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Few companies have mastered making products consumers actually want to use like Toast.

A $30 billion giant in the tech-food business, Toast faced their worst case scenario during the pandemic when the restaurants at the heart of their business were all forced to shut down.

Toast rose like a phoenix to become one of the best success stories of pivoting during the pandemic by making users love using their food delivery systems.

To understand how Toast became one of the great success stories of the last 2 years, we spoke to Brad Pielech, the company’s Director of Engineering.

An amazing conversation that’s informed how we think about product at LinearB, Brad made a flawless case for the importance of UX - and why the alliance between UX and devs at Toast produced a market-beating pivot that took the company from unicorn to brink of collapse and back again.

Episode Highlights Include:

• (1:13) Dan & Brad's history at Cloudlock
• (5:48) Secret to building & maintaining relationships in a remote world
• (10:21) Why engineers should make friends with their Legal Dept.
• (18:00) One good UX is worth 5 engineers
• (20:29) The Triad Team Model: Eng + Design + Product
• (33:08) How Toast survived the pandemic
• (37:57) Change can be scary for engineers
• (45:51) Support local restaurants!

Starved for top-level software engineering content? Need some good tips on how to manage your team? This article is inspired by Dev Interrupted - the go-to podcast for engineering leaders.

Dev Interrupted features expert guests from around the world to explore strategy and day-to-day topics ranging from dev team metrics to accelerating delivery. With new guests every week from Google to small startups, the Dev Interrupted Podcast is a fresh look at the world of software engineering and engineering management.

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