Interview with Lior Gavish Senior Vice President at Barracuda Networks

Managers Club, Interviews and Resources for Engineering Managers

* What’s your background and how did you get into management?* What are the biggest challenges you face?* What is your approach to hiring?* What’s your advice for managers who are just starting out?* What’s your workday like and how do you manage your time, emails, etc.?* What’s a personal habit that contributes to your success?* Share an internet resource or tool that you can’t live without.* If you could recommend one book to managers, what would it be and why?* What is your approach to mentoring and coaching members of your team?* Where can we go to learn more about you?
Vidal: Thanks for speaking with me today. I really appreciate you joining the call
LIOR: My pleasure.
What’s your background and how did you get into management?
Vidal: Just tell us a little about yourself, maybe your title, where you’re located.
LIOR: Sure. I am the SVP of Engineering of the Email Protection team at Barracuda Networks. It’s a cybersecurity company. Our office is in Campbell next to San Jose. I live in San Francisco, happy to be here today.
Vidal: Well thanks. Could you tell us a little bit about your background and how you got into management? A lot of people are interested in knowing how they get into management.
LIOR: I originally did my bachelor’s and master’s in computer science and I’ve worked for several years, both for larger companies and smaller companies, startups that is. I did all of that back in Israel, where I grew up. And then at some point I wanted to learn more about management. I went to Stanford to get an MBA and I learned many good leadership principles – it was a really, really good experience. It brought me here to Silicon Valley and I actually decided to start a company, to join friends and start a company with them right after. It was called Sookasa. And Sookasa was really where I first kind of took my first steps with management. When we started out, the team was pretty flat and we all worked together.
LIOR: But over time, I found I was taking on more and more responsibilities and I really, really wanted to win and wanted to drive our success and our product, so eventually my co-founder, who was the CEO, asked me to officially take the VP engineering role. And so that’s how I first became a manager. We were a small team of five engineers. We later grew to 10 and got acquired by Barracuda Networks, which is where I work today and within Barracuda, it was essentially the same story. So I was always trying to take more responsibility and to make the team more successful. And so over time, I was asked to take responsibility over an increasingly larger team of engineers, by now there are probably 70 or 80 engineers in my organization. It’s been a path that was very enjoyable for me and where I learned at times, just starting out as an individual contributor and taking on increasingly larger teams.
Vidal: That’s great. How long have you been in management? How long was that transition from when you started to here?
LIOR: Probably seven years since we first started Sookasa and I took on a small team. It took four years until we got acquired and then three more at Barracuda Networks.
Vidal: That’s a great growth trajectory. That’s awesome.
LIOR: Thank you.
What are the biggest challenges you face?
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