Greg Leib on Software

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.