Namecheap, Inc

In my role as Director of the Namecheap Cloud Department, I lead and manage four highly skilled teams, comprising a total of 40 talented individuals. My primary responsibilities encompass people management, budget oversight, stakeholder engagement, and the strategic direction of technical decisions to ensure seamless functionality within the department.

Director of Cloud

As an Engineering Manager, I began by overseeing a team of 6-7 individuals, which subsequently expanded and was divided into various teams, each specializing in distinct areas such as frontend development, DevOps, and infrastructure management. My primary responsibility as an Engineering Manager was to ensure the effective coordination and execution of projects, fostering a collaborative and productive work environment. This included:

- Team Leadership
- Project Management
- Cross-Functional Collaboration
- Technical Direction
- Performance Optimization
- Stakeholder Communication

Engineering Manager

EasyWP is a WordPress managed hosting platform built on top of the latest containerization and cloud technologies (Kubernetes, Docker, CoreOS, Openstack, Ceph). My roles in EasyWP are multiple. Product vision, agile product management, container infrastructure creation and maintenance, design.

EasyWP Product Owner

wpXtreme Inc

wpXtreme is a true app store for WordPress, the most widespread Content Management System. My role in wpXtreme is to build the product giving the long term vision to the rest of the team. I manage the development with agile methodologies and I plan all the actions around the final product; I'm also responsible about the communication  strategies.

Ceo & Founder

Saidmade Srl

I've founded Saidmade with the aim of supporting companies improve their online presence. Saidmade has been for years one of the most known communication companies in Italy and one of the first mobile applications developer.

Hurricane Media Srl

Software and System Engineer/Co-Founder

Softech Srl

In Softech Srl I had different tasks: web developer, system engineer, security manager.

Web Developer / System Engineer

Fondazione S. Carlo

I've managed the Unix system infrastructure of Fondazione San Carlo and I've been the person in charge for R&D.

Unix System engineer

ePlanet Spa

In ePlanet I was the person in charge for security and system maintenance. I've been involved in different projects and worked with some big italian companies (HP, Fastweb, etc).

Edp manager

Director of Cloud at Namecheap | 🤓 Author of The Hybrid Hacker, a newsletter about Engineering Management, Leadership, Career Growth and Productivity

I've spent 25+ years diving deep into technology, building businesses, and leading high-performing teams of Engineers. I try to condense all this experience in my newsletter and share it with my 30,000+ subscribers.

My main goal is to help other Engineers and Leaders grow and avoid mistakes I made in my career, through sharing:

🔧 Practical advice on how to grow from Engineer to Engineering Manager or Leader
📚 Personal stories about how I grew from Individual Contributor to Director
🎨 Easily understandable articles enriched with visuals to simplify complex concepts

If all of this makes sense to you, join 20k+ subscribers at: https://hybridhacker.email

Nicola Ballotta

Francis Lacoste - The VPE Coach

I work 1-1 with VP of Engineering, CTOs, Head of Engineering and other engineering leaders as well as with their teams. I assist them in growing in becoming leaders who foster a culture centered around collaboration and technical excellence. When appropriate, appropriate, I also work directly with the team through coaching and workshops.

Engineering Leadership Coach

Salesforce

Initiate and manage programs to foster a culture of collaboration and innovation  across the Salesforce Platform engineering division (~1200 people). Coach and mentor engineering managers and other technical leaders. Build and manage an onboarding program. Developed and manage an internal mentoring program for software architects. Curate and ensure the availability of training programs for the knowledge, skills, and models required for the organization and individuals growth.

Senior Director of Software Engineering - Culture & Engagement

Heroku

Responsible for the consistency and alignment of engineering culture across the organization. Support the organization in its integration within the Salesforce Platform organization. Coach and mentor engineering managers and other technical leaders.

Engineering Chief of Staff

Responsible for an engineering department of 70 engineers. The engineering teams within the department owned the user experience (web, CLI, public APIs) of the Heroku platform, as well as many of its developer experience features (continuous delivery and testing, build system,  team management). Teams are responsible for both the development and the operation of the systems powering these functionalities.

Senior Director of Engineering

I was responsible for the "Experience teams", 4 cross-functional teams focused on the development of new features for the Heroku platform. The teams have expertise in user-centric development and a strong focus on delivering a great user experience. 

I was also coaching and mentoring managers across the engineering organization.

