From 0 to 70+ Engineers: Scaling an Engineering Org

The Scaling Journey

At Egitech Group, we grew from 2 co-founders in a garage to 70+ headcount over 4 years. Every phase had different challenges, different leadership needs, and different failure modes. Here's what I learned.

Phase-by-Phase Framework

# Team Building Phases
founding_0_to_5:
  focus: "Move fast, build MVP, hire generalists"
  challenge: "Finding co-founders who share the vision"
  lesson: "Hire for culture fit first, skill set second"

product_market_fit_5_to_15:
  focus: "Basic processes, first management layer"
  challenge: "Everyone does everything → specialization"
  lesson: "Establish code review + basic CI/CD early"

scaling_15_to_30:
  focus: "Team structure, domain ownership, documentation"
  challenge: "Communication overhead, quality at speed"
  lesson: "Documentation-first culture saves you later"

maturity_30_to_70:
  focus: "Engineering excellence, career paths, org design"
  challenge: "Maintaining startup agility at scale"
  lesson: "Clear engineering ladder (IC + mgmt tracks)"

Core Management Principles

• ▹Hire for culture fit first, skill set second — skills can be trained; mindset and values are much harder to change
• ▹Invest in onboarding: The first 90 days determine long-term retention. Structured onboarding with buddy system, tech stack ramp-up plan, and weekly check-ins
• ▹Transparent communication — share both good news and bad news. No information silos. Weekly all-hands, monthly retrospectives
• ▹Career development framework — everyone needs to know where they're heading. Clear engineering ladder with explicit criteria
• ▹Celebrate small wins — don't wait for big launches. Recognize individual contributions in standups and retros
• ▹Lead by example — culture flows from the top. If you want tests, you write tests. If you want docs, you document first

Engineering Standards

• ▹Code Review: All PRs require 2 approvals. No self-merging. Automated linting and test gates.
• ▹Git Strategy: Trunk-based development with short-lived feature branches. Conventional commits.
• ▹Testing: Unit tests (>80% coverage), integration tests for critical paths, E2E for key journeys.
• ▹Documentation: ADRs for every technical decision. API docs auto-generated from OpenAPI specs.
• ▹Incidents: PagerDuty on-call, blameless post-mortems within 48 hours, action items tracked.