Lessons on Hyper-Growth & Scaling w/ David Singleton & Bill Coughran #59

The Engineering Leadership Podcast

You've found the mythical product-market fit & are scaling fast... now what?! Bill Coughran (Partner @ Sequoia Capital; Former SVP Engineering @ Google) & David Singleton (CTO @ Stripe) cover common mistakes scaling engineering orgs make, signals to help you identify & develop good managers internally AND find great hires externally. Plus how to balance short & long term demands while scaling & more!

DAVID SINGLETON, CTO @ STRIPE

David joined Stripe from Google, where he was VPE, leading the Android Wear & Google Fit teams. At Google, David led teams that built some of the company’s most ambitious products, including its first apps with voice search; publisher products for Google Adsense; Google Offers; and Google Mobile Search Apps. He was also one of the first engineers at Google London and oversaw much of the growth of the London engineering office from inception to the large scale it has today.

Prior to Google, David spent 3 years as a senior engineer at Symbian, the pioneering mobile phone operating system, where he developed software for Nokia & Samsung smartphones & worked on both the Bluetooth stack & PC Connect software.

BILL COUGHRAN, FOUNDER'S COACH & PARTNER @ SEQUOIA; FORMER SVP ENGINEERING @ GOOGLE

Bill Coughran works as a founders' coach and partner at Sequoia Capital to help build spectacular technology-centric companies. Previously, Bill was Senior Vice President of Engineering at Google with oversight of Chrome, YouTube, maps, google.com, underlying infrastructure systems, and security.

SHOW NOTES

• What are the most common mistakes scaling organizations make? (2:24)
• What's the best way to add managers to a technology organization? (4:40)
• Signals to identify potential engineering managers to develop from inside the organization (7:32)
• Finding the right external hires while in hyper-growth (signals & warning signs) (8:41)
• What questions do you ask for hiring references? (11:23)
• Navigating doing things that don’t scale in the short term (16:17)
• “Second system syndrome” & avoiding the urge to rewrite your system (19:12)
• How to retain early employees at a hyper-growth startup (21:30)
• What Bill’s most excited about in the tech industry right now (24:18)
• Tips to help turn ICs into leaders (25:20)
• Deciding on org structure when you’re scaling fast (27:26)
• Navigating speed & long-term quality building your architecture at an early-stage company (29:43)
• Final advice from Bill & David (31:37)
  

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