Stacey Gammon, a Principal Software Engineer at Elastic, discusses scalability challenges in rapid growth, project management, the value of saying no to new projects, retrospectives, formal mentorship programs, one-on-one meetings, and team communication. Insights on tech leadership roles, Kibana platform, career transitions, prioritizing technical debt, API documentation evolution, and effective project management in a remote-first company.
Effective project management involves aligning project goals and technical feasibility through close collaboration between software engineers, tech leads, and project managers.
Stacey Gammon emphasizes the importance of team success over individual achievements, focusing on code quality, project management, orchestration, and process improvement.
Deep dives
Stacy Gaiman's Role as a Tech Lead at Elastic
Stacy Gaiman, a tech lead at Elastic, oversees a team of about 80 engineers within five different areas, focusing on code quality, project management, orchestration, and process improvement. Her role emphasizes team success over individual achievements, encouraging proactive decisions for team improvement.
Stacy's Unique Approach as a Tech Lead
Stacy Gaiman distinguishes herself as a tech lead by focusing on breadth over depth, emphasizing people-oriented skills and facilitating collaboration. With five years at Elastic, she leverages a comprehensive understanding of the code base to guide architectural decisions, technical vision, team coordination, and problem prevention, showcasing a leadership style centered on strategic planning and team empowerment.
Kibana's Position Within Elastic's Technology Stack
Kibana, the platform team where Stacy works, serves as an interface above Elasticsearch, providing a foundation for building applications. The team collaborates with security and observability divisions, utilizing Elasticsearch data for search, display, and analysis. Kibana's composition includes client-side and server-side code, offering reusable components, scalable services, and incorporating Elasticsearch capabilities.
Challenges in Project Execution and Progress Tracking
The transition from planning to execution involves close collaboration between software engineers, tech leads, and project managers to align project goals and technical feasibility. Varied progress tracking methods like RFC reviews focus on concrete deliverables, architectural considerations, and public API alignment, contributing to effective project management and communication among team members.
What works for a small company may not work for a large company, so what do you do when your organization experiences rapid growth, and the old way of doing things is no longer sustainable? In today’s episode, we speak with Stacey Gammon, a tech lead and Principal Software Engineer at Elastic. She has been with the company for almost five years and in that time has been able to observe firsthand the challenges that come with rapid growth in areas like scalability, communications, and project management. Tuning in you’ll hear Stacey break down the details of her role and how she manages teams and people. She elaborates on how Elastic is currently approaching the problem of scalability and how it is still a work in progress. We hear from Stacey about the many projects they have going on at one time and why the biggest challenge is often saying no to new projects. Later, we discuss retrospectives and why they can be a safe and effective way for teams to learn from past errors. Stacey shares the details of the formal mentorship program at Elastics and unpacks why the long-term benefits of delegating outweigh the extra time commitment it requires in the short term. Stacey shares her feelings on spending a large portion of her time in meetings and why she believes one-on-one meetings are valuable. We loved having Stacey on the show, and we’re sure you will find the conversation every bit as insightful and thought-provoking as we did! For all this and more, tune in today!