“The Problem of Growth”- Interview with Darin Swanson – VP Engineering, APM at New Relic, Inc.
What’s THE best problem to have hands down?
Most people would say: growth.
And I’d agree 100%.
But it’s not as rosy as you’d imagine. Whether you’ve gone from a five-person garage startup to 15, 50 or 500 person team, there will be some challenges.
And at each stage tackling those challenges can leave us feeling like growth is more of a burden than a boon.
We have to learn to balance the pressure to satisfy customer demands, while managing and nurturing a team.
This requires hiring new people who fit into the culture, altering our development process to include them, and learning to delegate tasks that have become too much for one person to handle.
Easier said than done.
But don’t worry because in today’s episode of FemgineerTV, you’re going to learn how to handle the great problem of growth from our special guest Darin Swanson who is the VP of Engineering and Platform at New Relic.
Darin is going to share some valuable lessons from his experience growing the New Relic team over the past 4+ years.
As you watch the episode you’ll learn:
- What it was like to transition from being a software engineer to a manager and then a VP of Engineering
- Darin’s test for deciding on whether or not you should go down the management track
- The WORST advice Darin ever received regarding scaling teams
- How Darin and the New Relic team screen their engineering candidates for culture fit
This episode on the problem of growth is full of nuggets of wisdom from Darin, and I highly recommend watching it whether you’re experiencing a growth curve in your company, or are thinking about joining one that is growing.
Listen to the episode on the problem of growth on iTunes!
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FemgineerTV is produced as a partnership between Femgineer and Pivotal Tracker. San Francisco video production by StartMotionMEDIA.
