How FanDuel’s Gregg Altschul Keeps Engineering Culture Strong at Scale
March 11, 2025 26 min read
What makes a great engineering leader? It’s not just about technical skills—it’s accountability, adaptability, and the ability to connect with your team in a way that fosters ownership and long-term success. Engineering leaders who understand how to scale teams effectively, build cultures of responsibility, and stay connected across distributed offices create teams that deliver value beyond simple execution.
In this episode of Keep Moving Forward, Gregg Altschul, VP of Engineering at FanDuel, shares what it takes to lead a high-performance engineering organization. With years of experience across startups, fintech, and gaming, Gregg has seen firsthand how rapid scaling can strain teams, how ramping up hiring can backfire without the right structure, and why fostering ownership at scale requires more than just good intentions.
Beyond the Job Description: What It Means to Own the Outcome
Ownership isn’t just a leadership principle—it’s the difference between a team that executes tasks and one that drives outcomes. “At startups, it happens naturally—because it has to,” Gregg says. When resources are tight, you’re expected to wear multiple hats, jump into unfamiliar territory, and do whatever it takes to keep the company moving forward. But in larger organizations, ownership isn’t automatic—it has to be deliberately built into the culture.
At FanDuel, Gregg is intentional about keeping ownership at the core of his engineering teams. As teams scale, roles become more specialized, and it’s easy to focus only on your assigned tasks—but true ownership means looking beyond your immediate scope to what’s best for the business as a whole.
That’s why “own the outcome” is one of FanDuel’s core principles. “‘Own the outcome’ is not just about owning your area, it's about really owning everything in the business as much as you can,” Gregg says. “I might not be responsible for the current outage, but it's still my company, and I still care about other services that are not mine being up, so I might lend a hand.”
This mindset doesn’t happen overnight. It takes reinforcement, strong leadership, and leading by example. But when an engineering team truly owns the outcome, everything changes. Teams move faster, silos disappear, and accountability becomes a shared responsibility—not a burden.
More Hires, Less Chaos: How to Scale Without Slowing Down
When hiring ramps up, it’s easy to focus on the number of hires you need to make and forget about the people who are already carrying the load. “One of the biggest factors that I think people don't consider when scaling a team is the impact on the current team,” Gregg says. It’s a delicate equation: hiring too fast overwhelms your current team, but hiring too slow leaves you understaffed. The key is structured onboarding, clear processes, and a well-supported talent acquisition team.
At FanDuel, new engineers are expected to ship code to production within their first 30 days. To make that possible, the team invests heavily in documentation, mentorship, and structured onboarding programs. “We have onboarding buddies, so they have folks who they work with directly, and they’re usually folks who have been at the company for a while,” Gregg explains. Scaling successfully means creating systems that enable new hires to ramp up quickly without disrupting the team’s momentum. Because when hiring is done right, it strengthens your team instead of slowing it down.
The Secret to Managing Remote Teams? Show Up—Literally.
In a remote or hybrid work environment, visibility matters more than ever. When teams are spread across multiple locations, it’s easy for employees to feel disconnected from leadership. Virtual meetings can keep teams aligned, but they don’t replace real-life presence. Your ability to be seen, engage in casual conversations, and participate in office culture can have a profound impact on morale, trust, and long-term retention.
“I encourage every leader who has teams across multiple offices to go to those offices and be with the team,” Gregg says. Whether it’s grabbing coffee, chatting in the break room, or just being available for informal conversations, these moments shape how employees view leadership, feel connected to the company, and stay engaged.
Gregg makes it a priority to host all-hands meetings in person whenever possible. “Standing up in front of them enables them to see you, and there’s something about you just being real for them that is very important.” He follows up with open ask-me-anything sessions, giving employees across all levels the chance to ask direct questions about strategy and company direction.
Attending company events, hosting team dinners, and simply getting to know employees on a personal level fosters trust and loyalty. In a world where remote work has become common, making time for in-person connection is one of the most powerful things a leader can do.
Transcript
Gregg Altschul:
Owning the outcome is not just about owning your area; it's about really owning everything in the business as much as you can. I might not be responsible for the current outage, but it's still my company, and I still care about other services that are not mine being up, so I might lend a hand, and I've done that many times throughout my career. It doesn't have to be mine in order for it to be mine, and I think that's the spirit of it at FanDuel. It's really, we are a part of this together, we are all part of the outcome, so let's get there together rather than just staying siloed in your own area.
