TechLead-Story: Michael Kröll, CTO at geizhals.at
Michael Kröll
Team
Size and Roles:
- The Tech Dev team currently consists of 14 individuals in the second district of Vienna.
- Specializations include DevOps, Back End, and Front End, working collaboratively on the development of price comparison web portals, APIs, and internal tools.
Organization and Methodology:
- High-level goals are defined or adjusted in three-month cycles.
- These goals are translated into epics, broken down in weekly iterations, blending aspects of Scrum and Kanban.
- The hybrid approach balances development speed and quality effectively.
Distinctive Team Aspects:
- The team emphasizes producing high-quality code rapidly, rejecting the acceptance of technical debt.
- Openness to second opinions and continuous improvement is valued.
Recruiting
Integration in Recruiting Process:
- With a manageable team size, the Tech Dev team is involved in designing its recruiting process.
- Typically, two rounds of interviews per position involve an HR specialist in one and a team member in the other.
Onboarding Procedure:
- Each new team member is assigned a mentor for the initial days or weeks.
- General onboarding includes an overview of processes, best practices, and tools, followed by collaborative problem-solving on programming tasks.
Qualities Beyond Technical Skills:
- Attributes such as a willingness to learn, ability to work independently, implement solutions, and a commitment to continuous improvement are highly valued.
- Cultural fit within the existing team profile and character is also considered during hiring.
Technologies
Technical Challenges:
- The E-Commerce market's rapid growth poses challenges in adapting systems to increasing data volumes.
- Dealing with large datasets, for example, managing an average of around 200 million retailer offerings that change daily, is an ongoing challenge.
Technologies in Use:
- The company adheres to an Open Source Stack, including Ansible-provisioned Debian Linux, PostgreSQL, Redis, Memcached, Elasticsearch, Varnish, Nginx, Perl, React, and Less.
Evolution of Technology:
- Founded around the turn of the millennium, the company has witnessed the evolution of technologies.
- Virtualization, modularization, and automation now play a significantly more critical role in their technology stack.