Download as PDF, PPTX
!["I figured Google would be better [than
AltaVista] because I knew more of the people
there, and they seemed like they were more
technically savvy."
-- Jeff Dean, Google Fellow, in Steven Levy's In the Plex](https://image.slidesharecdn.com/eng-culture-export-131008013606-phpapp01/75/What-Makes-a-Great-Engineering-Culture-33-2048.jpg)
Uploaded byEdmond Lau
What Makes a Great Engineering Culture?
The document outlines ten key elements that contribute to a great engineering culture, emphasizing the importance of iteration speed, high code quality, automation, and shared ownership, among others. It incorporates insights from experienced engineers and successful companies, advocating for environments that foster experimentation and continuous improvement. Additionally, it highlights the need for a respectful workplace and prioritizing hiring to attract talented individuals.
More Related Content
![Big Data [sorry] & Data Science: What Does a Data Scientist Do?](https://cdn.slidesharecdn.com/ss_thumbnails/dslatcloudmsevent20130125-130126065651-phpapp01-thumbnail.jpg?width=640&height=640&fit=bounds)
Similar to What Makes a Great Engineering Culture?
What Makes a Great Engineering Culture?
- 1. What makes agreat engineering culture? Edmond Lau @edmondlau www.theeffectiveengineer.com
- 2. About me - Formerengineering lead of user growth at Quora - Led teams at Ooyala and worked on Google search - Writing a book on how to be an effective software engineer
- 3. Growing the teamat Quora - Helped grow company from 12 to almost 70 - Started mentoring & onboarding programs for new engineers - Developed interview guidelines and training sessions
- 4. Interviewed 500+ people -Many engineers from strong engineering companies - Google, Facebook, Palantir, Amazon, Dropbox, Apple, etc.
- 5. “A good cultureattracts and keeps the kind of people that helps your company become successful.” -- Andy Parkinson, greatcompanies.io
- 6. What is onething you liked and one thing you disliked about the engineering culture at X?
- 7. 10 elements ofa great engineering culture
- 8. 01 Optimize foriteration speed
- 9. Continuous Deployment Quora releasedcode 40-50 times a day.
- 10. Developer productivity tools -Continuous deployment - Continuous integration testing - Faster compile and build times - Incremental reloads for web servers
- 11. Avoid organizational bottlenecks -Google's weekly search UI review - Empower team leads to make decisions - Define clear channels for quick feedback
- 12. "Commit, explode, recover." -- Bill Walsh, former 49ers coach Image Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/nostri-imago/4439637126/
- 13. 02 Develop highcode quality through code reviews
- 14. Higher code qualitylets you iterate faster - easier to reason about code - quicker to modify - less susceptible to bugs
- 15. Fix broken windows Modellingis important Image Credit: Broken Window, elizjoy
- 16. 03 Push relentlesslytoward automation
- 17. Automation is extremelyhigh-leverage - Invest in automated testing. - Automatically handle failures, restart services. - Automatically scale up services at peak traffic.
- 18. "Optimize for minimal operationalburden." -- Mike Krieger Instagram co-founder Grew Instagram to over 40M users with 13-person team
- 19. 04 Build theright software abstractions
- 20. "Pick the rightones, and programming will flow naturally from design... Pick the wrong ones, and ... even the simplest of changes will be hard to make." -- MIT Professor Daniel Jackson, Software Abstractions
- 21. Compounding benefits ofabstractions Google - MapReduce, Bigtable, Protocol Buffers Facebook - Thrift, Hive Quora - Webnode, Livenode
- 22. 05 Build anopen and respectful work environment
- 23. “Writing software is ateam sport.” -- Brian Fitzpatrick and Ben Collins-Sussman, Team Geek
- 24. 06 Build sharedownership of code
- 25. Keep the busfactor > 1 Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons ICCE Illinois School Bus
- 26. 07 Embrace failureand accountability
- 27. annual award “tothe individual who breaks flickr.com in the most spectacular way” Image Credit: Dylan Couper, dvinfo.net
- 28. 08 Allot 20%time
- 29. Promote experimentation - Google- 20% time - Ooyala - hackathons - Quora - offroad weeks - Facebook, Atlassian, Dropbox Image Credit: Tempest, http://tempest.deviantart.com/
- 30. 09 Build aculture of continuous improvement
- 31. Grow reusable knowledge -Invest in onboarding and mentoring - Encourage tech talks and document design discussions - Write codelabs
- 32. 10 Make hiringa priority
- 33. "I figured Googlewould be better [than AltaVista] because I knew more of the people there, and they seemed like they were more technically savvy." -- Jeff Dean, Google Fellow, in Steven Levy's In the Plex
- 34. Build a greatengineering culture 1 Iteration speed 2 Code quality 3 Automation 4 Abstraction 5 Respect 6 Shared ownership 7 Accountability 8 20% Time 9 Learning 10 Hiring
- 35. Q &A - [email protected] -@edmondlau - My upcoming book: www.theeffectiveengineer.com/book