Oh wow. How many teams do you think are at Shutterstock? And then how many teams can one manager manage basically? (just trying to get a feel for how the "middle management" starts to come up when the organization grows).
We have about 14 teams. The topic of management is a great one. We've shifted our approach over the years. That story might make a good blog article in itself. We've ended up with what's sometimes called a "matrix" structure, where people's day-to-day activities are based on what the team is doing, but each role (dev, tester, UX) reports into a manager (who's usually not on the team) with expertise in that domain. We've mostly avoided middle managers who only manage -- nearly all our managers are also on teams and, if they're devs, code. But we've also learned that having more than five direct reports can get pretty overwhelming, and so we've had to expand our org chart as we've grown for that reason.
Ok great, I think I understand that...but a full blog post would definitely clear it up (also I've finally figured out you're obviously at Shutterstock so can just ask direct questions).
Who decides what each team is going to be working on? Do tasks come down from the C-level guys, are you self-directed on what you want to work on, etc.?
Great questions! Each team has a specific domain -- we have a customer experience team, a contributor team, a search team, etc. Each team also has one or more stakeholders -- business folks that help set the high-level direction of the team. The teams work with their stakeholders (some of whom are super hands-on, others aren't) to pick 2-3 projects per quarter to focus on. We try to talk in terms of the problems each team should solve, and let the team itself work out the best solution.
It has taken us years to refine our process, and it's been a great journey. I'm happy to chat more about it with anyone -- hit me up at dan at shutterstock.com
Umm: ERROR WITH QUERY: SELECT * FROM deal WHERE added_date >= '2013-11-08' - INTERVAL 30 MINUTE AND from_id IN(19) AND ship_id = ORDER BY cpd ASC LIMIT 0, 100 You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near 'ORDER BY cpd ASC LIMIT 0, 100' at line 1
Great post. I think this isn't discussed enough (which just benefits those companies who have nailed it). This ties into one of my prime lessons of tech management: always be recruiting. To do that well, you have to start with an awesome idea/company and then hone your message to get the best people working with you.
Yeah - great point. Recruiting is so hard these days that most people don't get enough leads in the top of the funnel in order to really see enough quality candidates get through the screening process.
Establishing an engineering story (and telling it well) allows you to add more interested engineers to the top of the funnel. It's a longer term strategy, but I think it's required based on present market dynamics.
Yup, that's fair. I meant more that it encourages you not to get carried away with things that don't matter. But you're right, there's still a lot to be said for regular refactoring.
