The success of your company or startup depends on having harmonious, collaborative teams. If you’re a tech startup, your tech team is your core team. They’re the ones who build your core product and test your features.
This means you should consider how to build your tech team, and when to do so. It’s easy to start small with a couple of developers. But as your team grows, you’ll need to establish a clearer hierarchy within your team.
This will help you manage team members and be clear on deliverables. It’ll also help you know when you need more team members and when to hire senior and junior developers.
Read on to learn more about when and how to build a tech team and the common mistakes to avoid.
What does a tech team look like?
Before you can start building your tech team, you should envision what it looks like. This doesn’t mean looking into the horizon and having a dreamy vision of your team. (Sure, you can do that, but not now. Not at the beginning).
You should also consider that technical recruitment differs greatly from general recruitment.
One of the most common mistakes we see new CEOs and non-tech co-founders do is begin with junior developers because their budget is limited.
While it’s common to begin your startup with bootstrapping, starting with any number of juniors just won’t cut it.
Similarly, starting with one senior developer and one junior will only burden your senior techie.
Here are a few tips from TechieMatter’s Founder and CEO, Muhammed Abu Elgheit, a 4-time founder:
- If you don’t have a tech background, you need to understand the different tech roles and what each of them entails.
- If you’re a startup or tech company founder, you should consider whether you need a chief technical officer (CTO) or a chief product officer (CPO) or a product manager. Consider getting a consultation from TechieMatter or someone you trust.
- When building your tech team, you need to have the mindset of candidate quality versus candidate quantity. There is no point in getting 1000 CVs for a vacancy. On the other hand, getting 10 high quality resumes means finding the right tech talent faster.
Meanwhile, TechieMatter’s CPO Amr Medhat, notes:
Junior developers are good to have when you want to expand your team. But you should have enough seniors to manage your workflow. Unlike seniors, junior techies can’t work autonomously. They need guidance and mentorship.
Without enough senior and mid-level developers, adding juniors will only burden your team and delay your product launch or development.
Company culture is also an important factor to consider when building your tech team. For example, if you’re building a tech team for a software development agency, you need to consider that a developer at a software house, project-based services company, or a corporate setting might have stellar qualifications, but might not be a good fit for you.
This is because the software development agency culture is entirely different from being a startup developer. The pace is much faster in an agency as opposed to a SaaS startup.
How to build a tech team
If you’re a tech startup, or tech-focused company, follow these steps to build your tech team.
-
Define your business and tech needs
The first step in building your tech team is to identify your business goals and what you need this tech team to do.
Based on those needs, you can identify the tech talents and the different types of developers you need to hire.
-
Define the hiring timeline and budget
The next step is to determine your timeline for hiring those talents. The tech hiring process usually takes about 45 days, but could reach up to 60 days, depending on the roles you’re trying to fill.
You should also consider what your budget is for hiring these talents.
Don’t set a budget and then try to find the talents who will accept the lowest salaries. This doesn’t work with tech talents—or any other field, for that matter. You need to conduct your market research.
Request our TechieMatter Insights Report to know more about the latest salaries and offered packages for tech talents in different countries.
-
Determine initial roles needed
When building your tech team, you should identify two things
- The tech team you want to start with
- The tech talents you’ll need down the road
You don’t have to consider what your tech team will look like in 5 years. But you should consider your next stage of tech hiring as your product grows. This could be within 6 months of the first group or a year.
In your initial hiring plan, determine whether you want to hire web developers or mobile app developers or both?
Do you need to hire a combination of frontend and backend developers or full stack developers? How many?
-
Outline your tech team’s goals
Part of building a tech team, and later leading and managing that tech team, is to determine their long-term and short-term goals.
These aren’t their day-to-day activities but their targets or milestones for the first month after hiring them and every month and quarter afterwards.
It’s important you set specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (SMART) goals. Otherwise, no matter how great your tech team is, their efforts will fail against unachievable goals.
- Be aware of the business context
Part of building a tech team is to be aware of the business context of your company.
This means knowing where you are currently, where you’re headed, and where you want to be. It means being familiar with the business, market, industry, and your competition.
For example, if you manage a software house, then you can build a tech team of mid-level developers since you don’t need to spend a long time on each project.
As opposed to a software startup that’s experimenting and going through the research and development (R&D) phase. This product-based company will need senior developers and architects who can build a product that you’ll use for a long time.
Finally, if you’re building your product yourself and you’re still in the early stages of R&D, you may avoid investing in a team and hire a junior to help you test your product before you can expand and hire more people.
Knowing this information will help you estimate the time needed ahead of a product launch and what’s needed for your go-to market strategy.
-
Establish a hierarchy
Whether you’ll be leading this tech team yourself or will hire a team lead, you need to establish a hierarchy.
Hierarchy is designed to cover flow, communication, and delivery.
By establishing a team hierarchy, you should determine
- Who is the team lead or senior in charge
- Who reports to whom
- Who delivers updates and milestones (or problems) to you
- Other reporting processes and requirements
When do you need a full tech team?
Many companies start their first steps by turning to a software development company or hire two remote or freelance developers.
This is ok, when you’re just starting out and not looking to incur massive costs of hiring a full-on tech team. However, it’s not a feasible strategy in the longer-term.
As your product grows, so will your tech team. Especially if you need regular product changes and updates and you can no longer bundle those changes for a freelancer or software company.
At this point, your tech team needs to move in-house. To meet those needs, you may consider hiring a couple of remote developers, on a full-time basis.
This is what UAE-based kids activities startup QiDZ did. They decided it was time to bring their team in-house and need to hire developers. But with no background in tech, they needed help finding the right developers for their business.
“As the company started growing, we decided to bring the tech team in-house. We came across TechieMatter and immediately they were very responsive, helping us along the way from the start by asking relevant questions about the candidates we were looking for.”—Ines Mena, COO and Co-founder of QiDZ.
QiDZ turned to TechieMatter to hire a senior mobile developer, two backend developers, including a senior. Over the years, QiDZ also hired a data scientist and technical lead through TechieMatter.
Similarly, Saudi-based real estate tech company Ayen turned to TechieMatter to hire a tech lead. They had been working with an outsourcing company and wanted to start their in-house tech team with a tech lead.
Following this hire, Ayen decided to build a tech team and they opted to use TechieMatter to find all new members for their team.
One of our clients in Saudi Arabia also turned to TechieMatter to hire a CTO.
Need help growing or building your tech team? Get in touch with TechieMatter. We’ll source candidates from the countries of your choice, conduct interviews, and deliver the best of the best.
