Greg Leib on Software

Recruitics has a culture that celebrates exceptional results.  The expression "get shit done" or more commonly "GSD" has become something of a mantra around our office.  We have GSD stickers and t-shirts. We even have a #gsd message channel where we call out peers who go above and beyond.  When I first heard the phrase, my reaction was not positive. To me it seemed to encourage indiscriminate action and low-quality work. But as I have learned since then, there is a lot of nuance behind the concept - and it goes to the core of what makes Recruitics a unique workplace. In this post, I want to use GSD as a lens to explain a little about our engineering culture. Of course, within Recruitics d ifferent disciplines and teams manifest GSD in different ways: A salesperson who calls a prospect on a Saturday afternoon with a carefully-crafted value proposition.  An account manager who obtains an industry certification that helps her better serve clients. An executiv...

As a new technology executive, my biggest worry is whether I am focusing on the right issues. My prior roles primarily required technical work, but they mostly involved small problems and small teams. For my first executive position, I expected to focus on organizational issues more than technical ones. Two months in, I think my expectations and role reset strategy were about right. Here are some of the challenges I've been working on so far: Hiring. I'm shifting the organization from being mostly outsourced offshore to a more even onshore/offshore model. Sourcing and assessing engineers for senior roles has been challenging. I'm committed to building a great team. This is my top priority, and so far we've filled two of the four most senior roles. Our offshore people are solid, and I'm really excited about the new people we're hiring. Process.  We need a simple and unambiguous approach for software development. I've been pushing the team to use Jira a...

Two weeks ago I started a new job as VP Engineering at Recruitics . It's a great opportunity. The company is growing quickly and has a solid management team. This role is quite different from my last one as a software architect. Now I am designing people stuff, not software. I have read nearly twenty books to prepare for this role. One recurring theme from my reading is that people fail in new roles when they keep doing the things that made them successful in their previous role: the key to success is adapting to the new challenges. My background is in writing solid software systems, but the challenges I face now are different from the ones that brought me to this point. Resisting the urge to jump to coding is difficult. But code doesn't hire a great team, and code doesn't improve communication. I need to do it differently now, and I'm embracing the change.

I recently received this marketing communication from LinkedIn, featuring a YouTube video . The video shows children talking about what they want to be when they grow up, and they are juxtaposed against images of successful professionals doing those things. The message is that you can follow your dreams and succeed. It's cute. LinkedIn marketing communication promoting http://imagine.linkedin.com The website accompanying the campaign goes on to explain how some of the professionals featured in the video use LinkedIn to do their current jobs. For example, a chief merchandising officer uses it to discover vendors for unique items. And that's it: end of communication. What I find interesting is that LinkedIn isn't set up very well for people trying to "follow their dreams". I've worked hard to grow my capabilities. I average two hours per day studying work-related topics to expand my reach. For my career, the signal-to-noise ratio on LinkedIn is mostly...