Silicon Valley CTO shares top 3 secrets for building high-performance engineering teams Growing elite engineering teams is a tough challenge in today’s ultra-competitive IT recruitment landscape. Experienced tech leader Rija Javed, who has built and run engineering teams for high-profile FinTech organisations such as WealthFront and MarketFinance, shares her top tips in our recent podcast. 1. Don’t hire for skills, hire for people. First and foremost, in terms of actually having that truly growing and thriving culture, you need a culture that actually values people. Skills can be learned but the quality people will always be hungry to learn and develop themselves to acquire the right skills. I think as human beings, no matter what we’re doing personally and professionally, we should always want to be learning and growing in life. At least for myself, I always want to be the dumbest person in the room! 2. The best engineering cultures see technology as the driving force of the business. But I think one of the key differences is that in the Silicon Valley, you have technologists at the VC and founder level, who are trying to disrupt the traditional industry. Versus in London, as well as other scenes that I’ve seen in Europe, particularly, say Berlin and Amsterdam, so many other places. You tend to have people from traditional industry and London is quite a few people from traditional finance, that are trying to disrupt that industry. And they’re coming from places where, there’s not much of a concept of tech. They just think of them as this IT lackey for them. Their mental models are often totally different. The cultural values that in a lot of cases, that they’re coming from are totally different. The world that I always grew up in, the Bay area was more that, it’s the people that make the difference, but it’s not an NGO, it’s not a volunteer service, or whatever. So, you’ve got to ultimately value that people. And engineering is, in tech, is more than just writing code. For me, the reason why I have been attracted to start-ups is, that it allows me the ability to ultimately become a business leader. And I’m not just, there’s somebody behind the scenes and thinking of it as tech. I’m thinking about it, overall, for the whole business as it may be. That’s just such a big difference based on the companies I’ve chatted to the founders. As well as, even the VCs where they’re coming from and what they’re actually, how they’re vouching. We’re looking at some of these companies. So, for me, that’s the big difference. I think there’s still quite a few years for London, and the rest of the European tech scene to catch up in terms of that development. 3. It’s the job of a manager to make those around you successful For me, a management relationship or the job of the manager, no matter what title or role you’re at, it is your job is to make these people successful. So, figure them out, figure their personalities out. What are their strengths, where there is improvement? And what exactly are they motivations? For some folks it might be that, I want to work on the most technically, challenging things? Or are there things that’s just that, I really care about the people that I work with, and I want to make sure that, that’s a, enjoyable environment. For other people, it may be that I just want to work on whatever the client’s facing, the biggest PR thing is going to be for the company. So, try to figure that out. Rija Javed is CTO of business finance specialist Market Finance.