初创公司为什么要我

by Assaf Elovic

通过阿萨夫·埃洛维奇

在一家大型初创公司担任副总裁之前，我希望知道什么 (What I wish I knew before becoming a VP at a large startup)

When I started my position as VP of R&D at a growing startup, I thought my biggest challenges would be mainly technical. That is, provide state of the art architecture solutions, conduct code reviews, help solve complex algorithmic challenges and maybe even push some code. That’s because my previous technical leading positions were at small startups, where anyone who can code is needed when dealing with limited resources in a fast paced environment.

当我在一家成长中的初创公司担任研发副总裁时，我认为我最大的挑战将主要是技术方面的。 也就是说，提供最新的体系结构解决方案，进行代码审查，帮助解决复杂的算法难题，甚至可能推送一些代码。 那是因为我以前的技术领导职位是在小型初创公司中，在那里，在快速节奏的环境中处理有限的资源时，任何需要编码的人都需要。

A few mistakes straight into the position made me realize very quickly that leading R&D for a team of over 20 people requires a variety of skills. Just to clarify, my team is constructed of five divisions - Front End, Back End, Mobile, Research (mostly machine learning) and QA.

职位上的一些错误使我很快意识到，带领一支由20多人组成的团队进行研发工作需要多种技能。 需要澄清的是，我的团队由五个部门组成-前端，后端，移动，研究(主要是机器学习)和质量检查。

So here are 5 lessons I wish I had known when starting this position:

因此，我希望在开始这个职位时了解以下5课：

1.了解你的人 (1. Get to know your people)

Understanding what empowers and motivates your team members is powerful. It’s important to remember that every person is different: they need different things, have different communication styles, and focus on different things.

了解什么可以赋予团队成员力量和激励力量。 重要的是要记住，每个人都是不同的：他们需要不同的事物，具有不同的沟通方式，并专注于不同的事物。

Get to know what motivates each of your team members and what are their passions and career goals. This way you can leverage tasks and responsibilities based on it and maximize productivity and motivation within your team. It’ll also help retain your employees and make them feel more resourceful and self-fulfilled.

了解什么激励您的每个团队成员，以及他们的激情和职业目标是什么。 这样，您就可以利用基于任务和职责的任务和职责，并最大程度地提高团队中的生产力和动力。 它还将有助于留住您的员工，并使他们感到更足智多谋，更加自我实现。

I schedule a weekly 1-on-1 meeting with each team leader and a monthly 1-on-1 with the rest of my team. In these meetings, I try to focus mainly on the personal level. Some meetings are very short, and some suddenly take hours. This policy provides me with a constant pulse of my teams’ status and motivation level, allowing me to prioritize who and when needs that extra push and attention. And believe me, there was always someone who needed it.

我安排与每个团队负责人每周一次的一对一会议，并与我的团队其他成员每月一次的一对一会议。 在这些会议中，我尝试着重于个人层面。 有些会议很短，有些突然需要几个小时。 这项政策为我提供了团队状态和动力水平的不断变化，使我能够确定谁和何时需要额外的推动和关注。 相信我，总有人需要它。

2.不要成为英雄 (2. Don’t be the Hero)

I truly agree with the saying “You’re only as successful as your team”. As engineers, we are constantly striving to solve complex problems, or in other words, be the hero. As the leader of your team, your job is to have a capable team that can solve any challenge on their own, without you. The more you try and solve for them, the more they’ll rely on you for future challenges.

我真的同意“您只有团队一样成功”的说法。 作为工程师，我们一直在努力解决复杂的问题，换句话说，成为英雄。 作为团队的领导者，您的工作是拥有一个能干的团队，在没有您的情况下 ，他们可以独自解决任何挑战。 您为他们解决的尝试越多，他们对未来挑战的依赖就越多。

I found this rule to be very hard to follow since sometimes it feels much more effective to bring out a solution from experience, than have your team research for days on end. However, down the line, it’s proven to be the most valuable lesson I’ve learned. With an independent and capable team, you’ll have much more time and focus to push and improve areas of your R&D that you are mostly capable of.

我发现很难遵循这条规则，因为有时候从经验中提出解决方案比在几天之内进行团队研究要有效得多。 但是，就这一点而言，这被证明是我学到的最有价值的一课。 有了一个独立且有能力的团队，您将有更多的时间和精力专注于推动和改进您最有能力的研发领域。

3.永远不会成为瓶颈 (3. Never be a Bottleneck)

The first mistake I made going into the position was to take on a coding task. Coding is my comfort zone which is why I probably fell back to it. Very quickly I was flooded with unexpected top priority issues to deal with, hours and hours of staff, business, and product meetings, not finding almost a single hour to focus on the coding task. Even when I did find some time, we all know coding requires getting “into the zone”, which was hard when constantly getting interrupted. In the end, I was creating a bottleneck in my own team, which almost delayed deployment.

我进入该职位时犯的第一个错误是承担编码任务。 编码是我的舒适区，这就是为什么我可能会退缩。 很快，我就充满了意料之外的头等大事，需要花费大量的时间来处理员工，业务和产品会议，而几乎没有一个小时可以专注于编码任务。 即使我确实找到了一段时间，我们都知道编码需要“进入区域”，这在不断被打断时很难。 最后，我在自己的团队中创建了一个瓶颈，这几乎延迟了部署。

I am still amazed at how many unexpected issues can occur on a daily basis. From HR and external relations to technical and political company challenges. As a leader, you should make sure you’re always available to deal with urgent issues. If you take on tasks such as deployment yourself, you’ll either be risking being a bottleneck or not have enough time to deal with urgent tasks that only you can help solve effectively.

