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Scaling Fast: Growing Engineering Orgs From Zero to IPO
Nick Caldwell shares insights on growing engineering organizations from inception to IPO, emphasizing the importance of a compelling mission statement and clear objectives. He outlines five key tools for building successful teams, including a roadmap for tech upgrades and measuring results through OKRs. The document stresses the need for effective organization and processes to navigate the challenges of scaling while fostering a diverse and inclusive environment.
Scaling Fast: Growing Engineering Orgs From Zero to IPO
- 1. GROWING ENG ORGS FROM0 TO IPO 5 Lesson 5 Tools
- 2. NICK CALDWELL Reddit, Inc. VPof Engineering Microsoft, Power BI General Manager NICK CALDWELL Reddit, Inc. First CTO Pinterest Founding Engineer MARTY WEINER
- 3. WHAT IS REDDIT Redditis the frontpage of the internet A social network where there are tens of thousands of communities around whatever passions or interests you might have It’s where people converse about the things that are most important to them
- 4. REDDIT SCALE Quick Stats •4th largest web site in the United States • 6th largest in the world • 325M monthly users • 1.1M communities What’s new? • Executive team • Product vision: make the site more welcoming • Rapid hiring! Grew 40 to 130 engineers last year REDDIT COMPANY SIZE BY THE NUMBERS
- 5. Within 3 years,92% of startups fail... … of those, 43% fail due to issues with SCALE! STARTUP Genome Report
- 6. OUR FIRST WEEKSAT REDDIT AWESOME PEOPLE…BUT… ▪ 30+ person standups ▪ Google Slide tracking tools ▪ Sloooooow delivery pace ▪ Smash Brothers ▪ Urgent work to do! Super-size Daily Standups
- 7. WE DON’T STARTCOMPANIES BY WRITING A DATABASE FROM SCRATCH BUT WE RECREATE OUR PROCESSES FROM SCRATCH ALL THE TIME! 10 ORG $4000 11 A1 = $3C 12 A2 = $3E 13 A4 = $42 14 ALLMOVE = $C311 15 16 ************************** 17 * SETUP-move data for VTOC 18 * and catalog to a????? at 19 * 8000-B3FF (pseudo trk 11 20 * 0-3) 21 ************************** 22 SETUP LDA #<vtoc 23 STA A1 24 LDA #>VTOC 25 STA A1+1 26 LDA #<end
- 8. NOW SHIPPING FAST WITHA GROWING HAPPY TEAM ▪ 140 Engineers ▪ Focused product strategy broken down into years and quarters ▪ Rapid on-time execution, checked weekly ▪ Fundamentally rearchitected the entire tech stack ▪ New products shipping rapidly
- 9. RESULTS 2017 Major RedditReleases Feb. New Moderator Mail Mar. Launch of Profile Pages Mar. Self-serve Ad Platform May. International Reddit Aug. New Video Platform Sep. New Search Platform Sep. New Chat Platform Soon Complete site-redesign
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- 11. Mission and Vision SettingObjectives Measuring Results Organization Structure Execution WE DID IT. HERE’S HOW TO EXECUTE.
- 12. LESSON 1 Mission In modernsoftware development, successful execution requires that your mission be more interesting than Super Smash Brothers…
- 13. Vision is NOTMission! What makes a great vision statement?
- 14. MISSION = CLEAR GOAL + HOW + TIME LIMIT + BLOCKQUOTE ON A BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO TOOL #1: Create a mission statement
- 15. What makes agreat mission statement?
