Joe Conley Tagged buyside

Working at Buyside

Thu, 14 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

This post originally appeared on Working with Buyside

Our team is growing! I’ve had the distinct pleasure of building out our engineering team over the past year, and as we’re prepping for another round of growth, I thought this was an appropriate time to reflect on what our culture is like. Why do we enjoy working at Buyside? What makes us tick? I asked my team to reflect on that, and I’ve summed up the main points here so that prospective hires can get a good sense of why they might want to join Buyside.

Autonomy

This was the most common theme by far. Our team is well-distributed geographically, from Pennsylvania to Nevada to Costa Rica, and we pride ourselves in creating an effective environment conducive to remote work. We keep meetings and overhead to a minimum. We subscribe to the adage of hiring smart people to tell us how to do things, and not dictate to them. We encourage healthy debate, and expect team members to take ownership of their work from inception to completion. This allows all of our team members to grow while serving the needs of our clients.

Productivity

Similar to the above, we want to create an environment that optimizes productivity. This isn’t treating our team as cogs in a machine, but rather understanding that when we hire smart and motivated people, they tend to be happiest when they are feeling productive. We provide top-of-the-line machines. We try to minimize context-switching as much as possible (some days are better than others). As most of us have families and kids, we respect work-life balance and allow for flexible schedules. We know this approach is a win-win for both our team and our company.

Value

Despite our recent growth, we still maintain the scrappiness and energy of a startup. We expect everyone to make meaningful contributions to the direction of the company, and I as a tech leader take great pains to ensure the team is constantly aware of the impact of their work. One advantage we’ll always have over the bigger tech companies we compete with over talent is offering the opportunity to be part of a special team that’s offering real tangible value to their clients.

And we’re just getting started! I’m really excited about the work we’re doing now and in the short-term, as the next year promises to be one of unprecedented growth for Buyside. If you think you might be a good fit for our team, please check out our Careers page for our current openings. Thanks!

Managing Distributed Teams

Fri, 01 Nov 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I was recently featured in an article discussing how CTO’s manage remote teams. It’s certainly a non-trivial task, but an increasingly relevant one as software teams become more and more geographically distributed. I think this a great trend, as your potential resource pool becomes much wider once you look beyond your backyard.

I’ve certainly been blessed to have found such strong talent to work with at Buyside, both locally and remotely, and our company is the better for it.

Enjoy!

https://arkenea.com/blog/managing-distributed-teams/

RVNTV Interview

Tue, 24 Sep 2019 00:00:00 +0000

I did an interview recently on Tech Talks, a local tech show hosted by Michael Bertoni. I talk a bit about my time at Buyside, how I’ve built my teams, and what I’m looking for next in ML/AI trends. Enjoy!

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XcL-ZGplQmzrdS70mXpiM92QGscRC_sI/view?usp=sharing

Independent Thinking

Fri, 01 Jun 2018 00:00:00 +0000

I’ve been quite busy of late in my new role as CTO of Buyside. I’ve loved the challenge of leading development teams and scaling out a rapidly-growing business. However, between those demands and the birth of my third son Jack, I’ve found it difficult to make time for myself. I had previously been an avid reader and movie-watcher, but both of those activities have taken a back seat to more pressing priorities, like hanging out with these guys.

My boys

Lately though, Jack is sleeping better so I’ve been making more of an effort to read. And the common thread in all of the things I’ve read lately is the importance of independent thinking. To name a few things I’ve read recently (all of which I’d HIGHLY recommend):

I know historically, independent thinking isn’t something I’m great at. Growing up I was always great at math. Tell me the rules, I can apply them as logically as any computer, and I’ll get you an answer. That’s probably why I’ve been drawn to computer science too. And there’s an inherent beauty to the order of simple logical processes. But while I’ve gotten far on my logical abilities, I feel like some of the time I’m too much like Emmet from The LEGO Movie, simply following instructions without thinking outside the box:

Emmet likes to follow instructions!

This is why I admire writers like Christopher Hitchens and Nicholas Nassim Taleb. They spent a lot of time thinking independently, and have the intellectual courage to formulate and defend their ideas in a public way.

So I’ve been brainstorming a bit on how I can start to flex that independent thinking muscle and I think one good idea is to create a monthly newsletter. Similar to smart folks like Shane Parrish and Patrick O’Shaugnessy, I will be trying to come up with some interesting content on a monthly basis. So if you’re interested, sign up here.