Speaker
Abstract
Startups are the harshest environments for engineers. Limited time, resources, and energy force teams to make decisions under pressure — and those decisions can determine whether a company survives or stalls.
In this talk, I’ll share lessons from my career moving through multiple roles — individual contributor, product manager, engineering manager, and now CTO & Co-Founder. Drawing from real experiences at startups that grew from under 10 people into larger companies, I’ll highlight the practical patterns that maximize chances of success.
Attendees will walk away with a framework for making better engineering decisions in constrained environments, and learn how to avoid common traps that waste precious energy.
Key Takeaways:
- How to evaluate platforms and frameworks for both short-term speed and long-term flexibility.
- How to balance engineering purity with survival velocity.
- How to prioritize automation and tooling investment.
- How to keep teams focused on high-value work instead of reinventing the wheel.
Topics
QCon San Francisco 2025 is a three day conference for senior software engineers, architects and team leads. An international program committee of working engineers selects every session. Patterns and practices, not products and pitches.
From the same track
Monday 17 November
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