Vitaliy Peker

Do you think you need to hire developers as w2 employees to build a highly-skilled, devoted and culturally aligned team? Let Blueprint show you otherwise. Here's how we're changing the game: 1️⃣ Unmatched Quality: Quality is our creed. Our vetting process includes interviewing with former CTOs and senior software engineers, ensuring only top-tier talent makes it to your team. 2️⃣ Long-Term Commitment: Forget the turnover and churn worries! Our developers stay longer than industry norms for W2 developers (average tenure of 2.2 years), providing stability and continued expertise to your projects. 3️⃣ Cultural Integration: Culture isn't just an add-on for us. We dive deep to understand your core values and ensure every developer we match with your team enhances and embraces your company culture. 4️⃣ Equity is Optional: Save your cap table for your growing startup! We ensure that our developers are passionate believers in your product right from the start - without incentivizing them with equity. We rigorously test for craftsmanship, ensuring they value not just a quality end result but also the journey of creation. 🌟 Shoot us a DM to connect and see how we can improve your staffing strategy. #StaffAugmentation #InnovationInStaffing #TechTalent #CultureFit #LongTermGrowth

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We've had an EM role open on our team for several months. This is a post about everything we learned from why we haven't filled it yet. I'd love to get your help in filling it! 🤝 The role: - EM for our 0-to-1 team within Postman, with the goal of defining and winning our category for a new kind of API-level monitoring/observability tool. Our team came into Postman through an acquisition and we're now building the Postman version of our product, using the same tech. - Help scale our product and team from alpha into beta. We are a department with six engineers and approved headcount to grow a lot more in the next year. - The role is 60% prioritization/roadmap management, 40% building the team. The current team members are high-ownership, independent, founding engineer types. 🤔 Misconceptions, miscalibrations, and lessons: - Initially, the role was called "Senior Engineering Manager, Observability." Instead of getting the product engineering managers we were looking for, we primarily got interest from platform/infra EMs. We got thousands of inbound applications and spent months zeroing that out. 🙀 - Previously, our recruiters were sourcing a lot of folks with observability backgrounds. We've learned that since we're actually building a new kind of observability product, much more focused on UX, the profile we're looking for is product-focused rather than tech-focused. No observability experience required. - When people think Postman, they often think of our core product: the API client. So we were getting more interest from folks looking to scale a product, rather than 0-to-1 "I want to build a team and product" types. Postman actually has several other products, for instance testing and Flows, our no-code tool. There is a lot of interesting 0-to-1 work on our way to growing as a multi-product platform! - Some people have the perception that Postman isn't one of the high-growth companies because they're not seeing lots of their friends joining Postman. Postman has quadrupled since 2020, BUT a lot of the engineering growth has been in India. (Postman is the biggest SaaS company to come out of India!) Our team is part of a recent change to grow our US engineering presence. Many of us leaders across the company are looking for folks to join early cohorts of US-based product engineering and platform teams. 💡 What we've changed on our end: - We've deemphasized the "observability" part of the job and emphasized the "new product" and "product engineering" parts of the job. - We've also switched our own reachouts to look for people with product engineering experience at SaaS companies with product-led growth. 👩‍🚀 Help us find our EM! We now have a solid pipeline, but haven't yet made a hire. We'd love to hear from you if: - You have thoughts about how to improve our EM search. - You know someone we should meet. - You're a scrappy EM looking for an opportunity to build a new product while growing a team. Look forward to hearing from you!

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Who doesn't like free stuff?!? Now 👊 Digital Punch Cards 👊 are bringing the coffee shop "buy 10 get one free" experience to eCommerce. I'm extraordinarily proud of the hard work that my Engineering team did to make this vision a reality. Research shows that when customers can see themselves getting closer to a goal, they’re more motivated to reach it sooner 🏃🏽‍♀️ By gamifying your customers’ subscription journey, you can unlock a higher LTV. Digital Punch Cards are embedded directly into your customer portal, allowing subscribers to see and visually track their rewards journey in real-time and then seamlessly apply those rewards to upcoming orders. Now, your customers can - 👊Access Digital Punch Cards embedded directly in the customer portal 👊Track progress toward exclusive rewards 👊Apply exclusive rewards to upcoming orders All in just a few clicks ✔️ Stay AI’s Digital Punch Cards functionality is a first-of-its-kind. You won’t see another subscription solution utilizing the familiarity of punch cards with customizable and easy-to-set-up rewards functionality to drive strong customer retention and LTV. Interested in being one of the first to use it? Send me a message! #StayAI #Subscription #Rewards #Retention #eCommerce

