Taz Minadakis is a Director of Engineering at YouTube with more than 15 years of professional experience building quality products and 10+ years of experience building high-performing teams at Google, Uber, and Microsoft. She led a development team building a touch-first browsing experience for Windows 8 and Surface SDK at Microsoft when touch screens were still an emerging technology. Taz is passionate about community building and professional development initiatives for women in tech and spearheaded early women's ERGs at Yelp and Uber.

Please note this episode includes discussion of pregnancy loss.

In this episode we discuss:

• Taz's career pivots and how she leveraged her connections to find new opportunities

• Building zero-to-one products and growing teams from scratch

• The importance of allowing yourself to be uncomfortable and curious

• Good stress vs bad stress

• Networking advice for introverts

Additional Resources: StrengthsFinder (Rebranded as CliftonStrengths): https://www.gallup.com/cliftonstrengths/en/252137/home.aspx

Where to find Taz Minadakis:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tazneemiandevil

Brought to you by WEST⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.joinwest.org⁠⁠⁠⁠

Where to find Heidi Williams:

LinkedIn:⁠⁠⁠ ⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/heidiwilliams1⁠⁠⁠⁠

Where to find Karen Ko:

LinkedIn: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/karenko26