PA Leadership Coaching

I help Tech executives and leaders in Engineering and Product upgrade themselves, how they work, serve others, and create value in the world.

Leadership Coach

Inflow

Inflow's mission is to equip people with ADHD with the skills and support they need to reach their full potential.

I coach a number of folks across the org in their leadership development and in expanding their thinking to better cope with the complexity of day to day work.

Resident Leadership Coach

My role as Fractional CTO was focused on helping set Inflow up for success as the company grows: coaching and mentoring talented people, and to setup scalable processes across recruiting, software development process, and continuous improvement.

Fractional CTO

Hotjar

Hotjar is the Product Experience Insights software of choice for small and medium businesses.

I coach a number of engineering, product and UX leaders across the organization to be at their best when their best is needed.

Sharpist

Sharpist is the outcome-driven digital platform for people development that pays in on your KPIs by growing your employees with the power of coaching and personalized learning plans.

VP of Engineering

TourRadar

Reporting to the CEO, responsible for growing and nurturing the Engineering organization, along with its budget planning. Scaling up the company on the back of its series C round.

Doubled the team size within a year, to ~50 engineers, through a systematic, scalable and predictable hiring process, while increasing development and deployment velocity/frequency 3x.

Setting a clear direction and objectives for the team, communicating these effectively, and facilitating collaboration with different stakeholders across departments.

For a period of 4 months, led the Product org in addition to Engineering adopting a more structured, predictable and experimentation-based product development process.

VP of Engineering & Interim VP of Product

HelloFresh

(IPO: Frankfurt Stock Exchange 2017)

Responsible for driving and helping accomplish a long-term technical vision for a number of customer-facing teams. Aligning with the business and product vision of the company, empowering a fantastic and ever-growing group of engineers, and removing impediments to flow.

Heavily involved in engineering hiring, helping teams efficiently onboard new engineers, and coaching engineering managers in growing and nurturing their respective teams and individuals.

Director Of Engineering

Tasked with building a team for supporting and developing internal CRM technology. Being essentially a greenfield space at HelloFresh at the time, it led to the development of a modern event-driven architecture enabling us to tap real-time data fed into our CRM platform.

Engineering Manager

Architecting and develop a new Data Warehousing solution for the growing business. Hadoop, Apache Spark, etc.

Data Engineer

Architecting and developing the payments backend and integration with external payment service providers.

Senior Software Engineer

Sports Interactive

Portuguese localization of the market-leading football management simulation game Football Manager (formerly known as Championship Manager)

Translator

Universidade de Évora

- Backend development and maintenance of the University's Online Information System; 
- Design and implementation of integration mechanisms between the University's Online Information System and its counterpart Financial application;
- Design and implementation of public access APIs to the University's Online Information System, for use by external apps (kiosks, mobile platforms, etc) in different contexts.

Software Developer

LOUD! Magazine

Interviews, feature articles and album reviews for a leading Portuguese widespread metal music magazine.

Writer

InfluAds

Front and backend development of a PHP/Zend Framework based, MySQL/MongoDB driven, web app for use by the Influads network of publishers and advertisers.

Developer

Former VP Eng • Leadership Coach • I help you get in control of your work so it doesn’t control you.

🚀 Coach for tech leaders at all levels looking to step it up, and do well while doing good. If that's you, and you feel like someone who can expand your thinking could be handy, DM me. Let's chat!

🧠 Former engineering executive, manager and software developer, manager. Leadership, management and organizations through the lenses of complexity, systems, and how the brain works.

👹 The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world it’s either people or profit.

Paulo André

Engineering Leadership

Writing one of the fastest growing newsletters for engineers and managers. The goal is to help everyone to become great engineering leaders.

Become a subscriber:

Founder & Author

Maven

Teaching a highly-rated (4.9) top engineering course. 

In the course, we particularly focus on the development of much needed people / communication and leadership skills in order to grow from engineer to leader.

You can join here:

Course Instructor - "Senior Engineer to Lead: Grow and thrive in the role"

gregorojstersek.com

I mostly work with startups and scale-ups to build up great engineering organizations, build MVPs or scale the engineering org. My expertise is in aligning the business vision with technical solutions and building a high-performing engineering org.

Here are all the options to work with me:

Fractional / Interim CTO and Tech Advisor

Zorion

Leading the Software Development of the Fintech product from idea to the launch and growth to 10k+ users. Managing a fully remote Agile cross-functional team in various different time zones. Managing the tech direction, culture, setting the right processes and continuously improving them. Aligning all of the tech initiatives with org-level (business) goals.

