strong opinion on, but I think that that's one of them. Uh, so I, I think those two are certainly intern like leadership are, uh, are, are something that.

I care a lot about, maybe on more on the entering side. I think one thing I learned at Apple is attention to detail. There was this sculpture of like, or there, there probably still is like, it's just, I'm not, not at Apple to, to see it. But uh, there is this sculpture at Apple of like, Um, trying your own product, which I think is amazing when you, you have a consumer product, like being able to, to try it out yourself and being your your first user is awesome, but also like giving feedback and, and giving your most critical eye of like, Hey, The wording here is, is is weird on this screen, or, Hey, the animation there from this screen to the next, like, it flickers or Hey, um, the application is taking forever to launch.

Like all that you can, you can take your, your, your end user hat and apply it to your own product and like real look at, it's like, okay, if I was to describe like the perfect experience, like, and, and I tried to use my product today in what? Is it deviating from that perfect experience? And can I really just like one by one, can I like create those tickets?

Or can I go through like all the user flow and just like notice all the little things that, uh, that are not, uh, great. Maybe we won't have time to fix them all and maybe we, some of them we need to live. But at least like you are ex you are exercising that, that critical eye and you are building that long-term vision of like, okay, in the long run, if I was able to fix those issues or if I was able to refactor my products so that it doesn't have this annoying side effect, then I should be doing it.

Uh, and I think all again, like I think that's, it's interesting. Make that part of the conversation of like, no, it's not okay. If you feel that your product is broken, you should like scream. Like you should like, um, wave the flag and you should, uh, you should escalate it. Like it's not okay if, uh, if, uh, if you see something that's broken.

I think there's, um, probably like the, the folks at, at uh, branch are, are familiar with the broken window theory. Uh, I think that's, that's very true. That's. Including, or maybe especially with, with software engineering, like if you see something that's broken, uh, fix it, don't, uh, because it's people will, will take.

This brokenness as the new standard and they will, uh, uh, then feel that it's acceptable to have, uh, broken, like more broken windows. That is such a good metaphor. I actually wasn't familiar with this way of saying, but I totally was writing it down right now and have like tons of use cases. Yeah. As, uh, go ahead.

So, so, may, may, maybe it's worth, uh, explaining where this is coming from, uh, at the, I'm pretty sure there's a wiki, uh, Wikipedia page about it. But it's essentially, it's, um, the findings of a study, which I think originates from, uh, uh, the UK where, uh, the researcher noticed that if there was a building in a street and that had no broken window, then it could stay that way for a pretty long.

If there was one window that was broken on that building then, and it, it, it wasn't fixed like very quickly. Then very quickly after the first broken window, like more windows would get broken because it's send a message that it's okay for this building to have broken windows. And so to some extent, like very quickly the building would, uh, decay and get vandalized extra.

And so the, the, the theory was like, no, no, we, we need to fix the broken window immediately. So that's the, uh, it, it doesn't escalate and doesn't accelerate the, the, the, and, and we don't get more broken windows. This must perfect sense, and I think as you mentioned in software development, this is such a big thing, right?

Because when you. Build things fast and quickly, and we definitely can relate. We are actually going through a bit of a refactoring process on our end currently because we build the m v mvp and then we scaled it way too fast. And obviously there's a lot of tech tab. Um, but yeah, it's totally of course, the case when you have new developers picking things up and they're kind of starting from a place where you know, everything is a mess and there is no tests, and so.

Um, I think it's super, super important to establish clear boundaries on like what you want to achieve. Um, so I think it's a really, really great metaphor. I actually wanted to follow up quickly on something that you've been mentioning throughout the examples. Um, and you mentioned a few times, growth is really important and learning is really important, which makes of course, perfect sense in the startup world, but in in general as well.

And I wanted to dig a bit deeper on what your habits or hacks are. To make sure that you are learning and growing, because of course as um, SC level executive at a growing scale up, um, and in, in, in times like these always, uh, sounds very dramatic, but it's, there's been a lot of change in the world. Um, it must be really difficult to kind of, to stay on top of things and, and probably jumping from like thousands of meetings to the next thousands of meetings.

How do you make sure you have time to reflect? You have time. Actually learn new things and yeah. How do you prioritize that? I found something that's working well for me, which is that I've organized my. Uh, to try and have as many of the meetings that I like to have, that I want to have, that I need to have early in the week, like typically on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, and then like, get more time for, uh, sitting down and kind of like, uh, reading, sitting down and writing, uh, on, uh, on at, at the end of the week.

Um, and that's been working very well for me. Uh, it's, it's, uh, so I kind of. Carve out, try to carve out as much as possible, uh, time on, um, on, on Thursday afternoon and Friday to, uh, reflect on what, what I've seen happening in the week. Uh, kind of like process, maybe a backlog of, uh, emails or things I wanted to do, uh, but also like just take like maybe a couple hour, a couple of hours and write down some of the things that I've been thinking.

