16 years experience hiring, leading, and fixing development teams in startups like TIM Group (investment banking, backed by Commonwealth Capital), Secretsales (e-commerce, Doughty Hanson), and Osper (debit cards for kids, Index Ventures).
If your development team is delivering late (or not at all), is battling bugs rather than building new features, or can't recruit, I can suggest concrete steps you can take to help them improve performance, boost quality, and deliver working software daily - and be happier in the process.
I have helped many full-time engineers to move up to a team lead or full-time management position, increasing their communication skills, ability to report and overcome team obstacles, and helping them to coach and lead their teams.
I have been hiring software engineers in startups for over ten years, developing methods for branding (see http://tech.osper.io), advertising (see https://osper.workable.com/jobs/22459), recruiter selection, and interviewing - and am ready to share these with you.
Had a great call with Douglas discussing hiring and interviewing strategies for developers. He listened intently to my questions and provided valuable insights based on his experience. Thanks!
Squirrel is an exceptionally talented CTO who helped revolutionise the SecretSales’ Technology function.
He hired and integrated a new team and implemented future-proof practises that have enabled the efficiency and quality of the Technology team’s output to continuously improve. He is an accomplished and inspiring manager and a well respected Senior Team Member during his time with us at SecretSales. He has cultivated a finely-tuned, self-sufficient Technology function, which we are very grateful for.
Personally, I have learnt a tremendous amount from Squirrel and am proud of the time I have worked with him. He is full of charisma and has been great personality in the company. I wish him the very best in his endeavours and, as he remains a shareholder of SecretSales, I count on his advice and support in the future.
Squirrel is unique. Very smart, very dedicated, and very reliable. He built a team from scratch that has one of the best organisational cultures I've seen. He cares about the right stuff and it's a pleasure to work with him
Squirrel has contributed immeasurably to our company’s success during his ten years as our CTO. When we began developing our market leading applications, we had fewer than ten developers. Few if any of them had experience with web-delivered software, with the technologies we now employ, or with commercial software development of any description. From these unpromising beginnings, Squirrel built a 50-strong Technology team which has fuelled our growth and earned us recognition as a leading proponent of best-practice software development. He led the development of our two applications, established our hosting infrastructure, and led the development of the internal IT infrastructure which serves our two development centres (in London and Boston) and additional sales and support locations in New York and Hong Kong. He established the technical, management, and recruitment processes that have supported our operations and on-going growth. He has shown himself to be a gifted technologist, a strong manager, a good contributor to business discussions, and an eloquent company representative on technical issues.
Squirrel and TIM Group agreed in spring 2012 that our Technology organisation was sufficiently stable and mature to allow him to seek new challenges, which he did. He will be an asset to any organisation that employs him in the future.
