TPM Podcast With David Glick – Part I cover art

TPM Podcast With David Glick – Part I

TPM Podcast With David Glick – Part I

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 Episode Overview In this episode of the TPM Podcast, Mario Gerard is joined by David Glick, former Vice President at Amazon with nearly 20 years of experience and current CTO at Flex. David brings a senior executive perspective shaped by building large-scale systems, leading thousands of people, and repeatedly delivering mission-critical programs in high-pressure environments. The conversation is split into two broad themes. First, David shares his perspective on the fundamentals of the TPM role, what great TPMs do differently, and why the role is so critical to execution. Second, he discusses leadership at scale: how senior leaders ensure the right people are working on the right problems, how organizations execute reliably, and how trust, clarity, and discipline shape high-performing teams. David’s Background and What Flex Does David spent almost two decades at Amazon, where he served as a Vice President leading Fulfillment Technologies and Amazon Tickets. After leaving Amazon, he joined Flex as CTO, where he has spent the last three years helping scale a fast-growing logistics technology company. Flex operates a marketplace that connects enterprise shippers, including major retailers and brands, with logistics and fulfillment providers. The company works with six of the top ten retailers in the United States and is building its own warehouse management system, transportation network, and supporting infrastructure. As David notes, Flex is hiring aggressively across TPM, engineering, and product roles. How David Defines the TPM Role David describes the TPM role in one word: delivery. In his view, the TPM’s primary responsibility is to get programs over the finish line on time and within budget. This means owning schedules, understanding dependencies, coordinating resources that do not directly report to the TPM, and driving commitments across teams. While TPMs may not formally own resources, they effectively control them through influence, structure, and accountability. David emphasizes that large-scale projects require rigor. Even in agile environments, major initiatives are still managed at the milestone level. Tools like Gantt charts, spreadsheets, or Smartsheet are essential for tracking dependencies and ensuring alignment when dozens or hundreds of people are involved. Agile Execution vs Reality David shares an anecdote from Amazon that highlights the tension between agile philosophy and real-world delivery. A team resisted providing delivery dates, arguing that deadlines were unnecessary. David’s response was blunt: regardless of methodology, large programs must converge at a specific point, especially when senior leadership and customers are involved. Agile execution at the team level still requires traditional planning and milestone tracking at the program level. Without that structure, large initiatives fail to come together. Dependencies Are What Kill Projects According to David, projects rarely fail because of software or hardware alone. They fail because of people, communication breakdowns, and unmanaged dependencies. One of the most effective TPM strategies is to front-load dependencies. If one team needs an API from another, delivering a stub early can unlock progress and prevent downstream teams from being blocked. Reducing or eliminating cross-team dependencies is one of the most powerful ways TPMs increase delivery success. Being Technical Without a Computer Science Degree David is candid about not having a traditional computer science degree, yet he has led some of Amazon’s most critical technical organizations and now serves as CTO at Flex. He describes earning his technical education through experience: being pulled into high-severity incidents, reading postmortems, and observing firsthand what makes systems fragile or resilient. He credits early mentorship at Amazon, particularly from one of the company’s first TPMs, with shaping his understanding of how technical leadership evolves over time. Early in a career, value comes from individual output. As seniority increases, value shifts toward process, people, and organizational effectiveness. Why David Strongly Believes in the TPM Role David believes TPMs are indispensable once an organization has product-market fit and direction. At that point, success depends almost entirely on execution. He shares an example from Flex, where a major customer required multiple features before committing. The organization agreed to deliver but lacked a clear plan. Hiring a strong TPM immediately changed the situation. Within a week, the TPM created an integrated execution plan linking JIRA and Smartsheet, clearly exposing ownership, dependencies, and schedule risk. This, for David, perfectly illustrates the value of TPMs: turning commitments into credible execution. Core Skills TPMs Must Have David highlights several foundational skills for TPMs: Extreme attention to detail: TPMs must know what every contributor is working on and how it ...
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