Allison McMillan
Special guest
Allison is an accomplished engineering leader with a wealth of experience in technical strategy and execution. She has a proven track record of delivering results and driving growth in high-performing engineering teams, exemplified through engineering leadership positions at GitHub, DEV Community, and QuotaPath. At GitHub, she simoutaneously ran the key product areas of Codespaces, Repositories, and Pull Requests. Allison is an expert at navigating and translating between technical and non-technical stakeholders. Additionally, she is passionate about building strong teams and products that make a positive impact on people's lives.
Throughout her previous roles, Allison has been responsible for overseeing multiple engineering teams, each with their own set of challenges and opportunities. She focuses on building a strong culture of innovation and collaboration, and has introduced frameworks for cross-functional collaboration and deepening a mentorship culture in engineering teams.
Over the years, Allison has consistently demonstrated her ability to deliver results by implementing effective technical strategies. She has introduced impact-based performance systems to guide career growth and has helped to streamline hiring processes across engineering organizations at multiple companies. Allison has also instituted communication processes that foster transparency and collaboration, resulting in more efficient and effective teams.
Prior to her work leading Engineering at DEV Community and QuotaPath, Allison led GitHub's Coding Department as Director of Engineering. During her time there, she developed and implemented a multi-year growth plan, engineering health strategy, and product strategies for multiple product lines aimed at a variety of customer audiences. This included work on Atom, Codespaces, Gists, Repositories, Pull Requests, and other R&D products. She also more than doubled the size of her engineering department in a short period of time, helped lead the launch of GitHub's Codespaces product, and managed a wide range of engineering tasks from customer support and maintenance to bug fixes and feature development.
Allison's ability to deliver results through technical strategy is a testament to her deep understanding of software development processes and her ability to collaborate with multiple stakeholders. Her focus on the customer journey and product domain results in immediate impacts.
In her free time, Allison is an active member of the tech community, speaking at conferences around the world on a variety of topics related to engineering leadership and team management. She is a board member and former board president of Ruby Central and founded and recorded the Parent Driven Development podcast for many years.
Allison McMillan has been a guest on 1 episode.
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498: RubyConf San Diego with Chelsea Kaufman and Allison McMillan
November 2nd, 2023 | Season 11 | 35 mins 7 secs
In this episode, the focus is on RubyConf, the upcoming conference dedicated to the Ruby programming language. They start by talking about the origin and evolution of RubyConf, highlighting its growth in attendance and its impact on the Ruby community. Chelsea details how the conference has adapted to the digital format due to the COVID-19 pandemic but points out the value of in-person connections. They are looking forward to the Community Day event, which will feature various activities to encourage community interaction and an acknowledgment of scholarships that would help more people attend.
The event will offer various programming options, workshops, and talks to cater to newcomers and seasoned professionals. There will also be some level of hands-on learning through hacking activities. The conference aims to be inclusive, offering opportunities for mentorship and growth, regardless of one's career stage.
Towards the end, the discussion shifts to Ruby Central, the organizing body behind RubyConf and RailsConf. Chelsea and Allison describe multiple avenues for community engagement, ranging from board membership to open-source contributions. They also encourage donations and corporate sponsorships. Don't miss your chance to register for RubyConf and engage with the fantastic Ruby community!