Systems, Local User Groups, and Avoiding Premature Scaling
Engineering Mastermind, May 2025
Last week, we held our first Engineering Mastermind meetup, and it was quite a challenge to pull off.
In case you are new around here, I aim to create a platform where members have a safe space to:
Collaborate & Engage:
Share knowledge, ideas, and feedback.Keep Each Other Accountable:
Check-ins to ensure progress.Support & Encourage:
Uplift each other through challenges.Share Diverse Perspectives:
Different backgrounds lead to innovative solutions.Have Exponential Growth:
The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.
The complexity comes from the fact that members are cross-continent and cross-timezone. Thus, finding a time window that fits these constraints is one big complicated puzzle, especially if you want everybody to have the chance to be there for the big opening.
Add each member’s unique commitments and schedules to the mix, and you end up having a one-on-one reflective meeting with yourself.
And that is what happened with my first attempt at the end of April: I failed to communicate the date and time correctly, which, combined with the members’ unplanned work commitments, resulted in me being alone in a Zoom call for 50 minutes.
I can’t complain—I had plenty of time to reflect and replan.
But this is not my first experience of this kind, either. In 2014, while developing iOS apps for a living, I founded iOS NSAgora, the community of iOS software engineers in my hometown.
At that time, the community in the area was small, and the most experienced developers seemed not to want to share too much of their knowledge.
But that was about to change. I wanted to bring enthusiastic iOS engineers under the same roof, learn from each other, and grow together. I reasoned that, since we are from the same city, we might work together at some point.
And I wasn’t far from the truth. As more companies started developing mobile app projects, the community grew fast, and some of us ended up working together.
But the first meeting I organized to meet the devs and sell the idea of the community was a total disaster. Nobody showed up, and I had a beer all by myself.
However, that didn’t stop me. One month later, I managed to gather 20+ engineers and share my vision about the community we were about to become.
For the next three years, we held monthly meetings where we shared our knowledge, talked at local conferences, and engaged in technical debates over a beer, or maybe two—who counted.
Eventually, things slowed down as some of us accepted leadership responsibilities, and iOS user groups began to develop inside companies.
In a way, the cause that gathered us all in the beginning—the need to learn from each other—is no longer standing.
Now, I’m working on a different cause—helping software engineers worldwide create sustainable careers, with a focus on technical mastery, productivity, and well-being.
Spotlight Wins and Challenges
This month, at our Engineering Mastermind meetup, I met
, from . We had a prolific discussion about systems, local user groups, and how premature scaling might be counterproductive when launching new projects.
Here are the key highlights from our session:
One premise of the platform is to create an accountability circle for software developers to achieve their personal and professional goals. However, Andrew prefers the engineering approach—building systems that keep him accountable. For reference, check out his SHELL framework.
The old saying “Birds of a feather flock together” might be true. Like me, Andrew used to organize PHP User Groups to help him master his skills and positively impact the local community.
My takeaway from this session was that premature scaling might not work to my advantage at this community stage. I would be better off bootstrapping the Engineering Mastermind with one-on-one meetings and growing it into a mastermind format only when I need to scale.
Our conclusion: do stuff before you are ready.
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—Alex