Um, and, and kind of like put together, uh, maybe a document or, or, or put together my thoughts. Um, so that's, that's been working well for me. And yes, I think it's critical. Uh, I, I found out that it's critical for me to have that thinking time and otherwise I just feel that I'm the. The, just the Guinea pig running in the, in the, in the rolling wheel and, uh, and, and not really ever stopping.

Um, and over time I feel like you, you are kind of also losing like your lucidity. You don't see things as well if you are just in this mode of like constantly being, uh, overwhelmed by what's happening. Um, so yeah, I think that's, that's, that time is important for me just to be. To reflect, to be self-aware of like, okay, this is not going well.

Why is it not going well? What can I do to help maybe put this back on track? Uh, or, uh, uh, or just like overall making time for the things are important, but not urgent. Uh, I think it's, it's easier said that then done. Uh, but I think that's, uh, that's, that's something that's Yes, absolutely. Uh, uh. Friday afternoons are also good for podcasts.

Yes. No, but it's not, it's not a surprise if we're, if we're chatting on a Friday afternoon, like this is also the time where I'm more available for, uh, this kind of conversations, which are important, but never urgent. Like, uh, if, uh, if, if your, if your agenda is full of. Urgent things, then you don't really have time to do the important things.

Absolutely. No, and I, I, uh, I think, uh, being asked a bunch of questions in, uh, in sequence is honestly one of the best ways to reflect to, uh, I found funny enough, um, whether on a podcast or just otherwise, it's a great, uh, it's a great reflection tool. So with that being said, I do have one more reflection question for you.

Um, reflecting out, I, I, uh, out to others, I guess. What do you think? Um, Olivier, what do you think if, you know, you could turn back time? What do you think tech leaders nowadays need to know more than ever before and or what would you recommend someone just getting into tech and tech leadership? What would you, what would you recommend them, uh, really take into consideration?

What advice? I think maybe as a, uh, uh, one thing that I like to do when someone tells me they want to become an engineering manager, Is, is dig into their motivation, um, and then like point them to maybe some books. I think there are, like, I think we're lucky to have, like, there are a number of people that have been, uh, thinking deeply about like the kind of job we're doing and, and having, uh, written about it.

Uh, so whether it's like, um, uh, like the major pass from, uh, is one of my favorite. Uh, so I think like having that kind of material is, is super helpful and people should, should take advantage of that. Um, to some extent like, yes, there is, there's plenty of material out there. And so the question is more like, okay, what do you choose?

Cause it can be a bit overwhelming and, and where, where do you start? Uh, but I would point to maybe some of those, um, uh, uh, a handful of books that I think are, are very impactful and. Like sharp and to the point. Uh, maybe the second one is radical candor, which I think is, uh, uh, especially for a manager and someone that will have to give feedback, uh, uh, as often as possible, I think is, uh, it's, uh, it's a great, it's a great tool to have in, uh, in your backpack and, and, and refer back to it like very, as, as often as, as.

So I think those two would, uh, would be a good starting point for, for people that, uh, that want to, to engage in the, in the, in the entering leadership career. That's really good. Recommendations. We actually give radical candor as like a welcome book to everyone who starts at bunch together with a bunch of swag.

Um, so I totally agree with you and I hear you. I think especially. The candor part of the concept for anyone who is kind of like at the beginning of the journey is often very, very tough. Um, definitely really good recommendation on that note, actually to close out, um, all the great insights that you've been able to share and also, um, your personal experience, which I really, really enjoyed.

I would love to hear, and this is a bit of a my favorite question actually, what did you recently. Read, listen or watch that kind of blew your mind or change your perspective. So it can be anything, can be a book, but also can be a podcast or an essay or a blog post. Anything that really changed your point of view, I really enjoy Will Larson, uh, blog.

I always find his, uh, blog entries super insightful, uh, very well written and really to the point like, uh, uh, focusing. Actual things that either I have been fighting with or, or I'm, I'm, I'm presently fighting with. I think he, he might be like a couple of steps ahead of me in terms of like solving those issues, but I think it's always very insightful and very inspiring for me, uh, when I read his, uh, blog post.

Thank you so much for sharing your journey with. But also some of the learnings that you've made recently and in the past, and it's been a real pleasure. Um, I'm really glad we made this happen and I can't wait to share this with the world. Thank you very much. Uh, the pleasure was mine. Thanks Olivier.

Thanks for listening to Teams at Work. Let us know what your thoughts are on today's episode. You can find us on Twitter at @darjagutnick and @anthonyareo, or simply follow Bunch at @bunch_hq. And don't forget, subscribe if you like the episode because we always have interesting guests who join us and share valuable knowledge as well as actionable advice.

Yeah, we're looking forward to hearing from you. Please do get in touch. At the beginning of the show, we did mention that we're building an AI leadership coach that helps you level up as a leader in just two minutes a day. Check us out on the Apple App Store and simply search Bunch leadership coach to find it.

Try it out and let us know what you think. And that's a wrap. We're your host, Darja Gutnick and Anthony Reo, and we're excited to speak with you all soon. Till next time.

with OLIVIER BONNET, CTO @ BLABLACAR

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