Partnered With:

Former CTO of SushiSwap: Failure as leader of SushiSwap

Read this article in 8 Minutes

Joseph Delong, former CTO of SushiSwap, wrote a post summarizing the mistakes he made while leading Sushi, apologizing for his actions and giving Sushi his best wishes.

My Failures in Leadership at Sushi

原文作者： Joseph Delong

Gu Yu, ChainCatcher

Joseph Delong, CTO of SushiSwap, has stepped down to appease the crypto community, which has been gripped by infighting at SushiSwap. Joseph Delong was arrested early this morningDecentralized content publishing platform MirrorI reviewed my team experience at SushiSwap in detail and reflected on the specific causes of various problems.

The following is the original text

Failed to expand the plan after adding new team members

As new team members come on board, the need for organization, roadmap, and planning increases. A competent team of five to seven people is fully self-coordinating. As a result, as I expanded the team beyond that number, the need for coordination increased significantly, and I failed to equip the team with the tools and plans it needed to succeed. Once we understood the problem, we increased the frequency of development team synchronization to a daily occurrence.

When I worked at USAA, I worked on two separate teams that had very capable Masters of SCRUM, which, in retrospect, made the development process smoother and less chaotic. On my next project, one of the first 5 employees will be a highly qualified SCRUM master.

Also, as someone who hates administrative overhead, I fell into the trap of trying to keep overhead artificially low, which ultimately hurt the team. As the team grows to 12 people, if there is no centralized project management or sprint plan, major failures begin to occur. When I failed to be an effective facilitator, Rachel Chu stepped into the role.

Organize teams around skills, not product lines

The development team is organized around the developer's skill set, i.e. : front-end, Solidity, Devops. Sushi took a team approach, which in my opinion was the perfect model for the DAO.

However, by focusing on their skill set rather than product lines, the team's ability to focus on multiple product lines is reduced. On my next project, the team will be split by product lines with very little crossover.

Not letting problematic contributors go as quickly as possible

Early on, when Maki asked me to join the project, there was already infighting between Born Crypto, Keno, and LevX, and in retrospect, this tension eventually led to the major infighting that followed. I think separating the two belligerents and conducting a code review of LevX based on the performance improvement plan is enough to quell the infighting.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have let LevX go earlier and quarantined Keno and BoringCrypto. Although the project was still in its early stages and Maki had taken over as CEO, WITH his approval I was able to exclude the contributors in question.

However, after he left, FOR whatever reason, I lost the right to remove problematic contributors. This brings me to my next point, which is by far my biggest failure as a leader: communication.

communication

1) Be blunt

Communication is the key to my failure. When I lost the ability of external developers, I should have contacted the Sushi community to let them know. It is impossible to manage a development team without the ability to exclude problematic developers. For example, Matthew Lilley stopped participating in our daily technical syncs, leaving other front-end developers scrambling to get things done. With the threat of going offline, we could have kept the team in touch and made development more efficient.

2) the rhythm

Second, I didn't communicate enough with the community, so when it came to issues that required talking to them, I was no longer willing to engage. So, in hindsight, I would have talked to the community more often to increase our relationship.

3) Public relations

As someone who has worked in the Ethereum community for four years, I used my personal Twitter feed to send messages about Sushi. This turned out to be a mistake, as I should have moved through official channels.

Also, my behavior on Twitter had changed so much before I became a public figure that I couldn't adapt to new ways of communicating. I think it's ok to be honest about how I think the DAO works, which is a false assumption.

I should look at people I respect, like Sam Bankman-Fried or Joe Lubin, who I used to know, who run their own Twitter but have obviously turned over their PR to an agency or assistant. In my next project, I will use public relations professionals to drive communication.

conclusion

Finally, due to my manifold failures, I failed to fulfill my duties. I will incorporate this knowledge into my next project. I think the imperfect birth of Sushi caused additional problems, and for my next project I'll be able to build an organization to license contributors. Thank you for letting me lead Sushi through this time and wish Sushi the best of luck. Long live the Sushi.