Chief know-how officers (CTOs) — the individuals answerable for the event and administration of the tech behind each startup — are at present dealing with some powerful challenges.
Hiring technical expertise stays tough throughout Europe — in line with job platform Adzuna, in London alone, there are at present over 46k engineering vacancies. Not solely that, in line with the CTOs we spoke to, builders are the most costly function to rent for on common and CTOs maintain the biggest hiring price range within the firm.
Engineers are additionally exhausting to retain — and in line with CTO Meri Williams, have turn into even more durable to hold onto for the reason that pandemic. CTOs are additionally dealing with price range cuts and hiring restraints because of the financial downturn and a tougher funding panorama.
On high of that, distant work is turning into extra commonplace, and CTOs are having to determine what meaning for their groups.
We spoke to 5 CTOs — from Glovo to Omio — in regards to the biggest challenges they’re dealing with proper now.
Software prices want reducing — Tomas Vocetka, CTO at Omio (Germany)
A brand new problem this 12 months has been total inflation pressures resulting in value will increase throughout the board. To deal with it, we now have to overview the software program we use — and we are undoubtedly doing it with extra diligence and scrutiny. It’s important at this time limit to establish and prioritise the core enterprise instruments we want and to exchange or discontinue all non-essential gamers. If it’s one thing everyone seems to be utilizing, maintain it. If it’s solely utilized by just a few individuals or we now have one other software that does the identical factor, do away with it. To lower prices, you wish to streamline what instruments you employ.
Also, understanding our buyer is a key precedence for this 12 months. Customer behaviour and preferences are evolving post-Covid — individuals are travelling extra and are exhibiting a choice for floor transportation as an alternative of air. To sustain with the tempo of change, we now have to speculate closely in our information analytics to observe traits and sentiment. As exterior pressures change buyer wants, we now have to probably change what we offer.
Narek Verdian, CTO at Glovo
Remote work is creating more durable competitors — Narek Verdian, CTO at Glovo (Spain)
Competition for expert tech employees was already sizzling pre-pandemic. Now that many corporations enable fully distant positions, the competitors for the very best expertise is much more fierce. Both massive US tech corporations like Netflix, Alphabet and Meta and well-funded scaleups are providing Silicon Valley wage packages and advantages for distant employees in Europe — and these situations are exhausting to match for a lot of European gamers.
Right now, our problem is determining how to raised handle a hybrid workforce. We strongly consider face-to-face collaboration is all the things, so when our group is within the workplace, we don’t need them to spend the vast majority of their day on Zoom conferences — we wish to create high quality in particular person time to concentrate on teamwork and collaborating successfully.
Technical debt is piling up — Meri Williams, interim fractional CTO at Cardeo (UK)
Teams are understaffed and struggling:
Recruiting expertise stays tough.
Salary expectations are approach up largely as a result of US startups, even the smallest ones, are now hiring immediately out of Europe, with out requiring relocation.
The funding setting is getting more durable to boost in and other people are being made redundant to increase firm runway.
Upskilling engineers, particularly junior ones, is totally different in a distributed or hybrid setting — many corporations are having to alter their method from in particular person which largely means being extra deliberate with coaching. However, this isn’t an excuse to not rent junior expertise — they are often educated up remotely, it simply wants thought behind it.
All of that is resulting in ”technical debt” — doing issues imperfectly at first, both for pace or to be taught — piling up. It will be helpful for creating and rising sooner, however solely briefly. Otherwise, like monetary debt, “curiosity repayments” turn into problematic; you need to catch up and maintain doing new work — and, like placing a mortgage on a bank card, it’s unmanageable. Teams have to have a practical timeline in place for when this work will get accomplished and the sources that are wanted for it.
Building and scaling tradition — Sam Mountford, CTO at Feast It (UK)
Sam Mountford is CTO at Feast It
Building a robust engineering tradition is all the time a problem — and it solely will get tougher to keep up as you develop.
Unlike quite a lot of what occurs within the engineering division, tradition isn’t a listing of duties you’ll be able to tick off — it could possibly really feel extra summary and intangible. This requires tender expertise and the creation of processes. I’m all the time occupied with how to make Feast It a spot that’s enjoyable to work, the place individuals really feel secure to take dangers — and the place individuals wish to stick round. To try this, we now have to construct in private safety from the bottom up, even because the group scales — for instance, does somebody know how to boost grievances, is there a course of for asking questions, is there cultural understanding inside the engineering group?
My different problem because the CTO of a scaling firm is feeling additional away from the group’s day-to-day work — so I would like individuals round me who can drive the tradition. It’s vital to search out individuals who are not solely nice technically, but in addition opinionated, keen about bettering processes and galvanizing to the broader engineering group in some side. As we develop, we now have to encourage individuals to really feel possession and dedication to constructing one thing really nice.
People challenges are more durable than technical ones — Toomas Römer, VP Engineering, Bolt (Estonia)
Even with all of the publicised layoffs and hiring freezes, discovering nice expertise is as powerful as ever.
Although the world is embracing distant work, we consider that for corporations of a sure dimension, a hybrid mannequin is probably the most sensible choice. This is difficult when distant jobs are attracting high expertise — it could possibly make you’re feeling like you want to supply the identical to have the ability to compete. But we are listening to what our individuals need and are persevering with to open new bodily workplaces in numerous markets.
When trying to the long run, I’m primarily involved with individuals matters and how we handle day-to-day collaboration on this new world. Yes, we’ll all the time have technical challenges however we now have extra management over these — they are typically extra sensible and logical. We have much less management over how individuals and markets work — they are influenced by cultural traits and exterior pressures (like financial downturns).
Anisah Osman Britton is coauthor of Sifted’s Startup Life publication, which comes out weekly on Wednesdays. Sign up right here.
https://sifted.eu/articles/cto-challenges/
