Scaling Your Engineering Organization with Distributed Sites
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Marin Dimitrov's presentation discusses strategies for scaling engineering organizations with distributed sites, emphasizing the importance of attracting local talent and maintaining strong culture and values. Key takeaways include the need for dedicated support from headquarters, clear mission and autonomy for remote sites, and avoiding common antipatterns in hiring and team structure. Effective collaboration and local adaptations are crucial for success and growth in these remote sites.
Scaling Your Engineering Organization with Distributed Sites
- 1. Scaling Your Engineering Organization with Distributed Sites Marin Dimitrov Engineering Manager @ Uber @marin_dim CodeVoyagers meetup Sep 2017, Sofia|BG
- 2. Topics Growth Culture & Values Mission & Autonomy HQ Support
- 3. About me Engineering Manager @ Uber Former CTO @ Ontotext @marin_dim
- 4. Distributed Eng sites - why? ● Lots of competition for local talent ● Global / 24/7 business ● Universities, centres of excellence ● Startup ecosystems (Machine Learning, Fintech, Autonomous vehicles) ● Cost & efficiency* Antipatterns ● Building a remote site around one individual ● Building a remote extension of your team, because local hiring is hard (or expensive)
- 5. Antipatterns “One of our Directors wants to move back to Idaho with his family, so let’s just build a team there...”
- 6. Growth
- 7. Bootstrapping & growing the remote site ● Starting from 0 is extremely difficult ● You need some critical mass to start growing faster ● Landing team from HQ to bootstrap & establish the remote site ● Every new team member is a brand ambassador
- 8. Bootstrapping & growing the remote site ● Growing the remote site needs to become the top priority of the HQ recruiting team & the site leader ● Performance targets for the recruiting team specifically for the remote site ● Adapting the hiring process to the local market ● Building a local recruiting team Antipatterns ● Remote site hiring is just an overhead for the HQ recruiting team ● (wrong) Remote site location ● Slow / inefficient hiring process ● “One size fits all” approach ● Sacrificing culture & values for speed
- 10. Values ● Values, beliefs & behaviours practiced in the organisation ● Core asset of the organisation, can be a competitive advantage ● Attracts great people, amplifier to individual + team performance ● Shared understanding ● Guides hiring and feedback processes ● Continuously evolving with the organisation
- 13. Culture & Values for remote sites Interview process ● Interview panels & Bar Raiser help from HQ ● Best practices / sample questions for eliciting culture fit ● Culture fit is more important that hiring speed Mobility ● Exchange programmes (6-12 mo) ● Internal transfers & mobility ● Regular team visits to HQ (and vice versa) ● Senior mentors from HQ
- 14. Culture & Values for remote sites Antipatterns ● Sacrificing culture & values for speed ● Acqui-hiring ● Inconsistent hiring processes & standards across sites ● Insufficient buy-in & support from HQ
- 16. Site mission & autonomy ● Clear mission & area of ownership for the remote site ● Site of excellence - Not a collection of unrelated & low impact projects ● Very important for hiring & attracting talent ● Start with one area, expand it & establish new areas as the site grows Collaboration ● Minimise cross-geographic dependencies, local communication & collaboration above all ● Autonomy for decision making & execution / Continuous delivery ● Alignment with the organisation's strategy
- 18. http://www.melconway.com/ ● “A system’s design is a copy of the organization's communication structure” (Mel Conway, 1967) ● Team size & cross-team independence are very important
- 19. Site completeness ● Build a “complete” organisation (no cross-geography dependencies) ● Product managers, mobile, UX, SRE, … everything needed for your area of ownership ● OK to start with an “incomplete” site Antipatterns ● Cross-geography dependencies ● No autonomy & clear mission - unrelated projects or team extensions ● Insufficient buy-in & support from HQ
- 20. HQ Support
- 21. HQ support ● Full HQ support for the site mission, autonomy & alignment ● HQ should encourage & reward the growth of the remote site (landing team, transfers, recruiting & roadmap re-prioritisation) ● Frequent travel to/from HQ & relationship building ● Senior leadership visiting from HQ ● Perks / compensation structure should be well aligned ● Regular knowledge sharing and All-Hands on the company / group level
- 22. @marin_dim Thank you! Growth Culture & Values Mission & Autonomy HQ Support