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My biggest fear as a product manager are Friday afternoon code deployments. 😄 Kidding (but really, please don’t). My actual biggest fear is that I’m not driving the value my teams and customers need from me. 🔗 As product managers, our job is to drive value for our product’s teams and customers. We aren’t necessarily the people who deliver the tangible results that our peers and customers see – a lot of what we do is traditionally “behind the scenes” work. It makes sense, product management is often seen as the bridge between business and technology, customers and solutions, etc. 💡 That’s where a lot of my fear comes from. I’ve felt it the first day I served as a product manager, I still feel it over a decade later even with a list of achievements saying otherwise. But fortunately, I’ve had the opportunity to work with coaches and mentors in the product space, each of which assure me that the feeling is normal. I recently had a conversation with a product manager from the MAANG space; several more years of experience than I and an even longer list of achievements. He, too, still holds a fear that he may not be driving value. But, he counters that fear with a few affirmations like these: “I am the reason my developers know what to build and why it matters.” “I am the reason my marketing and sales teams know who the product is for and how to engage them.” “I am the reason my product is solving a problem that people in my space want to solve in the first place.” 💭 Today, I still use affirmations to overcome my fears. They remind me that fear is “False Evidence Appearing Real.” What are you most afraid of as a product manager? How do you face your fear and overcome it? #productmanagement #productmanagers #impostersyndrome #fear #affirmations

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There are so many sources of information out there for product managers on their job hunt that it can be overwhelming. One of the best that I've found is Ari Janover's page over at: https://lnkd.in/g_-8kuVg Ari is about as thoughtful and genuine person that you'll talk with and he knows how to cut to the chase and provide you with solid information whether you're a seasoned pro, looking to give new life to your search and an apiring product manager who is looking for that first opportunity. Check out his page and newsletter. I'm using his thoughts about creating a Bespoke Resume to help facilitate the conversations that I'm having with companies. Thanks, Ari! #productmanagement

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I keep reading this every couple days and falling in love with it more. We keep having more and more systems because people need to write articles and books. And, of course, you have to have your own acronym. But when we step back and look at the core of things, most of it boils down to: 1. Go to therapy and deal with your own shit 2. Talk to other people. Be humble. 3. Actively listen to them and think deeply about what you heard from them 4. Don't be a dick. Have empathy. 5. Try to figure out situations where everyone wins That's it.

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Familiarity Levels at Work, and Meeting Scheduling Novice: You are surprised by their calendar blocks Journeyman: You already schedule around their blocks Expert: You know why those blocks exist and when they are negotiable Elite: Already synced over chat

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Slack adopted a "Fair and Transparent Pricing Model" That sadly is now over. --- Slack's stance was our product offers $X in value so you'll pay $Y per user, and only pay if that user is active that month (on a monthly plan). The idea was brilliant: we don't negotiate because our product is sold at a competitive price and we want to reduce complexity. --- Enter Salesforce acquisition. Salesforce is notorious for overcomplicated SKUs and pricing strategies. If you know how to negotiate with Salesforce you get an amazing contract. If you don't, you're going to overpay for the life of your contract (unless you grow and can trigger a renegotiation) They've decided to start applying this strategy to Slack, especially for the new AI SKUs. --- On one hand, it does mean you can now bundle your total Salesforce contract and get a potential discount. On the other hand, you now have another product that you need a Rubik's cube in order to decipher what you should be paying. --- I think we're in for a world where we'll continue to see add-on SKUs for Slack, which may push companies with a strong Microsoft footprint closer to Teams over Slack. What do you think? Do you prefer Slack's old pricing model or moving towards negotiation and bundles? #salesforce #businesssystems #slack

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“Developer health first” ... I pitched in a board meeting. “I don’t know, Gabe. We’re not a wellness company”, leadership told me. If you don’t know me: I’m a recovering workaholic and dealt with an illness called CIRS for years. I was heavily invested in the developer community and they donated $22k for my treatment. I then realized that beyond being a tech talent marketplace, our passion at G2i is Developer Health. You see, putting the developer first has real benefits. For tech workers AND clients. My story about my health isn’t unique. Thousands of developers deal with burnout, stress, and health issues. People produce their best work and sustain it for longer when their mental and physical health is protected. It actually makes a lot of sense to prioritize health. In his book “Good to Great”, Jim Collins writes about how every company needs a “hedgehog concept”: The one thing they can do better than anyone else. Developer Health was our hedgehog concept. We hired Michelle Bakels, our first key hire for Developer Health. She had her own experiences in burnout. We hosted dozens of convos with the Developer Health Twitter Spaces, launched the Developer Health Show, wrote the Developer Health OS, and more. We grew G2i’s team, recruiting more developers who wanted to avoid burnout and wanted a healthier work environment. We’ve served 100s of developers and companies over the years. And we keep expanding. Developer health first... It’s not just a passion. It’s vital for our employees, our clients, and ultimately developer success. --- PS. If you are a developer and want to talk about dev health, hit me up and I'll gladly answer your questions.

