Hiring Like The Life Of Your Team Depends On It (1/5)

What underpins this value is that slowing down is not an option and moving faster is a core responsibility of a team.

Growth Models

Our department is undergoing a period of rapid growth and I don’t see it slowing down. We observe 3 types of growth. The first one, our favourite kind, is organic. This is what has happened with Search. We hire constantly, we rearchitecture our stuff to split concerns which in turn allows us to split ownership. When we reach this stage, it’s a big win, we can reorg into smaller teams, each within a neat bounded context. We increase our focus. We get better at what we do. Collaboration is on the rise. And we move faster.

A year ago, we had one Search team. Today we have five to cover the same estate: MAP, Search Foundations, Search Experience, Nautilus and the Vikings. MAP is managing the ingestion side. Search Foundations is modernising the core Search platform and integrating it onto MAP. Meanwhile, the Search Experience is busy taking our users happiness to the next level¹. Team Nautilus, 856 miles away in Lisbon, have been covering on the NowTV front, making e20m 1DD-compliant and launching territories like bullets in a scattergun. Finally, the Vikings, in Lisbon as well, are taking ownership of the Browse estate². That’s a great story where we prove our engineering function scales in a sustainable way.

Then we have this other type of growth: boosted. In this model, an invisible hand brings a whole new team and throws it at one of our projects. In this model, the risks around ownership, team cohesion and alignment are higher. We reserve this approach to exceptional demand which occurs mainly under two scenarios: green field projects and failed organic growths. When the organic approach hasn’t performed, delivery pressure builds up as a result. Once we are against the wall, it’s soul-crushing as it always gets nasty.

A green field project may seem an obvious occasion for creating a new team. Almost all our teams emerged in this scenario. Yet, the boosted growth is suboptimal. Even for a green field project, it does feel wrong to put together a brand new team at its inception. It’s a bit like a scientific experiment where you vary two parameters at once and conclude about the unique influence of one. It’s flawed.

On a green field project, usually, the functional domain is new and you want to rapidly prove it’s a valuable one. If you think of it as a scientific experiment, you have essentially three parameters: the functional domain, the technical approach and the team. Since the functional side is the variable under experiment, you should definitely not change the team and have them use the existing boring technology they master. Even more so, we want you to fail fast. Otherwise, it opens the door to the saddest situation that can ever occur in engineering: a good idea that’s wrongly deemed bad, due to poor implementation.

Nonetheless, boosted growth can save the day. We have a technique to mitigate its risks: start really small and seed the team with existing staff. We already applied this successfully to DAP UK team and Olisipo teams. We’re trying a further experiment with the OptOut team, where the seed team is rolled off completely after ensuring the new team is on track ³.

Last but not least, we have growth by merger. That’s what DAP did to us. It may sound daunting but in this format again we find both the organic and boosted approach. The DAP merger is much more on the organic side. It means we don’t challenge the cohesion in place on both sides. We only try to augment it by establishing clear collaboration bridges. And it forces us to reflect on our strategic direction, which isn’t a bad thing at all. More specifically it begs the following beautiful question: “What is the minimal set of alignment points we need to fix so as to behave as one big team?“. But merger and alignment are topics for another day.

Growing and scaling our engineering beyond the pure technical aspect is part of the mission of each team. And organic growth is the best. It implies hiring and hiring well. In Discovery, we say “Hire Like The Life Of Your Team Depends On It”. Let’s take a close look at what is threatening the life of our teams and see what that means for the way we hire.

Life Threats for your Team

Here is a mind map: A bit oversimplified but I trust most of it is self-explanatory.

The first sign of a team that fails to scale its own model is the increasing delivery pressure. A jammed roadmap will make a team lose track of the customer and by this, its definition of good. Sooner or later, the team will cut corners. It will harm its trustworthiness but also choke it like a boa constrictor. In software delivery, mediocrity tightens its rings slowly but surely, until suffocation.

The team members then realise the future in this team is anything but bright and churn hits hard. Different systemic problems will make it enter this spiral of death at a different stage but the lethal turn of events always converge. High churn is the sign⁴ the team has entered terminal stage. Do you measure churn in your team?

This value of ours invites us to see growth (or lack thereof) as the main source of team problems as well as the ultimate solution. For instance, if a team has quality issues, it could be that a) it lacks the time to invest in it, b) it lacks the know-how to do it right. In both cases, one can look at it as a hiring issue. In the first situation, the team moves too fast and should grow to increase its bandwidth and devote enough time to QA. In the other scenario, the team should simply hire someone with the required know-how.

Yes, it’s a simplistic view. No, I am not suggesting you create a new position at each stumble. What I am saying is thinking in terms of growth is a great weapon against fatalism. Enabling growth in your team will force you to think strategically and get ahead of the curve. “How to do more with more?” is a question that offers an interesting angle to that other: how to do just more? That’s because the engineering mind knows that when done right less is more.

And at times, it will be a real opportunity. When bringing the topic of an extra head for your team (or a whole new team!), you show proactive thinking and commitment to your goals.

Today, we looked at the importance of growth. Next time, we will look at all the risks it involves.