I’m excited to announce that I will be taking on the VP of Engineering role at Names & Faces starting today.
Names & Faces aims to offer any growing company a simple and fast directory of employees built specifically for that purpose alone.
Names & Faces solves a problem experienced by everyone from the CEO to the intern. How do I get to know the people around me, get context for where they fit in & get in touch when I need to?
I’m joining an exciting startup with a team based in a number of cities across the world – Palo Alto, Cape Town and London.
Names & Faces was one of the startups selected to be part of the Y Combinator Summer 2018 batch of startups. I have followed and admired the Y Combinator program for a long time now, with companies such as AirBnb, Dropbox and Stripe having gone through the same program in their early stages.
About the VP of Engineering role
In my new role I will be expected to be a great manager and team builder.
My job will be to make everyone in the engineering organisation successful by influencing architectural decisions, establishing best practises, setting work cadences and cultural norms and overcoming the issues that get in the way of the team’s success.
I’m looking forward to helping engineers grow and develop their skills. Identifying potential in people, supporting them, seeing them grow and succeed is something I enjoy doing and I find it personally fulfilling.
I’m also looking forward to applying my experience from my working career to help Names & Faces succeed. At the same time I expect to learn and grow both personally and professionally. The constant pursuit of learning being something I value incredibly.
What will be different?
After spending 8.5 years building software in the finance industry (Allan Gray – 4 years and Prodigy Finance – 4.5 years). I’m finally going to be working in a different industry. I’ve learnt a lot of interesting things about the finance world in my career, however I am also glad to move on from some of the complexities that come with building software in the finance world.
At both companies I’ve worked for in the past I built software to support the main business operations of the company. Now I will be building software for clients (other companies) to use. This may seem like a subtle change but I’m sure it will give me a different outlook into how to decide what to build, how to release software and how to scale as the client base grows.
I will still write code, also operating as a software engineer in the team, which is something I enjoy doing and I believe every leader in the technology space should try hold on to as long as they can. My career has mostly been in the web development space and at Names & Faces I will be exposed to building and releasing software for mobile apps too. The technology stack is modern and will be exciting to learn, with all the niceties that come with React, React Native, GraphQL, Typescript and Node.js.
Finally Names & Faces is a remote-first company. Remote-first means working remote is the default. It means making sure your remote employees are as much a part of the team as those in the office. For most of my career I’ve worked in an office with my co-workers. I believe the future of work will be mostly remote for knowledge workers. So I’m looking forward to learning the different ways of working and flexibility working for a remote-first company will bring.
In case you can’t tell, I’m really delighted to be joining the startup world again. The Names & Faces team has already accomplished a lot so far, and I look forward to working with the team to do even more.
I’m still based in Cape Town and I continue to enjoy living in the city.
If you would like to know more about Names & Faces you can watch our demo video below.
Tarisayi says
MAKOROKOTO!!
Onwards and upwards! Many blessings brother!.
Nyasha Mukoki says
This is so innovative General and I am sure it will turn a lot of heads. Congratulations on your new VP job and I am totally confident that with you on the wheel, the only way is up. God bless you and your team Tanaka