Scaling Software Teams

Miles Sterrett is a Partner at Fretless, a custom software development shop that helps software companies level-up their software chops. Miles’ team specializes in coming into high-growth teams and acting as an interim software leader. He has worked with startup and scale-ups to help them overcome technical debt and build the engineering team that can help them hit their future product goals.

In this episode, we talk about ways he reduces stress, reasons to hire out of a coding bootcamp, and how to give effective feedback to your team.

For notes and a full transcription of the episode, visit woventeams.com/16

You can listen to the Manager Tools podcast here. https://www.manager-tools.com/all-podcastsSpecial Guest: Miles Sterrett.

This week, we're doing something different.

Instead of talking to one engineering leader about a broad range of topics, we talked with a collection of engineering leaders about one topic: How do you screen for technical talent? In this episode, we talk to:


Jon Lavender, CTO at Dragos
Adam Perelman, CTO at Affinity
Ryan Carroll, VP of Engineering at Zylo
Ryan Rusnak, CTO at Airspace Technologies
Jeff Stickel, CTO at Kerauno


For a full transcript of this episode, woventeams.com/15.

Today’s a really exciting day for us. Our startup just acquired a New York City-based tech hiring platform called Headlight.

We're sitting down with Wayne Gerard to talk about this transition. We wanted to know what they’ve learned while uncovering some of the best software engineers in New York City. Over the past two years, they’ve uncovered hidden gems and made the hiring process better for both developers and hiring managers. What’s more, they did it in one of the nation’s most competitive job markets. We could all learn something from their story.

For a full transcript of this episode, visit woventeams.com/14.

Christine Spang is the Co-Founder and CTO of Nylas. Nylas’ API powers communications in software applications, taking data from 4.5 billion inboxes worldwide and connecting it directly to productivity, sales and marketing apps. Nylas has raised $30M in funding and has 20 engineers across 4 teams.

In this episode, we talk about her entrepreneurial journey, building a support network as a founder, and building a diverse team with less bias.

For notes and a full transcription of the episode, visit woventeams.com/blog/christine-spang/Special Guest: Christine Spang.

Amjad Masad is the founder and CEO of Repl.it. Repl.it is a Y Combinator-backed online development environment that helps developers learn, build, collaborate, and host all in one place. They’re on a mission to make programming more accessible.

In this episode, Amjad shared why he believes that discovery great people is the key to great teams. He contrasts that with talent identification, which is about credentials and resumes.

For more information, notes, and takeaways, visit woventeams.com/blog/amjad-masadSpecial Guest: Amjad Masad.

Mitch Stewart is the co-founder of Guru, a software company based out of Pennsylvania that is working with companies like Shopify, Square, and Spotify to unify their team’s collective knowledge and empower them with information when they need it most.

In this episode, we talk about some of the management practices that have made Mitch successful at Guru. We dive into his transition from developer to manager, and the lessons he learned about building and motivating teams along the way.

For more information, notes, and takeaways, visit woventeams.com/blog/mitch-stewartSpecial Guest: Mitch Stewart.

Austin Broyles is the Director of Engineering at Primer, a Bay Area company using AI to parse and collate a large number of documents across several languages.

In this episode, we talk about Austin’s experience transitioning into a management role at Google and how he is splitting leadership between machine learning and pure software engineering teams in his current role. We also dive into the story of how he increased his offer acceptance rate by being smarter about sandwiches.

For more information, notes, and takeaways, visit woventeams.com/blog/austin-broyles. Special Guest: Austin Broyles.

Eric Tobias is a Partner at High Alpha, a Venture studio that conceives, launches, and scales next-generation enterprise cloud companies.

In this episode, we chat about how he parlayed an early love of basketball and bootlegged music into a passion for the internet, how he grew his first team at batteries.com during the dot-com era, and the lessons he learned starting and scaling iGoDigital, which he sold to ExactTarget, which he helped sell to Salesforce.

For more information, notes, and takeaways, visit woventeams.com/blog/eric-tobias. Special Guest: Eric Tobias.

Ade Olonoh is the founder of two companies with similar names and very different stories.

Formstack is an online form builder that has witnessed slow, steady growth since its founding in 2006. In their first month, they had $75 in Monthly Recurring Revenue and today, they’re clocking in at seven figures.

Formspring was an anonymous social Q&A app that grew from zero users to over a million users in 45 days, making it at the time, the fastest growing social network in history

Those two experiences give Ade a unique perspective on the differences between hyper-growth and steady growth because he’s lived both sides. In this episode, Ade will share what he’s learned about fast growth, as someone who naturally a steady approach.Special Guest: Ade Olonoh.

Jacob Kaplan-Moss talks to us about managerial practices he believes in, as well as practices he’s sick of, in this week's part two of his interview. One central thesis: Our teams perform better when we treat them like adults.

For those who missed part one, Jacob Kaplan-Moss is a veteran software leader and the co-creator of Django, the python web framework that powers Pinterest, Eventbrite, and Instagram. I built my last startup on Django, so speaking with him was a huge pleasure.Special Guest: Jacob Kaplan-Moss.