Femgineer - How To Handle The Great Problem Of Growth: Interview with Darin Swanson VP of Engineering at New Relic

What’s THE best problem to have hands down? Most people would say growth. And I’d agree 100%. But it’s not as rosy as you’d imagine. Whether you’ve gone from a five-person garage startup to 15, 50 or 500 person team, there will be some challenges. And at each stage tackling those challenges can leave us feeling like growth is more of a burden than a boon. We have to learn to balance the pressure to satisfy customer demands while managing and nurturing a team. This requires hiring new people who fit into the culture, altering our development process to include them, and learning to delegate tasks that have become too much for one person to handle. Easier said than done. But don’t worry because, in today’s episode of FemgineerTV, you’re going to learn how to handle the great problem of growth from our special guest Darin Swanson who is the VP of Engineering and Platform at New Relic. Darin is going to share some valuable lessons from his experience growing the New Relic team over the past 4+ years. As you watch the episode you’ll learn: - What it was like to transition from being a software engineer to a manager and then a VP of Engineering - Darin’s test for deciding on whether or not you should go down the management track - The WORST advice Darin ever received regarding scaling teams - How Darin and the New Relic team screen their engineering candidates for culture fit This episode is full of nuggets of wisdom from Darin, and I highly recommend watching it whether you’re experiencing a growth curve in your company or are thinking about joining one that is growing.