Lessons from Jean-Denis Greze

On Engineering Philosophy and Pragmatism

On the essence of great engineering: "When I was younger, I really liked the idea of building a perfect system and engineering something really, really, really well, and really perfectly. That's nice in the world of computer science and engineering and the abstract, but pragmatically you're at a company with a budget. You have a timeline by which you need to deliver something, or competitors will deliver something better, faster... great engineering is about solving business problems faster. And better than your competitors can. That's just boils down to pragmatism." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On the illusion of a single right answer: "Engineering and math can make you feel like there's one right answer to everything. But the reality is in real-world engineering, there's no right answer." [2](https://review.firstround.com/how-to-build-a-culture-of-ownership-and-other-engineering-leadership-tips-from-plaid-and-dropbox/)
On the goal of engineering: "Don't build a great system if no one uses it as stuff, no value. And then the way you get to impact is you've got to be pragmatic about the trade-offs that you're making along the way." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On the reality of fintech engineering: "It's not as glamorous as people make it out to be... sometimes we're just moving letters around on the internet." [3](https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2023/10/plaid-engineering-culture)
On advice to interns: Grèze tells Plaid interns that they'll need "to be really comfortable transforming strings into strings." [3](https://www.efinancialcareers.com/news/2023/10/plaid-engineering-culture)

On Leadership and Management

On the core of management: "The hardest part of management is to manage the times when the expectations and hopes of individuals don't match the expectations and hopes of the company." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On balancing business and individual needs: "In the moment I will ask you. To do what's right for the business. But over time, I'll do what's right for you when there's that misalignment. I'm not going to let that misalignment last too long." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On the leader's responsibility: "Your job as a leader... is to like find the things that are getting in the way of the right outcomes. for the business. which usually come from people trying to do the right things." [4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhN-C04li5c)
On managing a system: "You are running a system. and there's all these things that are getting in the way of people doing the right thing every quarter. find one thing that's getting in the way. and solve it. and you just do that over and over again and you never fix. it there's always a new thing that's getting in the way of the right outcome." [4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhN-C04li5c)
On the lack of shortcuts in management: "There are no short-cuts when managing people. You cant condense 10 years experience in to 1 year." [5](https://moderncto.io/242-jean-denis-greze-head-of-engineering-at-plaid/)
On the evolution of a manager's role: "As I've had bigger teams, my role has changed completely a few times... management of one team managing a bucket of teams or managing a function where. Might as well, be an alien to the average person on your team requires like very different skillsets and approaches and the things that you do at one level don't work at the other level." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On the burden of leadership: "This is the great lesson of being at the top of the pyramid is that you're not allowed to get offended about things cause there's no one above you to get offended at." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On firing employees: "I actually don't mean the conversation with the other. person i mean identifying the right point in your company that the odds of success of that individual and the role is no longer right for the business." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)
On the humanity of firing: "It's like having a breakup. no one ever likes doing it i don't think you truly get good at it. and I don't think you ever have a playbook where both sides come out of it. like super happy humans that's just that that's just reality." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)

On Building and Scaling Teams

On building a "spiky" organization: "You're asking me what makes us different. I think it's that we've been really deliberate about building what I would call a 'spiky org' as opposed to a very balanced organization. The reality is when you're in a fast-growing company, it's much easier to do a few things well than to try to do everything." [7](https://sfelc.com/podcasts/part-1-building-a-successfully-spiky-org-jean-denis-greze-head-of-engineering-plaid)
On hiring: "You have to have interviewed. enough people that you know what grade looks like and so if you have the perfect candidate be your first hire like the first person you interview it's really hard to pull the trigger. because people don't have any comparison. points." [8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG3FzRPMh48)
On hiring for the right fit: "You have to always ask the question with with Talent. which is like are they the right person for my business. not. are they a great person right." [8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG3FzRPMh48)
On red flags in resumes: "Staying too long in level like not having a good trajectory. jumping around from company to company you can jump around once or twice but if if you do it over and over again and you never find a place where you're able to like really hit that velocity that that really bothers. me." [8](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kG3FzRPMh48)
On losing product-building DNA: "Plaid in its early days was really good at zero to one. And I think, as we grew, we started to have a lot of challenges around building more reliable systems... after a while, you take for granted that you're really good at building new products, and you start to realize you've lose a little bit of that DNA." [9](https://tearsheet.co/podcasts/what-the-ctos-of-plaid-and-brex-learned-scaling-their-teams-skills-and-products-during-years-of-hyper-growth/)
On scaling yourself as a leader: It's a key challenge "to scale yourself as the engineering team grows beyond the point where you can know everyone individually." [5](https://moderncto.io/242-jean-denis-greze-head-of-engineering-at-plaid/)

