LiveTiles: Under New Management

Stories from Being the Boss for 5 years

In the last five years at LiveTiles, I’ve hired, fired, and grown an amazing ten-person product team. While I did have two years as a tech lead under my belt, joining LiveTiles was my first time assembling and growing a team. In the last half-decade, we’ve grown from zero to 8.5 million users. Thankfully, I’ve grown a lot, too.

Hiring

In my time at LiveTiles, I’ve hired over a dozen people. Mostly developers, plus 2 quality assurance analysts, and a designer. My favorite hiring story was pure luck:

I had just gotten off the phone with my boss, talking about how we needed to hire a new developer. When I walked into Fuse Accelerator, hoping to enjoy an open house event. I ran into a friend of mine at the door, saying they were just showing someone around. When I asked the visitor “What do you do” they had a fortuitous response:

“I’m a .Net developer, but I was just laid off.”

To which I responded, “Would you like to have a job interview?— right now”.

On the phone, I had expressed consternation that we might find someone easily in Tri-Cities. Within 15 minutes I had them in the Fuse conference room doing The Trash Can Problem. They have spent the last four years at LiveTiles, building SaaS apps.

Keeping contact with the community has contributed to the hiring of four of my coworkers at LiveTiles. Chance meetings through the Tri-Cities maker space, teaming up at a hackathon, and networking through Washington State University’s computer science club all played a role. Find your people, find a way to keep in touch, and you’ll find more luck.

Firing

Letting someone go is never easy. Over my career, I have survived at least four layoffs at work and seen more than one firing over poor behavior. Fortunately, I’ve only ever had to do one firing as a manager.

We had a very strong candidate on our hands and really wanted to get them an offer as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, they said “No”. So, we went back to our second choice, based on a rushed set of interviews to make a fair comparison, and made them the same offer. They said “Yes”.

The first week was very promising. They arrived at work on time. They engaged with the team. They downloaded and installed all the tools. Getting acquainted with the projects seemed to be gaining a lot of positive momentum, so we assigned them their first little bug. They aced it.

Week four, we assigned them a trio of “regular” bugs to see if they were ready. Things hit an unexpected brick wall. We set aside time for some online training. We started doing pair programming. We went back and dialed down the difficulty of the tasks. They can’t seem to use the documentation — let alone the library — and little of what I am teaching gets retained day-to-day.

When it was apparent that they weren’t going to become an independent contributor on week 8, I had to give them a performance warning. It was a short conversation with an ongoing follow-up of coaching. I came away from most of the interactions thinking I had motivated them to close their skill gap and achieve more using a step-by-step, learning-based approach.

It completely failed.

They started coming in late, disengaging with the team, and spending so much time in the bathroom I was worried they had salmonella. By week 12, I had to tell them their time at LiveTiles was over. Human Resources helped me drop the hammer and it was done.

I look back on the experience with regret. I wish I had been able to lead them to redemption, yet I know letting things go on any longer would have been even worse. My ultimate takeaway focuses more on hiring than firing: Make sure you have an approach that can find curiosity, creativity, and grit — not just whether or not they know enough JavaScript to pass one interview.

Graduating

Sometimes letting someone go means seeing them go on to greener pastures. I like to call this friendly departure a “Graduation”. I’ve had seven graduations from my team at LiveTiles — overwhelmingly interns reaching the end of their time. It’s a moment to reflect on growth and achievements. My greatest graduation was first introduced in a message with this distinct quote:

A Diamond in the Rough.

When I first sat down to interview them for an internship, I could definitely sense the “rough”. They were nervous, but could confidently describe object-oriented design patterns and the projects they did on their own — they were ashamed to be unemployed at the time. They hadn’t completed their education, but I believe in gaining experience beyond the classroom. I decided to take a chance. They were only an intern.

Three months later, we had hired them full-time. They were able to tackle problems on their own, showing intense initiative. They received feedback well and fit within the culture of the team, despite being quiet. By the time they completed making their second product completely on their own in less than two years, we had proudly re-titled them “Senior Web Developer”.

When it came time for them to look for a new job, they trusted me enough to not make it a secret. They made it clear they wanted to move to the Seattle area for the next stage of their life — not just their next job. I tried to support where possible. They’re now making six-figures hacking in Seattle.

At work, our time together is temporary. Ideally, we spend every day learning, growing, and mentoring to give back. We spend a plurality of our waking lifetime working, so we best make this the time of our lives. This means getting attached to folks, but still being able to wish them the best when they go. I look forward to seeing more graduations.

Coping

When you become a manager, you are responsible for someone’s livelihood. What if I told you, you may also become responsible for someone’s life? I’ve had many moments of drama at work, but also a few times of trauma — moments of pain and tears. The worst was some years ago:

It was a normal week, give or take. We have multiple projects converging on their due dates, we had positive company growth on the market, and everyone was still optimistic the new Star Wars sage would be cinematic gold. It was just a day.

Wait, someone didn’t come into work.

We figured it was just an illness. We were a tiny team and we’ve all been too sick to open our laptops before. Then day 2 rolled around. We tried texting them, but they weren’t responding. That was strange.

They finally sent us a message that they had been in the hospital. It had been a couple of days, so we assumed it was something serious — it was. Their body was fine, but their mind was full of suicidal thoughts. Had they not shown immense strength to get help for themselves, who knows what would have happened.

We were crushed. First out of sympathy for our friend, but more so out of shock that the struggle has been silently between their ears for weeks. We had no way of knowing and were floored that we couldn’t have helped them had they not chosen their own salvation. We were powerless.

Mental Health at work matters. For creative minds even more so, given there is a higher chance of mental health challenges amongst those working in this industry. Consequently, everyone on my team at LiveTiles has been trained in Mental Health First Aid, equipping them to look for the signs and understand how to really listen when someone is struggling.

Conclusion

In the last five years, LiveTiles has grown immensely. From 15 employees when I joined, to 200 around the world. The ten-person team here in Washington has written a lot of code, but more importantly, made a lot of memories. Reflecting on the comings and goings, coincidences and second-chances, I feel a renewed sense of just how far we’ve come.

Erik Ralston is Chief Architect at LiveTiles where he leads the team building the world’s only Intelligent Experience Platform (IXP). Erik is also co-founder of Fuse Accelerator in Tri-Cities, WA where he works on connecting people and sharing knowledge to turn new ideas into growing startups. You can find him on LinkedIn, Twitter, or the next Fuse event.