Engineering your culture / Oren Ellenbogen

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!