TechLead-Story: Michael Ionita-Ganea, CTO at Walls.io
TechLeadStory
Michael Ionita-Ganea
Team
Size and Roles:
- The Dev team consists of 6 cross-functional members covering roles such as Full-Stack Developer, Product Designer, and DevOps.
Organization and Methodology:
- Organized via a Kanban Board with a structured process to ensure communication and quality.
- Weekly retrospectives and kick-offs for the upcoming week, ensuring a commitment to quality over meeting arbitrary deadlines.
Distinctive Team Aspects:
- Belief in developing features through experiments and not launching until they are truly finished and valuable.
- Emphasis on tackling challenges without being deterred by complexity or lack of existing solutions.
- Strong involvement in shaping the future and success of the company, fostering commitment and bonding with the product.
Recruiting
Integration in Recruiting Process:
- CTO is responsible for the recruiting process, with developers actively involved in interviewing and decision-making.
- Developers participate in coding challenges, code evaluation, and interviews to assess candidates.
Onboarding Procedure:
- New hires are expected to have their development environment set up within a maximum of one day.
- Introduction to the company's values, beliefs, and simple processes.
Qualities Beyond Technical Skills:
- Strong emphasis on communication skills and cultural fit within the team.
- Candidates are evaluated based on their alignment with the company's beliefs and their potential to contribute and expand on them.
Technologies
Technical Challenges:
- Current focus on breaking down a PHP monolith into smaller services with an elegant central API.
- Utilizing machine learning for image classification to enhance filtering and moderation features.
Evolution of Technology:
- Initially started with CakePHP and jQuery.
- Currently rewriting the product using modern technologies, transitioning UI to ReactJS, evolving the backend into a more API-centric architecture.
- Planning to increase reliance on NodeJS and replace PHP where applicable in the backend.
Dev Interview Info
