May19: CTO me at Nexchanges Technology

Describe your experience with developers, operators or IT security professionals as customers of your products? In your experience what are their primary pain points? What annoys them? What delights them?

My Operating Style

I have personally experienced this while working in an engineering team of the size of 18 full time and 7 interns while building my startup as a CTO/Founder.

Pain Points

1. Cross team push pulls
   • a. asking for help
   • b. communication language
   • c. ego clashes
   • d. urgent vs imp.
   • e. agenda driven based on personal career roadmap
2. Deadlines/Roadmaps being pivoted without their consent/discussion
3. Not giving them enough room [expectations management] to allow for experimentation/learning curve, also micro managing leaders questions trust in their intellect with difficult problems often making them feel stupid.
4. Making them feel always that their opinions at the right junctures of decision making get overlooked by condescending their opinions via managers smashing their inputs
5. Not defining / aligning their career growth roadmap with project roadmap and also not living upto the promises once the OKRs are met.
6. No data evidence to backup the new whimsical feature request just blindly copying the competitors new feature without understanding the context.
7. The whole world looks to them a nail with their hammer capabilities hence every challenge is a target for an engineering solution. This becomes a pain at times

Annoying [Common Denominator]

1. Expecting them to demonstrate execution, commitment and passion to deliver for approaches that are typically against their discussion thread in meetings
2. To be called out for certain slacking areas of responsibility when the role is not typically written explicitly as part of their JD
3. Unnecessary long meetings beating around the bush by non-tech teams without conveying the WHY? of the meetings or taking their suggestions seriously
4. Over engineering the hygiene and processes in the name of a Product Manager without dealing with critical conflicts at the management level.
5. Complexity in over engineering the key metrics (trackers) where the meaning of progress is lost in the name of data science

Delights them

1. Someone(PM) taking the onus to resolve for unsaid responsibilities [gives them faith in the project that someone has a moral responsibility for driving the project forward]
2. Great sense of mission towards the outcome of the project, the vision of their company and a strong sense of ownership in achieving that mission.
3. Budget for technical conferences giving them opportunity to travel, learn and up-skill themselves
4. Freedom to work on an outside project and explicitly allow it to be recognised in office for their weekend gig