Caleb Brown:
Hey, everyone, and welcome to Keep Moving Forward, the podcast from X-Team for tech professionals who are passionate about growth, leadership, and innovation. I'm your host, Caleb Brown, and in each episode we'll dive into candid conversations with the tech industry's brightest minds, seasoned leaders, forward-thinking engineers and visionary experts. Today, I'm excited to sit down with Gregg Altschul, Vice President of Engineering at FanDuel. With over two decades of experience leading teams across industries, from IoT startups to major financial institutions, Gregg brings a wealth of knowledge on scaling engineering teams, fostering innovation, and balancing technical leadership with business strategy.
In this episode we'll explore how Gregg applies principles, like extreme ownership, to drive accountability in his teams, how he fosters a culture of continuous learning and the strategies he's used to scale engineering teams in high growth environments. We also dive into the challenges of innovating in a highly regulated industry, and the future of AI and machine learning in gaming. Whether you're leading a team, looking to sharpen your technical edge while growing in leadership, or simply curious about the evolving landscape of engineering management, this conversation has something for you. Let's get started.
Well, I’m really, really excited about today. Again, this is the Keep Moving Forward podcast from X-Team, and Gregg, I was able to take some time to kind of dig into your background a little bit, your experience, and I think there's, what, over 20 years of experience there? Kind of leading teams across a ton of different sectors—which is a really interesting thing about you—IoT, startups, and major financial institutions and now FanDuel. So I'm really excited to get into this and, yeah, just welcome to the show.
Gregg Altschul:
Thank you. Excited to be here.
Caleb Brown:
Awesome. Well, then, speaking of your background, I think it makes sense to go ahead and kick off with your personal and professional journey. So maybe you could do that. Walk us through your career as you see fit, because like I said, there is a lot in there, but there's a ton of really interesting stuff, maybe from your early days at Amano, I believe, all the way up to FanDuel.
Gregg Altschul:
Sure. When I look back on my journey, it is, like you say, very varied in terms of industry, but always with the tech focus, obviously. I was a student of engineering and still sort of am, but obviously a practitioner, as well. I started at Amano after college, which… We automated parking decks. So the gates that go up and down and the things that detect that your car is there, things that take your ticket, the pay machines, I worked on it, a pay-on-foot machine where you take the ticket to it, you pay first, and then you go to your car and you put it in to leave later. That was an interesting machine because it combines software and hardware, which software I had studied, but hardware I hadn't. It was a nice intro into the hardware space. I actually did a little bit of firmware coding there. And what's interesting about that is that it sort of comes back later in my career at Keen Home where I did a bunch of hardware as well.
But after Amano I went into the financial services industry, FactSet first and then BlackRock after that. Those are the two major firms that I worked at while I was in finance. While I was at BlackRock, I transitioned from software engineer to manager, and that's where I expanded my first team over to India. So I had my first foray into launching and building a team abroad. After about five or so years at BlackRock, the itch to start my own thing kicked in again, because it’s something that comes up over and over, but I decided, for the first time, to leave big business and take a stab at starting businesses on my own. And most of them were unsuccessful, as the story usually goes, but I did join Keen Home, not as a founder, but as their first software hire, and that's where I got back into the confluence of software and hardware.
Again, it was a smart vent system that automatically moved air around the house in order to solve hot and cold spots. So it was an IoT product in the house, it sat in the vents in your home, but there was obviously a big software component that controlled the airflow, et cetera, and obviously ran the entire platform in the cloud. From there, I left to join Compass. I started there as an engineering manager, managing their search infra team and, by the time I left, I was managing the entire real-time data platform at the company. And shortly after that joined FanDuel, which is where I am now. I'm currently managing the casino engineering team. Most people know us as a sports book, but we actually have a casino app, slots, table games, live dealer, and that's where I'm today.
Caleb Brown:
I think it was on our initial call, you had kind of introduced the concept of extreme ownership, from those startup days that we're talking about, and I was just kind of curious if you could tell a little bit about that and then how you apply that principle in your current role at FanDuel.