- 16. Mission statement practicerun March 9, 2018 I believe that we can present 5 simple tools for building engineering organizations, delivered with clarity and humor, in under 45 minutes. “ “ Marty Weiner Message to a session of joints
- 17. Communicating your Mission EveryoneExecs Press Release Product Team Objective Roadmap
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- 19. OBJECTIVE What you aretrying to accomplish KEY RESULT OKR Measurable success criteria that signals if you made progress on the objective
- 20. HOW TO BUILDA ROADMAP Mission + 3 Ingredients 1. Strategy 2. Themes 3. Objectives
- 21. Strategy How are yougoing to win? Lots of Tools: MBA approach: SWOT, Business model canvas, game theory, random luck, etc Ultimately, you win by meeting your customer’s needs CUSTOMER EMPATHY MAP FROM DESIGN THINKING
- 22. “Themes are apromise to solve problems, not build features” – Jared Spool Theme 1: Outdated UX Theme 2: Quality and Perf Theme 3: Personalization Reddit 2017 Themes
- 23. Objectives: How willyou solve each problem? Theme: Outdated UX Upgrade the Tech Stack • Move to React • Break up Monolith Community Tools • Moderation Mail • Moderation Queue • User Reputation Modernize Content • Rich Text Editor • Image Galleries Theme: Quality and Perf Search Sucks • Replace Search stack • Index and Tune • New Search UX Slow Load Times • Measure perf • Optimize Listings • CI perf monitors Theme: Personalization Where’s my home? • Onboarding • Discovery Units • Profile Customization Addictive Content • Feed tuning • New HOT Algorithm
- 24. ROTATE AND ESTIMATE TOGET THE TIMELINE
- 25. Outdated UX Upgrade theTech Stack Community Tools Roadmap 3 MONTHS 6 MONTHS THE FUTURE Move to react Break up monolith SDK and API Mod Mail Mod Queue Reputation Quality and Perf Search Sucks Slow Load Times Replace Search Stack Indexing and Tuning New Search Page Measurements Focus on Optimization New CI Tools Personalization Where’s home? Relevant Content Profiles Feed Tuning HOT Algorithm Deep Learning Onboarding Discovery Units Timeframe: Are your objectives near, a little further out, or in the “distant future?”
- 26. Outdated UX Upgrade theTech Stack Community Tools Roadmap 3 MONTHS 6 MONTHS Move to react Break up monolith Mod Mail Mod Queue Quality and Perf Search Sucks Slow Load Times Replace Search Stack Indexing and Tuning Measurements Focus on Optimization Personalization Where’s home? Relevant Content TOOL #2: ROADMAP TEMPLATE Feed Tuning HOT Algorithm Onboarding Discovery Units
- 27. Direction can changein an instant but destination should take time Great objectives have measurable outcomes … a few final tips
- 28. LESSON 3 Measuring Results The emperordoes not share your optimistic appraisal of the situation.
- 29. OBJECTIVE What you aretrying to accomplish KEY RESULT OKR Measurable success criteria that signals if you made progress on the objective Grow Mobile User Base Increase Mobile DAUs from 10M to 11M (averaged over last 14 days) by end of quarter
- 30. TOOL #3: KEYRESULT RECIPE 1. What is being improved and by how much 2. The time frame the measurement is over 3. The time frame for delivery of the KR 4. Status—where the measurement is and where it’s projected to arrive with the current course Increase Mobile DAUs from 10M to 11M (averaged over last 14 days) by end of quarter. Currently at 10.8M projected to be at 11.05M by EOQ.
- 31. WHAT IS BEINGIMPROVED SHOULD BE… Meaningful: Does this KR actually & significantly help the objective? Motivational: Does this get people excited? Measurable: Can you measure your KR? Operational: Can you effect timely and meaningful change in your KR? Reduce number of spam reports Reduce number of times a user sees spam
- 32. AND BY HOWMUCH?? Wild Guess Scientifically Modeled Prediction
- 33. EVOLUTION OF “HOW MUCH”Build or Ship Something Improve some arbitrarily chosen KR by an arbitrary feel good amount Improve a carefully crafted KR by an educated guess Improve a carefully crafted KR based on analysis of available effort and impact projected from past performance and expected trends
- 34. HOW LONG FORTHE MEASUREMENT WINDOW? Last 1 second? Last 2 weeks? Whole quarter?
- 35. HOW LONG FORTHE MEASUREMENT WINDOW? Last 1 second? Last 2 weeks? Whole quarter? Good for results that should follow a bunch of hard work that quarter Good for maintaining a quality bar
- 36. OKRS CASCADE MISSION COMPANY OBJECTIVES TEAM OBJECTIVES To helppeople discover places where they can be their true selves, and empower our community to flourish. Grow Mobile User Base Build a Sustainable Business Become a Destination Employer Improve Site Uptime Ship New Video Product Reduce Spam Experiences And many more…
- 37. LESSON 4 Org Chart Thewar is not won with spearmen or cavalry but with effective organization -Unknown
- 38. What type oforganization should you use? “Organizations which design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organization.” -Conway’s Law You will eventually ship your org chart. -Translation
- 39. OK, ship theorg chart, but make sure you have the right one! - Conway’s Law (revised)
- 40. TEAM FLAT STRUCTURE: ~10PEOPLE
- 41.