我仍然对每天可能发生多少意外问题感到惊讶。 从人力资源和对外关系到技术和政治公司的挑战。 作为领导者，您应确保始终可以处理紧急问题。 如果您自己进行部署等任务，则可能会面临瓶颈的风险，或者没有足够的时间来处理只有您才能有效解决的紧急任务。

4.力求对估计保持清晰和自信 (4. Strive to be clear and assertive about estimates)

We’ve all been asked questions such as “how long will this take?”, “why is it taking so long?”, etc. Surprisingly, we are often asked these kinds of questions when things are not taking any longer than estimated. We are often asked these questions when our peers either didn’t really like the original estimation or didn’t ask for it in the first place, and now they’re upset, despite nothing going wrong.

我们都被问过诸如“这要花多长时间？”，“为什么要花这么长时间？”之类的问题。令人惊讶的是，当事情花费的时间不会比估计的时间长时，我们经常被问到这些问题。 当我们的同龄人不是很喜欢最初的估计或一开始就没有要求最初的估计时，我们经常被问到这些问题，而现在，尽管没有任何问题，他们还是很沮丧。

Therefore, you must always be assertive about sharing estimates and updating accordingly, even when people don’t ask. It is your job to make it clear, as best you can, what “long” actually is by providing your best view into the timescale of a project, and proactively updating that view when it changes.

因此， 即使人们不提出要求 ，您也必须始终坚持分享估计并进行相应更新。 您的工作是尽最大可能弄清楚到底是什么“长”，方法是提供对项目时间范围的最佳视图，并在视图更改时主动对其进行更新。

Nonetheless, you should also be assertive about getting estimates from your team, and constantly strive to improve their estimation process and instincts. Try to take part in estimation meetings, and don’t be afraid to challenge their input and cut scope toward the ends of projects in order to make important deadlines. Your role in these meetings is to play a tiebreaker and make decisions about which features are worth cutting, and which features are essential to the project’s success.

但是，您还应该自信地从团队中获取估计，并不断努力改善他们的估计过程和直觉。 尝试参加预算会议，不要害怕挑战他们的意见，并在项目结束时缩小范围，以便制定重要的期限。 在这些会议中，您扮演的角色是决胜局，并决定哪些功能值得削减，哪些功能对于项目成功至关重要。

5.专注于构建流程和策略 (5. Focus on building processes and strategy)

As someone who’s constantly aware of both the high-level business needs, and internal requirements and pains, you’re in the best position for focusing on building external processes.

作为不断了解高级业务需求以及内部需求和烦恼的人，您处于专注于构建外部流程的最佳位置。

When I started the position, the first process I focused on was how to conduct code reviews. While this is something that might be expected of a VP of R&D, it is a process my team can probably build better than I can. Since they face the daily challenges of deployment, and understand each other’s styling preferences and coding standards, this was definitely an internal process I could give my team leaders to build while I was focusing on external processes.

当我开始担任该职位时，我关注的第一个过程是如何进行代码审查 。 尽管这是研发副总裁所期望的，但是这是我的团队可以比我更好地建立的过程。 由于他们面临部署的日常挑战，并且彼此了解样式偏好和编码标准，所以这绝对是一个内部流程，可以让我的团队负责人在关注外部流程时进行构建。

Also, by having your team lead such internal processes, you’d increase overall engagement and sense of responsibility that will ultimately lead to more initiatives within your team.

此外，通过让团队领导这样的内部流程，您将增加整体参与度和责任感，最终将导致团队内采取更多的措施。

An example of an external process would be the delivery process between the product and R&D team. Each division has its own requirements, culture, and needs. I’d conduct meetings with the VP of Product, and interview product managers and my team leaders to fully understand how to build a process that’s aligned with everyone’s needs and maximize delivery productivity.

外部流程的一个例子是产品与研发团队之间的交付流程。 每个部门都有自己的要求，文化和需求。 我将与产品副总裁举行会议，并会见产品经理和我的团队负责人，以充分了解如何构建符合每个人需求的流程并最大程度地提高交付效率。

Only you have the time and resources to fully understand and see the high-level picture of what’s needed to accomplish such cross-functional external processes.

只有您有时间和资源来充分理解和看到完成此类跨功能外部流程所需的高级知识。

I have no doubt many more lessons are to be learnt as I continue my journey in my role, so I hope to continue sharing them with you.

毫无疑问，随着我继续自己的角色，我将学到更多的课程，因此我希望继续与您分享。

If you’ve enjoyed this piece, go ahead, give it a clap ??! You can also share it somewhere online so others can read it too. If you have any questions, feel free to drop me a line in the comments below!

如果您喜欢这首乐曲，请继续拍手??！ 您也可以在线共享它，以便其他人也可以阅读。 如果您有任何疑问，请随时在下面的评论中给我留言！

翻译自: https://www.freecodecamp.org/news/what-i-wish-i-knew-before-becoming-a-vp-at-a-large-startup-d2336645a38b/

初创公司为什么要我