Gregg Altschul:
It's a great question, because it's a tough thing to do. At a startup, everyone's wearing many hats. Everyone sort of knows that about the startup world. Even if you're at a decently sized one, you still got your hand in multiple pots versus when you're at a much larger company and you're more focused or dialed into a specific area; maybe it's a service or two or specific feature. At startups, it happens naturally—because it has to. The startup will not succeed if everyone doesn't feel some degree of ownership over virtually every area of, at least, the tech world if you're in technology.
So again, it's a much more organic thing that happens at startups. When you move into larger business, you have to sort of create it a little bit more. Some people have it naturally; others you sort of have to put in processes that sort of pull for that. Really talk about the mindset, really instill that into everything you do. So if you're doing all-hands or you have small team meetings, whatever it may be, you're bringing this up, you're really trying to instill the mindset, explain why it's important, explain why it's important to the business, and why it should be important to you, ultimately.
Caleb Brown:
It's interesting, because we keep talking, and probably me, because I'm fascinated very much by startups, but I keep kind of focusing on a little bit of that. But I'm interested… In that kind of space, you have to kind of be focused on innovation and continuous learning and understanding what's out there, but obviously that's helpful in any software role. So I'm just kind of curious how you foster that innovation and that continuous learning within your actual engineering teams—in any kind of team, whether that's a startup-sized team or something larger that you're in now. Just really interesting, from your perspective, how you make sure the team is fostering that culture overall.
Gregg Altschul:
The nice thing about technologists is that they tend to naturally gravitate towards staying on top of things, but especially in a larger organization and especially one like Compass and FanDuel where… At my time at the companies they were scaling very rapidly, you tend to lose sight of that being so important and really have to focus on and make a concerted effort to foster that kind of thinking within the organization. Obviously, when you're scaling, you're trying to do everything you can to deliver product to the business, so that can really quickly eat up all of your engineers’ time. So not only is it important to keep track of innovation for bringing new technology into the business that ultimately helps the business and deliver value to the customer, but it's also something that really excites engineers and keeps folks satisfied, and ultimately at the company.
So it is something that I try to do within my organizations. I think it's important to... Again, it comes down to mindset. If you're saying to people, "Hey, let's really focus on innovation and be inquisitive about things," that tends to have an impact, but it's also about giving folks the space to explore on the job. So Google was obviously very famous for implementing 20% time. We do a version of that at FanDuel, we did a version of that at Compass, as well, but that really... It's a very clear signal to everyone that they ought to be taking the time to do that, and they can actually schedule it on their calendar if they would like to.
Caleb Brown:
And so it's really interesting that you're doing, because the first thing, when you were starting to talk about that, the first thing I thought of was the 20% thing at Google, and that's interesting that you've been part of organizations that have implemented that. Wondering if you can share an example or something along those lines of sometime that you've helped an employee, or what have you, unlock that full potential of... You're right, technologists, naturally, are curious and always moving, but fostering that culture within your company really brings it out. So I was just curious if you had any examples of a time when someone unlocked that full potential?
Gregg Altschul:
So it's interesting, because I actually just ran a session on gen AI and ChatGPT, and it wasn't for engineers, it was for non-technical folks.
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, very cool.
Gregg Altschul:
And I think most people in my org will have some understanding or will have, at least, played with or potentially even use it daily in their job; but non-tech people, maybe not. They're not as plugged into what's new, what's going on in that space, and how it can help them in their day to day. So I actually ran a session for those folks to help them understand what ChatGPT is good for, how they can use it. We went over some prompts, some interesting prompts. We did some stuff that's related to work, some stuff that was just fun, like, "Tell me a joke," type things and tried to gear it towards how they could use it in their day to day.
How can I use ChatGPT to write an email? How can I get input on this idea that I have for a marketing campaign? And it really... you could see people light up and it brings the innovation to the non-engineer, which is really interesting to me. And as an engineering leader, I think that's part of my job is to empower and enable the entire organization to use the tools that are available, not just the engineers in my particular organization.
Caleb Brown:
Very cool. I love that. I wanted to focus a little bit more on scaling the engineering team side of things and talk about some of the key challenges that you faced when doing that scaling of engineering teams, and particularly in a super high growth environment like FanDuel is.
