Tech Icon Spotlight: Jeremy King

CTO, Pinterest

 

While some careers are meticulously planned, many more are dictated by minor opportunities that open new doors, random introductions, or just happening to work at a time when a transformational technology is introduced to the world.

“I always loved to build things, and you got to make your own luck, but I landed in Silicon Valley at a networking company just before the internet wave. It was as much as being good timing as being the perfect fit,” said Jeremy King, CTO at Pinterest.

King spoke with Riviera Partners to share his perspective on the benefits of long tenures, how non-AI tech companies can provide intriguing AI career opportunities, navigating the different flavors of tech leadership, and balancing incremental and exponential thinking.

01

Experience doesn’t
require restlessness

02

AI is everywhere.
So are the opportunities.

03

Be the right
leader for the job

04

History doesn’t repeat itself,
but it does rhyme

01

Experience doesn’t
require restlessness

While the tech industry is renowned for executive job-hopping, thinking long-term can unlock more opportunities for a more rewarding career trajectory. It can take months at a new company to learn the culture, build relationships, and uncover hidden obstacles; the longer you stay, the more you can maximize your institutional experience.

“I learned more in the third, fourth, and fifth year at eBay, Walmart, and Pinterest than I would have if I jumped to another company, because at that point I had my feet grounded and was able to make a bigger and faster impact,” King said. “As long as you’re at a good company that is growing and scaling quickly, the disruption to your career to work at another company purely for a little bit more money or a title change may not be worth it in the long run.”

The longer you are with a company, the more others will trust you with the new initiatives that will ultimately define your career. “I am the guy who would always volunteer and say yes to a project, even if it added extra work to my plate. I feel like I got to senior leadership faster because people knew they could count on me to get things done.”

“I learned more in the third, fourth, and fifth year at eBay, Walmart, and Pinterest, because at that point I had my feet grounded and was able to make a bigger and faster impact.”

02

AI is everywhere.
So are the opportunities.

While AI is the hot technology, you don’t need to join the handful of leading AI companies to make it the focus of your career. Almost every technology company will leverage AI in its products and services, and even non-tech sectors such as finance and healthcare are infusing AI throughout their operations. The opportunity to become an AI leader can come from anywhere.

“The whole reason I joined Pinterest is because it is on the leading edge of the ML/AI space,” King said. “We are using some LLMs from others and we have built our own. We have one of the best image corpuses in the world, so we use AI to make our recommendations and search results better, but we are using it in every part of the business. You don’t have to jump to the ‘hot’ company as long as you have a company that is able to adapt to AI quickly.”

“You don’t have to jump to the ‘hot’ company as long as you have a company that is able to adapt to AI quickly.”

03

Be the right
leader for the job

There’s no single way to be an effective technical leader. Some thrive when they are deep in the technical weeds, others as managers, and others still as strategic visionaries. Knowing the type of leader you are–and aligning yourself with a company that needs that specific type of leadership–can make all the difference.

“I quickly realized when I became a manager of managers that I was not the smartest person in the room, but I was a good connector and communicator. I would hear things from my peers and above that were extremely useful for my teams, often in unexpected ways,” King said.

King cautions leaders to not only know their strengths, but to avoid overextending their purview. “Many leaders at some point fall into a trap where they think other teams would do better if they worked under their purview..’ It’s easy to get a little power-hungry or want to build your empire. But after some time, you have to realize that you can never own it all. Your goal should be to figure out how to work well with others and maximize what’s within your scope.”

“After some time, you have to realize that you can never own it all. Your goal should be to figure out how to work well with others and maximize what’s within your scope.”

04

History doesn’t repeat itself,
but it does rhyme

Regardless of leadership style, all technical leaders are measured on: exponential results.

“As a CTO, you can get mired down in the tactical day-to-day so quickly. If you’re not careful, you’ll spend your entire time on that and never pull your head up to look. But if you put the blinders on to just get projects out the door, 18 months will go by and you’ll have missed this window or be late to that market,” King said.

“The CTO has to carve out time to talk about the future. Incremental thinking is great but a senior leader needs to be able to step back and think about exponential change, especially with the unprecedented pace of technology adoption right now,” he said.

One way King delivers exponential value is to balance technical acumen with people management to better identify potential solution strategies, even if the tactics change to reflect technology or use cases.

“We are using NewSQL and had to redo the way it shards, and I thought, ‘My God, I saw this problem 25 years ago.’ To be efficient, I have to keep up with the latest tech and identify patterns to help us get to the solution faster and remove any bottlenecks.”

“If you put the blinders on to just get projects out the door, 18 months will go by and you'll have missed that window or be late to that market.”

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