Engineering your culture / Developer Philosophies / Geektime Devfest 2016 By: Oren Ellenbogen, Forter

1. Engineering your culture
@orenellenbogen
How to keep your engineers happy?
“No J were harmed in the making of this talk”
– said no one, ever. Until now.

2. THE PROBLEM?

3. All companies start as a beautiful dream
Photo credit: Mike Kepka

4. If we’re lucky, we grow
AirBnBPhoto credit:

5. How can we keep them
happy & engaged
for the long run?

6. “ I’m just pushing this
small change to production ”
clickypixPhoto credit:

7. How happiness
looks like at
scale?

8. #FAIL
me, this morning
Photo credit: yiyinglu

9. “ Oh crap, it’s
not going to work…
Facebook’s
Open-space
Environment.
But that’s
not important.
Really.
Photo credit: Facebook

16. Or in a single shot
We’re beautiful snowflakes

17. Who am I?
VP Engineering
I write at http://lnbogen.com
I tweet @orenellenbogen

18. Side-projects to boost my own happiness
SoftwareLeadWeekly.com comLeadingSnowflakes.
The
Engineering
Manager
Handbook
Culture,
People &
Leadership
newsletter

19. I want to share my own
journey & insights
Read: you can steal some ideas to experiment with

20. Purpose
the reason we do stuff
Autonomy
own the way we do stuff
Mastery
do stuff well

21. photo credit bennylin0724
Not a
checklist
Think sliders

22. Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
P A M
Google
• Amazing mission statement
organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful
• Hard to iterate fast
• Incredible technology
MapReduce, Google FS etc.

23. Facebook
• Awesome mission statement
make the world more open and connected
• Fast iterations, small teams
• Great technology (+ leftovers)
PHP – I’m looking at you!
Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
P A M

24. [Gambling Co.]
• Some lame mission statement
make more money than the church
• Fast iterations, small teams
• Great technology, at huge scale!
Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
P A M

25. What are you
trying to
optimize for?

26. Great Culture == Great Working Environment
ASSUMING THEY FIT
(your engineers)

27. GitHub’s “No Managers” mantra
Explicitly hire for:
People who can
prioritize &
get things done
on their own
They focus on autonomy
P A M

28. Purpose, Autonomy, Mastery –
Be amazing at least in one of them
Then:
Hire people who will shine
because of it

29. Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
Let’s talk about

30. Purpose is not only
about your vision,
it is also about
your attitude.

31. The
pessimistic
organization

32. Changing code -> …
-> something breaks
-> lack of trust
-> slower cycle (process++)
-> new department of [trust issue]
-> still breaks
…
-> death (of happiness)

33. The
optimistic
organization

34. Sponsored by:
Continuous
Deployment
“completely changed my life” – everyone, everywhere.

35. Changing code -> …
-> something breaks
-> quick release + retrospect
-> automate/test stuff
-> still breaks
-> quick release + retrospect
-> automate/test stuff
-> …

36. Same assumptions,
different coping
mechanism.
Different attitude.

37. Organization DNA?
Learning versus avoiding
Alignment versus departments
Ownership versus blame
At scale, you cannot afford to kill
your DNA – this attitude you had
when you started.

38. Attitude
builds
momentum

39. http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-hubspot-culture-code-creating-a-company-we-love http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
HubSpot Netflix

40. Purpose has to
be distributed among
teams to truly benefit
from experimentation

41. “ hmm…
basically, we’re building
the mobile version of
our successful web app. ”
– an engineer open for job offers

42. “ Google’s mission is to organize the
world’s information and make it
universally accessible and useful.
WTF?
a frickin’
self-driving car

43. When you're lacking
purpose at work, every
small annoyance scales
out of proportion.

44. Focus on
building a team.
Start on their 1st day.

45. One small tradition…
The last person to join
the company is responsible
to create a “starter kit”
for the next one to join

46. Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
Let’s talk about

47. Define your expectations.
Tell what, not how.
* BE EXPLICIT *

48. “Page to render under 100ms”
“RoR is slow, use Java!”

49. “Stay communicative, even if
things are going as expected”
“Send me a daily email with
your progress on your tasks”

50. Luc’s Blueprint (of values)
Luc Levesque
“I’ve always wished I had a ‘blueprint’ of how my boss works”
VP SEO at TripAdvisor

51. Luc’s Blueprint (of values)
Get the
template
here

52. Purpose
Autonomy
Mastery
(5 concepts you can try)
Let’s talk about

53. Google’s “Code Labs”
Onboarding process for Google’s building blocks

54. Amazon’s “Bar Raisers”
Scaling your DNA

55. Medium’s Jank ‘n’ Drank
Scheduling time for non-urgent tasks
https://medium.com/life-at-obvious/3231f644a8b1

56. “ One day I will work for a company
that does something like this. ”
Mission accomplished!

57. Help building a
personal brand
for your teammates
Fact: awesome attracts more awesome

58. Everything.Me’s
re:dash
Arik
Fraimovich
https://github.com/EverythingMe/redash

59. 1. Build stuff
2. Tell people
3. Don’t stop at #1

60. Have a growth plan ready
Junior Engineers
Practice, practice, practice
Experienced Engineers
Practice, lead, build trust
Veteran Engineers
Become an expert or pivot (+mentor as a Bar Raiser)

61. What’s next?!

62. A startup is
not a smaller
version of a
large company.
Steve Blank:

63. A large company is
not a degenerated
version of a startup

64. photo credit bennylin0724
1.Pick your sliders
2.Hire accordingly
3.Try stuff
4.Tell people
Continuous
Experimentation ™

65. THANK YOU
WE’RE HIRING!
@orenellenbogen
Come get one!