Hire the Best FDEs
Look for judgment, a record of getting useful work done, and curiosity about the business. Have a real conversation about the decisions someone has made. Give capable people meaningful work, autonomy, development and fair pay.
A book by Chris Strobl
Leading FDE Teams
Scale Compute, Not Headcount: A New Way to Manage
Great people. A trusted place in the business. An organization that delivers.
AI gives capable engineers more room to act. Leading them well means deciding what the team should take on, earning the business's trust, and building a future great people want to share.
The leadership work
The business needs more from IT. And more of its leadership.
A team can put working software in front of a customer sooner than before. Someone still has to decide whether it solves the right problem, how it will be introduced, and who will take responsibility when people begin to rely on it.
Those decisions bring the CIO, CTO and CPO closer to the business. They need people who understand the work, the trust to challenge a request, and an organization that can act on what the team learns.
FDEs work close to their customers, whether those customers are inside or outside the company. Their leaders connect that proximity to the choices the wider organization has to make.
The faster you can build, the more carefully you have to decide what you promise.
Inside the book
Five parts of leading the team.
The book connects the people you hire, the projects you choose, the infrastructure they need, the compute you scale and what success makes possible for others.
Find the Right Projects
Understand what the business is trying to achieve and choose projects with partners who are ready to act. Earn trust by asking useful questions, explaining tradeoffs and taking responsibility together. Examine incentives and agree who can decide, adopt the work and carry the result.
FDE Infrastructure
Give teams access, shared context and capabilities they can rely on. Use existing IT, security and governance; agree reuse, ownership and the compute budget. Infrastructure earns its place by making the next important piece of work easier to deliver.
Scaling Compute
Turn more compute into repeatable, useful work through systems an FDE can direct. Track accepted results in use and their total cost, including review and support. Assess business value, ROI and payback before deciding where to scale.
Earn More to Give More
Build a future that makes greater responsibility worthwhile. Discuss careers, autonomy, pay and participation in success honestly. Use success to give other people money, time or expertise they can put to work.
A question worth taking to your team
The software is ready. Is the business ready to use it?
Finishing the software and realizing its value are different events. Between them sit decisions about who will introduce it, which work will change, and who can resolve the dependencies.
Before the next commitment, ask four questions: What will change for the customer? Who can authorize that change? Who will introduce and run it? What evidence will tell us it is helping?
Bring the people who own those answers into the same conversation. A decision to narrow the scope, build the missing capability or pause can be more responsible than another promise to ship.
Leading FDE Teams brings questions like these back to the people and decisions behind the work.
About the author
I'm Chris Strobl.
I started with hands-on FDE work. Alongside the CIO, I helped build an enterprise FDE unit that I now lead.
That work has made me think carefully about the people we hire, the promises we make, and what the organization needs to change around us.
I'm writing Leading FDE Teams to pass those lessons on. I want you to leave with a better question, a useful distinction, or a decision you can make more clearly with your own team.
Featured in 8090's Software Factory Stories. The episode was shared publicly by Chamath Palihapitiya.
The original feature ↗The public share ↗Feature and public distribution, not a book endorsement.A few questions
Is this the book for you?
Who is Leading FDE Teams for?
CIOs, CTOs, CPOs and the business leaders working with them. It is for people building or leading FDE teams, and for those deciding what their organization needs to change so those teams can succeed.
Do I need to lead an existing FDE team?
An existing team gives you immediate decisions to examine. If you are building one, the same questions help you think about whom to hire, how the team will work with the business and what responsibility it can carry.
What does FDE mean here?
A forward-deployed engineer works close to a customer and the customer's actual work. The customer may be an external organization or a team inside the same company. This book focuses on leading the people and the organization around that work.
How technical is the book?
You should be interested in how software changes the business. The book's center of gravity is leadership: hiring, project choices, infrastructure, productive compute and shared opportunity.
What does the book cost?
For delivery to Germany, the printed book costs USD 9.95 in total. Shipping and all mandatory taxes and fees are included.
Can I contact Chris?
Yes. Questions about the book, an experience from your own team, interviews and talks are welcome.
Leading FDE Teams
Build a team people trust. Give them a future worth building.
Start with the people, the choices and the responsibilities behind the work.