Gregg Altschul:
It is really quite a challenge. One of the biggest factors that I think people don't consider when scaling a team is the impact on the current team. So building out a ramp, a hiring ramp, that can accommodate the hiring you need to do, but also making sure that people aren't- that all they're doing isn't interviewing and training. There needs to be a balance. Obviously, the bigger the team gets, the easier that becomes, because you have more people to do those things. But when you're going from small or medium to large, that becomes a real strain. You also need to take into account your talent acquisitions team's ability to fill the hopper and get the interviews going. So that's something that we kept track of quite closely, both at FanDuel and at Compass.
Caleb Brown:
Very interesting. So curious, because, I mean, we honestly talk about that a lot on this podcast, because it is something that just every engineering team faces and also can tackle it in different ways. But curious if, along the way, you've found any processes or even tools that you use for an effective way of maintaining that productivity and communication as the team grows, just like you were talking about… As the team grows, you have the current team that's been there for whatever amount of time and then brand new people entering that. Just curious if you found any tips and tricks or tools or anything along the lines that made some of that productivity and communications easier?
Gregg Altschul:
Yeah, so really refining your interview loops, the questions that you're asking, so that they're tight, they get straight to the point, we don't have to revisit with folks as we try to minimize that as much as possible. Having a very good onboarding process, making sure that it's top-notch, so that when someone joins, they can do self-learning. There's obviously going to be folks who need to lean in and help train people up, but as much as you can put onto a Confluence page or in some other onboarding tool, there's a bunch out there that automate this stuff, the better, because that takes the strain off of the team that's doing the training and the interviewing.
Beyond that, after they get past their first month, we try to get folks into the team and submitting code by … really into production within 30 days. That's the goal. But beyond that, there's still more learning to do. So we have everything documented on Confluence. We have subject matter experts identified so that folks know who to go to for particular topics. We make sure people are well-networked, so that if I come to you for a question, for example, and you don't know the answer, you know who to get that answer. It just sort of greases the wheels, all of these things. And then beyond that, having a good continuing learning and development process, and we work with our learning and development team to work on those things, get them executed.
So beyond that, when folks are coming in, making sure that you have a good mentorship and coaching program. We have onboarding buddies, so they have folks who they work with directly, and they're usually folks who have been at the company for a while. It becomes a little challenging when you're scaling, because you have a lot of folks who are very new, but we still try to make sure that they get the best onboarding buddy for the areas they're coming into.
Speaking of areas, your org structure matters when you're bringing folks in the door. If you have just one pool of people with not much organization, it's going to be much more challenging to onboard people than it is if you have a much more refined org structure.
Within that org structure, a clear set of ways of working so that folks don't get confused about where they're getting their work from. It's very clear: this is my Jira board, these are my tasks, and this is what I'm working on and what I'm responsible for delivering. We also make sure that, within our ways of working, that we have very clear escalation paths. So if a junior person gets stuck, they would escalate to their manager or a particular principal engineer. That also really helps, because then they know exactly who to go to for support.
Caleb Brown:
You're someone that, at least, as far as I understand it, kind of travels pretty frequently between different offices, and I'm interested in how you sort of maintain the leadership and presence across different locations with those teams. I just thought that was an interesting question that you might have a perspective on.
Gregg Altschul:
It's one of the things that is crucial for me, and I encourage every leader who has teams across multiple offices to go to those offices and be with the team. Earlier, we talked about culture and local culture. It helps you embed yourself in that culture. What is this team like? What do they do, day to day? Do they hang out by the coffee machine or the water cooler or do they play ping pong or foosball? What are the things that they do that you can get involved with and really understand the office culture? So that's really critical. But it cannot be understated how important just your physical presence in a location means to someone who might not even be meeting with you or spending any time with you. Saying hello to them, talking to them via, potentially, an all-hands.
I try to host my all-hands at my office locations. I very rarely do virtual all-hands. Again, I said don't skip them if you're virtual, which I feel very strongly about, but if you can be in-person, standing up in front of them enables them to see you, and there's something about you just being real for them that is very important. I also tend to follow up by all-hands with AMAs. So I'll sit down in front of the team and they could just ask me anything they want for 20 or 30 minutes. And they can just ask away. What are we doing with gen AI? When can we use more of that in our tools? What is it you do on a daily basis? [That] is a question that I got one time. And I was like, "I'm not really sure, actually." I need to think about that. So that was a tough question, but it was fun to answer.
