talent

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at, “HR 2.0: Dealing with Fast Growth in Technology,” about how technology companies (and their HR departments) can more effectively attract and retain talent. The rapid growth in the technology industry is exciting and staggering and has only been seen a few times in history. As Okta’s director of people,…

In a post earlier today on Fast Company, I discuss why the first five hires are so critical for all start-ups, and why that "leadership DNA" makes or breaks companies. Have a look below, and be sure to head over to Fast Company to read the full article: For any company — whether you’re manufacturing athletic shoes, selling medical devices or…

As more and more IT services get shifted to the cloud, the demand for talent becomes an increasingly important issue. In an article for CIO, Meredith Levinson describes the challenges facing CIOs in finding employees. Levinson cites data from Wanted Analytics that found from February 2011 to 2012 there was a 99 percent increase in job ads for IT…

Last week, I welcomed Adam Aarons and Hector Aguilar to the Okta team and offered some thoughts, culled from my time as an engineer, on what constitutes a great engineering team. It was meant as a bit of advice (for what it was worth), to Hector, our new VP of engineering – because admittedly, I’m an engineer at heart. I ran engineering at…

With Adam Aarons (SVP of worldwide sales) and Hector Aguilar (VP of engineering) joining the Okta team, I thought I’d reflect on what makes a great engineering team — and how that philosophy also applies to building a rockstar sales team. I’ll get into sales next week, but first here are some thoughts on what makes a high performing engineering…