Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
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Jon Pass is the Head of Engineering at Coassemble, a Newcastle based startup building a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) used by businesses to provide training, information and continuous education to their staff.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Jon to learn more about his experience and what he does as the Head of Engineering at Coassemble.
How do you explain what you do?
You can break my role down into three parts. There’s the people management part, leading the tech team. There’s the championing of the technology part, to our internal senior stakeholders. And finally the developer part, writing code and leading by example.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you’re accountable or responsible for?
I’m responsible for ensuring our engineering effort leads to the continuous improvement of the product and its performance, supporting new initiatives and serving our customers.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as Head of Engineering?
A good portion of my week is deeply connected to my engineering team and the work that we're doing there. Beyond that, it’s really about supporting other teams. For example in providing engineering support to our customer success, sales and product teams.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to Coassemble
I started out at a not-for-profit called Compassion Australia as a business analyst and quickly got experience in many roles as a CRM specialist, Digital Marketer, Data Migration Specialist, Solutions Architect. I then kind of weirdly landed in a software development role and had to learn quickly on the job.
After almost 7 years there, I wanted a new challenge and stumbled upon Coassemble. I joined as a front end developer and grew into my role as the Head of Engineering.
What prior experience set you up to succeed at Coassemble as Head of Engineering?
In the not for profit space, you get really used to bootstrapping absolutely everything because you need to be scrupulous about spending resources. You have to be really clear about what’s important at any given time. That set me up to think about how I can enable the team to build more with less which is critically important in any early stage startup.
Coming from a non-technical background, was there anything you needed to upskill in?
I’m really thankful for the non-technical roles that I’ve had. I think when you have too much experience in something, you almost can’t see the forest for the trees.
I find that people who are more successful tend to have broadly applicable skills rather than just technical ones.
Particularly when I'm hiring, I look for the cultural fit because I can teach anyone how we write code, but I can't teach someone to have the right attitude and to be excited about the product we're building.
Who do you work most closely with?
Apart from my immediate engineering team, I work most closely with our CPO Jude, our CEO Ryan, the Product Team and Customer Success team.
What do you love about your role as Head of Engineering? What is hard?
I love the product that we build. We are in a really interesting space with lots of competitors, but the problem we’re solving is so compelling. And looking at where we've come from in the four years that I've been here gets me excited about what that trajectory will look like.
In a perfect world, you would just be able to make your product how you wanted to. But equally you need to make sure that people want to purchase it and that means jumping through certain hoops. Sometimes a decision needs to be made that might not be the right decision for the product or team, but might be essential to keep the lights on.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as Head of Engineering?
Software development is so nuanced, and the pace of technological development is such that what was relevant five years ago is no longer relevant today. So I think the biggest misconception is that people have encountered this stuff before, but they encountered it 10 years ago and the world has moved on.
What does good look like as Head of Engineering? Who are your role models?
First and foremost my responsibility is to make sure the team is motivated, excited, and has the clarity they need. In that sense, good looks like not only understanding what you should be doing, but also what we shouldn’t be working on.
As we develop as a company, good will start to look like engineering thought leadership. We're probably not at the scale where that's super important, but I'd love to get to a point where people are excited to work at Coassemble because of the impact we make.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since starting your current role as Head of Engineering?
I think if you'd have seen the product four years ago before I joined and saw it now they wouldn't even resemble one another. It's been exciting to be able to continually raise the bar on what we're able to do. I give all credit to the team, who rallied behind it and found creative ways to build the tech piece by piece. We wouldn't have got to where we are now if we didn't find a way to get 1% better every day.
In terms of milestone moments, at the beginning of 2021, we dropped our course builder which was a full rebuild of the way you authored courses in our platform. The ability to actually create courses is a huge part of the Coassemble experience. To see the rebuild go live was super exciting after a good couple months of work.
What advice would you give yourself or a friend starting as Head of Engineering?
I think you need to be passionate and excited about the thing you're working on and fall in love with the problem you're solving. That's the only motivation that's going to endure when the going gets tough.
My advice for technical people in general is to get excited about the potential of your platform again. There's so much happening in that space right now, that it's hard not to be excited. So if you're feeling burnt out, tired or demotivated, find ways to get excited about the potential again.
When I’m hiring, I love seeing engineers that are pumped about the potential of the technology. So in the future, if you want to join my team it speaks volumes if you’re inspired by the work.
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Interested in Engineering roles? Check out Talent_OS to see opportunities across the EVP Portfolio, or reach out to Fred or Charmaine from EVP's Talent Team!
Welcome to the EVP Talent blog! This blog series exists to demystify common startup roles, create clearer pathways and tell the stories of exceptional operators within the EVP Portfolio.
