5 tools for rapidly scaling your startup's engineering organization. 1. How to create Vision and Mission statements 2. Setting objectives 3. Measuring Key Results 4. Creating and organizational structure 5. How to drive consistent execution Bonus!

1. GROWING ENG ORGS
FROM 0 TO IPO
5 Lesson
5 Tools

2. NICK CALDWELL
Reddit, Inc.
VP of Engineering
Microsoft, Power BI
General Manager
NICK CALDWELL
Reddit, Inc.
First CTO
Pinterest
Founding Engineer
MARTY WEINER

3. WHAT IS REDDIT
Reddit is 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 WEEKS AT 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 START COMPANIES 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 WITH A
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 Reddit Releases
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

10. REDESIGN
Coming very very soon!

11. Mission and Vision
Setting Objectives
Measuring Results
Organization Structure
Execution
WE DID IT.
HERE’S HOW
TO EXECUTE.

12. LESSON 1
Mission
In modern software development, successful
execution requires that your mission be more
interesting than Super Smash Brothers…

13. Vision is NOT Mission! What makes a great vision statement?

14. MISSION
=
CLEAR GOAL
+
HOW
+
TIME LIMIT
+
BLOCK QUOTE ON A BLACK AND WHITE PHOTO
TOOL #1: Create a mission statement

15. What makes a great mission statement?

16. Mission statement practice run
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
Everyone Execs
Press Release
Product Team
Objective Roadmap

18. LESSON 2
Objectives

19. OBJECTIVE
What you are trying to accomplish
KEY RESULT
OKR
Measurable success criteria that signals if you
made progress on the objective

20. HOW TO BUILD A ROADMAP
Mission +
3 Ingredients
1. Strategy
2. Themes
3. Objectives

21. Strategy
How are you going 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 a promise 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 will you 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
TO GET THE TIMELINE

25. Outdated UX
Upgrade the Tech 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 the Tech 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 change in an instant but
destination should take time
Great objectives have measurable outcomes
… a few final tips

28. LESSON 3
Measuring
Results
The emperor does not share your
optimistic appraisal of the situation.

29. OBJECTIVE
What you are trying 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: KEY RESULT 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 BEING IMPROVED 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 HOW MUCH??
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 FOR THE MEASUREMENT WINDOW?
Last 1 second?
Last 2 weeks?
Whole quarter?

35. HOW LONG FOR THE 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 help people 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
The war is not won with spearmen or
cavalry but with effective organization
-Unknown

38. What type of organization 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 the org chart, but make sure
you have the right one!
- Conway’s Law (revised)

40. TEAM
FLAT STRUCTURE: ~10 PEOPLE

41. WEB
iOS
ANDROID
INFRA
PLATFORM TEAMS: ~35 PEOPLE

42. PLATFORM + FEATURE TEAMS: ~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: BUILD A 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 Org Chart
Product Pillars Foundation Roof

46. BONUS STEP: REPEAT
“The design 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
“Death Star” 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 DONE ON 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 IS ALL 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
Original Toyota Kanban “Kaizen”:
minimal processes created from
bottom up
Process becomes culture over time
Toyota production system

53. KANBAN BOARD
Great for engineers and managers…
… but what about reporting status to the
rest of the product team?

54. TOOL #5:
EPIC WORKFLOW
Each of these
has a due date!

55. MANAGER
DASHBOARD

56. DIRECTOR
DASHBOARD
Shows position and health of director’s
product lines

57. EXEC
DASHBOARD

58. RESULTS
Completed JIRA Epics by Quarter

59. FINAL THOUGHTS
SCALING FAST
2 warnings
1 opportunity

60. FAST != FRANTIC
FAST LOOKS SMOOTH AND CONFIDENT
(WITH SHORT BURSTS OF FRANTIC!)

61. GO FAST, BUT REMEMBER THE HUMAN
people are the most valuable part of your
organization and the best part of being a manager!

62. BUILD A DIVERSE AND
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
Follow us!
 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

64. THANKS Questions?