Stories behind building HashiCorp | Mitchell Hashimoto

Mitchell co-founded HashiCorp in 2012 and created many important infrastructure tools, such as Terraform, Vagrant, Packer, and Consul. In addition to being a prolific engineer, Mitchell grew HashiCorp into a multi-billion-dollar public company. We discuss: - How to structure large projects to avoid demotivation or burnout - The "A.P.P.L.E" framework for diffusing tense situations and handling trolls - How to decide what to work on - Mitchell's unconventional transitions from CEO to CTO and then back to an individual contributor (IC) - The quality that Mitchell values the most in an engineering team. Segments: 00:00:00 - Intro highlights 00:14:19 - Impactful lessons from working at the Apple Store in college 00:22:26 - Origin story of HashiCorp 00:26:08 - College side project that turned into Mitchell’s first financial success 00:31:25 - Why infrastructure? 00:39:50 - How individual products came about 00:44:17 - Challenges of fundraising as a company with an umbrella of products 00:48:20 - Balancing being the CTO and writing code: “I didn’t want to be that CTO that just produced technical debt” 00:53:09 - Transitioning from CEO to co-CTO 00:57:26 - From CTO to Individual Contributor 01:06:03 - What’s next? Show Notes: - Mitchell’s blog: https://mitchellh.com/writing - The “APPLE” principle that has guided Mitchell throughout his career: https://mitchellh.com/writing/apple-the-key-to-my-success - Mitchell’s Startup Banking Story 😂: https://mitchellh.com/writing/my-startup-banking-story Stay in touch: 👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected] Music Credits: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en