#9: Kevin Goldsmith on the Spotify model and rolling out progression at scale

Back in January I chatted to Kevin Goldsmith, a very experienced technical leader with background at companies including Microsoft, Adobe, Spotify and more. He was at Spotify when they evolved their org, witnessing and helping to shape the 'Spotify model' which has now found so much popularity in teams around the world.

It's taken me ages to get this episode out, but it's a real corker for anyone thinking about scaling a team in tech. There's loads of lessons learned around parallel tracks, consensus-driven org decisions, managing a rollout of career progression in a company which had grown crazy fast with nothing and much, much more. Enjoy!

Links from the episode

Kevin on Conway's law (podcast):

http://www.se-radio.net/2018/07/se-radio-episode-331-kevin-goldsmith-on-architecture-and-organizational-design/

The Spotify careers documentation:

https://labs.spotify.com/2016/02/15/spotify-technology-career-steps/

Kevin's current gig, Astrum U:

https://www.astrumu.com/

Find Kevin at:

https://www.kevingoldsmith.com/

https://twitter.com/KevinGoldsmith

Sponsor: Onfido are great 🙌

This episode is sponsored by Onfido! They're ruddy great, and are looking for a design ops person (amongst other interesting design and product roles). Check out their open jobs here: onfido.com/jobs

Want to sponsor an episode, or suggest a guest? Email [email protected] to get straight to me.

Me and progression:

twitter.com/jonnyburch

progressionapp.com