And then, of course, for my leadership team, entertaining, bringing them out to dinner, spending time with them that isn't work. And it's not just them; it's the entire team. I might go to a party with them, an office party. Last summer I went to their summer party in Cluj, Romania, which was amazing. We got to just hang out versus be in a work environment. With my leadership team, we'll go out to a restaurant and just talk about me. How are our families? How many kids do you have? It's so important, and we do that virtually, too, but to do that in person is, there's just no substituting it in my view.
Caleb Brown:
Yep. Agreed. Well, cool. Let's pivot a little bit to talking about innovation, but in regulated industries. Game, betting industry, highly regulated, of course. So how do you balance that need for innovation that we've talked about with that compliance factor?
Gregg Altschul:
It's an interesting question, and I think it's still one that we're constantly evolving at FanDuel. But it's so different at FanDuel than it is at something like BlackRock, for example, which is also a very highly regulated industry. We try to push the envelope as much as we can. We try to think about things ahead of time. Okay, well if we built this thing, would it be more or less compliant this way or that way? Will it be compliant at all? We try to answer those things as best we can ourselves, but we also have, obviously, a legal team that we work with to help us navigate the regulatory environment, because ultimately it's a complex set of regulations that we are not equipped to navigate ourselves.
We try to get ahead of those things, so we are not going to build something that we are not sure has a very good chance of being approved by regulators. So we try not to get too far down the road without making sure that what we can build will actually be successfully delivered to customers. But when it comes to innovation, I try and sort of... Then the compliance stuff comes a little later. What I don't want to do is say to the team, "Don't innovate, because we're not sure whether we’ll even get approved." That's not the answer. The answer is, "Go play. When you have something that you think can really be something, let's talk about it—but let's talk about it before you've done a ton of work on, let's say, some exciting new product that we're not sure we'll be able to get launched."
Caleb Brown:
Well, let's talk some more about a different spin on the engineering leadership. What advice do you have for tech folks, essentially, tech leaders, making a transition to more of a business-focused role? I know you're always in, you always stayed technical, but I guess the question really is about changing industries a bit, pivoting a little bit. Or maybe not pivoting, but changing industries, because I do believe that you've done that a little bit. I was just kind of curious about that. Maybe that's worded not ideal, but I think you probably get what I'm saying.
Gregg Altschul:
It's a really challenging one. If you're trained in engineering, you don't really have much context or classical sort of education in business, and there are many people who obviously do. You can come at the technology side of business from a business degree and probably be much better equipped for that role, but that person would then need to understand the tech side. But, first of all, you can find a lot of good information on the internet about the business side of tech, and just the business side of business. What is EBITDA, for example? You can Google that and get really good explanations of what that is. So if it's something that you hear, and you're interested in it, you can go Google it and equip yourself that way. Don't let those moments go by where you hear a term that you're not familiar with, whether it's business or anything else, and not take the opportunity to research what that might be, especially if it's related to your business.
I think, as you move over to management, you start to get more and more of that as you get more and more senior. So then the question is, well, do I even want to be a manager? And that's really the first step. Understanding what an engineering manager does, because resource planning for people's time is a lot like resource planning dollars. It's investments in both cases, so they're really quite similar. So just making the jump over to engineering manager and starting to do those things, starts to help sort of develop that muscle, but in a way that is still very much technical. And then, as you get more and more senior, you're going to get more and more of the business side of technology. It's going to be more about dollars than it is going to be about headcount or how people spend time. You never really shed that, at least, not so far in my career where I'm at, but you do start to incorporate more of the business side of things just by doing.
And, of course, the closer you are to the business side, the more terms you're going to hear that you don't understand. You're going to ask questions, you're going to look it up. You can get mentors to help you. I really didn't understand how to read a financial statement, really until I joined FanDuel, to be honest. I knew what it was and I can pick certain pieces apart about it, but I really didn't have a deep understanding of what a financial statement was. And I actually went over to my finance partner and asked her to explain it to me. She sat down with me in two sessions and explained it to me, and then, by the end, I was able to explain it back to her. So I learn by doing. I also learn by reading, asking tons of questions. I really think those are the keys. Of course, you can go back for a master's degree, as well, if you want to and do it that way too. That just wasn't my path.
