Session 4 of the Summer Startup Academy has come and gone – but not without some great insight and conversation. In this presentation, John Avery, engineering group manager at Panasonic Innovation Center, shares his extensive experience in the technology arena. He's worked with and some of the most advance technology on the planet.
7. Keeping the lights on:
Numeric pager software
Browser / phone / email device for home
Bluetooth Early Entrant Program
Web to Wireless transcoding system
12 people at acquisition
Convergence (96-99) #StartupAcademy
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13. 1. Bring Technical Credibility
People may like the Hustler but they don’t trust him
2. Set the Technical Culture
What it feels like to be an engineer
3. Answer ‚HOW‛
From Idea to Reality. Deliver the goods.
Hacker role #StartupAcademy
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15. Recruiting takes a lot of time.
Give it the time it needs
Retention is important.
Focus on personal growth
Need for functional overlap
No ONE person should be required to deliver
Early developers will likely become managers
Encourage mentoring
People
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@hypepotamus
16. Amoeba to vertebrate
Structure is essential as company grows
Focus on interfaces
Clear ownership
Vertical or horizontal structure
Processes
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18. CTO role is mainly about providing credibility
Say what you mean and mean what you say
It becomes more about people management.
Get training if you don’t have it.
Must be good at estimating effort/time.
It’s hard, start NOW!
Manage like a GPS
Clear destination but flexible about route
Keep moving!
Even when things aren’t clear there are things you can do
Your ‚product‛ becomes the company itself
Watch for bottlenecks and remove them
Stay off critical path but stay close to the technology
Bug fixing, customer service
Don’t need to solve all future problems just current
You will be wrong anyway, don’t waste time
Be the source of CALM in the storm.
CTO mojo (advanced class) #StartupAcademy
@hypepotamus
19. Calm does not mean ignorant, but it is a choice
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20. Version control is essential. START NOW.
Architect for piecewise updates and fast rollback
Allows for faster A/B testing
Avoid blank-slate re-writes. It rarely works.
Continuous integration matters more as team grows
Get into a regular cycle. I like a weekly cadence.
Always release from source.
You will eventually need to debug ALL code, even open source.
Watch out for tribal knowledge. Focus on sustainable development.
Don’t be enamored with every shiny new thing
Use just the minimum you need
Battle ship vs cruise ship
One New Thing every day (not just interrupt driven)
Top Three projects. Always
Look for the 10x factor
CTO mojo (advanced class) #StartupAcademy
@hypepotamus
22. Example from 80s’
Lotus 123 v3 Excel 3.0
Development Time 260 staff years 50 staff years
Lines of code 400k 649k
LOC per staff year 1,500 13,000
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23. They don’t type 10x faster!
They don’t work 10x more hours!
They know and use coding tools very well
They know and use coding patterns very well
They reuse more code more often
They get better every day
reading lots other peoples code
reading blogs/books
HOW?
#StartupAcademy
@hypepotamus
Recruiting takes a lot of time. Need a process CTO responsible for setting the culture for development “what it feels like”Replacing people is expensive, try to keep people engaged, growing