I had just attended Inovia CTO summit, it was a one-day round-table discussion amongst the invited portfolio CTOs. The discussions were led by top CXO/VPs from Dropbox, Amazon, and Microsoft. Here are my top findings:
- The development of a career ladder is central to the scaling of the engineering organization. It forms the backbone around which budget, hiring, and retention can be structured. At BenchSci, our VP of engineering Asaf Inger has already constructed a well thought-out parallel technical and managerial engineering ladder. So it’s great to see that we are on top of this very important step.
- When splitting a singular engineering team into R&D and platform teams, pay special attention to the “connective tissue” between them. Particularly, engineering morale may be affected as senior developers may want to be part of the R&D team to work on attractive new projects. Have a tour-of-duty that is open to all engineers to allow those interested to participate in new features R&D. Most engineers will not exercise this option, but it’s important to have a system in place for fairness.
- Software architecture directly impacts engineer team scalability. Particularly, well-decoupled systems will allow easier future integration of remote teams as the company scales.
- When tackling technical debt, explicit risk modelling will allow easier discussions with non-engineers when prioritizing new development versus investing in improving current infrastructure.
- Similarly, an SRE-oriented discussion on product expectations can better manage expectations with non-engineers.
- Have early and regular reviews with the CFO to review spending, and take a more proactive approach on financial discussions. This can lead to improved planning, and also to position engineering as a partner in financial planning and growth, rather than a cost-sink.
- Hack week(s), recommended by the CIO of Dropbox, has many benefits. Dropbox in its early days derived almost 30% of new product roadmaps from it. Other benefits include improved morale, and breaking silos between departments. The important factor in getting the practice work is to plan it into the OKR from day one and to involve the entire company so all departments can participate.
It was highly refreshing to be able to spend an entire day focusing on the higher-level discussion on the practice of being a CTO, which can often be ambiguous. While the exact role of a CTO differs somewhat between companies, I found myself identifying with most of the points raised, and was sometimes relieved that I was not the only person that faced such situations, and in many instances, my own decisions were not too off the mark.
Overall, I highly recommend the summit and wish I had attended sooner. Inovia is doing a great job bringing in Canadian founders and offers insights with a perspective and understanding that is unique to Canadian startups trying to navigate ourselves in the greater ecosystem.