This is a presentation I did at Developer Week here in SF about building and scaling technical teams.

1. Building and Scaling Technical Teams
Jason A. Hoffman, CTO and Founder
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The only private systems company
An operating system (smartOS)
A runtime (node.js)
A suite of middleware that leverages both

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Only private, large scale service provider
Performance and scale sufficient for large customers.
Hardware lifecycle dominants COGS. Not people.

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A business. A company.
Provides something of value in exchange for money.

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Companies don’t sell to people.
People sell to people.

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Companies don’t innovate.
People do.

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Companies don’t discover.
People do.

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Companies don’t hire people.
People do.

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People. Person.
Psychology. Sociology. Anthropology. Matter too.

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Packard’s Law.
“No company can consistently grow revenues faster
than its ability to get enough of the right people to
implement that growth and still become a great
company.”
from Jim Collins, How The Mighty Fall (page 55-56)

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How do you convince the right people?
To give years of their life. To direct their passion.

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Myself.
Army. PhD Scientist. Academic. Founder. A “CTO”.

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Comfortable team structures.
I believe a basic biological aspect to them.
Something “tribal”.

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Fire Team.
Four. Lead by a sergeant. Three team members.
Two roles each.

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Squad.
2-3 fire teams plus a Staff Sergeant
8-12 “staff ” plus one “leader”.

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Baseline: you need to be capable of
being on a fire team.

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Baseline: you need to be capable of
running a squad.

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You’ll only ever run a “squad”.
The human brain can only manage up to 8-12
people and about 600 sq ft.
Adapted from Thomas Schweich’s Staying Power

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A Marine Colonel:
“We don’t promote our micromanagers, we like
them exactly where they are.”
Adapted from Thomas Schweich’s Staying Power

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PhD Scientist and Academic.
Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why? Why?

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Academic.
People are willing to give years of their lives for
something other than money.

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Scientist.
Turns out to shape how I view everything.
Let me take you through a series of observations.

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Scientists.
Scientists don't work in a lab to "sequence DNA."
They work in a lab to "cure cancer."

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Recognition.
Is as important as a salary.

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Observation I
Humans have a hard time thinking of the power law
or punctuated equilibriums.

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Observation II
Humans have a hard time with the absolutism that's
in binary states (live, dead).

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Observation III
We think that "evolution" is "optimization", when
it's, in fact, it’s adaption to current conditions.

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Observation IV
We don't know how to change the dimensionality of
a problem.

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Observation V
We have a hard time thinking of a complete system
yet we can make connections, frameworks,
simplifications that no computer can do.

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Observation VI
We often think that success is a thing, or it’s because
of a thing.

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Diamond’s Anna Karenina Principle
“Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family
is unhappy in its own way.”
Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel

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Failed Domestication.
Different species were domesticated because of the
lack of negative reasons (traits) not because of a
reason (a positive trait).

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Success.
Is simply the absence of failure. It’s the absence of
fatal mistakes.

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To study success.
You must study failure and death.

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Models differ.
Anti-patterns are the same. Know them.

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Founder.
Noun. One who establishes something or formulates
the basis for something.

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Founder. Foundering.
Verb. Usage: “Oh yeah, I’m foundering!! Watch out.”
(said by me)

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Foundering.
Verb. To sink below the surface of the water: The ship
struck a reef and foundered.

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Foundering.
Verb. To cave in; sink: The platform swayed and then
foundered.

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Foundering.
Verb. To fail utterly; collapse: a marriage that soon
foundered.

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Foundering.
Verb. To stumble, especially to stumble and go lame.
Used of horses.

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Foundering.
Verb. To become ill from overeating. Used of livestock.

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Floundering?
Verb. To move clumsily, thrash about. To proceed in
confusion.

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OK what about Latin?
Must be something positive there!

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Fundus.
Noun (Latin). The bottom of or part farthest from the
opening of a sac or hollow organ.

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OK. Well.
Perhaps that is all closest to the verb to founder.

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CTO.
Chief Technical Officer.

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Establishes.
Vision, culture, organizational structure.

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CTOs are outward facing.
Product and merchandising. Operational.

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Technical.
Enough to validate, shape, dig in if broken.
Know who is a dummy, who is a blessed unicorn.

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Vision needs to be inspiring.
People do actually feel that they’re changing the
world.

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Work hard.
At being an exemplar and being exceptional at an
aspect.

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Ideal disposition.
Personal and professional humility coupled with
thoughtful intellect and professional will.
Also from Jim Collins’s Level 5 leader idear.

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Culture: Don’t be an Asshole.
Pricks get fired. Bullies get banished.

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Culture: Transparency
Complete, even when painful. Tough (not brutal)
and honest.

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Culture: Peer Review
And everyone is a peer.

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Culture: Titles
Let compensation and ownership reflect importance
and contribution.

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Founding CTO.
Biggest decision that you’ll make is to either become
the VP of Engineering and hire a CTO, or hire the
first VP of Engineering. It’s big, because can be fatal.

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VP of Engineering.
Responsible for the development and delivery of the
product, and recruitment.

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VP of Engineering.
Has to be the Exemplar Engineer for the teams.

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Exemplar Engineer.
Every single person that works for them wants to be
them when they grow up. Critical for recruitment.

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Exemplar Knowledge.
The teams must feel comfortable looking to them for
thoughts and decisions on a wide range of technical
problems.

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Innovation
Then gets driven by the collaboration.

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Organizational
You must provide a framework and a structure. You
must segment.

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Concluding Thoughts

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‣ Work hard yourself to be an exemplar.
‣ Scientists don't work in a lab to "sequence DNA." They
work in a lab to "cure cancer."
• Too often in the "IT" industry we focus on technology and
tools, not their higher purpose and relationship to the rest of
the world. You must give your talent a higher purpose than
the hammer that they're swinging.

67. ‣ What are they looking for in a leader?
• Personal and professional humility coupled with thoughtful
intellect and professional will.
‣ When you do the above, you can be free to let them talk,
teach, blog, write papers (i.e. do more than patents).
• You can let them become recognized (and perhaps even tech
celebrities) and known in their field.
‣ Titles aren't what important.
• Let compensation and ownership reflect importance and
contribution
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68. ‣ Thanks for Bryan Cantrill for some of the CTO vs VP of
Engineering ideas. Covered in a different presentation.
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAHItZ1cSNM
• http://www.slideshare.net/bcantrill/cto-vs-vp-of-
engineering
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