#5 – Lara Hogan, Engineering Director at Etsy

Lara Hogan is an Engineering Director at Etsy and a published author on web performance & public speaking.
Selected Topics: Public speaking, book writing, thought leadership, ignoring trolls & developing yourself as a manager
About Lara: Lara Callender Hogan is an Engineering Director at Etsy and the author of Designing for Performance, Building a Device Lab, and Demystifying Public Speaking. She champions performance as a part of the overall user experience, helps people get comfortable giving presentations, and believes it’s important to celebrate career achievements with donuts. Follow her on Twitter, visit her website or connect with her on LinkedIn.

BOOKS SHE RECOMMENDS (and has written!)
(WITtalks will receive a small commission if you purchase a book using the affiliate links on this page. Thanks!)
Designing for Web Performance: Weighing Aesthetics and Speed by Lara Hogan
Demystifying Public Speaking by Lara Hogan
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard, by Chip Heath
 
TRANSCRIPTION
Note: The text below reflects constructive editing of the published audio for clarity and flow. Time stamps indicate a change of topic.
In today’s episode, we catch up with Lara Hogan, engineering director at Etsy, based in New York. Don’t miss this episode if you’re interested in public speaking, book writing, tech leadership, how to ignore trolls, and how to empower other women. And if you are a self-taught coder, you will definitely appreciate Lara’s evolution as a professional in technology.
Erin: Welcome to another episode of the WITtalks podcast. My name is Erin Allard, your producer and co-host.
Tammy: And I’m Tammy Sanders, your co-host.
Erin: And we’re here today with Lara Hogan.
Lara: Hello! How’s it going?!
Erin: Thank you for joining us!
Lara: Thank you so much for having me.
Erin: So Lara is here visiting from New York, where she works at Etsy, and you are actually here to give a speech.
Lara: Yeah, I’m gonna give a talk at Mozilla on Monday. I’m excited about it.
Tammy: Actually we should say where “here” is.
Erin: Yeah, go for it
Tammy: Let’s set the scene. So we are in San-Francisco. Lara when did you fly out? When did you come?
Lara: Oh gosh—late, late on Thursday.
Tammy: OK.
Lara: So I’m a little bit jet-lagged.
Tammy: So we are in rainy San-Francisco, on a rainy Saturday morning, Downtown.
Erin: Yeah, we’re near Union Square.
[1:32] Tammy: Cool, so where are you giving your speech? Can you tell us a little bit about what you are doing?
Lara: Yeah, so Mozilla has this pretty cool master class program that they offer to a bunch of people who work there to help them get comfortable with public speaking. They’ve invited me to come in and do a master class workshop on choosing a topic and getting comfortable, finding a venue, and stuff like that.
Erin: Awesome.
Tammy: Public speaking actually seems to be a bit of a thing for you.
Lara: Yeah, I’m super into it right now. It’s also a little bit meta,