Competing with Unicorns

Today’s tech unicorns develop software differently. They’ve developed a way of working that lets them scale like an enterprise while working like a startup. These techniques can be learned. This book takes you behind the scenes and shows you how companies like Google, Facebook, and Spotify do it. Leverage their insights, so your teams can work better together, ship higher-quality product faster, innovate more quickly, and compete with the unicorns.

Massively successful tech companies, or Unicorns, have discovered how to take the techniques that made them successful as a startup and scale them to the enterprise level. Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Spotify all work like startups, despite having workforces numbering in the tens of thousands. Ex-Spotify engineer and coach, Jonathan Rasmusson, takes you behind the scenes and shows you how to develop software the way the best companies do it.

Learn how to give teams purpose through Missions, empower and trust with Squads, and align large scale efforts through Bets. Create the culture necessary to make it happen.

If you’re a tech or product lead and you want to ship product better, this is your playbook on how the world’s best do it. If you’re an engineer, tester, analyst, or project manager, and you suspect there are better ways you could be working, you are correct. This book will show you how. And if you’re a manager, Agile coach, or someone just charged with improving how your company ships software, this book will give you the tools, techniques, and practices of the world’s most innovative, delivery-focused companies. Don’t just admire the top companies – learn from them.

Table of Contents

1. What’s Different About Startups

2. Give Purpose with Missions

3. Empower Through Squads

4. Scale with Tribes

5. Align with Bets

6. Working At a Tech Lead Company

7. Invest In Productivity

8. Learn with Data

9. Reinforce Through Culture

10. Leveling Up-From There to Here

About the Author

Jonathan Rasmusson has helped some of the world’s largest, most innovative tech companies ship and deliver software around the world. As an engineer, Jonathan helped integrate Spotify into the Sony Playstation, Facebook Messenger, Google Chromecast, iMessage, as well as BMW, Tesla, and Ford car integrations.