Building Great
Web Teams
Cory Wright
Hush Labs, LLC
Copyright 2007 Hush Labs, LLC
Monday, September 3, 2007 1

Who am I, and What Do I Know
About Building Great Web Teams?
Copyright 2007 Hush Labs, LLC
Monday, September 3, 2007 2

Before Getting Started
• Who might want to build a great web team?
• This talk is about building small teams
• What makes a web team?
Monday, September 3, 2007 3

Components of a Web Team
Systems
Administrator
Web Network
Designer
Developer Administrator
Database
Administrator
(DBA)
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Monday, September 3, 2007 4

The Six Stages of
Building a Great Web Team
• Deciding Important Character Traits
• Determining Required Skills
• Locating Candidates
• Attracting Them to Your Company
• Retaining Talent
• Dealing with Beavis
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Monday, September 3, 2007 5

Qualities to Look For
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Monday, September 3, 2007 6

Half-life of Knowledge
\"The half-life of knowledge is the amount of
time that has to elapse before half of the
knowledge in a particular area is superseded
or shown to be untrue.”
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Monday, September 3, 2007 7

Half-life of Knowledge
• Medical Profession - 20 years
• Mechanical Engineering - 7 years
• Software Development - 2 - 3 years
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Monday, September 3, 2007 8

More About Inquisitive Types
• Always learning, always teaching
• Enjoy thinking about ways to solve problems
• Find and fix problems on their own
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Monday, September 3, 2007 9

Avoid “Rock Stars”
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Avoid “Rock Stars”
• Think they are above other teammates
• Arrogant
• Productivity nightmare
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Productivity Nightmare
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Avoid Wimps
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Avoid Wimps
• We’re talking about Great Teams
• No room for people who simply follow instructions
• Must stand up for their ideas
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Monday, September 3, 2007 14

“Fight as if you are right,
listen as if you are wrong”
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Monday, September 3, 2007 15

Understanding of Business Realities
• Most companies aren’t Google
• Reasons that no one has an Aeron chair
• Risk of failure
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Teams of Friends
• Great teams tend to be teams of friends
• Social compatibility is important
• The team should want to hang out
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You can’t change things
about people that they
don’t want to change
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Monday, September 3, 2007 18

Deciding Which Skills are Important
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Monday, September 3, 2007 19

Smart People Can Learn Anything
• Technical experience is overrated
• Process experience is underrated
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Specific Role Skills
• Designers
• Developers
• Systems Administrators
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The Big Picture
• How web browsers communicate with web servers
• The advantages of using revision control systems
• Why you should use database indexes
• Basic understanding of your server operating system
• Networking fundamentals, such as mail and DNS
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Monday, September 3, 2007 22

Finding Candidates
• Former Coworkers
• Meetups, BarCamps, Conferences, etc
• College Internships
• Open Source Developers
• Temping Firms
• Monster.com, HotJobs, Craigslist, etc
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Attracting Great People
• Interesting work
• Smart, enthusiastic team
• Enjoyable office environment
• Proper equipment and resources
• Attractive compensation
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Problems with Working Remotely
• Team should be in same room
• Communication overhead
• Remote worker doesn’t bond with team
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Proper Equipment and Resources
• Hardware
• Software
• Web Development is mostly platform agnostic
• Virtualization
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Attractive Compensation
• Not simply a big salary
• Ownership (stock/equity)
• Flexible hours
• Bragging rights
• Personal growth
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Monday, September 3, 2007 27

Interviewing
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“I’ve Got a Deal For You!”
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Hiring the Right Ones
• Avoid revealing status of the manager
• Everything seems ok, but you aren’t sure
• Contract
• Personality is the top priority
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How Many?
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Ideal Team Size?
• Larger teams, larger problems
• Harder to reach agreement
• More difficult to do things as a group
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Monday, September 3, 2007 32

Ideal Team Size
4
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Ideal Team Size
• Somewhere between 3-7
• Point of contact
• Handles all communications for the team
• Person must want to do this
• Must be clear that this is not an authority role
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Monday, September 3, 2007 34

Keeping Your Team
• The work must continue to be interesting
• Continuing education
• Show appreciation - when appropriate
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Motivation is Hard
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If It Doesn’t Work Out
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Parting Ways
• Don’t be afraid
• Waiting almost always makes things worse
• Forces the issue
• Worst possible outcome is to lose a great team
member
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Monday, September 3, 2007 38

That’s All, Folks
Cory Wright
cwright@hushlabs.com
Copyright 2007 Hush Labs, LLC
Monday, September 3, 2007 39

Cory Wright
cwright@hushlabs.com
Copyright 2007 Hush Labs, LLC
Monday, September 3, 2007 40