How Hire Build teams

Commitment Competence (Capability) Graph

Skill Vs Will

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDuu_oWReO8 

 

 

How Hire Build Teams

• Understand 
  
• What is the team's goal ? (short term & long term)
  
• What skill set are needed to achieve goal ?
• Company's Career Levels & expectation of each level
• budget for each role 
• available budget
  
• Make a Plan
• I like to have a pyramid structure in my team
• helps me make sure that there is space for everyone to grow
• to rephrase i do not like to make "top heavy" & "bottom heavy" teams
  
• Hiring Process
• depending on levels different rounds & depths
• Sr vs Staff vs Principal
  
• Offer Negotiation
• Keep relationship warm

How do you keep team motivated

• Make sure they understand team goals and how the project helps achieve Group goals 
• if org has done a good job in defining product and tech strategy
• I expect good documentation around leading indicators , lagging indicators and outcomes
• will make sure i revise leading indicators with my team every month 
  
• Set forward looking goals
  
• I negotiate a 10% with my leadership , that they can spend on "innovation sprints"
• using AI 
• etc 
  

Difference between Sr , Staff , Principal

• Sr 
• Execution
• Staff
• broader technical breadth and depth
• responsible for architecture
• cross team collaboration & alignment 
  
• Principal
• strategic initiatives , large enterprise wide initiatives
• building data lake
• cloud strategy etc
  
•  

 How do you deal with poor performers ? How deliver -ve feedback ?

• Performance should be an on going discussion , it should not come as a surprise to someone
• i discuss performance in regular 1:1 
• it is usually both ways , where i also ask for feedback .. so that we can build trust
• Poor Performers
• Have data points
• is it isolated incident 
• regular 
  
• Identify root cause 
• Tech Gap 
• Behavioral 
  
• Other reasons ?
  
•  Be direct & genuine .. no point in beating around the bush
• Hey i have been observing xyz , is there anything that is bothering you?
• don't take the approach of blaming "your performance is poor , fix it"
  
• Try understand root cause
• some change in life ?
• Communicate next steps
  
•  
  

What if a person is super strong in one area , not in another

• Engineer maybe good with one language
• may not be good in presentation 
• I would push them to go out of comfort zone , and coach 

How do you identify problems in your team ?

• ongoing 1:1
• it could come from different direction
• First Thing
• isolated incident 
• impacting whole team
• If isolated many people maybe saying something about 1 person
• if bigger (many people resigned) ... is it something in env , in leadership 

 How do you fix your teams concerns ?

• no std formula 
• be genuinely interested in your team's health
• listen (its winning half battle) 
• show you have taken action