2. Anton Naumenko
Largest Online Consignment Store
● $130M+ Invested
● 1000+ Employees
● 5 Distribution Centers
Director of Engineering at thredUP
Co-founder & CTO at Syndicode
Ph.D. on Semantic Web
Senior Product Manager at thredUP
Product Lead at Google
Harvard Business School & Claremont McKenna College
Jenn Volk
11. CULTURE IN THREDUP
Core values
● SpeakUP
We all learn from those around us, but it’s hard to
learn if people are not willing to speakUP and
share what they have to say.
● Influence outcomes
How did you make an impact or a difference on
the slice of the world you were in at the time?
● Seek the truth
First principle thinking encourages continuous
innovation and creative problem-solving by
reducing bias and faulty reasoning.
● Infinite learning
Every day is an opportunity to learn, an
opportunity to teach and, just as importantly, an
opportunity to forget.
● Transparency
When we all know what’s up and what’s
happening, it’s a whole lot easier to make the best
decisions moving forward.
● Think Big
Imagine the world as it could be, not as it is.
12. CULTURE IN THREDUP
Engineering controversial decisions
● People vs. Process
● Generalist vs. Specialist
● Over communication vs. Communication overload
● Dynamic team vs. Hierarchy
● Tempo vs. Quality
14. PEOPLE VS. PROCESS
Waves of innovation
The Natural Advantage of Nations: Business Opportunities, Innovations and Governance in the 21st Century
15. PEOPLE VS. PROCESS
Learn to love change
A startup is a temporary
organization in search of a scalable,
repeatable, profitable business model.
Steve Blank and Bob Dorf. The Startup Owner’s Manual, K&S Ranch, 2012
… organizations of the future will likely
be those that can move faster, adapt
more quickly, learn more rapidly ...
The organization of the future: Arriving now, Deloitte, 2017 Global Human Capital Trends
Source: https://www2.deloitte.com/insights/us/en/focus/human-capital-trends/2017/organization-of-the-future.html
23. SMALL ASYNC TEAMS WITH OVER COMMUNICATION
Over-communication vs. communication overload
70+ engineers
5 countries
7 time zones
Responsible
Accountable
Consulted
Informed
Engineering
Product Management
Operations
Creative
Marketing
Executive Team
Customer Service
Partner engineering teams
24. SMALL ASYNC TEAMS WITH OVER COMMUNICATION
Async vs. sync communication
70+ engineers
5 countries
7 time zones
● Unblock your work for tomorrow
today
● Set expectations upfront
● If blocked or unclear - execute your
power, make your own judgement,
just do it, you can fix it later
26. DYNAMIC TEAMS VS. HIERARCHY
Areas of Expertise vs. Areas of Responsibility
ENG PM
MARKETING
OPS CS
EXEC
CREATIVE
● Business KPIs define team structure
● No director - subordinate relations
● Cross-team communication
27. DYNAMIC TEAMS VS. HIERARCHY
Self-managed vs. Controlled
✗ Hierarchy
✗ Approval boards
✗ Accountability
✓ Lean team
✓ Fast decision making
✓ Pro-active ownership
29. Tempo vs. Quality
Risk Driven Development vs. Plan and Execute
What’s the smallest thing we can do to test our riskiest assumption?
30. Entire engineering team builds,
learns, scales fast
One slow decision creates a
bullwhip effect in the organization
Tempo vs. Quality
Slow decisions create bullwhip effect
31. Tempo vs. Quality
Quick and dirty vs. clean and solid
We have scarce resources and many hypothesis to learn
● Embrace a willingness to fail and learn
● Come up with scrappy solutions to validate value hypothesis
● Consolidate towards growth hypothesis with more investment
33. OUR RECIPE
Engineering controversial decisions
● People vs. Process
● Generalist vs. Specialist
● Over communication vs. Communication overload
● Dynamic team vs. Hierarchy
● Tempo vs. Quality
35. Anton Naumenko
Open positions
● Full stack engineers
● Senior ML engineers
● Senior DE engineers
https://www.thredup.com/p/careers
Director of Engineering at thredUP
Co-founder & CTO at Syndicode
Ph.D. on Semantic Web
Senior Product Manager at thredUP
Product Lead at Google
Harvard Business School & Claremont McKenna College
Jenn Volk
Editor's Notes
Jenn
Value proposition
Complexity / dynamics of the marketplace and main challenge to sync supply, demand, capacity, and profitability in time
Sell to both sides of the marketplace at the same time
Synchronize the capacity expansion so that you have the right amount of buyers for suppliers, right amount of suppliers for buyers
Anton
Maybe screenshots of media coverage
Remade might be under embargo and we cannot publicly talk details. However we can check what was told publicly before. If we cannot use that we can go with Goody Boxes story
Complexity / dynamics of the marketplace
Optimization of budget
Main optimization channels
Anton: People vs. Process, Generalist vs. specialist
Jenn: small teams, tempo vs. quality
Not sure if this is the best graphic as if the primary focus is process and not talent, the "No Talent" is actually a right outer join in this venn diagram. This diagram almost makes it look like we want zero process, which also isn't true. Lightweight processes that enable velocity with stability for talented engineers is the message we want to convey, right?
Limit noise by using RACI, don't have meetings with 15 people
70+ engineers, daily scrum by project, slack channel, distributed team
Upcycle example
France, Serbia, Mexica, DCs
Limit noise by using RACI, don't have meetings with 15 people
70+ engineers, daily scrum by project, slack channel, distributed team
Upcycle example
France, Serbia, Mexica, DCs
Get all your questions answered you need to remain unblocked tomorrow before you end your day
Communicate clearly what and how you plan to do things upfront
If still blocked or unclear - execute your power, make your own judgement, just do it, you can fix it later
Partner program: core team included partnership, marketing, creative
Upfront Offers: core team included eng, data science, design
Areas of expertise not responsibility
Roadmap defines team
Shuffle teams to reach business goals
no director-subordinate relations
There’s a reason we’ve stayed lean →
Architectural board for approval processes, regulation
Ownership versus accountability. ... Managers hold employees accountable by building accountabilityactions into their daily schedule, such as providing timely feedback and measuring progress toward goals. But ownership is not something that managers can demand. It's intrinsic, rather than extrinsic likeaccountability.
What’s the smallest thing we can do to test our riskiest assumption?
https://hackernoon.com/the-mvp-is-dead-long-live-the-rat-233d5d16ab02
https://mvpworkshop.co/validate-riskiest-assumption/
https://www.mindtheproduct.com/2017/08/innovation-broken-janice-fraser/
https://blog.leanstack.com/the-artist-and-the-innovator-e6b4888c5869
Do you prefer quick and dirty or clean and well tested solution? I ask this question on almost all intro calls with candidates. Many adapt their answer like “it depends” rambling about “in some case quick and dirty, but personally I like clean code and embrace TDD”. Eeeee. Wrong answer. Decide where you are on this scale. We decided even on exec level that we value tempo more than quality. We can tolerate and fix dirty solutions, but we cannot tolerate slow decision making, delays in communication, slow product development.
People look new jobs because they are often bored on current job, Did they try to make their work at least double faster - I doubt they would be bored.
Validate the value hypothesis first in the least disruptive way, and then consolidate towards the growth hypothesis, which requires more investment in tech. The challenge we face over here is to make the right design and architecture choices upfront so work doesnt become too hard if the product-line works (its happened many times)
Anton: People vs. Process, Generalist vs. specialist
Jenn: small teams, tempo vs. quality