Hypergrowth exposes every flaw in your team strategy—and every opportunity. Whether you’re scaling from a handful of developers to 100+ engineers or expanding internationally, your ability to build, structure, and develop your teams will make or break the business.

I’ve had the privilege (and pressure) of growing engineering teams from 6 to over 100 during my time at eXp Realty, and later leading engineering at Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies through periods of acquisition, consolidation, and transformation.

Here’s what I learned—and what I wish I’d known earlier.

Building and Scaling High-Performing Technology Teams

Lessons from eXp Realty and Lone Wolf Real Estate Technologies

📈 Hiring at Scale Without Losing Your Soul

In hypergrowth, the pressure to fill seats is real. But hiring fast without a plan is how you break culture, burn out leaders, and end up rebuilding everything six months later.

Strategies That Work:

• Hire for trajectory, not just skills.
  At eXp, our best hires were curious, adaptable, and had the potential to grow into future leaders. Technical depth mattered—but coachability mattered more.

• Standardize your process early.
  Don’t let each team run its own ad-hoc interviews. Build a clear rubric, train interviewers, and define what good looks like. Consistency builds speed and trust.

• Centralize onboarding and documentation.
  We reduced onboarding from 30+ days to 1 by automating access, documenting systems, and assigning mentors. That system helped us onboard nearly 1,000 agents a week—and tech scaled with them.

🤝 Mentorship: The Multiplier You’re Probably Ignoring

As your team grows, tribal knowledge gets lost. Mentorship closes that gap—faster onboarding, better retention, and smoother integration of new teams or acquisitions.

How We Made It Work:

• Formal pairing program for every new engineer (matched by discipline + team).
• Weekly syncs during their first 60 days to review onboarding goals.
• Mentorship training for senior staff—because not every great dev knows how to mentor well.

“When we assigned mentors instead of just throwing people in, ramp-up times dropped dramatically—and so did attrition.” — Stephen Ledwith

Tip:

Mentorship isn’t just for juniors. Encourage reverse mentorship. Let new voices bring fresh eyes to legacy systems.

🏗️ Team Structure During Hypergrowth: When and What to Reshape

In the early days, flat orgs work. But as team size explodes, you need new layers—and clarity.

At eXp, we scaled from a single team to a matrixed org spanning time zones and functions. Lone Wolf required realignment post-acquisition across multiple product lines.

When to Restructure:

• Teams are stuck in endless meetings with unclear ownership.
• Engineers say “I’m not sure who handles that anymore.”
• You can’t ship cross-functional features without a PM playing air traffic control.

Structural Patterns That Scale:

• Squads + Chapters (Spotify-style): For cross-functional pods with shared discipline best practices.
• Feature-based verticals: To empower autonomy and reduce dependencies.
• Architecture-driven roles: To provide horizontal oversight and system integrity at scale.

“Structure isn’t about hierarchy—it’s about clarity, accountability, and speed.” — Stephen Ledwith

🔁 Leadership Development at Every Stage

If you’re scaling a team but not scaling your leaders, you’re the bottleneck.

Key Milestones:

1. Team Lead → Engineering Manager
   Teach the shift from doing to enabling. Give them coaching tools, not more Jira tickets.

2. Manager → Director
   Focus on business acumen, cross-functional fluency, and how to lead managers—not projects.

3. Directors → VPs
   Align them with strategy, P&L literacy, and how to navigate executive teams.

What We Did at Lone Wolf:

• Launched internal “Leadership Circles” for new managers. Topics ranged from hiring to handling tough feedback.
• Provided mentorship for high-potential ICs interested in future leadership.
• Encouraged rotation between teams or domains to develop perspective.

Invest In Leaders
Leadership is a learned skill. Invest in it early or your best engineers will either leave or struggle silently.

💬 Expert Insights

“Your first 20 hires set the tone. Your next 80 either reinforce it—or dilute it.”
— Camille Fournier, The Manager’s Path

“Great teams aren’t hired—they’re built over time through systems that scale.”
— Lara Hogan, Wherewithall

“The only thing harder than scaling a tech org is turning one around after scaling it wrong.”
— Stephen Ledwith

🧩 Definitions You Should Know

Hypergrowth
A phase of rapid business expansion, typically defined as >40% year-over-year growth, requiring structural and operational transformation.

Mentorship Program
A structured initiative to pair experienced employees with newcomers or junior staff to accelerate onboarding, knowledge sharing, and culture transfer.

Team Topologies
A framework for designing team structures based on business goals, flow of change, and software architecture.

✅ Final Takeaways

Scaling tech teams isn’t about throwing bodies at problems. It’s about intentional design—of systems, structures, and leadership capacity.

• Hire with a blueprint, not just urgency.
• Make mentorship foundational, not optional.
• Restructure when clarity fades—not after burnout sets in.
• Grow leaders alongside teams—or risk losing both.

Done right, scaling your team isn’t just possible. It’s your greatest lever for long-term success.

For more hands-on frameworks, stories from the trenches, and leadership strategy—visit The Architect and The Executive.