On Culture and Ownership

On the value of ownership: "The best leaders act like no problem is outside of their purview. It doesn't matter if it's a business problem, a design problem, an engineering problem, or a legal problem. They push through and find a way to get groups of people to solve the thing." [2](https://review.firstround.com/how-to-build-a-culture-of-ownership-and-other-engineering-leadership-tips-from-plaid-and-dropbox/)
On a bottom-up approach: "I think we will succeed. If we're really bottom up in our approach to problems." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On work-life balance and ambition: "I do think if you care work care more and you're more focused. and you're willing to go the extra mile you will build better things right and you can't ask everyone to do that. so I like the fact that we have work life balance. but I think for the people who really like want to push they're they'll have more career success." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)
On the shift in tech work culture: "The relationship of many tech employees to their tech employer is the same as like a French citizen to the French. government which is like the employer shall. provide all the big problems in life are the fault or the you know the fault of the employer like kind of this weird like lack of ownership. mentality." [10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF8GwJTp1Qk)

On Fintech, Plaid, and the Industry

On the foundation of financial services: "All financial services, at the end of the day, the real industry is trust… And from a technical perspective, for us trust is privacy... And then on security, it's the exact same thing where you're only as strong as your weakest link." [11](https://fintechleaders.substack.com/p/jean-denis-greze-plaid-cto-at-the)
On competition: "The trick about competition is you need to fundamentally be playing a different game than the competition. It can look competitive from the outside, because there's a lot of folks doing similar features, but, if your customers think of you differently, it might not matter." [12]
On Plaid's competitive advantage: "Economies of scale means we derive we make more revenue. from the 10,000 banks in the US that we're connected to than anybody else and that just means we can invest. more in having better connections with those banks. better data quality cleaning the data more." [13](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IbzVYJLyFyA)
On data privacy: "For me, the important thing is: You've got transparency, you've got control, (and) you gotta have some way to make sure the privacy lives in the entire ecosystem… It's (also) about the chain. It's about what everybody does on the chain. Because privacy is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain." [14](https://alphalist.com/blog/the-weakest-link-in-the-chain-privacy-engineering)
On Plaid's mission: "Plaid's mission to make moving money easier for everyone in the world." [5](https://moderncto.io/242-jean-denis-greze-head-of-engineering-at-plaid/)

On Career and Personal Growth

On the value of a "weird" career path: His varied background, including a stint as a lawyer, made him a "weird outsider" but ultimately a valuable hire at Dropbox. [15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCU9h2dfEg)
On learning from his time as a lawyer: "What I learned from that experience is that I love building things with computers, and the worst day I have as an engineer is better than the best day I had as a lawyer." [2](https://review.firstround.com/how-to-build-a-culture-of-ownership-and-other-engineering-leadership-tips-from-plaid-and-dropbox/)
On humility: "The second thing I learned in law is that I'm not that smart. Before going to law school, when I was an engineer, I was an obnoxious know-it-all, who thought he had the right answer to everything." [2](https://review.firstround.com/how-to-build-a-culture-of-ownership-and-other-engineering-leadership-tips-from-plaid-and-dropbox/)
On finding impactful work at a big company: "Find really impactful work for the company that the founders don't care about. and if you can find that you're gonna crush your career at the big business because if the founders don't care about it no one's going to interfere." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)
On the shortness of life and career: "Life is short for all of us... you choose how you want to spend the time on Earth." [10](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kF8GwJTp1Qk)
On joining Dropbox as a turning point: He considers joining Dropbox his "lucky break," which opened doors for his career in Silicon Valley. [15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCU9h2dfEg)

