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Scale at Reddit: Triple Your Team Size Without Losing Control
Nick Caldwell discusses the challenges of rapidly scaling a team at Reddit, particularly focusing on maintaining clear roles, organizational trust, and effective communication. He emphasizes the importance of having a flexible organizational structure that reflects company goals and enhances collaboration while also addressing the potential pitfalls of scaling, such as increased coordination costs and cultural disconnects. Caldwell advocates for the integration of diversity and inclusion into the company culture from the outset to foster better products and work environments.
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Scale at Reddit: Triple Your Team Size Without Losing Control
- 1. TRIPLE THE TEAMSIZE without losing control
- 2. NICK CALDWELL Reddit, Inc. VPof Engineering Microsoft, Power BI General Manager MIT ’03 Berkeley Haas ‘15
- 3. REDDIT Quick Stats • 4thlargest web site in the United States (Alexa) • 325M monthly users What’s new? • Executive team • Dramatically different product vision • Rapid expansion REDDIT COMPANY SIZE The home of conversation online
- 4. Within 3 years,92% of startups fail... … of those, 43% fail due to issues with SCALE! STARTUP Genome Report
- 5. MY FIRST WEEKAT REDDIT WOAH! § 30+ person standups § Google Slide tracking tools § Lots of tech leads but no engineering managers § No product team org chart §Urgent work to do ! Daily Standups
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- 8. PRODUCT VS PROGRAMVS ENGINEERING MANAGERS Program Manager Product Manager • Customer (who) • Vision (what) • Strategy (why) Eng. Manager • Architecture (how) • Execution (when)
- 9. R.A.C.I. Disadvantages • Inflexibility • Doesnot directly address lack of trust
- 10. People are candidand authentic Information is shared openly People are willing to share credit Transparency is a practiced value New ideas are welcome Mistakes are tolerated as a way of learning There are few “meetings after the meetings” People talk straight and confront real issues There is a high degree of accountability High energy level HIGH ORGANIZATIONAL TRUST People manipulate or distort facts People withhold and hoard information Getting the credit is very important People spin the truth to their advantage New ideas are resistedd and stifled Mistakes are covered up or covered over There are numerous “meetings after the meetings” There are many “undiscussables” People tend to over-promise and under- deliver Low energy level LOW Takenfrom:SpeedofTrust
- 11. TRUST (BUT VERIFY) Peoplefeel okay to say, “that’s not my job” … … when they can also say “the person we hired to do it is amazing!”
- 12. The most terrifyingand important part of successfully growing a product team is the org chart… 2. (re)ORGS
- 13. 3. (RE) ORGANIZATION “Organizationswhich design systems are constrained to produce designs which are copies of the communication structures of these organization.” -Conway’s Law You will eventually ship your org chart. -Translation
- 14. Your organization shouldreflect your company's most immediate goals and the best people for each goal should be continually moved to where they are most needed… … ideally
- 15. Relationships with keypeople change or get further apart Hurt feelings over projects getting defunded Scary instability as the ground shifts beneath you SUCK Surfaces leaders who are okay with uncertainty and discomfort Prevent empire building behaviors Creates new opportunities for people who want to grow skills Get the right people to where they need to be to urgently achieve changing business goals SUCK (LESS) REORGANIZATIONS
- 16. Groups of teamsfor every product. Minimize dependencies and maximize focus on user needs. “Shared” teams, to provide cross- organizational support needs. Clear, time-bounded, mission statement for every box in your chart Do ship the org chart, but make sure you have the right one! - Conway’s Law (revised)
- 17. WHAT’S NEXT “Death Star”Architecture “The design which occurs first is almost never the best possible, the prevailing system may need to change. Therefore, flexibility of organization is important to effective design.” — Mel Conway Perhaps, in the highly-networked and flexible teams of the future, the value of mission, culture, and relationships will dominate that of organization and architecture.
- 18. 3. EXECUTION ATSCALE, WHAT GET’S HARDER Awareness Everyone wants to know what everyone else is doing Bottlenecks Missed dependencies can cripple your production roadmap Coordination Here comes PROCESS: managers, tools, meetings
- 19. WHY? Surely, with morepeople we can just get more done! Right? Wrong! For every 1 engineer you hire, add to backlog 1.1 engineers worth of work Eventually, coordination costs and scope overcome your ability to deliver reliably. You will need a process change or reorg to keep scaling up. # PEOPLE Efficiency Curve Scope Output
- 20. PROCESS ADVICE AND CAUTION Avoidprocess junkies and boilerplate solutions. Evolve something that works for your team. Some variants of Agile promote intra-team coordination more than actually shipping code Original Toyota Kanban: minimal processes created from bottom up Value of visibility and dependency tracking increases exponentially with team size
- 21. REDDIT’S FIRST PROJECTTRACKER
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- 23. KANBAN AND STATUSBOARDS
- 24. KANBAN AND STATUSBOARDS
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- 26. JIRA + TABLEAU EngineeringExecution Dashboard
- 27. 4. SO MANYPEOPLE How can it be that the more people we have the more disconnected we feel?
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- 29. HOW MANY PEOPLECAN YOU KNOW? Dunbar’s Number What is the MonkeySphere
- 30. YOU DON’T NEEDTO KNOW EVERYONE AT THE PARTY TO HAVE A GOOD TIME! • Make sure your core values are strong but assume that diverse subcultures will form • Technology guilds, affinity groups, are all great ways to continue feeling connected • Remote offices will develop different cultures. Double down on your core values and inclusion. • Subcultures will emerge but don’t let anyone ruin the party!
- 31. BUT WHAT ABOUTCOMMUNICATION? WARNING: none of these methods work* newsletters, team syncs, company meetings, interest groups, documentation, regular 1:1s, posters, onboarding, press releases, offsite, Slack, Email, Wikis, dashboards *Alone. At scale, you have to use all of them!
- 32. BEAT THE TELEPHONEGAME message with extreme clarity broadcast for everyone leaders should repeat and reinforce overcommunicate
- 33. FINAL THOUGHTS ON GROWINGTEAMS 2 opportunities and 1 challenge
- 34. DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION Diverseand Inclusive Teams: • make better products • are more fun to work in Like any cultural aspect, it will be extremely hard to “fix” later Make D&I part of your company DNA before you expand!
- 35. Get executive support.It is not IC's responsibility to define hiring practices or D&I programs Create or invite inclusiveness groups to interact with your company Hire leaders first Be intentional, patient and persistent. DO DIVERSITY & INCLUSION Hire a "head of diversity" and expect them to fix everything Use the “diversity of thought” excuse or ever say, “we don’t see gender or color” Point out individuals without their permission Make assumptions about how much a diverse candidate cares about this issue Hire people who care more about diversity than delivery DON’T
- 36. SOCIAL IMPACT Your company’svalue to the world can be more than the products you ship.
- 37. As your teamgrows your connection to individuals will lessen. It will become easy to think of people as numbers or resources in your tracking tools… …remember that people are the most valuable part of your organization and the best part of being a manager.
- 38. CALLS TO ACTION Redditis hiring! http://about.reddit.com Follow me! Reddit https://www.reddit.com/user/nickcald Twitter https://twitter.com/nickcald Medium https://medium.com/@nickcaldwell LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/nickcaldwell/ Color Code Fund http://colorcode.fund
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