Chief Technology Officer

Streamlined the software development process from sporadic to highly efficient, aligned with business goals. Led the transformation of the Technology department with a clear definition of roles and responsibilities. In charge of hiring and building up the tech department for the business needs. Technologies: React, React Native, Python, FastApi, Hasura, PostgreSQL, AWS.

ready2order

Managing fully remote Agile teams that are responsible for different products including the core POS application as well as internal middlewares for business processes. Responsible for Engineers, QA, DevOps as well as Delivery Managers. In charge of hiring and building up the teams. Coordinating with key stakeholders for different projects. Providing coaching and mentoring to direct reports.

Head of Engineering

ZenGRC

Managing fully remote scrum teams located on various different time zones and 20+ direct and indirect reports. Managing the direction, culture, setting right processes and improving them. In charge of growth of the teams and hiring. Working directly with team leads - providing coaching and mentoring. Coordinate deliveries across different departments.

Building features on the Risk and Compliance Management platform used by enterprise companies worldwide with technologies such as Vue, React, Python, Node.js to name a few. Leading a fully remote scrum team on building next-gen products. Coach and mentor engineers on the team. Managing the direction of the team and improving processes to optimise deliveries.

Senior Software Engineer, Team Lead

Sibit d.o.o.

Building web applications, e-commerce and other web solutions with technologies such as HTML, CSS, SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, PHP, MySQL, C#, ASP.NET CORE, SQL Server.

GO Solutions

Providing services in regards to web, mobile and desktop solutions with different technologies such as SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, TypeScript, Angular, React, Vue, Ionic, PHP, MySQL, Node.js, Express.js, MongoDB to name a few. Hiring external experts for the need of particular projects in different fields including Development, Project Management, Marketing, Sales and Copywriting.

Harvey Norman

Web solutions from design phase and all the way to finished developed phase with technologies such as HTML, CSS, SCSS, Bootstrap, JavaScript, jQuery, PHP.

Software Engineer

Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science

Working on different web solutions with technologies such as HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, Javascript, jQuery, PHP.

CTO | Author of Engineering Leadership newsletter (65k+ subscribers) - Helping you become a great engineering leader!

I am an engineering leader with a passion for solving complicated problems with innovative concepts. I love learning about new technologies, sharing my knowledge and teaching others. 

I have a proven record of successfully managing Agile teams, setting the correct direction and culture as well as creating right processes and continuously improving them. I have overseen hiring and building up the teams as well as have strong emphasis on coaching and mentoring to direct reports.

You can reach me at info@gregorojstersek.com.

Gregor Ojstersek

PM: “Can we get a timeline?”
Senior engineer: “Time is… a spectrum" :)

Happy Friday and have a great weekend!

CTO | Founder of Engineering Leadership newsletter (175k+ subscribers) - Helping you become a great engineering leader!

There are 3 main routes when it comes to Engineering Leadership:
- Management (Team Lead or Engineering Manager)
- IC (Tech Lead or Staff Engineer)
- Architecture (Software Architect)

I consider these to be starting engineering leadership roles, where people in such roles are expected to be multipliers for others and not primarily contributing by finishing assigned tasks.

And these are the skills you need to develop:
- System Design
- Leadership
- Management (for management path)
- Technical details
- Product/Business
- Communication/Influence

The level of depth you need to go in each depends on which path you take.

To help you with this.

Here are 200+ resources to get better at any skills mentioned above: https://lnkd.in/eRMgZ9Ee

What do I look for in a Senior Software Engineer as a manager?

There are so many different things that make a senior engineer. If I can sum all of them in 1 sentence, that would be:

A senior engineer should be able to independently understand the problem and find the right solution to it.

I am not just talking about technical solutions here. I mean solutions across different areas including communication, collaboration, mentoring and helping others.

And by no means do I mean that you need to have the right answers on the spot. A senior engineer is able to find and gather solutions from various of different sources.

Software engineering is too broad of a field to be an expert in everything or to know everything upfront.

As a manager, I wish to rely on a senior to make good decisions, do the right things and inspire others to do the same.

Learn more how to become a Senior Software Engineer here: https://lnkd.in/dUeAbHqD

Engineers must become multipliers in the AI-era.

The reason?

As tools for development have gotten better, the desired skills for engineers have moved from just pure knowing programming languages and frameworks (expected) to problem-solving abilities and people skills.

But what does it actually mean to be an engineering multiplier?

Being an engineering multiplier means being someone who amplifies the productivity and effectiveness of the engineers around them, not just focusing on their own output, but elevating the entire team.

An engineering multiplier doesn’t just ask, “What can I build?”, they ask, “How can I make everyone around me more effective?”.

And this is what multipliers are doing. They are:
- Improving team efficiency
- Sharing knowledge
- Raising the quality bar
- Enabling better decisions
- Mentoring and empowering others

To learn more, read this article: https://lnkd.in/ezWydu8T

CTO | Founder of Engineering Leadership newsletter (176k+ subscribers) - Helping you become a great engineering leader!

How to start with public speaking as an engineer or engineering leader?

Giving talks at events and conferences has really been one of the most rewarding things for me.

