Growing Your Own: How to Turn Technical Staffers into IT Leaders

Sanjib Sahoo

Chief Technology Officer

OptionMonster Holdings, Inc.

• “Leadership Comes from integrity-that

you do whatever you ask others to do”

• - Scott Berkun

The challenge..how we started

Build a world class online brokerage system,

providing an amazing user/trading experience within

a short time period with a limited budget.

Use cutting edge technologies (incl. Open Source) to

achieve scalability and performance in the online trading

world

Compete with top trading firms in the nation with limited

resources and a relatively ‘small’ tech budget

Attract talent to work for a small one room start-up

Retain talented people with a limited financial budget

Manage a multi-location organization,

utilizing an onshore-offshore

development model

Organization

optionMONSTER

Holdings, Inc.

OM Securities, LLC optionMONSTER

Technologies, LLC

optionMONSTER

Media, LLC

Retail media portal &

subscriptions

Online Education

Invest Like a Monster

(ILAM) conferences

Technology development

IP management

Tech support

Registered brokerage

Retail online brokerage

‘Institutional’ brokerage

The Company’s primary businesses are run through its subsidiaries: Retail online brokerage:

tradeMONSTER.com (OM Securities, LLC) and Media site: optionMONSTER.com

(optionMONSTER Media, LLC)

Where we have come from..

optionMONSTER – Co-founded in 2006 by Jon ('DRJ')

Najarian and Pete Najarian, a pair of professional traders,

financial executives, and CNBC contributors. Best for

options content in the industry.

tradeMONSTER – Launched in 2008, ‘Best for Options’

online trading firm in North America since 2010, ranked

Top 3 retail trading firm in 2012 by Barron’s. Well known

for unique and innovative trading platform, great user

experience, technology and patented design.

tradeMONSTER has retained it’s original technology

team with almost no attrition and has been able to run a

successful trading operation with using innovative

approaches & new technologies incl. the Open Source

stack.

A different approach to build leaders

Started with all technology resources, no managers

hired

Non-traditional hiring model

Rotational well-rounded radical approach to build

leadership skills

Intra –team acceptance model for leadership

Stress handling models to strengthen leaders

Creating Leaders-Custom Model

Phase 1 Flat organization

Hiring strategy

Inclusive management style

Tough love

Phase 2 Identify talent

Acquire business knowledge

Cross training

Technical leadership(horizontal and vertical structure)

Phase 3 Acceptance of leaders within team

Conflict management

Overall vision development

People management

What aided this?

Non-political open door environment

Open review process(supervisor, manager, peer

reviews)

Periodic 360 degree reviews for leaders

Innovation committee and mapping to product plan

Create passion and motivation within every level of the

team

Create communicational and inclusive management

style

“I feel my leadership skills and willingness to lead teams have grown here at

optionMONSTER. The way I have taken on more and more responsibilities with

getting more and more involved with the team has given me confidence to take on

more management tasks, which I was not sure was my forte before. This steady

additional level of responsibility pushed me to make sure that my team performs at

its best at all times. Today I feel more comfortable to take on more management

tasks”

- Kris K. Director of Technology, optionMONSTER

Motivating Technologists…

Tuning them to the business success

Inclusive management style- periodic business and

strategic updates to whole technology team

Revenue and business implication updates for

products developed by technology

Tech appreciation meets on a quarterly basis

Creating politics free, fun environment and building an

attached leadership model

“ My experience at OM has taught me to ask many questions to lead the team to the

desired outcome. Not only does it build better team work, but the solutions are more

robust and the risks are mitigated quicker. The team environment here and the vision of

leadership from top has made me more comfortable as a leader and handle people much

better in a challenging environment “

- Lucy B, Leader of Quality Assurance

“ The open and agile culture at OM has brought out a tough attitude in me with a no

fear attitude to face critical issues. Working with great minds has increased my

knowledge and confidence and my hard work has been acknowledged always and has

helped me grow more and strong as a leader.”

- Dham P, Leader of Production Support

Motivating Technologists..

What else helps?

Cross platform training and rotation policy for tech

resources

Attention to detail and constant sharing of vision

Open houses to understand opinions and thoughts of

the team

Encourage decision making within lower levels and

clear communication of acceptance/rejections of those.

Overseeing the hiring process.

Striking the right balance of tough love for team.

“Morale on our technology team has never been higher, and we are extremely excited

about our products and the services that we provide. We have a culture of “whatever it

takes” to meet many difficult challenges that we have overcome “.

-Aaron W, Senior Implementation Engineer

What we achieved…

Minimal Staff attrition, key team retained during growth

period (Ranging from 0 to 3% yearly basis)

A platform with 99.98% uptime ; created a scalable, high

performance trading platform

Ranked #1(4.6 out of 5) by Barron’s for Technology

amongst online trading brokerages in North America,

Patented technology design

A fluid organizational structure that has created well-

rounded leaders and able technologists.

Thank you

“As technology leaders, we have a big responsibility of

bringing upcoming leaders not only for the interest of

ourselves but for the industry as a whole. This story

highlights what we have been able to achieve with a

different approach for creating leaders and different

motivational approaches taken to retain talent in a high

stress environment. Hope this approach helps all of you

to get a new perspective!”

Thank you,

Sanjib Sahoo