Last week I went to the Sydney Technology Leaders’ Meetup, which we hosted in the Tyro Fintech Hub. There was a trio of great talks, and a panel discussion with the speakers at the end.
When asked what they do to help train new leaders, one of the speakers mentioned “throwing a bunch of books at them”. So I took the opportunity to ask the speakers, if they could only recommend one or two books to a new leader, what would each of them recommend. Continue reading
At Tyro, we don’t have anyone with the title of Architect, Designer or Tech Lead who designs software and then asks other people to build it. Instead, each team of Software Engineers does architecture and design as part of their iteration planning sessions for the stories we’re taking on.
As a Team Lead, the two main goals I keep in mind for each person are: keep them happy and keep them growing. One of the ways I try to ensure this happens is by meeting with each person regularly so we can chat about how to make sure these things are true or at least heading in the right direction.
A topic that’s come up with a few people lately is software design and architecture. Specifically, I’ve had a couple of comments along the lines of: “When we’re designing things, I want to contribute more, but I’m not really sure where to start.” Continue reading
… and the secrets of 7 other famously successful people.
There would be few adults in the western world who have not heard of Steve Jobs. A pioneer of personal computing, an entrepreneur of unrivalled clout, one-time owner of the world’s most successful digital animation studio, the man who took the helm of an almost bankrupt computer company and transformed it into the most valuable business in the world.
But have you ever heard about Steve Jobs’ skateboarding skills? Continue reading
Two weeks ago I published a post titled ‘Why Smart Software Teams Don’t Need Senior Developers, Tech Leads or Architects‘. I received a lot of good feedback, but I also know it was a long read. So, if you’re interested by the title but are looking for a quick brain dump rather than an enjoyable read, here’s the abridged version:
At Tyro Payments, we’ve doubled our Engineering team over the last year.
We don’t hire for, or use, titles like Graduate Developer, Junior Developer, Senior Developer, Tech Lead or Architect. Everyone has the title ‘Software Engineer’.
This is an important part of Tyro’s Engineering team culture. Here are the reasons… Continue reading
A queue of software developers, not unlike the one that has inundated my inbox for the last year.
We’ve almost doubled our Engineering team at Tyro Payments over the last financial year and we’ll be adding that many again this year.
Most people who’ve worked in or with software teams would imagine that within this surge of hiring we’ve been filling all kinds of different roles – Graduate Developers, Junior Developers, Seniors, a couple of Tech Leads, maybe an Architect. But the truth is we’ve only been hiring for one role: Software Engineer. In fact, it’s the only development role on our team, and it’s the title we give to everyone on the tools, whether they have 20 years’ experience or none. This isn’t just some convenience we came up with to save ourselves HR work. It’s an incredibly important part of the culture at Tyro. Why? Continue reading