Building tech teams for future
Note - This is from my perspective and learnings as a founding engineer. This is my personal take on how to build tech teams for the future. Not affiliated with any company or my current employer.
Introduction
Building tech teams is hard. Building tech teams for the future is even harder. The future is uncertain, and the pace of change is accelerating.
One thing is certain: Bloated teams and bloated software are set to fail.
Peace time is over, it is war time. Global growth is projected at 3.3 percent both in 2025 and 2026 by IMF, historically it has been 3.7!. Also, Wartime vs Peactime CEOs by Ben Horowitz.
Lean Teams : AI Augmented + Extreme Ownership
AI has dramatically changed the way product teams work. In my experience, it will accelerate the 100x engineers by allowing them to focus on high leverage tasks. Offloading the grunt work to AI.
8-10 people teams will be enough to build and scale products. Handful of people will be building unicorns. DeepSeek AI had about 200 employees crashed the global stock market in 2025.
Gone are the days where more people meant more productivity. Now, each hire should increase company’s average talent density if not, it will drag the company down.
As I said, this is war time - Paranoia is high. Wartime CEOs will be back in fashion. Extreme ownership will be the norm. Wartime CEOs will be hiring wartime engineers.
Hiring
Archetype -
- T-shaped - Deep expertise in one area and broad knowledge in others.
- Deep Thinkers - People who can think deeply about a problem and come up with solutions.
- Fast Learners - People who can learn fast and adapt to new technologies.
- Bold Risk Takers - People who are willing to take risks and try new things.
- Quick decision makers - People who can make quick decisions and take action.
- Rally Teams - People who can rally teams around a common goal and motivate them to achieve it.
- Get things done - People who can deliver results.
If one has demostrated these traits in the past, they are a good fit.