Knowledge shared by our community

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.

Pitch Me on Why You Want to be a Manager

The author was an engineer working at a startup when the CEO asked him to become the Director of Infrastructure. He had no idea what he was getting himself into, but he accepted the role. He now asks individual contributors who want to be managers to convince him why they should be managers, and looks for certain qualities in them. He wants them to understand the scope of the role, how their day will be structured, and if they enjoy working with people. He also wants them to understand that the position is business-driven and that they are at the mercy of the business. He advises them to look for role models and to practice managing.

Implementing a Rotation for Operations Toil

A team of five people experienced an uneven distribution of workload and communication breakdown due to too many people working on the same thing. To solve this, a rotation schedule was created to ensure that everyone was taking on the same amount of operations toil and high-value work. This rotation schedule had the unintended consequence of teaching the team how to work together, giving them autonomy, and creating accountability. Special circumstances should be avoided as they can lead to individuals taking on too much work and becoming overwhelmed.

Creating Startup Product Feature Processes During Market Expansion

The team developed software for milk vendors to provide convenience to customers. When the product was launched in post-paid market cities, they had to change the product. After implementing a bill pay feature, they realized it was not useful and needed to come up with a strategy to resolve the issue. They implemented a process to take in ideas from the sales team and top management to talk to customers. This process allowed them to create a final feature to fix the post-paid problem. The team learned key lessons in solving this problem, such as understanding the customer's needs, gauging customer response quickly, releasing features to a few customers first, and making features plug and play.

Focusing Engineers on KPIs Versus Short Term Fixes

The engineering team was spending 30% of their time solving live site issues, which was inefficient. To fix this, they moved to an on-call system based on metrics, invested in a "magic fix-it button" and established a rule that any metric violations must be fixed immediately. To get the engineering team on board, trust had to be rebuilt between them and management, which was done through KPI priorities and guarded time with the team.

Tracking Engineer Time To Allocate Engineering Teams Better

The engineering team was overwhelmed with requests due to the company's upcoming IPO. To manage the workload, the team tracked their time spent across different categories and found that 30% of their time was going to unplanned projects. They worked with other divisions to make decisions and prevent other people from committing resources if they couldn't commit from their end. This allowed them to prioritize and better manage their workload.

How Metrics Can Help to “Disagree and Commit”

My company decided to differentiate from the competition by focusing on a five-star renter experience, introducing a customer service call center. However, this strategy didn't make sense for a few reasons. As head of engineering, I took a “disagree and commit” stance and used data to show the leadership team that the extra layer of interaction we forced on our renters was not helpful for the business. This allowed us to pivot company strategy while maintaining or improving relationships with other leaders in the company. I learned the true meaning of “disagree and commit” and the importance of engineering playing an important part in setting business and product vision.

Designing the Performance Review Process for a Startup

A head of engineering at a small company with 50+ employees was tasked with creating a process for employee performance reviews. After trying a standard process that was not successful, they decided to go with a minimal viable product approach, with two questions and monthly reviews. This allowed managers to practice feedback giving more often and improved employee engagement. The lesson learned was that practice is key to becoming better at something.

Roadmapping OKRs

This article discusses the challenges of implementing OKRs in a young business. Initially, the team set ambitious goals that were not met. After realizing they were missing a roadmap, they began to work on OKRs and roadmaps together. They also included people from other organizations with expertise in their respective areas. The lessons learned were that understanding team capabilities is key, and working on OKRs and roadmaps together allows for better team alignment.

Writing Code Across Multiple Platforms

The author was tasked with creating a new product for both IOS and Android while managing the front and back end of a small mobile team. To save time and money, the author introduced React Native, a platform that allows code to be written once and then compiled for both platforms. This allowed the team to ship on both platforms within a month. The author recommends React Native for startups, as it saves time and money and prevents teams from becoming misaligned.

The Importance of Time Management When Hiring

Effective time management is essential for successful hiring processes. Three key ingredients for successful time management are being organized and prioritizing tasks, having consistent messaging about the company and role, and being respectful of the candidate's time. Optimizing the interviewing time and maintaining the flow of the process are also important. Being time considerate will create a positive experience for the candidate and broadcast the company culture.

