Vasken Hauri has been working with WordPress since 2006. Since then, he has engineered WordPress to create everything from order fulfillment and tracking applications to APIs that withstand several hundred thousand hits per day. He’s the VP of Strategic Engineering at 10up, a leading agency specializing in strategy, design, and engineering.

Vasken has a solid background on the implementation side of things, and it shows in his strategic approach to management of new initiatives, diverse teams, and company growth. He is an active member of the WordPress community as a speaker, thought leader, plugin builder, and core contributor.

At Prestige Conference Minneapolis, he’ll be presenting on the topic of scaling your business. Get to know him through our interview below, or catch up with him on simpleCanvas.

What is your role at 10up?

Working with our various engineering Directors and Executive team, I help 10up deliver well-built, quality websites on a timely basis. A large portion of my time is focused on how we effectively scale our team, while maintaining efficiency, consistency, and a work environment that promotes work-life balance and employee empowerment.

You’ve worked in the technology field for over a decade. Where did your aptitude for online technology first start emerging?

I first published a listing of cheat codes for various games in basic HTML back in 1997. In terms of traffic and engagement on my personal sites, it’s all been downhill from there

Why engineering and not something else?

I love the chance to help others create and build things that have value to our clients and give our team pride in their accomplishments. Working with the open web has given me the unique opportunity to work in a community where knowledge sharing and proliferation are the celebrated norm. The work we do also affords us the ability to meet and work with people all over the world with few of the traditional time and space barriers that have historically limited such possibilities.

Once you figured out where you wanted your career to go, how did you start making things happen?

I never really *decided* to make web development or team management my career. At a young age, I knew I wanted to work with computers and/or technology in general. I was always more curious and autodidactic when it came to broadening my understanding of technology than anything else, so turning that into a career was mostly just a natural progression.

What were some of the biggest roadblocks you encountered on your path to success?

Growing up in the 1980s and 1990s, home computing and the web was a new and often misunderstood subject. While my family has always been incredibly supportive whenever possible, their lack of understanding of new technologies made it difficult for them to see the value of what I was doing on the computer, and more often than not, everything from writing code to playing The Sims was grouped under the umbrella of “wasting time on the computer.”

I know many of my colleagues have dealt with similar situations, and so pushing for more recognition of the value of web technology and the associated jobs it offers (especially at the elementary and secondary education levels where change is often slow and difficult) is a key to ensuring a strong pipeline of talent from generations to come.

How did you connect with mentors that supported your technology interests?

Barbara Mindell, who ran the Academic Computing Center at Haverford where I gained much of my initial experience with client services in a technology context, played a key role in my professional development. Barbara was a constant advocate of listening and understanding a problem before making a decision, and of maintaining consistent, clear, and fair policies for her team. These values have come to anchor my approach to team management.

It also didn’t hurt that, as a former lawyer, her occasional quips about how much calmer and easier to deal with our Helpdesk clients were than judges, juries, and lawyers really put things into perspective.

You’ll be speaking about growth and scalability at Prestige. Can you share a little preview about what you’ll be covering?

We live in an age and work in a field where ‘scaling’ often comes with the click of a button. Bandwidth, RAM, cloud infrastructure, even things like Mechanical Turk enable us to scale rapidly on demand. That’s not really the case when it comes to people, though, and so scaling your team can prove to be a singular challenge.

We’ll discuss some proven ways to scale your team while maintaining a consistent corporate culture, from verbal communication techniques that build understanding, to writing policies that enhance, rather than restrict, productive output.

Any industry predictions for 2016?

We’re going to see a huge expansion in the use-cases for WordPress, thanks in large part to the JSON API. WordPress will be used more and more as a true CMS, with the display side propagating beyond templates as the stored content begins to be consumed by other platforms and systems within complex enterprise infrastructures.

What’s coming up next for you?

I’ll be continuing to work with the engineering team at 10up, streamlining our existing practices and planning to anticipate the next round of industry changes that are more or less inevitable.

Of course, 10up is hiring, and will likely continue to do so until we transition into our sinister, top-secret “Phase 2.” Speaking of which, if you have experience affixing high-powered lasers onto sharks, we might have a long-term job opening for you.

What book(s) are you reading right now?

“Decisive” - Chip and Dan Heath
“The Secrets of Pirate Management” - Peter Leeson
“On War” - Carl von Clausewitz

Just for fun - what’s your favorite junk food?

Currywurst and fries.

What part of Prestige Conference are you looking forward to most?

The conversations. Everyone at the event is knowledgeable, passionate, and opinionated about the WordPress ecosystem and economy, and it shows in the excellent quality of the discussion that occurs throughout the event.