It feels great when you get to share knowledge, and people learn something new that helps them to become a better engineer or engineering leader.

But not just that, you get to learn new things as well, because when you are preparing to give a talk, you are cementing your knowledge on that topic.

This is my advice on how to get started:

1. Start looking for opportunities to share knowledge across your organization

This should be the first thing you focus on if you don't already, and you can start really small. No need to volunteer for presenting across the whole organization right from the jump. Remember that small steps eventually lead to big results.

2. Present at a local meetup

After you share your knowledge internally, look to share it with other people as well, outside of your org. Presenting at a local meetup is a great way to gain experience speaking in a low-stakes situation. Everyone is there to learn and have a good time.

3. Start applying to present at a conference

After you get experience at a local meetup, you should start applying for talks at conferences. It is important to mention that you don’t need to be an all-time amazing public speaker to have a talk. In our industry, the substance is the most important thing, not that you have 10/10 public speaking skills.

To learn more, read my latest article: https://lnkd.in/eGH53DqJ

This is how I do a full engineering org audit.

As a Fractional CTO and advisor, one of the common things that I did a couple of times this year was an engineering organizational audit.

I use the same approach as I would use in the first 90 days if I were to start a new full-time engineering leadership role.

1. The first thing I do is to really understand the pain points
In some cases, they have secured new funding and would like to scale and focus on hiring. Another reason may be that the CTO has left the company, and they would like to do a good overview of the current org before making any decisions.

2. The second thing I do is have 1:1s with the relevant people
The 3 main questions I normally ask here are:
- How are you feeling about your current work and projects?
- What do you believe is going well, and what could be improved?
- How can I support and help you?

3. Following, I go through all the relevant parts of the engineering org
I normally combine the second and this step together, as I am able to ask much better questions if I understand certain parts much better. I go through the documentation, check the codebase, overall architecture, and also assess all of the different parts:
- Hiring
- Culture
- Continuous growth
- Knowledge sharing
- Planning and alignment
- Onboarding process
- Release process
- Development process
- Incident management process
- Security

4. Provide suggestions for improvements and present the findings
I make sure I note all the important info in the board and finish by providing my suggestions for improvements. After I have everything prepared, I present my findings together with my suggestions.

To learn more, read my latest article: https://lnkd.in/e35MCdPx

Included in the article:
🎁 Checklist For a Great Engineering Organization
🎁 Board For a Great Engineering Organization

I've checked OpenAI's report on the state of enterprise AI.

They surveyed over 9000 people from various fields in 100+ enterprise companies. Plus, they shared the data on the usage of their services.

Some interesting insights:

- Users report saving 40–60 minutes per day using AI tools

- Australia, Brazil, the Netherlands, France, and Canada are above the global average in the number of paying business customers of OpenAI (Australia by far in the first place)

- ChatGPT message volume grew 8x and API token consumption per organization increased 320x year-over-year (from November 2024)

To learn more, tomorrow, I'll be sending out my full thoughts and insights on the report.

To not miss it, join 175k+ engineering leaders here: https://lnkd.in/eNSKBMUf

Had the pleasure of speaking at the TechLead conference in London in November.

I've talked about the two most impactful things I am seeing happening to Engineering Leadership due to the effect of AI:

1. Why 51% of engineering leaders believe that AI is impacting the industry negatively

2. Roles getting closer together

And also shared tips on what to do to be a successful engineering leader today and beyond.

If you wish to watch the recording, it's now available, and you can watch it here: https://lnkd.in/e_m9T2Sf

AI coding tools are not the problem. The problem is accountability.

It's really important to realize that as an engineer, you need to take ownership of your work and not just blindly open PRs without improving and testing the code to fit the guidelines and desired behavior.

Use AI coding tools, but use them to help you, not to do the work instead of you.

Just opening a PR filled with AI-generated slop is a fast way to lose credibility.

Do enterprise companies even use AI?

This was the question that came up frequently in some of the conversations I had with engineers and engineering leaders across the industry.

Ever since the increase in popularity of AI tools → many people have been doubtful regarding security, sharing sensitive data, and overall compliance factors regarding the usage of such tools.

This has been especially prevalent in enterprise companies, as many have previously chosen to restrict such tools.

But now OpenAI has published their report on the state of enterprise AI, and one thing is clear to me:

A lot more enterprise companies are using AI tools these days -> there has been quite a big increase in usage in the last 12 months.

Learn about the state of enterprise AI in my latest article: https://lnkd.in/eJ7BBsa5

taplio

The Battle

Paulo André

Gregor Ojstersek

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taplio

The Battle

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Engagements

Likes

Performance Score.css-goub6s{font-size:var(--chakra-fontSizes-md);font-weight:500;color:var(--chakra-colors-gray-600);display:block;margin-top:var(--chakra-space-1);}Gregor Ojstersek's LinkedIn Performance

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