The freedom and frustrations of working in a tech startup with Luke Vear, CTO at YQueue

Nicola Steel, Founder of JJP Talent Solutions, speaks to Luke Vear, the CTO of YQueue, a startup which is tackling the challenges faced by the Food and Beverage industry.

Luke begins by explaining how he was drawn to tech and how he secured his first role in software development.  His advice to aspiring leaders is to make sure taking on a leadership role is something that you 100% want to do and to grab every opportunity that presents itself.  

Luke explains that his biggest challenge is the non-engineering elements of being a CTO including managing  relationships between individual team members.  Retaining people in a small team and ensuring that you've got buy-in from everyone within the company, not just direct team members and colleagues, are the things that really keep him up at night.

What he loves about working in a startup environment:

• Freedom to experiment  
• Can get feedback quickly so can iterate very quickly 
• Intimate knowledge of how the business working  

 What frustrates him about startups:

• The rush to get something out of the door so solutions can sometimes be band-aided together 

 His top productivity hack is to avoid tacking shortcuts!