Building a Tech Team in Africa

Here I focused on some of what I think is missing with regards to creating a world class tech team in Nairobi at the AITEC East Africa ICT conference (http://aitecafrica.com/event/view/95). This is a great place to be creating high quality tech teams (everybody speaks English, expenses are low, exciting for young internationals) - and more top quality teams should be here.

Transcript

1. Building a World Class Tech Team in Kenya Adam Nelson adam@kili.io
2. About Adam • Former New York startup CTO • Built world class tech teams before - yipit.com • Beginning to build a world class tech team here in Nairobi - kili.io
3. Look Within • Do you want to build a world class tech team? • Does anybody else in your organization want to? • Do you even have a world class organization off of which to build?
4. And Again… • What’s your office like? • Do people eat lunch together? • What are your computers like? • Is your current tech team respected? • What is the path to success in your organization?
5. How Not to Find People • Don’t outsource finding people - this never works • Don’t use a bunch of acronyms to skim through resumes (ASP, VB, C#) • Don’t advertise on non-technology job boards (The Nation, CareerBuilder)
6. Who Do You Want to Join? • What’s the vision for the team over the next year or two? • What type of people do the other members of the team want to have join them? • What do other members of the organization want out of the team generally?
7. How do you know what everybody wants?
8. Ask Them
9. Can you afford a world class tech team?
10. Can you afford not to have one?
11. Specifics • Recruit abroad: 40M person talent pool (Kenya) is not as deep as a 6B person talent pool (World) • Don’t write job requirements, write descriptions of what the person will be doing on a regular basis • Keep descriptions loose - you will build a better team by building it around new hires, not shoehorning those new hires into rigid roles
12. Community • Does your organization have a Github page? • Does your organization visibly support a tech project? • Does your organization sponsor events at iHub, etc…?
13. I Can Help
14. If You … • Promise to pay well, with benefits • Promise to train new hires • Promise to give new team members a good work environment • … and they need a good computer too • Promise to give tech hires a path to success
15. Adam Nelson adam@kili.io @varud