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Wow, y’all. What a conference! 14 sessions in 2 days and my brain is 🍝! But dang, are those noodles tasty! Props to all the folks who put together such a valuable learning experience at Agile & Beyond - it was my first time attending and I’m very much looking forward to returning next year! #agile #agileandbeyond2024 #detroittech #detroittechnology #itconference #agilebusiness #techcommunity

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After an absolutely amazing 3 years (to the day quite literally), I am leaving Retool for my next adventure. It’s been a wild (and fun) ride of growing and scaling engineering from a group of 13 to an org of 100+, building 4 net-new product lines, and expanding the business. The thing I’ve always held strongly is that the team here *just ships*, and reflecting on my time, it’s heartwarming to think about how much landed: not just our new products in Workflows, External, Mobile, and RetoolDB, but everything ranging from runtime rewrites, to new component libraries, multiplayer, debug tools, our AI suite, new source control systems, a new IDE — the list just goes on and on. Retool is an incredibly special product, company, and organization to me — not just because of my time and experience there, but because of what we are trying to do: bring more good software into the world, especially when most internal tools don’t get the TLC they would otherwise need to be good. It spoke to me from first principles as a builder (both software and orgs) when I first joined, and continues to do so today all the same. It’s an incredible group, and one that I’ll miss so dearly. David Hsu and Anthony, thanks for bringing me in several years back and leading this charge. And for those reading who aren’t familiar with Retool, you should absolutely check it out; it’ll accelerate your eng team, but more importantly, your business overall. As for me, in terms of what’s next: I’m excited to build again. More to come there, but after a 10 year hiatus, I'm back to the startup-founding days!

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Software and AI/ML engineering friends - this is a killer opportunity to work for one of my favorite platforms (and one that I use literally every single day). Let me live vicariously through you (especially given my complete lack of engineering skill). #job #hiring #discord #engineering #software #data #AI #artificialintelligence #ML #machinelearning

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When launching a new product I see alot of product managers wait until they're asked "how it's going", before thinking about what their metrics of success are. This is something that I learned as a new product manager when trying to get funding for my first product. Think about the metrics that are important both your company, as well as what is going delight the customer to the point that they're publicly championing your products and organization. #productmanagement #GTM #productlaunch #launchstrategy

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🌶🌶🌶 Hot take… Old problem: if we put more devs on the project, we can deliver it sooner. Same thinking, new manifestation: we can hire more overseas devs for less total money to produce the same result as our US staff. Flaw in that thinking: product development is not an assembly line. Devs are not “interchangeable”. Software is as much an art as it is science. It’s a team sport. The people on your team matters. #tech #staffing #management #hiring #jobs #layoffs #software #startup #teamleadership

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"There's no strategy!" I agree with this post, and it reminds me of another thing I've learned about this common lamentation. I went to an exceptional first year design program when I was learning to be an architect. They said, "the hardest thing about learning to draw is learning to see." It turns out, when we aren't trying to do something about it, our brains don't cement shapes and colors well. I see the same thing around strategy. People who are building strategy see it everywhere, good or bad. People who want to be told strategy have a hard time even when you tell it to them. So: if you are wanting to see more strategy, try building. You'll discover the existing strategy along the way. And, if you are trying to help your teams understand strategy: get them involved and empowered! That does more than any number of presentations or passive readings.

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My two cents as a grugbrain - Just because you’re building an AI product in a hype cycle, doesn’t mean you can always rely on raising more capital. To exist long term you’ll need to slow your burn rate, embrace small teams of builders (don’t hire / overhire middle managers) and move quickly! The hype cycle brings a new horizon of exciting opportunities in innovation. This means new ideas are being introduced and tested in the marketplace in real-time. To maintain relevance you must ignore the temptation to biggering and instead focus on what users want and how they want to use it! Stay nimble my friends! 🚀

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Hey rockstars. MASSIVE NEWS. I am hosting a COMPLIMENTARY LIVE session for Product Mgmt Rockstars to help you LAND an amazing product ROLE QUICKLY. We'll build your brand, show you how to stand out in the market, interview like a rockstar, and land the right job....quickly. We'll even do some LinkedIn reviews LIVE! When: May 7th-9th Time: 7pm ET / 4pm ET It's real content I have trained over 600+ product managers on. I would LOVE to see you there. Just comment LAND and I'll send you a registration link. LET's GO! #productmanagement

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A friend reached out with a Product Management puzzle, and I'm curious to see how others would think about it. For background, my friend works at a large tech company and is taking ownership of a feature in development. This is the info the PM has to make a decision on next steps: 1. Feature seems 'obvious' to include in the product 2. Team has been working on the feature on-and-off for over a year 3. User feedback is strongly positive according to the few tests conducted 4. Engagement metrics are very low (<2% of users interact with it) 5. Conversion metrics don't show statistically significant change after use 6. None of the competition has successfully launched an equivalent feature despite being a relatively mature space with plenty of history 7. Leadership says they want this feature developed and think it's a good idea How would you approach this and why? Share your thoughts 💬 in the comments below 👇

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