

Ask HN: How to build a technical org from scratch? - upjumped_mgr

I am considering an interesting opportunity at a pre-existing, privately held (and massively profitable) media business; they view the future of media as inextricable from technology, so I&#x27;m being asked to build not merely a technical platform but an entire technical organization, pretty much from scratch.<p>This is exciting; I, like most of you, have strong opinions about rightness and aesthetics in technology, and having worked in a broad swath of organizations, I also have strong feelings about culture.<p>But I&#x27;m worried, because this is a <i>sui generis</i> sort of thing. It&#x27;s not the same as starting a small company, because a large company exists already; it&#x27;s not the same as being hired into an existing org as a director or CTO, because there is no org. So I see a lot of scary-type challenges and potential obstacles. How do I hire? How do I interact with existing business lines? How do I interact with <i>soon to be obsolete</i> business lines? How do I strongly delineate what is my bailiwick and what is that of the existing structure?<p>Thanks for any and all input!<p>EDIT: This is not posted from my personal account because I want unvarnished conversation, if you get my drift.
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mswen
The first thing to strike me is the double-edged sword which is the current
massively profitable status of the business. Any sane executive will be very
careful about doing anything to harm a massively profitable business. If they
are not careful that would mean that they were not fulfilling their fiduciary
responsibilities to the owners.

Having said that the current leaders are trying to be very forward thinking
and say we have to get deeply competent in technology because the world is
changing under our feet. And for that I commend them. And, the current
profitability certainly gives them the firepower to get ready for the next
stage of their business.

If I were the owners I would do a multi-pronged approach. I would create a
venture fund to do seed and series A venture investments and I would find the
10 most promising ideas and teams that could disrupt or replace my current
business and invest from $250K to $2M in each of them, depending on the stage.
I now have a chance of participating in a future big winner. And, for those
ideas that don't work out I create another fund to do acquisitions of those
start-ups that have forged really competent teams. It becomes a means of
identifying really competent technical people and knowing that they have
experience in the challenges of my media space.

In parallel to that I would go ahead and build out an internal technical
organization like you have described but take it kind of slow, especially with
the lines that generate the current massive profits.

Your position internally will, as you have already discerned, require the
utmost of tact and team building even while you seek to make the decisive
moves that the new technologically driven business requires.

You will need vocal support from the very top of the organization, expressed
through your title, your budget, your reporting line, and inclusion in
strategic planning sessions at the highest level in the organization.
Otherwise it won't work. Those executives leading really profitable business
lines will resist your "crazy" efforts to remake their golden-egg laying
division, and they may be right! And, those who are already becoming obsolete
and seeing their business model undercut by technologically sophisticated
competitors will be fighting you out of fear.

If you can forge a vision that uses the units hard-won domain expertise and
super-charge it with technology you will be the hero, otherwise you face
opposition at every turn and you need authority from the very top to succeed.

~~~
upjumped_mgr
Thank you, this comment is extremely astute.

I'm not too terribly worried about cannibalization, as the media company is a
subsidiary of the profit making business, and they don't have a lot of profit
making businesses in said subsidiary. I am worried about importing an
engineering culture (I have worked my entire career for engineering-focused
companies) into a very different environment.

What makes this so attractive to me is that it is an out-and-up move from
senior/lead/principle engineer or line manager to a director position. There
would be one person between me and the CEO of the subsidiary business, and
obviously relationship management is a _huge_ part of any executive job, which
I view this one as.

I very much like your idea of building a seed fund, but that seems like
something that would be outside my area of control. I wonder if proposing
something like that might be a reasonable way of opening the conversation
about defining the role that I would be playing.

Again, thanks.

