Thats my desk (the 'empty' one in the middle)… I am always out and about in the offices…

Hello, my name is Mike Agostino and I recently joined Snap as Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

First, what’s a CTO do? Typically a big-company CTO drives technology and product strategy by combining an in-depth understanding of technology trends with financial and market trends. Being a CTO is a somewhat tricky task because you want to influence product direction, but not control it. The development and product teams need to own the process and the last thing they need is a CTO becoming a bottleneck in this process. The CTO also serves as a champion of the company’s direction with customers, analysts, and potential hires. But, Snap is a startup and everyone wears many hats in a startup and that includes the CTO…

A little about me. I grew up in Silicon Valley and have been around startups and technology all my life. In my career, I have been an entrepreneur, startup manager, product developer and venture capitalist. One of my first jobs while in high school was writing technical manuals for semiconductor manufacturing equipment. My love of cool technology probably started with that first part-time job. I moved on to working with startups while in college. I’ve worked for many startups in my career – some successful, some not – but I’ve learned from those experiences that a small group of well-motivated people can accomplish almost anything. The most relevant aspect of my experience for Snap was my time at Infoseek. While at Infoseek, I led development of the web search technology used by millions of Internet users. I started my career in product development as a software engineer writing compilers and kernel software. I received a BS degree in computer science from Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo.

So, what am I doing for Snap? I am leading the Search team that develops our search engine. Snap has a full search engine team that works on core information retrieval algorithms (indexing, ranking, crawling, anti-spam) and sophisticated software infrastructure to support a high-volume website. I am also overseeing the engineering team (QA, Ops, Reporting, front-end dev) while Gladys, our VP of Engineering, is out on leave. I also work with the product management team to help set (but again not control) direction for our product. Additionally, our CEO Tom McGovern asks me to weigh in on strategy decisions and to participate in potential business opportunities. Needless to say, my job demands that I multi-task very well and contribute in many different areas.

More to come in a future entry …