Recently, I had a very interesting conversation with the founder of a rapidly scaling growth phase startup. I was amazed to hear from him that “While building the product with exceptional speed over last couple of years, the culture was lost somewhere. The engineers are delivering work but now things are not as interesting at work for them as it used to be earlier. The edge is missing.”
Why do I find it so riveting?
This is a rare statement. Not all companies in this phase of growth find it to be important enough to build a good engineering culture or are even able to acknowledge that the culture is degrading. Mostly at the rapid scale growth phase, companies are mostly concerned with shipping out as many features ASAP and hence willingly or unwillingly end up losing their focus on building engineering solutions with best practices or innovation. I am not saying this is wrong. It might actually be needed in most cases. But realizing it early and having the intent to solve the problem is what piques my attention.
What is a good engineering culture?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question. But one thing is for sure – A good culture is not just providing world class and cool facilities to the engineers or free food or sleeping pods or massage coupons etc.
It is something which is more rooted in how the software systems are built;
– how creativity and innovation is promoted within the organization
– what is chosen between speed and quality when they are stacked against each other
– is there a freedom to stop and look back at the legacy/older systems to figure out the problems and fix them before they impact business?
Engineering in most organizations almost always operate in background without much limelight on them about what they do and how they do it. So the onus usually falls on the leaders to appreciate their engineering teams and create a foundation for a culture of appreciation and innovation. And if at some point in time it gets missed, then realize and work towards fixing it.