In this episode of our Product Talks series, we had the pleasure of having a chat with Marco Risi, Head of Engineering at Skiller Whale.
Skiller Whale provides live coaching sessions for software engineers and tech leaders. Their focus is on practical application and tailoring the training to address each team member’s specific needs..
With Marco, we discussed:
Current Role
Marco’s current role as Head of Engineering at Steeler Whale and what the company does.
Networking
Importance of networking for career growth, especially in technical leadership roles.
Career Progression
How the speaker grew from a backend developer to CTO at Everly, including challenges of leading a growing remote team.
Challenges in Starting and Growing a Remote Company
Discussions around the challenges faced in starting a remote company and growing the engineering team remotely.
Measuring Success as a CTO and Maintaining Company Culture
Discussion on how to determine if doing a good job as CTO and strategies for keeping culture when scaling team fast.
Hiring Process and KPIs for Scaling Engineering Team
Questions around recruitment process, coding challenges, and KPIs used when hiring at scale.
Hiring Process and Technical Interviews
Discussion around different technical interview formats and take-home assignments and their impact on candidate experience.
CTO Experience and Lessons Learned
Reflections on cloud adoption delay, documentation, and technology choices in early days.
Engineering Organization and Scaling
Principles for scaling engineering organization through technology choices and team structure.
Engineering Career Paths
Discussion around dual individual contributor and manager tracks and moving between the roles.
Working with Product and Design
Challenges and importance of alignment between engineering, product, and design teams.
Defining roles and responsibilities
The importance of clearly defining what each product, engineering, and design role is responsible for.
Balancing quality and speed
How to find the right balance between code quality, testing, and the need for rapid development.
Integrating retailer data
Challenges faced with integrating product data from different retailers and how refactoring the architecture improved scalability.
Prioritizing based on business impact
Importance of justifying priorities and changes based on clear business metrics rather than technical reasons alone.