Level-up Engineering

Scaling Startups: Behind the Scenes of Fleetio’s Growth

Sep 18, 2024
Richard Young, Principal Software Engineer at Fleetio with nearly a decade of experience, shares invaluable insights on scaling startups. He delves into Fleetio's unique journey of organic growth free from external investor pressure. Richard highlights priorities like hiring senior, product-focused engineers and fostering informal mentorship programs. He emphasizes the importance of customer feedback in driving product features and maintaining a clean codebase. Additionally, he offers advice for engineers considering startup roles and discusses future explorations in AI and analytics.
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ANECDOTE

Second Engineer Wearing Many Hats

  • Richard joined Fleetio as the second engineer and wore many hats: backend, frontend, and DevOps.
  • Early on they fixed issues by restarting servers until they later solved scaling problems.
ADVICE

Prioritize Tests Before Scaling

  • Insist on a working test suite before scaling engineering efforts.
  • Tests prevent regressions and make onboarding new engineers safe and fast.
ADVICE

Use Review Apps And Pipelines

  • Use staging pipelines and review apps to validate branch changes in production-like environments.
  • Automate builds and create ephemeral apps so engineers can test features with real data safely.
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