Engineering Director

I managed the Human Interface team made up of 5 front-end engineers. The team was responsible for the development and maintenance of a the Heroku Dashboard, the Ember app which is used by Heroku users to manage and operate their applications.

In addition to managing thos team, I also acted as a mentor and coach for several engineer managers.

I was responsible for the 7 teams developing the Heroku Platform, as well as the infrastructure teams those relied on. That was a department of about 30 engineers developing and operating the Heroku Platform which runs containers on top of AWS.

- Grow and mentor engineer managers
- Reorganized some teams working in related areas to minimize hand-offs and foster collaboration.
- Helped bootstrap a new engineering teams developing a new product offering.

I managed the Foundation team made up of 4 engineers. The team was responsible for the development and operations of a management infrastructure on top of AWS that the other Heroku development teams relied on. We were also responsible for monitoring and logging systems.

- I introduced a Kanban process that brought focus to the team.
- As part of a young and new management team, I helped foster an operations-oriented culture as well as a people growth culture.
- Managed a distributed team where everyone is working from a different location across 4 time zones.

Canonical Ltd.

I managed the Cloud Engineering development team made up of 6 teams of 4-5 people each. The team works on various cloud-related projects like MAAS (Ubuntu provisioning system), Juju (service orchestration) and other Openstack related projects.

That team was also previously responsible for the development of Launchpad, the collaborative software development platform and Bazaar, the distributed VCS system.

- Introduced the Kanban Method to the team.
- Reorganized the team which allowed us to make the transition to cloud-projects

Director of Cloud Engineering

I managed a team of 8 engineers that was responsible for the infrastructure of the Launchpad applications.
- Lead the development the REST framework which added API to the site.
- Introduced a continuous integration system.
- Introduced Agile practices to the team.

Software Engineering Manager

I was the lead engineer of the Launchpad Answers application which allow Launchpad-hosted software projects to have community-based support. I introduced a guided workflow to the application to make tracking the state of questions easier.

Software Engineer

Self-employed

I specialised in building online community portals (World March of Women, Chaire MCD, ) and data analysis applications (National Film Board of Canada, LogReport Foundation).

Web Application Contractor

iNsu Innovations

I was the CTO of a start-up specialised in delivering e-commerce applications and security monitoring.

Founder and CTO

VPE & CTO Coach | Help Engineering Leaders Scale by Fostering A Collaborative & High-Performance Culture

If you are a CTO or VPE at a scaling tech startup, you are probably feeling the strain:

1. You need to balance building the product and developing the organization
2. You need to maintain a high performance culture while scaling the team
3. You need to provide a strategic direction while firefighting
4. You need to grow into new responsibilities while staying true to your values

As someone with a technical background, you feel the growing pains of becoming a people leader. 

You may be perplexed by the plethora of advice and "best practices" out there.

You are probably feeling stressed, uncertain, and sometimes confused. 

All of it can feel like rebuilding a plane mid-flight. 

It's totally par for the course!

That's where coaching can help you:

✔︎ You have safe space to reflect and gain perspective
✔︎ We turn each of your pain points in learning opportunities
✔︎ You benefit from the experience of someone who has been there
✔︎ You gain clarity on your day-to-day challenges from the perspective of your big picture

By partnering with me, you not only benefit from my experience of building  successful high-performance remote engineering teams at Canonical, Heroku, and Salesforce. Places where engineers loved working and built products that amazed the world.

You also benefit from the collective experience of others I helped just like you:

Paul Elliot - VPE @ Chromatic: "Francis has coached me through many things over the years but one of the most impactful ways he has helped is by helping me see through all that ambiguity."

Jon Roes - VPE @ Streamlit: "His approach to leadership and culture work is not only wise and insightful, but also grounded in practical and learnable processes that have helped me and my team navigate some of our biggest challenges."

Gary Poster - VPE @ GetKard: "As a VP of Engineering expanding your team beyond 20, you'll find immense value in Francis's coaching. His approach integrates compassionate leadership with practical business understanding, helping you navigate complex challenges while preserving your values."

Leading technology at a scaling startup can be challenging, but it doesn't have to be painful.

Through coaching, your experience and effort can lead to:

﹣Confidence in your leadership skills
﹣Mastery of the "inner game" of leadership
﹣An engineering culture that makes you proud
﹣A high-performance team that collaborates on what matters most: delivering products and services that delight your customers 

Gain clarity on your situation by booking a discovery call: https://cal.com/flacoste/thevpecoach-intro

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The Battle

Nicola Ballotta

Francis Lacoste

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