Building Teams for Success

Thoughtful Software Podcast

In this episode of the Thoughtful Software Podcast, Andrew and Fahad discuss team building in software, hiring methods for creating the best team possible, ways to screen for the best cross-functional candidates, and proven methods for instilling quality leadership to help train and mentor junior developers to be the next wave of industry leaders.
Show Notes

• How to build teams for application and development. How should development teams be built from a non-technical founder or executive standpoint?
• Start by looking at the size and maturity of the organization. Is there a technical founder? What is the maturity of that technical founder?
• Small organizations and startups should begin with Dynamic Programming languages such as Python or JavaScript. While these languages enable speed they do not often work at scale (number of coders working). Hiring top talent without paying them what Google or Netflix can offer requires new and exciting programming languages like Rust where people can come and learn.
• Once hiring is figured out then the question becomes "How fast do we want to move?" Senior developers are going to move more slowly than junior developers because they often make better decisions and take their time because they have suffered through bad decisions before. Larger companies can afford to move slower whereas startups may not.
• The last thing in hiring that must be considered is leadership. First are People Leaders - Managers, Directors, VP's. Second, are Tech Leaders - Engineers, Architects. Most startups need one technical leader.
• The people being hired in a startup must have a growth mindset or it will crush your team.
• Hiring at the enterprise level is designed to throw bodies at a problem, they are building to hedge against risk and return money to their shareholders.
• How can you screen for good candidates? Asking the right questions at the start: "Tell me why you picked this one technology and give me your reasons for doing so?" Asking someone to defend their choices is the best to understand why people make choices.
• How important is it now for developers to be cross-functional and understand the context of their code, not just the latest and greatest languages? Understanding the business you are in is important. As a leader, you have to understand where the company is going and where the market might force you to go. Any single agenda can't supersede that of the business.
• What Does a Good Technical Mentorship Look Like? Pairing on programming is very helpful and explaining and working through errors together with junior engineers rather than leaving a note is a great learning experience. Enabling engineers to confidently sell their ideas and training them to execute. Let people make the mistakes and then help them learn from those mistakes is the constructive loop needed. Great leaders are always training their replacements.
• Hiring Remote will help optimizing business.

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