TechLead-Story: Karl Heinz Struggl, CTO at BYTEPOETS

Team

Size and Roles:

• Three development teams with approximately five to seven members each.
• Each team includes developers, Scrum Masters, Product Owners, and loosely assigned UI/UX design specialists.
• Teams are cross-functional, promoting knowledge exchange and skill diversification.

Organizational Structure:

• Adopts agile development methods, aiming for self-organized teams.
• Facilitates scalability and provides an organizational framework throughout the company.

Distinctive Aspects:

• Fosters a familial and appreciative culture with open communication.
• Features a flat hierarchy, promoting a feedback-rich environment and team motivation.

Recruiting

Integration in Recruiting Process:

• Team members are consistently involved from profiling to hiring and onboarding.
• Emphasizes mandatory meetups with potential team members.

Onboarding Procedure:

• New employees receive a welcome package with state-of-the-art work tools.
• Day one includes orientation on HR topics and account setup with the Scrum Master.
• Subsequent days involve introductions, project overviews, and immediate integration into the development process.
• Newcomers are supported by experienced team members and Scrum Masters, promoting a smooth start.

Qualities Beyond Technical Skills:

• Values social competencies alongside technical skills.
• Emphasizes a good fit in terms of both technical and social aspects during hiring decisions.

Technologies

Technical Challenges:

• Diverse projects create challenges in maintaining a technological focus on tools and stacks.

Technologies in Use:

• Mobile apps predominantly developed natively for iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin, Java).
• Current projects involve Flutter and Dart, with previous experience in Ionic.
• Backends utilize a Spring Boot stack, often with Kotlin.
• Frontends implemented with React or Angular.
• Utilizes various SQL or NoSQL databases, Docker, and more.

Evolution of Technology:

• Language shifts from Java to Kotlin and Objective-C to Swift in mobile development.
• Increasing consideration of cross-platform technologies in the mobile domain.
• Server-side technologies evolved from PHP, Laravel, Ruby to Spring and Kotlin.