Thiago Ghisi, a seasoned engineering leader, shares his insights on the journey of scaling engineering organizations from a small team to over 100 engineers. This post summarizes the key takeaways from his presentation, offering a roadmap for leaders facing similar challenges.
The Journey of Scaling an Organization
Ghisi's experience, from managing a small team to leading a large organization at Nubank, was a gradual process filled with learning. He emphasizes that scaling is a marathon, not a sprint, taking years of experience to master.
Key Milestones and Actions During Growth
1. Establishing Order to Chaos (30-49 engineers): The initial focus should be on creating an operational cadence, structuring meetings, and accelerating decision-making. Leaders must manage across the entire organization, not just their direct reports.
2. Building a Leadership Team (50+ engineers): A strong leadership team is essential for scaling. Members should be at a similar level, be opinionated, and prioritize the organization's success over their individual "kingdoms."
3. Unlocking Cultural Levers: To foster a cohesive culture, it's crucial to create a group identity, encourage knowledge sharing, and develop a long-term vision by clustering problems and benchmarking against industry standards.
4. Leveling Up as a Continuous Org (88+ engineers): Talent distribution—balancing seniority, tenure, and archetypes—becomes critical. Reorgs should be treated as a "continuous deployment feature": small, frequent, and non-traumatic adjustments rather than large, disruptive events.
5. Operating as a Driving Bar Raiser: In large organizations, leaders must actively guide the company in new directions and continuously raise the bar for engineering practices.
Practical Lessons for Leaders
Ghisi shares some "notes to his 30-year-old self":
- Execution is paramount: Delivering results is what gets you noticed and earns you resources. It's often better to make a decision and iterate than to make no decision at all.
- Focus on People Management: For large teams, concentrate on the "lows" (patterns of low performance) and the "highs" (leveraging unique top performers). Don't expect executives to be well-rounded.
- The "First Team" is the Leadership Team: Managers must prioritize the goals of the leadership group over their individual team's interests.
- Culture is Defined by Actions: Who you promote and who you let go sends a stronger message than any mission statement. A leader's reaction to incidents and treatment of people shapes the culture.
- Engineering Cost is Real: Avoid splitting managers or product managers across multiple teams. Dedicated focus is more effective.
- Write It Down: Document decisions, especially for reorgs, to prevent the message from getting distorted as it cascades through the organization.
- Avoid Consensus as the Only Method: While valuable, consensus-seeking can slow things down. Sometimes, a clear decision from an accountable person is needed.
- Dry Run First, Then Roll Out: Test significant changes, like reorgs, with small task forces before a full-scale rollout.
- Manage Skip Levels Like Down Levels: Build personal connections and goodwill with senior leaders. These relationships are crucial for career advancement.
The "Three Levels of Impact" Framework
Leaders should think about their impact on three levels: their own organization, their boss's organization/department, and the entire company.
- Understand Outside-In, Act Inside-Out: Start by understanding company-level priorities and customer needs. Then, align your team's actions with those broader goals.
- Structured Scaling: First, optimize your own organization. Once it's strong, disseminate best practices to your department, and eventually, to the entire company.
Career Growth at Senior Levels
- Goodwill and Relationships: These become more important than just impact and influence.
- The 10-30-50 Rule: To advance, be in the top 10% in one key skill, the top 30% in others, and never below the 50th percentile in any critical skill.
- Set Expectations and Calibrate: Clearly define your career goals with your manager and regularly track your progress.
- Be the Driving Bar Raiser: Evolve from an implementer to a problem solver, then a problem finder, and finally, a driver of major organizational initiatives.
Conclusion
Great leadership is about distilling complexity, establishing a rhythm, driving accountable execution, and sharing a compelling vision. The ultimate goal is to build a resilient organization that can thrive even in the leader's absence.
Reference: Scaling to 100+ as a Director: Lessons from Growing Engineering Organizations