The talk I gave at the CTO Pizza #3 in March 2018 about hiring and managing happy engineers in a fast growing startup.

1. Ledger SAS
1, rue du Mail
75002 Paris - France
Ledger Technologies Inc.
121 2nd Street
94105 San Francisco - USA
Hiring and Managing Happy Engineers
CTO Pizza #3
7 March 2017
Ledger SAS
Parc Technologique de Sologne
Allée Georges Charpak
18100 Vierzon - France

2. ● 15 years scaling infrastructures and teams
in various startups
● Passionate about tech and leadership
● Open source contributor since 1998
● Author, speaker and startup advisor
Ledger
About Me
Fred de Villamil
VP Engineering
Twitter: @fdevillamil

3. ● Funded in 2014
● Leader in the security solutions for cryptocurrencies
● Sold 1 million units of the Hardware Wallet Ledger Nano S™ in 165
countries
● 3 offices : Paris, Vierzon & San Francisco
● 100 Employees, 35 engineers (20 / 4 one year ago)
● Raised 75 million USD in January 2018
Ledger

4. I'm a "para-shit", taking everything that might
prevent the team for achieving the company's
goals.
Achievements are the team's, not the leader's.
The team works for the company, I work for the
team.
Tell things before a person problem becomes a
team issue
My Job as a VP Engineering
Leadership Style

5. Finding the Right Engineers
● Engineers are expensive and don't believe in the startup bullshit anymore.
No budget, no people
● Takes time: 60% of my time spent recruiting, 10% of those who reach the
first interview get to the homework
○ 30 engineers to hire in 2018
○ 210 candidates / job description average
● Network first, have a cooptation program
● Pick up recruiters who know their job
○ Specialized in 1 field
○ Regular meetups attendees who know the ecosystem
● Web sites: Linkedin, Hired…

6. ● Fastest growing startup in Europe,
profitable
● Working on a "cool" technology:
cryptocurrencies, blockchain
● Attractive salary and equity
● Great culture of transparence
● 90% of the code is open source
● Little to no legacy
Attracting the Best
Key assets
● Going to conferences all around the world
● Incredible office (we have a full time
workplace happiness manager)
● Organising meetups and hackathons
● Freedom to take over the topics you
want when they pop up
That little thing that makes your eyes sparkle

7. Ledger Hiring Process
1. Phone call with the candidate
2. The candidate meets 2 people of the team
picked at random
3. A 2 hours homework
4. A technical interview with the lead + VP
Engineering
5. A leadership / organisation meeting with
the VP Engineering
6. A meeting with the company's founder to
expose his vision
Hiring Process
● Keep the process short: 6 steps, 3
meetings
● Do my teammate want to work with that
person?
● Cultural fit > technical skills
● Average 12 days between the first contact
and go
Goals:

8. Skills Assessments
● From simple to extremely complex
questions until they can't answer anymore
● Not used to write off a candidate but to
know them better
● Find a candidate strengths and weaknesses
● Building teams where they can learn from
each other

9. ● Originally designed at Spotify
● Organization by product line
● A designated tech lead / squad
● People within a squad aren't necessary in
the engineering team (marketing, product
management)
● Global leads have cross-squads
responsibilities
● Change every year (during a Hackathon
where you build the new teams)
Team organization
Going Full Squads

10. ● Scrum, but with a mix of Kanban
● Leave time for the unexpected
● Accept that the sprint is not immutable
● All teams (including the infrastructure) on
the same pace
Day to Day Organisation
A Mix of Scrum and Kanban
● 2 weeks sprints
● A sprint ends with a demo.
● What's demoed is shipped the week after
● No deployment on Friday!
● Daily standup
● Sprint retrospective: take feedback to
improve the global process

11. The Team Fatigue Rate
● Started when I was managing ops after 2
burnouts
● Different for developers, ops…
● Sometimes, you need to force people to
take a break!
● Not rocket science!
Track the Team Members Exhaustion Before they Burn Out
KPIs
● Interruptions and context switching
● Ops: incidents and oncall hours
● Calculated every week and on a sliding
month
Tools:
● Jira: nothing can be done without a ticket

12. The Clear Contract
● Explain your team members:
○ How you work
○ What you like
○ What you despise
○ What you will do for them
○ What you won't do for them
● Ask them for the same information
● Respect as much as you can
Setup a bi directional way of working

13. ● Solve problems as they appear, don't wait
until one person problem becomes a full
team problem
● Empathy is key but you're not Mother
Theresa
● Communicate with your leads often
● Use neutral places as much as possible, avoid
meeting rooms until it gets really serious
● Talk, then write, for what's not written does
not exist
● Involve the HR early enough to get advices,
it's their job
Solving Team Members Problems

14. Abraham Lincoln (source: the Internet)
The problem with quotes on the Internet
is that it is hard to verify their
authenticity