About.

Hi, I’m Baylee

I’ve been consulting and building tech products for 14 years. I was the VP of Engineering at Hinge and spent six years there, building the team and scaling the app from zero users to millions. Before that, I was a Technical Lead at Yeti (a tech consultancy) where I built two apps featured as Best New App on the App Store, and in the distant past I was a Senior Consultant at Booz & Company doing strategy consulting.

How I help

I work with companies in a few different ways:

• Interim/fractional CTO. I lead your technical team for 3-9 months, strategically and operationally. We’ll identify the biggest challenges upfront and I’ll focus on those, but I’ll also evaluate your organization and make recommendations. I help you hire my replacement.
• Special projects. You need a specific problem solved quickly and I use my experience to make that happen. Examples include:
  • You need to hire a lot of engineers and want proven hiring practices
  • You need formal engineering levels and an evaluation matrix
  • You need to reorganize your teams
• Executive advisor. I meet weekly with a leader or leaders in your organization, usually for 1-2 hours per week. You bring a problem you’re facing and we tackle it together.

Problems I can help with

Strategy

• Capabilities and trade-offs. Evaluating what is possible and what trade-offs (quality, speed, cost, etc.) are required.
• Achieving scale. Recommending service architecture and data architecture that will allow your company to scale without getting bogged down in overengineering.
• Tech debt and refactoring. Understanding the true cost of technical debt and planning right-sized refactors.

Team and culture

• Hiring. Identifying necessary skills for new hires. Implementing a proven hiring process, including conducting interviews and training existing team members on how to hire.
• Organizational design. Structuring your team for success at different sizes depending on company goals.
• Engineering levels and evaluation matrix. Formalizing levels that will scale with your company.
• Compensation. Creating and communicating fair, industry-benchmarked compensation that solves for new hires, existing employees, and tricky equity situations.
• Leveling up technical leaders. Coaching and mentoring existing leaders who are talented but inexperienced.

Planning, delivery, and quality

• Goal-setting. Identifying KPIs and setting ambitious, realistic goals that marry company value with individual desires and development.
• Roadmapping and planning. Setting up quarterly and annual planning processes that have buy-in and utility.
• Quality and reliability. Reducing downtime and engineer burnout by improving incident management and diagnosing reliability problems.
• Process and communication. Improving collaboration and communication between in-company stakeholders and with customers.