View Photo The Blue Angels stunt team — if they can’t fly as a team, they all die

The Blue Angels are A United States Navy aerobatic team whose entire fleet of demonstration aircraft is now F/A-18 Hornet combat/attack aircraft. After World War II, ADMIRAL Chester W. Nimitz assembled a team of Navy pilots to perform aerobatics. The name Blue Angels was given in 1946. The Blue Angels are all pilots from U.S. aircraft carriers with more than 2,000 hours of flying experience. The Blue Angels emphasize the importance of discipline.

If we can add these five features, we can make a big deal. “The sales manager said,” We need all these features, or the customer won’t want them.”

“Great, we can do this in eight months,” responded the development team leader.

The sales manager frowned. “That won’t work. By then, they’ll have to buy another solution. We only have three months if we want to win.”

“We need six more people to meet our goal,” retorts the dev lead.

At this time, the president said, “This list will enable us to meet our target for the whole year, and we will have the full staff within this month…”

This story is played out in many companies around the world. I’ve seen it a million times myself. The fictional CEO doesn’t want to break the team; he just wants to make a sale. Unfortunately, that simple remark probably cost him the deal and could spell doom for the team.

Growing development teams is about increasing productivity while maintaining team cohesion. This is easier said than done because there is a lot of external pressure like “We’re going to lose sales for the year”. I’ve written before about how to interview technical people, and here are five tips on how to safely grow your team before and after the interview.

Take time to grow

9 women can’t have 1 baby in 1 month!!

Everyone who qualifies to fly with the Blue Angels must already be an elite pilot. Even so, the Blue Angels won’t let a rookie fly on his first day. Similarly, when you hire a new person, it takes them two or three weeks to get things started. Most people accept this view. Another cliche is that almost everyone in tech knows, but only a few realize that during those two or three weeks, new people make teams worse off. This is not because the newcomers are bad, of course, but because other team members take the time to answer their questions and provide them with relevant information.

This will eventually make the new person an effective member of the team, but it will affect the overall effectiveness of the team for two or three weeks. If you hire more than one new person per month, it puts a lot of pressure on the rest of the team. Not only do newcomers drain the team’s time, they also take more time to become effective. This stress can even cause your team to collapse when it is “now that you have enough people” and the actual effectiveness drops. You are likely to lose key members of your team.

Ensure team cohesion

“Individual commitment to team work — the key to keeping a team running, a company running, a society together, and a civilization alive” — Vince Lombardi

In addition to making a team less effective for a period of time, adding more than one new person per month also slows assimilation. When assimilation slows down, team cohesion is at risk of being undermined. When a new person joins your team, answer their questions about the codebase to help them become technically part of the team. But what we as engineers often neglect is to integrate them into the team on a day-to-day basis. Maybe your group will have lunch together on Thursday, but be sure to invite new people to the group meeting on Tuesday. Maybe you have other social events, make sure you invite new people. The more you know about your colleagues, the easier it will be to discuss system architecture and coding with them later. Don’t be shy about letting people go as quickly as possible, just as you let people go who don’t have the right skills. This is very important. This is not to say fire someone who won’t have lunch with you, but if a team and a member are going to be working with caution, it may not be appropriate to keep that member.

Take the time to make sure the new person succeeds

“Come together to begin, come together to progress, and work together to succeed.” — Henry Ford

If team cohesion is important, then everyone should be involved. In the month you bring someone in, it’s part of the job of all the team members to help them succeed. Proactively ask newcomers if they have any questions about the codebase. Ask new hires if they have any questions about how things are done in the company (maybe help them find HR who has the best say). Help new hires keep abreast of team dynamics (this doesn’t mean gossip about team members). Find out what new people are interested in and ask how they did things in their previous jobs. Simply put, make them feel like they’re part of the team.

Maintain a good ratio of old and new members

“We are all apprentices and there are no experts in this field.” – Ernest Hemingway

Smart and talented junior engineers are great. They bring energy and intellectual curiosity to the team, and they are the seeds to become senior engineers. However, a seed cannot grow into a giant tree in a vacuum. They need light, fertile soil and water. Similarly, junior engineers cannot grow into senior engineers. They need the guidance of senior engineers. I firmly believe that the best ratio of the old and the new is the old and the new. Why three?

  • Three senior staff members make sure someone is always available to answer questions and provide guidance.
  • If a veteran developer has a bad habit, there are two veterans to keep the new guy from learning it.
  • A rookie should have at least three mentors so that they don’t take up too much of any one mentor’s productivity. This way, the newcomers are likely to increase the overall effectiveness of the group, rather than leveling it out or hurting it.

Hug to improve

“If you’re not good enough, you know you’ll get better” — Lindsey Beckingham

You want a new person to be on your side, but you can still learn something new from them. Perhaps they already have an idea of how to build a subproject more efficiently, because their most recent work assignment involved this. Maybe they already have experience with the idea you want to try, which can save you a lot of trouble. Maybe it’s just some other advice you didn’t take into account. You don’t hire people because they’re like you; Take advantage of this infusion of new blood. Just as adding carbon to iron makes it harder, adding more talent makes your team stronger.