In this episode, I sit down with Roman, CTO of Breakfast, a social tech startup fostering offline human connections in Lisbon.
Roman brings over a decade of tech experience, having navigated the trenches from Rails engineer to engineering manager at companies like Loca (later acquired by Capgemini) and Grammarly, before taking the helm as CTO at an early-stage startup.
What We Cover
- The Consulting to Product Journey: We explore Roman's seven-year tenure at Loca, where he grew a PagerDuty account from 3 to 25 engineers, and his transition to Grammarly's 700-person organization. Roman candidly shares the mindset shift required when moving from keeping external customers happy to truly understanding internal users and being proactive about product decisions.
- Platform Team Transformation: Roman details how he transformed a critical feature team at Grammarly—one handling APIs for all applications—into a proper platform team. We discuss tackling dependencies, managing a Slack channel with 400 people asking questions, and the importance of clarifying team charter and identity.
- Startup CTO Challenges: We dive into the realities of leading a 4-person engineering team at Breakfast, juggling everything from hands-on backend development to architecture decisions and team mentoring. Roman shares insights on hiring for "the flame"—prioritizing curiosity and drive over pure technical skills—and managing the lack of defensive layers that protect against burnout in larger companies.
- Leadership and Authenticity: Throughout our conversation, Roman emphasizes emotional intelligence, candor, and self-awareness as foundations of good leadership. He shares his daily meditation practice using the Waking Up app and how it helps him stay present and connected to objective reality.
Connect with Roman:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roman-skvirskyi/
Connect with me:
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/christianbarra/
Check out our awesome sponsor, zerobang, your 0 to 1 AI partner: https://www.zerobang.dev/
