# vp of engineering Published articles for vp of engineering. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## International Women in Engineering Day: reflections from our VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton DevFeed: [International Women in Engineering Day: reflections from our VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Skyscanner Engineering Published: 2022-06-23T08:08:17Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Stories by Skyscanner Engineering on Medium]() Topics: [Software Engineering](), [Development](), [Testing](), [bug](), [Support]() Tags: [bug](), [career](), [documentation](), [engineering](), [engineering-leadership](), [problems](), [software](), [software-development](), [testing](), [vp-of-engineering](), [women-in-tech]() ### AI overview An interview with Skyscanner VP of Engineering Myra Fulton about her path from hospitality studies to software engineering leadership. She discusses lessons from support and mortgage development roles, including the importance of documentation, code quality, testing, and the real-world impact of software defects. ### Source excerpt Skyscanner VP of Engineering, Myra Fulton She is Skyscanner's most senior female engineer, but Myra Fulton's career as she knows it almost didn't happen -- a last-minute decision to change her university course from hospitality to engineering set her on a completely different path to the one she'd intended. This International Women In Engineering Day, we sat down with Myra to hear her about her journey to the top. Myra, what lead you to engineering originally -- was it always the plan? Engineering was very much not the plan -- I wanted to get into hospitality, and had dreams of running a hotel group. But fate -- in the form of an amazing teacher called Mr Haggerty -- intervened. He convinced me to take up computer science and basically changed the course of my career. He then did the same for a fellow engineer here at Skyscanner, Mhairi McClair several years later! So thank you, Mr Haggerty. The way Mr Haggerty taught computer science brought the subject to life -- I loved how you could solve problems in really interesting ways, and doing that with technology was exciting. It suited my analytical brain, so I decided to switch my uni course from Hospitality Management to Computer Studies. What happened next -- what was your journey to Skyscanner? I graduated with a first class honours spent a year's placement with IBM. After graduating, I got on the grad programme with a bank and spent nine years there. My career started in a number of first and second line support focused roles where I learned the importance of good handover documentation and run-books. I then got the privilege to lead the mortgage development team where I started to learn the other side of software development. It was during my time there that said bank had announced they'd undercharged people for mortgages due to a bug in services. While I wasn't involved in that bug, it really taught me the fragility of software and the importance of the quality of code, of testing and of the impact that can be made on ## Equity Allocation in Startups DevFeed: [Equity Allocation in Startups]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Fuzzygroup Published: 2019-11-10T00:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Scott Johnson]() Topics: [Risk](), [RSS Feed]() Tags: [equity](), [funding](), [startup](), [startups](), [vp-of-engineering]() ### AI overview An opinionated guide to allocating startup equity, arguing that ownership should reflect the risk and timing of each contributor's involvement. It recommends reserving equity for an employee option plan, using options rather than stock, and applying a long vesting schedule. The author illustrates these points with personal experience from Feedster. ### Source excerpt Once upon a time, I was speaking with a company founder and they mentioned that they had a VP of Engineering to whom they have given a 1/3 stake in the company. I immediately commented that was too much and then said "I'll write this down in a blog post" - and then I never did. Last night, oddly, I woke up from a deep sleep with the desire to write this down. And that brings us to this post. Here's what I can remember from that conversation: Company Stage: Pre Funding Company Type: Medical Equity Split with the VP of Engineering: 1/3 Founder Title: Yes Did VP of Engineering Put in Cash: No You Need to Understand This One of the basic rules of the startup world is that on Day 1, you, the founder, own 100% of something that is worth absolutely nothing. The goal, by the end, is that you own a much smaller percentage of something actually worth something. As an example, owning 10% of something worth $10 million is actually much, much better. The Basic Rules of Thumb for Equity Allocations Here are my rules of thumb to use for equity allocation: The more risk you take, the more you get The earlier you join, the more you get Putting time in is one type of risk Putting cash in is a greater type of risk If you, the founder, give too much equity to someone else then you can be pushed out by simply having that other person align with the investor or investors You only have 80% of the equity to play with - 20% generally goes to an ESOP (employee stock option plan) Make damn sure that you give out options not stock and a long vesting schedule (incremental over say 4 years) The bottom line is that equity, in whatever form, is a reward for taking risk. And the earlier you are involved in a startup, the more risk there is. My Personal Experience from Feedster A long, long time ago, I founded a blog search engine named Feedster. I merged with another RSS search engine shortly after coming to market to address some technical limitations in my architecture. We did the typical nerd fo ## Why I joined Apollo DevFeed: [Why I joined Apollo]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Claire Hough Published: 2018-10-17T22:28:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Apollo Blog]() Topics: [engineering-leadership](), [dev-tools]() Tags: [community](), [culture](), [engineering](), [inclusive](), [leadership](), [leadership-team](), [team](), [vp-of-engineering](), [work]() ### AI overview Claire Hough describes joining Apollo as its VP of Engineering, drawing on her experience leading engineering teams and outlining her emphasis on learning, psychological safety, inclusive culture, and a supportive work environment. ### Source excerpt We're proud to introduce Claire Hough as our new VP of Engineering. Claire joins Apollo with over 20 years of experience building impactful and inclusive engineering teams at Udemy and Napster. She will be responsible for leading our engineering efforts and ensuring that Apollo continues to help developers build great apps. Please read this post from Claire outlining her vision for Apollo Engineering and help me welcome her to the Apollo community!