What Is the Right Time to Introduce a Coding Test

Pre-employment testing is a necessary part of the employment process, but it is important to understand when to introduce a coding test. Factors such as the size of the company and the number of candidates should be taken into account. It is best to wait until after an initial conversation and phone screen before sending a coding test, as it is a large time commitment. Companies should anticipate how many candidates they will attract and what will help to filter them before sending out coding tests.

First Principles of a Successful Product-Led Growth Strategy

This article discusses the importance of first principles thinking when creating a successful product-led growth strategy. It outlines four key principles to consider: Lead time to first value in minutes, Adequate recurrence of value, Virality and High switching costs. It also discusses the importance of delivering value fast, recurrence of value, virality, and high switching costs. Finally, it provides a roadmap for how to put these principles into action.

Applying Agile to Data Science Teams

A data science team was struggling to release software and models consistently and infrequently. To solve this, they created a data science scrum team with weekly sprints, which eventually moved to two-week sprints. This allowed them to build a deployment pipeline, document the release process, and move configuration out of code. Additionally, they moved from a research approach to a hybrid approach, allowing the product owner to review research spikes more frequently. This showed that Scrum processes can work for data science and AI optimization teams, and provides ancillary benefits.

Specializing in Non-Specializing: How Changing Roles Helps Both You and Your Company

This software developer has been with the same company for 14 years and has seen it grow from a small startup to a 1B+ company. He has changed roles many times, staying in each role for 6 months to a year before moving on. He has learned new skills and taken on new challenges, such as writing 59 case studies with a copywriter, learning SEO and conversion rate optimization, and talking to hundreds of users to find patterns. He has learned that no one should stay in the same role for too long, and that it is important to be aware of the company's priorities and offer help in whatever role is needed.

How to Sustain the Company Culture While Setting Up a New International Team in a New Location

When setting up a new engineering team in a new location, it is important to hire the right people who have the skills and culture fit to build the team. Leaders should provide the team with objectives of quality instead of quantity and invest in the team to reach the objectives. It is also important to align with the local market and competitors to attract talent and provide the team with the necessary resources to succeed. Finally, it is important to empower the team and hold regular one-on-one meetings to report progress and unblock issues.

Hiring Senior Leadership When Scaling Massively

As CTO of a company that grew from 140 to 800 engineers in two years, the author had to anticipate the size of the team and assess the existing leadership potential. It took nine months to hire six VPs and restructure the organization, and two years later the plan worked out. The author learned that it is important to anticipate growth and hire people in advance, rather than waiting until they are needed.

Continually Improving Your Hiring Process

A small team of 10 people, including one or two machine learning engineers, was tasked with hiring 20 more within a year. The company was not well known and had difficulty competing with larger companies. To overcome this, they promoted their company, co-organized a meetup, and collected data on resumes and the hiring process. They also adjusted their salaries to be competitive and offered a value proposition of greater autonomy and a chance to make a huge impact. In the end, they managed to hire 20 engineers within the year by providing a great candidate experience and reducing the time from initial contact to offer from four to two or three weeks.

Innovation in Face of Uncertainty

At a previous job, the goal was to develop music recommendations. To create a culture of innovation, a trial and error approach was taken, with experiments automated as much as possible. Hack days and hack weeks were introduced to encourage bottom-up innovation and to carve out time for people to work on their ideas. It was found that successful innovations often came from passionate people, and that what works and what doesn't is often counter-intuitive. To beat uncertainty, it was important to keep track of data and have solid statistics.

Some Useful Tips For Hiring the Right People

Hiring engineers can be a daunting process, but understanding the type, size, and developmental stage of the company can help create a successful hiring process. Smaller companies should look for people with smaller company experience and generalists, while larger companies can rely on their brand name. Respectful communication and clear role descriptions are important, as well as informal meetings with peers and managers.

Branding Yourself Through the Hiring Process

This article outlines the steps taken by a hiring manager to ensure quality candidates are recruited and retained. These steps include sourcing candidates through tech communities, meetups, and industry events, as well as screening and interviewing them. The article also emphasizes the importance of building a brand for the company and the hiring manager, and of being informed and prepared at each step of the process. Lastly, it suggests that recruiting services should be used in conjunction with other steps to ensure potential candidates are exposed to the company's brand before speaking with a recruiter.