Caleb Brown:
So this touches on… My next question was going to be. How do you stay technically sharp while focusing on leadership responsibilities? But that really does... You've covered a bit of that in reading, and potential education, and things like that. But I'm even curious in drilling in and talking about, even from a… If you started out as a software developer and you moved into a position where you're doing more managing, again, we talked about how software developers and folks like that are interested and curious naturally and don't want to lose that, but I'm just curious if you do have any tips, along the way, of making sure you don't... how to not lose that technical edge while you're moving into other areas that might be business or leadership.
Gregg Altschul:
In my role, I'm still sort of... I can get in the weeds as much as I need to, and when I do that, I will learn new things that folks are using. I learned about new AWS services that popped up since I stopped using the tool directly. So that's a really great way. So it's just really engage with the team, talk to the team, see what they're using, and then, like with the business stuff, go research it. I learned about new Amazon Web Services that became available, and I went and read what they're all about. So that's certainly one way.
I also read a lot. I have a few blogs that I go to that I find really informative, keeps me updated on anything new that's going on. It's how I learn about new open AI models or even trends within technology, more general trends, languages, things like that. So I think the key is really staying inquisitive. If you're inquisitive, you're going to find these things, because you're going to be poking around. I think that mindset is key.
Caleb Brown:
Totally agree. I think it was, again, on our kind of initial prep call you mentioned, at FanDuel, there's a principle called “own the outcome.” I'm curious for you to tell me a little bit more about that, but also how you kind of instill that mindset across the team.
Gregg Altschul:
It's one of my favorite principles at FanDuel, if not my favorite. It really speaks to what I mentioned earlier about having the mindset of ownership, and really instilling that. So again, I will repeat it to my team about owning their areas, but importantly “own the outcome” is not just about owning your area, it's about really owning everything in the business as much as you can. I might not be responsible for the current outage, but it's still my company, and I still care about other services that are not mine being up, so I might lend a hand, and I've done that many times throughout my career. It doesn't have to be mine in order for it to be mine, and I think that's the spirit of it at FanDuel. It's really, we are a part of this together, we are all part of the outcome, so let's get there together rather than just staying siloed in your own area.
Caleb Brown:
Absolutely. Wanted to talk a little bit about future outlook stuff. We're getting a little bit close to the end here, and I really like wrapping up, or starting to wrap up, with looking ahead. And so, I was just curious, what do you think are the biggest opportunities for technological innovation at iGaming over the next, call it 5 to 10 years? 10 is pretty far out, but over the next couple of years.
Gregg Altschul:
So I don't want to share too many secrets-
Caleb Brown:
Sure. Sure. You can talk broad.
Gregg Altschul:
I won't name anything specific, but I think the same factors and forces that are at work in other industries are at work in ours. AI is a big question for everyone. Obviously, I talked earlier about sharing how open AI can help non-technical people be more productive at work. We're obviously using it at work to be productive. We're using them as productivity tools, but I think, in terms of how we use it within engineering to enhance the product, remains a question mark, and it something that we're navigating now. It's still very nascent, so we are keeping an eye on it, but we're also not trying to lose focus. We're trying not to lose focus on what's important, which is delivering value to our customers.
Caleb Brown:
So I'm curious. You talked about having some level of the Google-esque 20% thing. Do you have teams working on sort of R&D experimental side, whereas the majority of the team is working on core product? I'm curious how you do experimentation, in-house. I'm just wondering how that looks as a technical team.
Gregg Altschul:
So… I don't want to talk too much about the org structure, internally, but we do have key people focused on… We have folks focused on tinkering in certain areas where we feel like there might be value in the kind of tinkering that they're doing, if that makes sense. And if we find that there might be a breakthrough in a certain area, then we will invest in it from there.
Caleb Brown:
Yeah, yeah. That makes sense. And I want to wrap up with the kind of future outlook stuff by just saying—I always love asking this question, no matter the industry—if there's just one thing you could change about the tech industry, in general or its culture, what would that be and why?
