Articles by James Turnbull
Hiring Engineering ManagersIn this two part blog post, James outlines how to hire an engineering manager from end-to-end. He starts with how to define the role and ends with concrete suggestions for an interview process.
- VPE and CTO - the first 90 days
James provides a map for all the areas that new CTO or VPE needs to dive into and understand, broken down into 4 categories: Company, Product, Humans, and Technical
Kickstarter's Engineering & Data Science Career LaddersKickstarter's approach has fewer levels and uses textual descriptions rather than a matrix of skills.
- Kickstarter's Engineering & Data Science Career Ladders
Kickstarter's approach has fewer levels and uses textual descriptions rather than a matrix of skills.
- A Monitoring Maturity Model
James' Monitoring Maturity Model outlines three stages of monitoring evolution: Manual, Reactive, and Proactive. Manual or None is typical in small organizations with limited IT staffing, while Reactive is common in small to medium enterprises and divisional IT organizations. Proactive is typical in web-centric organizations and mature startups, where monitoring is considered core to managing infrastructure and the business. It is interesting to note that organizations may not experience this evolution linearly or holistically, as different segments, business units, or divisions of an organization can have different levels of maturity.