In Praise of "Normal" Engineers (LDX3)

In Praise of “Normal Engineers” “Build Boring Engineering Orgs” h/t
Luca Rossi of refactoring.fm for commissioning the article that inspired this talk

3 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. I’ve
gotten to work with some *incredible* world-class engineers over my career and with other engineers who went on to become world-class engineers, years later

4 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. The
curious durability of the (rather ridiculous) “10x engineer” meme

5 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Excellence
is not generic, it is highly specific. Microprocessors, IoT, database internals, web services, user experience, mobile apps, embedded systems, cryptography, animation, training models for generative AI, machine learning… Golang, python, COBOL, lisp, perl, React, brainfuck, ruby, rails, java, jruby, F#, C, C++, C#, javascript, typescript? What version, which frameworks, which libraries, what data models? What adjacent skills, market segments, or other subject matter expertise… design, security, compliance, data visualization, marketing, sales, pre-sales, post-sales, finance, banking…? What stage of maturity? What scale of usage? Shrinkwrapped software? The Mars Rover? Startup, scale-up, Fortune 500, international finance? 5 engineers, 5000 engineers, 50,000 engineers? Open source, closed source? Consulting? Remote, in-office, hybrid? ✨ ✨ ✨

6 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. If
you’ve ever met anyone who self-identifies as a “10x engineer”... they were probably an asshole.

7 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Individual
engineers don’t own software, engineering teams own software.

8 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. (actually,
we do have a term for individual engineers who own services or surface areas…)

9 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. When
people talk about world class engineering orgs, they tend to obsess over levels and pedigrees and reputations. This is exactly backwards.

best engineering orgs are the ones where normal engineers can do great work. Where you don’t have to be highly pedigreed or have decades of experience in order to be productive.

11 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. A
truly great engineering org is one where normal, workaday software engineers can consistently move fast, ship code, respond to users, understand the systems they’ve built, and move the business forward, a little bit more, every single day. This demands a lot more from your managers, directors and even staff+ engineers.

12 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. If
you already have world-class engineers in your org, good for you! Your role as a leader is to leverage their brilliance for the good of your customers and your other engineers, without coming to depend on their brilliance. After all, these people don’t belong to you. They may walk out the door at any moment, and that has to be okay. Tech companies obsess over ﬁnding, hiring and keeping world class engineers. But they over-index on ﬁnding these people AFTER they’ve already developed into world class engineers. They overlook the majority of the talent out there. Talent may be evenly distributed, but opportunity is not.

13 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. It
is a massive competitive advantage if you can draw from a broader talent pool So many companies out there bragging about how they hire the top 10% (or top .1%!!!) of talent. If that’s your strategy, I hope you’re prepared to offer them something in the top 10% (or .1%!) of salary bands.

14 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Let’s
talk about “normal” for a moment. It can be humbling to think of ourselves as normal people, but most of us are in fact pretty normal people, with many years of highly specialized experience. “Normal” encompasses a vast spectrum of neurodiversity and neurospiciness. Being weird is normal too. 🥰 We are ALL more normal than we are not. 💜

15 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Nobody
is born a great software engineer; great engineers are forged over years and years of practice.

16 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. How
do you turn normal engineers into world class engineering teams?

17 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. How
do you turn normal engineers into world class engineering teams? How do you craft the kind of systems that consistently turn normal engineers and engineering teams into world class results? Now we’re getting somewhere….

only measure of productivity that matters is business impact. Software engineering is about solving business problems using technology, not writing tons of code.

number one productivity question is: Are you working on the right thing? Is everyone? In other words:

20 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. You
can’t wall teams off from the “why”. Any manager who sees their role as that of “shit umbrella” is a liability. Engineers are the innovation engine of your company, not task-takers or ticket monkeys. Invest in org transparency, hard conversations, saying no (and hearing no)

21 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Don’t
hire the “best” people. Hire the right people. Hire for their strengths, not their lack of weaknesses. Know your business, craft a talent strategy to match.

22 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. What
does excellence mean for your org? (Keep that list as short as possible) 1. How diﬃcult, scarce, and/or hard to learn are the technical skills you need in this role? (Be honest) 2. How much support or training are you equipped to give them? 3. How long a time horizon are you planning out? 4. What’s your risk tolerance?

23 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. You
can’t be all things to all people; don’t try. You can’t cargo cult excellence, any more than you can cargo cult another company’s values or culture. If you can think of several GREAT contributors, who you would wholeheartedly refer to other companies you respect, but you wouldn’t try to hire yourself… that’s a sign you’re doing it right.

24 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. Build
sociotechnical systems for software delivery with ✨normal people✨ in mind When your systems are designed to be used by normal engineers, all that excess brilliance and energy can get poured into the product itself, instead of wasting it on navigating the system. How do we do that?

sociotechnical systems for software delivery with ✨normal people✨ in mind 1. Keep the deploy interval short and sweet 2. Make it easy to do the right thing, hard to do the wrong thing. The fastest way to ship a single line of code should also be the easiest. 3. Every engineer should be able to deploy and (roll back) their code 4. Invest in observability and sense-making tools. 5. Invest in internal tooling and enablement. Only prod is prod. Technical: ✨ ✨ ✨

sociotechnical systems for software delivery with ✨normal people✨ in mind 6. Build an inclusive culture. People do their best work when they feel a sense of belonging. 7. Instill a growth mindset into your culture. Acknowledge your mistakes publicly, and learn from them. 8. Diverse teams are resilient teams 9. Assemble engineering teams from a range of levels Social: ✨ ✨ ✨

work you put into making your systems resilient, discoverable, and humane will be used over and over.

28 © 2025 Hound Technology, Inc. All rights reserved. I
am NOT saying that excellence doesn’t matter, or that you should manage to the “lowest common denominator,” or that you should not have high standards, All of this is done in service of excellence. or not manage underperformers out.

am NOT saying that excellence doesn’t matter, or that you should manage to the “lowest common denominator,” or that you should not have high standards, All of this is done in service of excellence. or not manage underperformers out.

am saying that your org is a ✨system✨ Who will people become in the time they spend on your team?

am saying that talent is as common as dirt; the potential for excellence is everywhere. Be an org that values continuous learning and development, curiosity and experimentation, and invests in people.

In Praise of "Normal" Engineers (LDX3)

In Praise of "Normal" Engineers (LDX3)

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