Gregg Altschul:
I'm going to say what I've been saying for years. I'd like to see more diversity in the engineering world. It's very male, it's very white, and I would really like to see more different stripes of life come into the tech world. It's something that we're focused on at FanDuel. It's something that we've focused on at every other company that I've been at. It is challenging, because there are also cultural factors at play, but I think what makes a great team, not just in engineering, but in any discipline, is diversity of thought. And you don't have diversity of thought if you don't have diversity of people.
Caleb Brown:
Yep, that's a great answer. So let's wrap it up here with just a couple more just about the overall key takeaways really. Interested in what you think is the most important lesson, or one of the most important lessons, that you've learned in your career, that you'd like to share with someone that is perhaps out there aspiring to be a tech leader.
Gregg Altschul:
Be coachable. I mean, I can't express that enough. The only way you're going to be the professional you want to be is to be open to feedback, and open to changing based on that feedback. If you're not doing that, I think you're going to severely limit how far you can go.
Caleb Brown:
And then, kind of a spin-off question to that, once they're in that role, what's the piece of advice that you would give them for making a significant impact once they're there within their organization?
Gregg Altschul:
I think talking to people and really understanding that the deepest problems that exist within your area, and the best way to deliver value, is to focus on the right problems and put the right people on those problems. If you're doing that, as an engineering leader, you're going to succeed.
Caleb Brown:
Totally, totally. While we're kind of in this world where we were... We've always had distributed teams, but so often, everyone kind of went into work for the most part. And now we're a little bit different. But even in my personal life, like I have folks that are a hundred percent remote as friends and things like that, and people that are hybrid. I'm just curious... You've seen a lot of these teams and seen how it worked, and we've talked about some of the difficulties there, how do you think engineering teams ... do you think this is kind of the ... what we found, this hybrid solution, is the future? Do you think it's more remote? Do you think that we'll be going back to the office more—there'll be a revival of the old school way, so to speak? Just curious about what you kind of think how engineering teams are working will look like moving forward?
Gregg Altschul:
I think it's going to be a mix of everything. It's going to be a hybrid of the options. And I think what's going to wind up happening is you're going to have certain organizations that prioritize being in the office and they want you in the office every day. You're going to have some folks that are remote, some companies that are remote, fully remote, and then you're going to have folks that are hybrid. And that's, specifically, with regard to the office. And I think that what's nice about that is that you, as an employee of a company, can choose the company that suits you best.
And I think that's really a wonderful thing. I didn't have that option up until recently. 18 years of my career, 18 years plus, had been go to the office every day. There was long commutes. And now, if I don't want to do that, I don't have to, because if a company that I'm at wants to bring me into the office, there's a company that I can go to that can work better with how I would like to work professionally, and with my family. But I think that what shouldn't change is that, even if you're fully remote, that, like I said earlier in the podcast, you got to get together still. It's just crucially important, even if you're fully remote, to make those connections in person. I can't stress that enough.
Caleb Brown:
A hundred percent. And I think that's a good one to leave it on. So Gregg, thank you so much. This was really nice, really enjoyable. I learned a lot. And, truly, a lot of what you said was legit helpful in my world and my career, so I appreciate it.
Gregg Altschul:
Awesome. Great chatting with you. Thank you very much for having me.
Caleb Brown:
What a great conversation with Gregg about the intersection of leadership, innovation and scaling teams in high growth environments. One thing that really stood out to me was Gregg's perspective on extreme ownership and how it plays a critical role in fostering accountability across engineering teams. His approach to leadership isn't just about driving technical excellence; it's about creating a culture where every team member feels empowered to take initiative and contribute meaningfully. His insights on continuous learning, mentorship, and balancing innovation with compliance in a regulated industry were both practical and forward-thinking. And I loved hearing about his experience in scaling teams while maintaining a strong team culture—something every engineering leader can learn from.
Thank you, Gregg, for sharing your journey from startups to FanDuel, and for the thoughtful lessons on building teams and technologies that make an impact. And thank you to our listeners for being part of this conversation. It's stories like these that remind us why we Keep Moving Forward.
Join us next time for more insightful conversations with tech leaders who inspire us to grow, lead and innovate. Find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or YouTube music. And don't forget to share this episode if it resonated with you. Until next time!
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