Level-up Engineering Leadership in Hypergrowth: A Case Study from Shapr3D
Interview with Ákos Kapui, VP of Engineering at Shapr3D. He talks about running an engineering organization in hypergrowth, doubling its employee count every year. Pick up his tips, tricks, and learn from his experience as he goes into detail on recruitment, decision making at scale, and planning while in hypergrowth.
In this interview we're covering:
- Challenges in hypergrowth
- Finding the right employees
- Key moments for a startup in hypergrowth
- Scaling management as the organization grows
- Planning hypergrowth
- Preparations for projected growth
Excerpt from the interview:
"Startups often don't recognize that the teams in the frontline should make their own decisions. The top leaders are far from the problem, their insight is limited, and their knowledge of the ground level work may be outdated. Micromanagement has its place, but it often leads to bad decisions.
As you grow from 20 people to 40 and 100, you need to start making decisions differently. As a high level leader, your job is to help your employees make decisions, show them how to align a good decision, spot a bad one, and help them learn from their mistakes.
Cities don’t involve the prime minister in details, and the frontline workers make the big decisions. The problem is that people lack experience in making decisions quickly, sticking with them, learning from them, and taking responsibility for them."