- 42. PLATFORM + FEATURETEAMS: ~45 PEOPLE MEDIA iOS ANDROID INFRA DATA SECU RITY API OPS FRONT PAGE MOD TOOL ML
- 43. PRODUCT GROUPS: 50+PEOPLE NEW PRODUCT GROUP NEW PRODUCT GROUP NEW PRODUCT GROUP MEDIA iOS ANDROID INFRA DATA SECU RITY API OPS FRONT PAGE MOD TOOL ML
- 44. TOOL #4: BUILDA 50+ ORG CHART IN 3 STEPS 1. Product Pillars ▪ What are your customer personas? ▪ What are your major product problems? Reddit.com Monetization Relevance 2. Foundation + Roof ▪ Foundation: shared services that help build products ▪ Roof: shared services that help understand customers and the business INFRASTRUCTURE DATA SCIENCE SDKs GROWTH 3. Sub Teams ▪ What are the major activities or themes of each area? ▪ Test: Can you write a convincing mission statement for each team? Front Page Mod Tools Ad Server Campaign Manager Search Listings Ops Security APIs Mobile
- 45. Reddit’s 2017 OrgChart Product Pillars Foundation Roof
- 46. BONUS STEP: REPEAT “Thedesign which occurs first is almost never the best possible, the prevailing system may need to change. Therefore, flexibility of organization is important to effective design.” — Mel Conway
- 47. REVERSE CONWAY’S LAW “DeathStar” Architectures Microservices change how we think about organization! In the highly-networked and flexible teams of the future, the value of mission, culture, and relationships will dominate that of organization
- 48. … GET STUFF DONEON TIME AND WITH HIGH QUALITY LESSON 5 Execution
- 49. ENGINEERING AT SCALE,WHAT GETS HARDER Awareness Everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing Bottlenecks Missed dependencies can cripple your production roadmap Coordination Here comes PROCESS: managers, PMs, tools, meetings
- 50. WHY? # PEOPLE Efficiency Curve Scope OutputSurely,with more people we can just get more done! Right? Wrong! Eventually, coordination costs and scope overcome your ability to deliver reliably. You will need a process change or reorg to keep scaling up.
- 51. GREAT EXECUTION ISALL ABOUT FINDING A RHYTHM WHERE EVERYTHING RUNS SMOOTHLY BUILD A FLOW THAT CONTINUOUSLY SEEKS OUT AND RESOLVES PRIORITY CHANGES AND BLOCKS AT EVERY LEVEL
- 52. START WITH MINIMAL PROCESS OriginalToyota Kanban “Kaizen”: minimal processes created from bottom up Process becomes culture over time Toyota production system
- 53. KANBAN BOARD Great forengineers and managers… … but what about reporting status to the rest of the product team?
- 54. TOOL #5: EPIC WORKFLOW Eachof these has a due date!
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- 56. DIRECTOR DASHBOARD Shows position andhealth of director’s product lines
- 57.
- 58. RESULTS Completed JIRA Epicsby Quarter
- 59. FINAL THOUGHTS SCALING FAST 2warnings 1 opportunity
- 60. FAST != FRANTIC FASTLOOKS SMOOTH AND CONFIDENT (WITH SHORT BURSTS OF FRANTIC!)
- 61. GO FAST, BUTREMEMBER THE HUMAN people are the most valuable part of your organization and the best part of being a manager!
- 62. BUILD A DIVERSEAND INCLUSIVE ENVIRONMENT Diverse and Inclusive Teams: • Make better products • Are just more fun to work in Like any cultural aspect, it will be extremely hard to fix later Make D&I part of your company DNA before you expand!
- 63. CALLS TO ACTION Followus! Reddit u/nickcald and u/mart2d2 Twitter @nickcald and @MartyWeiner Medium @nickcaldwell and @MartyWeiner LinkedIn nickcaldwell and martyweiner Reddit is hiring! http://about.reddit.com Reddit Party Tuesday 8:00PM Belmont Hotel Reddit: Life After (Near) Death Monday 12:30 Hilton Austin Downtown
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