Adam Berman at LeadDev West Coast 2023
summary
Built the second product at semgrep from a small cross‑functional startup team into multiple teams, documenting the concrete trade-offs: split into two teams to cut technical cognitive load, rebuilt scrappy services onto platform capabilities, and sunset unused features to reduce maintenance. The organization adopts regular planning, async standups, and more docs, explicitly trading flexibility for structure, accepting increased cross‑team coordination in exchange for sustainable velocity.
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chapters (7)
- 0:00Introduction
- 2:29Conway's law and communication
- 6:18Team structures and trade-offs
- 9:29Cognitive load and effectiveness
- 15:46Balancing structure and flexibility
- 19:36Organization design exercise
- 23:49Summary
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