How to eat a burrito (and other lessons learned scaling engineering teams) (Turing Fest 2019)

Every person is an individual and every team is unique. There is no secret sauce or set formula to follow when trying to build a successful team. You need to forge your own path and build your own culture, but you can learn a lot about approaches to try, and pitfalls to avoid, from the experiences of those who have spent time on the wild rollercoaster ride that is scaling a fast-growing software engineering team.

In this talk Olly will uncover some of the lessons he's learned while overseeing the growth of the FreeAgent engineering team from 1 to 75 developers and managers over the past 12 years.

Transcript

1. HOW TO EAT A BURRITO (AND OTHER LESSONS LEARNED SCALING ENGINEERING TEAMS)
2. CO-FOUNDER AND CTO, FREEAGENT @lylo OLLY HEADEY olly@freeagent.com © me
3. © me
4. THE SECRET TO SCALING TEAMS
5. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
6. LESSONS
7. © me
8. Founders, leaders, managers, engineers
11. THIS IS US!
15. TEAM GROWTH 0 50 100 150 200 250 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019
16. ~90 ENGINEERING STAFF
17. ~125 PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING
18. #1 HIRING IS NUMBER ONE https://unsplash.com/photos/fY8Jr4iuPQM
19. https://unsplash.com/photos/sUXXO3xPBYo
20. • EVERYONE IS HIRING!
21. •“The quality of coworkers is the single greatest determinant of workplace happiness” 
 -- Yishan Wong
22. Hiring is a feedback loop
23. HIRING IS NOT A CHECKBOX
24. •“Make hiring your number one priority, always. •This means that it needs to be your organization's first priority, it needs to be each manager's first priority, and it needs to be each engineer's first priority.” 
 -- Yishan Wong
25. BE CONSISTENT
26. Standard interview process, no exceptions (e.g. phone screen, technical test, review call, in office interview) Standard questions for all candidates Standard test with blind reviews 
 Reduce bias at every stage.
27. Be Human. Be Kind. Be Yourself. Glassdoor is watching you.
29. Provide feedback
30. Be human! Put in the hours , invest your time Think creatively Get out there, exhaust your network Optimise the funnel
31. #2 MO’ MONEY, MO’ PROBLEMS Photo by Clarence Davis, NY Daily News Archive (Getty Images)
32. © Universal Pictures, 1985
33. Junior Mid Senior / Manager Lead / Senior Manager Principal / Head CTO / VP Eng •Define levels ⬅ Dual ladder
34. •Define basic expectations
35. •Or just steal them. progression.fyi
37. Intern ? Junior ?? Mid ??? Senior / Manager ???? Lead / Senior Manager ????? Principal / Head ?????? •Bands
38. Intern 23k Junior 25 - 35k Mid 35 - 50k Senior / Manager 50 - 65k Lead / Senior Manager 65 - 80k Principal / Head 80 - 90k •Bands
39. Review bands annually. Use insight from pipeline, network, reports. Use expectations to discuss performance and progression regularly, run 360 feedback. Annual salary reviews, bi-annual promotion reviews.
40. #3 ONE IS THE LONELIEST NUMBER © DC Comics
42. •“Software development is a team sport” 
 -- Brian Fitzpatrick & Ben Collins-Sussman Team Geek
43. % Feature #1 & Feature #2 ' Feature #3
45. •Single Points of Failure ✅ Knowledge silos ✅ Increased pressure ✅ Reduced happiness and motivation ✅ Inconsistency creep. Drift from standards ✅ Reduced code quality. Technical debt.
48. •Work as a team, not a collection of •individuals
49. Build collegiate teams, not silos Work together as a team, not a collection of unique individuals Focus on reducing single points of failure (in people and systems architecture!) Optimise for the long term – team sustainability and scalability
50. #4 HOW TO EAT A BURRITO https://unsplash.com/photos/MaHkiMGQFZM
51. * SCALING ENGINEERING TEAMS BY WRITING THINGS DOWN
52. * SCALING ENGINEERING TEAMS BY WRITING THINGS DOWN
53. POP QUIZ
54. What’s our deployment process? When do I get a salary review? How do I get on the VPN? Why are we doing this feature rather than that one? What does a senior engineer get paid? WTF am I supposed to be doing?
55. COMMUNICATION
56. DOCUMENTATION
57. ⛔ CODE COMMENTS
58. ⛔ CODE COMMENTS
59. •“Good code is its own best documentation. As you’re about to add a comment, ask yourself, ‘How can I improve the code so that this comment isn’t needed?’” 
 -- Steve McConnell
60. CLARITY
62. •Team Knowledge Base Common standards, style guides Development process - “How We Work” RFDs Incident reports Our Toolkit (GitHub, DataDog etc) Runbooks
65. Unless you’re Homer Simpson you might want to try the “lunch- sized” burrito Unwrap the burrito from the top, like a pack of digestives As you eat, unwind the foil to expose more burrito Always ensure you have something between your burrito and the table/your lap: The burrito will leak If you have a burrito for lunch, remember to bring enough for everyone
67. RFDs: REQUESTS FOR DISCUSSION
69. ARCHITECTURAL DECISION RECORDS
70. DISCUSSION
72. • Side Effects Becoming a better writer Public blog posts Hiring It becomes part of the culture
73. •It’s about the long game You’re trying to scale, the last thing you need is for your velocity to decrease. New engineers not knowing how things work, or having to ask for assistance every time they do something, will just slow you down.
74. https://unsplash.com/photos/rK_nz3DswX4 #5 PULLING THE RIPCORD
75. WHEN SHOULD YOU LET GO?
76. Technical founders hiring your first engineer Engineers transitioning into management
77. •When should you let go? Day 1, when you’ve hired your first engineer. Consider yourself no longer on the critical path. Contribute, but put your energy into supporting your engineers, create the culture, remove roadblocks.
78. PLAYER MANAGEMENT
79. •“Moonlighting managers ain’t got no time for bullshit” 
 -- DHH https://m.signalvnoise.com/moonlighting-managers-aint-got-no-time-for-bullshit/
80. • Team first, technical contribution second
81. CONCLUSION https://unsplash.com/photos/keSFbPQAJRE
82. Hiring is #1: Be Human. Be Kind. Be Fair. Be Consistent. Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems: Clear expectations, fair salaries, dual ladder One is the loneliest number: Software development is a team sport How to eat a burrito: Scale teams by writing things down Pulling the ripcord: Get off the critical path, focus on your team
83. @lylo THANKS! olly@freeagent.com https://unsplash.com/photos/WMdKyKpmYDI