Wojciech Seliga
From Spartez
Wojciech Seliga is a seasoned software developer and for the last several years also an entrepreneur. He started coding 32 years ago when he was a kid, and since then has witnessed various waves, hypes, and fashions in our industry. For more than 10 years he has been responsible for fostering agile and craftsmanship practices in the development and business alike, managing and staffing software projects, mentoring and inspiring engineers.
Currently he runs a company he co-founded – Spartez – which with its nearly 90 awesome people partners with Atlassian on developing their core products, including JIRA, Crucible or Bamboo and offers its own solutions for agile and technical teams used by 2000 companies across the world.
Methodology & Culture
Ten lessons I painfully learnt while moving from software developer to entrepreneur/CEO role
For many years I was a software developer. I would concentrate on the code, software projects and the interactions with my closest team and the users. I was sure that Agile solves all world’s problems. I would laugh over Scott Adam’s Dilbert comics with his Pointy Hair Boss. Life was simple, life was good. Now for 8+ years I have been running a software company, not a small one anymore. I became myself a full-time boss who only codes sometimes at home or during hackathons. This session is about sharing with you those critical lessons which I painfully learnt when trying to grow into this new role - transitioning from being a software engineer into being an entrepreneur and top manager. Wheres not all of the lessons may or will (if you dream about your own startup) apply to your case, being aware of them may save you tons of time, energy, money or even help you to avoid the total disaster - burying your own company, dreams or destroying your team. And after all, sharing war stories from the past is fun … when these stories are the past.