engineering your culture / oren ellenbogen
Post on 19-Jan-2017
48 Views
Preview:
TRANSCRIPT
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.
THE PROBLEM?
All companies start as a beautiful dream
Photocredit:MikeKepka
If we’re lucky, we grow
AirBnBPhotocredit:
How can we keep them happy & engaged
for the long run?
“ I’m just pushing this small change to production ”
clickypixPhotocredit:
How happiness looks like at
scale?
#FAIL me, this morning
Photocredit:yiyinglu
“ Oh crap, it’s not going to work…
Facebook’s Open-spaceEnvironment.
But that’s not important.
Really.
Photocredit:Facebook
Or in a single shot We’re beautiful snowflakes
Who am I?
VP Engineering
I write at http://lnbogen.com
I tweet @orenellenbogen
Side-projects to boost my own happiness
SoftwareLeadWeekly.com comLeadingSnowflakes.
TheEngineeringManagerHandbook
Culture,People & Leadershipnewsletter
I want to share my own journey & insights
Read: you can steal some ideas to experiment with
Purposethe reason we do stuff
Autonomyown the way we do stuff
Masterydo stuff well
photocreditbennylin0724
Not achecklist
Think sliders
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 technologyMapReduce, Google FS etc.
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
[Gambling Co.]
• Some lame mission statementmake more money than the church
• Fast iterations, small teams
• Great technology, at huge scale!
Purpose
Autonomy Mastery
P A M
What are you trying to
optimize for?
Great Culture == Great Working Environment
ASSUMING THEY FIT (your engineers)
GitHub’s “No Managers” mantra
Explicitly hire for: People who canprioritize &get things doneon their own
They focus on autonomy
P A M
Purpose, Autonomy, Mastery –Be amazing at least in one of them
Then:Hire people who will shine because of it
PurposeAutonomyMastery
Let’s talk about
Purpose is not only about your vision,it is also about your attitude.
The pessimistic organization
Changing code -> …-> something breaks -> lack of trust-> slower cycle (process++)-> new department of [trust issue] -> still breaks…-> death (of happiness)
The optimistic organization
Sponsored by:
ContinuousDeployment “completely changed my life” – everyone, everywhere.
Changing code -> …-> something breaks -> quick release + retrospect-> automate/test stuff-> still breaks-> quick release + retrospect-> automate/test stuff-> …
Same assumptions,different copingmechanism.
Different attitude.
Organization DNA?
Learning versus avoidingAlignment versus departmentsOwnership versus blame
At scale, you cannot afford to killyour DNA – this attitude you hadwhen you started.
Attitude builds
momentum
http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-hubspot-culture-code-creating-a-company-we-love http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
HubSpot Netflix
Purpose has to be distributed amongteams to truly benefit from experimentation
“ hmm…basically, we’re building the mobile version of our successful web app. ”– an engineer open for job offers
“ Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.
WTF?
a frickin’ self-driving car
When you're lacking purpose at work, every small annoyance scales out of proportion.
Focus onbuilding a team.
Start on their 1st day.
One small tradition…
The last person to join the company is responsible to create a “starter kit” for the next one to join
Purpose
AutonomyMastery
Let’s talk about
Define your expectations. Tell what, not how.
* BE EXPLICIT *
“Page to render under 100ms”
“RoR is slow, use Java!”
“Stay communicative, even if things are going as expected”
“Send me a daily email with your progress on your tasks”
Luc’s Blueprint (of values)
Luc Levesque
“I’ve always wished I had a ‘blueprint’ of how my boss works”
VP SEO at TripAdvisor
Luc’s Blueprint (of values)
Get the templatehere
Purpose Autonomy
Mastery(5 concepts you can try)
Let’s talk about
Google’s “Code Labs” Onboarding process for Google’s building blocks
Amazon’s “Bar Raisers”Scaling your DNA
Medium’s Jank ‘n’ Drank
Scheduling time for non-urgent tasks
https://medium.com/life-at-obvious/3231f644a8b1
“ One day I will work for a company that does something like this. ”
Mission accomplished!
Help building a personal brandfor your teammates
Fact: awesome attracts more awesome
Everything.Me’sre:dash
ArikFraimovich
https://github.com/EverythingMe/redash
1. Build stuff2. Tell people3. Don’t stop at #1
Have a growth plan ready
Junior Engineers Practice, practice, practice
Experienced Engineers Practice, lead, build trust
Veteran EngineersBecome an expert or pivot (+mentor as a Bar Raiser)
What’s next?!
A startup is not a smaller version of a large company.
Steve Blank:
A large company is not a degenerated version of a startup
photocreditbennylin0724
1.Pick your sliders 2.Hire accordingly3.Try stuff4.Tell people
ContinuousExperimentation ™
THANK YOU
WE’RE HIRING!
@orenellenbogen
Come get one!
top related