1. Entrepreneurial engineering is built on tech expertise
Business-minded engineers need strong technical skills to be able to find and build the right solutions. Mid- to senior level is a must. Let junior engineers focus on the technical side.
2. Creativity and collaboration are must-haves
They need creative and critical thinking to come up with technical solutions to complex customer and business problems. Collaboration is equally important, as they need to work with people focusing on different areas of the problem.
3. Give them space to fail
Entrepreneurial engineers experiment. Most experiments fail.
When failures inevitably happen, don’t go on a firing rampage. Instead make sure they went in with the right mindset based on the right data, and everyone learns from the experiment.
Do you want to take a deep dive into spotting, hiring, retaining and leading entrepreneurial engineers?
Company-wide core hours are the best tool you can have to organize remote meetings across time zones. You also need to make sure people understand to be reasonably accommodating to each other’s schedules.
2. Move announcements out of meetings
Most people have more meetings in the remote world. Not calling meetings for announcements and status updates is a good start to counterbalance that. You can use asynchronous platforms to replace these meetings.
Episode 42 is here, the answer to life, the universe and everything: @mseavers, ex-CTO at @riotgames@RiotCareers discusses building self-managing teams.
1. What does the manager do in a self-managing team?
The leader’s job is to coach. You don’t do the frontline work, so you shouldn’t make all the frontline decisions. Teach your direct reports to solve problems and think for themselves.
2. There are reasons not to build an autonomous team
Leaders often have a desire to get more involved in the frontline work. Making decisions for your team can be quicker than taking time to have them think it through. But you come out ahead in the long run by letting these go.
1. Hire the right people
You need to hire for specific qualities when working in a hybrid team:
-Communication skills
-Proactivity
-Openness to feedback
-Inclusivity
These qualities have always been important, but they became essential in hybrid teams.
2. Document goals
You can’t rely on organically noticing in the office that an employee isn’t clear on the team’s goals and easily remind them with a few words. You need to make the goals explicit, and create a go-to document for your team to look at when in doubt.
1. About half of the tech companies didn't suffer badly from the pandemic, and almost as many experienced positive changes as negative changes. Only about 1 in 3 companies was forced to downsize at all.
Don't lower the bar in hiring, look for people as good or better than your existing employees. Create explicit requirements for each position so applicants are measured to the same standard whoever conducts their interviews.
2. Hire engineering managers with deep technical knowledge
This is essential for tech companies in hypergrowth. You need managers to mentor and support your junior employees and new hires. You can’t rely only on senior engineers for this, they’re busy coding and interviewing.
Whether you come from software engineering, sales, marketing or any other field, nothing can prepare you for being a CEO. Running a company requires experience in every discipline. You must learn on the fly.
2. The engineering background can help
A background in engineering helps you when you need to iterate your strategy in any field. Come up with potential solutions, set expectations for them, use data, and make rational decision. Software engineers are good at this.