Sreedhar Peddineni, two time entrepreneur at Gainsight and Hostanalytics with 19 years of SaaS experience, engaged with founders in an insightful session on “Building engineering teams” at Lightspeed’s Extreme Entrepreneurs program in Delhi recently.
Here are some of the key points Sreedhar made:
- There are 3 phases of scaling– 1. Early stage (x engineers) 2. Early growth (xx engineers) and 3. Growth (xxx engineers). It’s critical to have objective evidence for deciding when to switch on scaling– decide your metrics (eg-PMF/traction). “Don’t hire just because you have got funded.”
- While a small, full stack team helps to go through rapid iterations in early stage, early growth requires specialized, experienced people to fill gaps. As scale inefficiencies and team frictions start arising, it becomes critical to set processes, management layers etc.
- It’s tempting to give big titles to first set of ‘young’ hires as a company scales. Delay giving titles as much as possible– people might have to step down, so don’t over promise. Set expectations on potential org. changes 6–9 months in advance.
- It’s a myth that eng mgmt path (Eng manager–>Director Eng–>VPP Eng) is better than IC path (Lead eng–>Tech Architect–>Principal Architect). Educate employees on both career paths on an ongoing basis to help them take right decision as per their personalities & capabilities.
- Most companies don’t need VP Eng for several years (till 40–60 member eng team). Delegating responsibility of product delivery from CTO to VP Eng. early on might dilute the vision with which the product was built. A CTO needs to make sure that progress is aligned with vision.
Authors
