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I need some help!
I am tech lead for a small team consisting of 3 engineers. We've been bootstrapping everything for the past 2 years but the business is showing promising signs of growth and has secured a solid round of investment. Based on KPIs etc we expect to hire an additional 10-15 developers over the next 12 months. I have never led a team of 15.
I have not scaled a team, been responsible for cultivating a good tech culture, establishing core values and disciplines, keeping team moral high, reminding people of what our mission is here and why we come to work each day, attracting talent, interviewing candidates and so on..
It would be amazing if I could get some advice for the next 12 months and share with me their experiences and learnings.
Cheers :)
I Have been working my butt off for a startup for approx 1 year and I have just recently brought up the discussion regarding my equity in the company.
There were no formalities such as a contract in place, it was purely based on trust but with a promise of equity towards the end of the year. I agreed to by paid far less than normal.
I wore a number of hats as you do in startup land, especially in the early days. I was a Project Manager, Tech Lead, Designer & Developer. Not to be arrogant here, but somebody with this skill set was absolutely crucial to get us to where we are today. Solid deliverables were delivered and the founders were always so pleased and excited to have me on the team.
Before I came on board, they were trying to outsource their technology to india. Sending bad looking designs and technical specs written by a non-techy. The final result was always so average. A company specialising in delivering tech, couldn't deliver tech.
When I started, we continued with the outsourcing for sometime but with my oversight and redesign of the platforms.. After some time, it simply was not working. I had the connections to bring on a new developer so we could start building things in-house, with proper development cycles, oversight & accountability. So we did that. Over the course of the year the team grew. We're now at 6.
Once this happened, we started landing some pretty cool projects thanks to the teams work. The capability and the quality of work we were putting forward and the character of us all helped significantly with getting these projects on board. A year has passed and I have poured my heart and soul in to the company. I'm pulling 70-80 hour weeks every few weeks- working till all hours of the morning getting things done. Not to forget I'm not on a cushy funded start-up salary (far from it). HN, what would you value somebody like myself on your team? What are people like myself usually rewarded with?
Cheers HN!