On Product and Strategy

On metrics: "The thing about metrics of the danger is like you put them out there and people optimize for them. But if you've picked the wrong metric, you get in trouble." [1](https://review.firstround.com/podcast/plaid-dropboxs-jean-denis-grezes-playbook-for-building-an-engineering-culture-of-ownership/)
On speed of execution: "You can't move fast and break things you have to move fast as fast as you can while not breaking things within that constraints of not breaking things because it's people's money you want to be the fastest. person because you get more shots on goal against the competition." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)
On building for demanding customers: "SMBs really push you to build great products right they're very very demanding right they're not going to try something unless. it is like truly better than the status quo." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)
On expanding product lines: "We have to fundamentally believe that we can offer best in class, meaning better than the best solution products in that vertical or in that new SKU area." [9](https://tearsheet.co/podcasts/what-the-ctos-of-plaid-and-brex-learned-scaling-their-teams-skills-and-products-during-years-of-hyper-growth/)
On the investment in new products: "No product I've seen is like, Oh, it's a team of five people that build it and maintain it for the next five years, 10 years, and it's just going to be a huge product. Everything grows." [9](https://tearsheet.co/podcasts/what-the-ctos-of-plaid-and-brex-learned-scaling-their-teams-skills-and-products-during-years-of-hyper-growth/)

On Starting a Company

On the founder experience: "Building a new company from scratch is it's it's an exercise. and pain and uncertainty. because there's always someone's doing better than you there's always a metric you're not meeting there's always like a competitor. that's doing something slightly different than you are that worries you." [4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhN-C04li5c)
On the motivation to be a founder: "I'm getting what I signed up for i'm getting the sleepless nights. and the stress. and the the you know the joys when things work and the uncertainty when it doesn't." [4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhN-C04li5c)
On finding a market to build in: "You find really impactful work for the company that the founders don't care about... when you start a company I think you kind of have to look for the same ideally also other people are not looking at the area where you're looking." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)
On the advantage of a less "sexy" market: "Let me tell you something about tax is like very few people wake up excited about tax... I view that as a bonus right because it just means less less competition." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)
On operating within market constraints: "The question is can you operate better within the constraint that other that other people can't and that's like the the question you should always ask yourself." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)

On the Future and Technology

On the impact of AI: He believes that Large Language Models (LLMs) will revolutionize user interfaces. [17](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/jean-denis-greze-plaid-cto-at-the-cutting-edge/id1579999679?i=1000629165863)
On the role of humans with AI: "I think today you'd be a little it'd be a little weird to like just take that output and file with the IRS because you might find yourself in a tough spot... I do think that the other 90% the AI should be able to to do super. well." [16](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdPKIlXbC8E)
On remote vs. in-office work: "At scale incremental improvements to existing. products where you care about efficiency of the team and you have clarity of road map personally. I think almost in remote we're more effective." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)
On the human element in remote work: "The only thing in remote that's hurting me is pulse score in terms of belonging and how much fun people are having on the work like I think that has gone down from before but I think in terms of the quality of the work and the productivity. it's the same." [6](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q5xZxNBTvz4&pp=ygUKI3RoYXJ2c2kyMA%3D%3D)
On the importance of being unconventional: He credits Dropbox's culture for hiring "people that weren't quite conventional that they thought could really accelerate the business." [15](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNCU9h2dfEg)

Learn more:

Lessons from Jean-Denis Greze

On Engineering Philosophy and Pragmatism

On Leadership and Management

On Building and Scaling Teams

On Culture and Ownership

On Fintech, Plaid, and the Industry

On Career and Personal Growth

On Product and Strategy

On Starting a Company

On the Future and Technology

Written by Antoine Buteau

Lessons from Jean-Michel Lemieux

Lessons from Julie Zhuo