In this episode of The Tech Trek, Amir sits down with Michi Kono, CTO of Garner Health, to unpack what it really takes to scale engineering leadership inside a fast growing startup. Michi shares how he balances structure and speed, why formalizing processes too early can slow innovation, and how “the Garner way” blends lessons from big tech with first principles thinking. This is a conversation about leadership maturity, cultural design, and building systems that evolve with your company’s growth.

Key Takeaways

• Leadership scale comes from knowing when to formalize processes, not just how.

• “Six months is never”: waiting on fixes usually means they will never happen.

• Feedback is a gift, and it is on leaders to create the safety for it to flow upward.

• Borrowing from big tech only works when you adapt the principles, not the playbook.

• Engineering leaders should measure success by business outcomes, not just delivery speed.

Timestamped Highlights

01:46 The first signals Michi looked for when stepping into the CTO role

03:49 Turning ad hoc collaboration into structured dependency management

06:36 Why delaying operational fixes is a silent killer for scaling teams

08:38 Building standards only when they solve real, visible problems

12:13 The art of forecasting leadership hiring and team design

14:54 Lessons borrowed from Meta, Stripe, and Capital One, and when not to use them

17:31 Defining “the Garner way” through first principles

20:59 Judging engineering performance through business impact

25:00 Creating true psychological safety for feedback across all levels

A Line That Stuck

“If we can’t execute on the roadmap that lets us actually build a successful business, then I failed as a leader. There are no excuses.”

Pro Tips

When you inherit a growing engineering organization, start by mapping dependencies, not hierarchies. Clarity around how teams interact is more valuable than adding headcount too early.

Call to Action

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