What we’re about
We are a group of people who lead teams of people who create software products and deliver software-based solutions in the Auckland region. We meet regularly to discuss common challenges and solutions.
This includes, but is not limited to:
Talent management: organisational design (including scaling), selection, retention, career-path-ing, performance measurement and management (the positive sort, not the process of showing people the door), leading technical people, culture, on-boarding and ramp-up, the gender gap, leveraging brilliant but difficult people, graduate programmes, internships, remuneration and recognition, learning and development, formal training, supported formal education (technical and business), leadership development, managing under-performance
Sourcing and partnering: out-sourcing, off-shoring, near-shoring, in-sourcing, recruitment, off-shore hiring, employment brand, government funding and support, distributed teams, distributed team members, contractors
Practice: TDD, BDD/SBE, code reviews, planning sessions, demos, continuous integration, continuous deployment, pair programming, wire-framing, technical writing, performance testing and engineeringProcess: agile, scaled agile, lean, project management, product management, support and maintenance, working with implementation services teams, integrating UX and visual design, strategic planning, measurement, managing technical debt
Tools: workflow, engineering toolchains (design/dev/test/build/deploy), internal vs cloud, CI/CD/DevOps tools, knowledge sharing, knowledge management, team communication
Innovation: hackathons, Fedex days, "labs", “20% time”, research/prototype teams, processes to let good ideas bubble up, entrepreneurship, research commercialisation
Quality (with a capital “q”): quality management systems, audit, compliance, measuring quality, managing quality, educating teams on quality
Architecture: specialist teams and roles, process frameworks, patterns, business meets technology, infrastructure meets software, non-functional requirements
Technology: big and biggish data, cloud, never-ending list of libraries, frameworks, components….
Upcoming events (1)
See all- How GitLab Manages a Fully Remote Engineering Team at Scale: Lessons LearnedGrid AKL, Auckland
Come join us for November's meet-up (on the 20th of November). This month we have Andrew Haschka (GitLab Field CTO APJ) and Ben Ridley (GitLab New Zealand Solution Architect) from GitLab.
NOTE: We'll be hosting this event at The Grid (right around the corner from Microsoft)
How GitLab Manages a Fully Remote Engineering Team at Scale: Lessons Learned and Successes Achieved
In managing a fully remote engineering team at scale, GitLab has built a robust remote culture grounded in clear communication, transparency, and trust. From strategic hiring and onboarding practices to tools that enable seamless collaboration across time zones, GitLab prioritises alignment and accountability while empowering individual autonomy.
By leveraging asynchronous workflows and focusing on data-driven improvement, the team effectively overcomes common remote challenges, maintaining high productivity and security standards. These practices foster an environment where engineers thrive, continuously refine processes, and achieve scalable success.
Andrew Haschka
GitLab Field CTO APJ
http://linkedin.com/in/andrewhaschka
Andrew Haschka is the CTO for Asia Pacific & Japan at Gitlab acting as the trusted advisor to GitLab partners and customers. Andrew takes a consultative approach to address common and unique business requirements. He provides subject matter expertise and industry experience throughout the customer’s modernisation journey; whilst working with product management and engineering teams to evolve product features to meet market demand.Andrew brings more than 20 years of experience in the CyberSecurity, Digital Transformation and Cloud space with prior roles leading teams across APAC at Google and VMware. In addition to Digital Transformation projects delivered across Fiji & Pacific Islands, Downer, IBM, Jones Lang Lasalle, Thomson Reuters and Optus.
Ben Ridley
GitLab New Zealand Solution Architect
http://linkedin.com/in/ben-ridley-393004119
With years of engineering experience, Ben Ridley serves as a vital bridge between customers and GitLab’s engineering teams, ensuring a customer-first approach in every technical decision.His deep technical expertise enables him to translate customer needs into actionable insights for engineering, supporting GitLab in maintaining high standards of productivity, collaboration, and security.
This role not only builds trust with customers but also reinforces GitLab’s commitment to delivering solutions that genuinely enhance and align with customers' engineering practices.
Food & Drinks
As usual - we'll provide the pizza and drinks :)****NOTE***
We have a venue change for this event. We'll be hosting this event at The Grid Auckland (right around the corner from Microsoft):101 Pakenham Street West, Auckland CBD, Auckland 1010
