Leadership & Strategy

Hiring Pipeline for Passion and Talent

The CTO of a new company in Brazil was tasked with hiring a team that was representative of the entrepreneur's vision. He created a pipeline of tests to filter out potential candidates, including IQ tests, smoke tests, and paid challenges. He learned that it is more important to hire talented and motivated individuals than those with specific skill sets, and was able to assemble a successful team with high retention rates.

How to solve a conflict between two team members

When two senior architects on a team had conflicting views, the manager asked them to write down their top three concerns and brainstorm together. This enabled them to address all but one of their disagreements. For the last issue, they chose an arbitrator to solve it. The manager learned that discussion, arbitration, and escalation to senior management are three ways to solve a conflict. Writing down ideas is a great first step to avoid heightened emotions and to find a satisfying solution.

How To Start Using OKRs

This article discusses the implementation of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) in an engineering team of 125 people. Initially, a pilot was attempted but was unsuccessful due to lack of training and context. To ensure success, the team invested in education and set up times for teams to discuss why the business wanted to do things versus why the teams wanted to do them. The article concludes that OKRs are very helpful for giving teams a focus, but it is important to invest in education and ensure that teams are working on the right stuff.

To Contractor or not to contractor? Pros and cons of putting off full time hiring.

Rogue Rocket was founded in 2011 with the goal of staying lean and hiring staff on a project-needs basis. They used contractors to fill positions and minimize cash flow risk, and eventually made a few full-time hires. The strategy was to create great products and maximize quality and creativity, but this may not be a wise choice in the current business environment due to the shortage of skilled technical personnel. Companies must decide on the best strategy for their needs.

Stumbling into chaos

The new director of engineering at a startup had to jump in on day one when the team had just done a re-org and re-oriented the product roadmap. He met with the CTO and engineering leads to understand why the new structure had been put in place, then worked with the product managers to focus on pieces they had high certainty of needing. He also added weekly planning meetings for each product team and daily standups to create structure and accountability. Through retros and feedback, he tailored these initial short-term fixes to their needs. He learned that plans often go awry and we have to adapt, look for short-term engineering work when long-term plans change, and creating a predictable process cadence can help create stability.

Disagreement? Put Yourself in the Other Person’s Shoes

When faced with a conflict with a manager, it is important to take a step back and try to understand the situation from their perspective. In this case, the manager was trying to help and mentor the employee, and the employee was able to find a middle ground by trusting the manager's judgement and understanding the value of being uncomfortable.