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How Do You Manage Your Startup’s Engineering Team For Success?
“How do you plan on managing the design team?” I asked my prospective co-founder and soon to be VP Engineering, Jeroen.
“The same as I have at Maxim (Integrated Products),” Jeroen said.
I smiled, and then I said, “I’m sorry, but I have to ask, the design review process will be the same as Maxim’s?”
“Of course,” Jeroen quickly responded.
“That’s what I was hoping you would say,” I replied.
I knew exactly what Jeroen meant because I had worked at Maxim before. Maxim’s design review process, along with its arch rival and closest competitor, Linear Technology, were, to say it mildly, rigorous.
You want to implement a peer review process for your engineers.
In order for an engineer to get his design approved for production, the engineer had to present their design for review by their peers. Now this is nothing new in the analog semiconductor industry because every company had a design review process. However, Maxim’s had teeth.
One of the advantages I had before founding my company is I’d worked at a very well run company, Maxim, and I’d worked at a very poorly run company in the same industry, Micrel. Nowhere was the…
