Once upon a time, in the kingdom of Wisdom Peak, there reigned a king known for his wisdom and prudence. This king, by the name of Han, dwelled in a magnificent palace nestled atop the tallest mountain in the realm. To reach his palace, one had to navigate a treacherous path that wound its way up the steep slopes.

Accompanying King Han on his journey were his two trusted advisors: the elder sage, Master Li, and the younger scholar, Apprentice Zhou. As they began their ascent, …

The Problem

When you have a remote engineering team, the tools you use are really important since you can’t use an office as a band-aid. We had some issues with our project management tools, where some information didn’t reach the relevant people. We needed to fix that to improve our productivity.

Actions Taken

My first action was to reach out to everyone involved and get more feedback on our current software engineering process, what’s working well and what isn’t. Using this …

For most things, whether a startup is remote or not doesn’t make much difference in what you need. The tools you need depends on what you are actually building, not how your business is organized. But there are 3 needs that are crucial for remote startups. They all revolve around communication.

As the business and the team grows and mature, like all things the tools you used will evolve. Some will be added, some will be abandoned, that’s expected. As such, it is better to …

The Problem

When I joined an early stage startup as the first engineer, one of my goals was to build out the initial engineering team we needed. Building that initial engineering team is really critical and it must be done right. Having an initial team that is great (or bad) will have a huge impact on the startup as a whole. So I had to be sure I was building the right team.

Actions Taken

First, I spoke with the CEO to really understand the mission and vision of the company. …