****
Jon Pass is the Head of Engineering at Coassemble, a Newcastle based startup building a cloud-based Learning Management System (LMS) used by businesses to provide training, information and continuous education to their staff.
We had the pleasure of (virtually) sitting down with Jon to learn more about his experience and what he does as the Head of Engineering at Coassemble.
How do you explain what you do?
You can break my role down into three parts. There’s the people management part, leading the tech team. There’s the championing of the technology part, to our internal senior stakeholders. And finally the developer part, writing code and leading by example.
Broadly speaking, can you give us a sense of what activities you’re accountable or responsible for?
I’m responsible for ensuring our engineering effort leads to the continuous improvement of the product and its performance, supporting new initiatives and serving our customers.
What could a day, week or month look like for you as Head of Engineering?
A good portion of my week is deeply connected to my engineering team and the work that we're doing there. Beyond that, it’s really about supporting other teams. For example in providing engineering support to our customer success, sales and product teams.
Tell us about your past experience and journey to Coassemble
I started out at a not-for-profit called Compassion Australia as a business analyst and quickly got experience in many roles as a CRM specialist, Digital Marketer, Data Migration Specialist, Solutions Architect. I then kind of weirdly landed in a software development role and had to learn quickly on the job.
After almost 7 years there, I wanted a new challenge and stumbled upon Coassemble. I joined as a front end developer and grew into my role as the Head of Engineering.
What prior experience set you up to succeed at Coassemble as Head of Engineering?
In the not for profit space, you get really used to bootstrapping absolutely everything because you need to be scrupulous about spending resources. You have to be really clear about what’s important at any given time. That set me up to think about how I can enable the team to build more with less which is critically important in any early stage startup.
Coming from a non-technical background, was there anything you needed to upskill in?
I’m really thankful for the non-technical roles that I’ve had. I think when you have too much experience in something, you almost can’t see the forest for the trees.
I find that people who are more successful tend to have broadly applicable skills rather than just technical ones.
Particularly when I'm hiring, I look for the cultural fit because I can teach anyone how we write code, but I can't teach someone to have the right attitude and to be excited about the product we're building.
Who do you work most closely with?
Apart from my immediate engineering team, I work most closely with our CPO Jude, our CEO Ryan, the Product Team and Customer Success team.
What do you love about your role as Head of Engineering? What is hard?
I love the product that we build. We are in a really interesting space with lots of competitors, but the problem we’re solving is so compelling. And looking at where we've come from in the four years that I've been here gets me excited about what that trajectory will look like.
In a perfect world, you would just be able to make your product how you wanted to. But equally you need to make sure that people want to purchase it and that means jumping through certain hoops. Sometimes a decision needs to be made that might not be the right decision for the product or team, but might be essential to keep the lights on.
What misconceptions do people have about your role as Head of Engineering?
Software development is so nuanced, and the pace of technological development is such that what was relevant five years ago is no longer relevant today. So I think the biggest misconception is that people have encountered this stuff before, but they encountered it 10 years ago and the world has moved on.
What does good look like as Head of Engineering? Who are your role models?
First and foremost my responsibility is to make sure the team is motivated, excited, and has the clarity they need. In that sense, good looks like not only understanding what you should be doing, but also what we shouldn’t be working on.
As we develop as a company, good will start to look like engineering thought leadership. We're probably not at the scale where that's super important, but I'd love to get to a point where people are excited to work at Coassemble because of the impact we make.
Do you have a moment, day, team or piece of work that you’re immensely proud of since starting your current role as Head of Engineering?
I think if you'd have seen the product four years ago before I joined and saw it now they wouldn't even resemble one another. It's been exciting to be able to continually raise the bar on what we're able to do. I give all credit to the team, who rallied behind it and found creative ways to build the tech piece by piece. We wouldn't have got to where we are now if we didn't find a way to get 1% better every day.
In terms of milestone moments, at the beginning of 2021, we dropped our course builder which was a full rebuild of the way you authored courses in our platform. The ability to actually create courses is a huge part of the Coassemble experience. To see the rebuild go live was super exciting after a good couple months of work.
What advice would you give yourself or a friend starting as Head of Engineering?
I think you need to be passionate and excited about the thing you're working on and fall in love with the problem you're solving. That's the only motivation that's going to endure when the going gets tough.
My advice for technical people in general is to get excited about the potential of your platform again. There's so much happening in that space right now, that it's hard not to be excited. So if you're feeling burnt out, tired or demotivated, find ways to get excited about the potential again.
When I’m hiring, I love seeing engineers that are pumped about the potential of the technology. So in the future, if you want to join my team it speaks volumes if you’re inspired by the work.
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