Engineering your culture: How to keep your engineers happy

We all know how difficult (and expensive!) it is to convince brilliant engineers to join our team. The real challenge starts on Day 1 – What can we do to keep them happy and engaged?

After all, "Bored people quit".

If you know you should do better but ran out of ideas how - come on down! We'll talk about how to make their 1st day at work memorable, how to help them build a personal brand, how to figure out and sell our unique strength as a company (GitHub-style), why we should bring them to investors' events and plenty more.

In this talk I'll share 8 tips you could apply to build happier engineering teams.

P.S. If you enjoyed these slides, you'll enjoy my book - leadingsnowflakes.com

Transcript

1. @
   “No  were harmed in the making of this talk”
   – said no one, ever. Until now.
   

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3. Photo credit: Mike Kepka
   

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4. AirBnB
   Photo credit:
   

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6. clickypix
   Photo credit:
   

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8. Photo credit: yiyinglu
   

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9. “
   Photo credit: Facebook
   

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16. We’re beautiful snowflakes
    

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17. Full-stack Engineer @ Commerce Sciences
    I write at Lnbogen.com
    I tweet @orenellenbogen
    You can call me bogen. It’s kinda short, like me.
    Pronounced: BOO-GEN
    

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18. SoftwareLeadWeekly.com LeadingSnowflakes.com
    

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19. SoftwareLeadWeekly.com
    - 14 months
    - 65 weeks in a row
    - 7 recommendations / week
    - 455 recommendations so far
    - 30-40 posts digested / week
    - 2,600 posts so far
    - 500-800 words / post (roughly)
    - 52-60 books
    The only logical conclusion then?
    

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22. photo credit bennylin0724
    

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23. • Amazing mission statement
    organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful
    • Hard to iterate fast (process heavy)
    • Incredible technology
    MapReduce, Google FS etc.
    

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24. • Awesome mission statement
    make the world more open and connected
    • Fast iterations, small teams
    • Great technology (+ leftovers)
    PHP – I’m looking at you!
    

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25. • Some lame mission statement
    make more money than the church
    • Fast iterations, small teams
    • Great technology, at huge scale!
    

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27. (your engineers)
    

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28. Explicitly hire for:
    People who can
    prioritize &
    get things done
    on their own
    They focus on autonomy
    

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33. Changing code -> …
    -> something breaks
    -> lack of trust
    -> slower cycle (process++)
    -> new department of [trust issue]
    -> still breaks
    …
    -> death (of happiness)
    

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36. Changing code -> …
    -> something breaks
    -> quick release + retrospect
    -> automate/test stuff
    -> still breaks
    -> quick release + retrospect
    -> automate/test stuff
    -> …
    

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40. http://www.slideshare.net/HubSpot/the-hubspot-culture-code-creating-a-company-we-love http://www.slideshare.net/reed2001/culture-1798664
    

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43. “ Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information
    and make it universally accessible and useful.
    WTF?
    

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46. The last person to join the
    company is responsible to
    create a “starter kit” for
    the next one to join
    

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51. VP SEO at TripAdvisor
    

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54. Onboarding process for Google’s building blocks
    

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55. Scaling your DNA
    

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56. Scheduling time for non-urgent tasks
    https://medium.com/life-at-obvious/3231f644a8b1
    

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57. “ One day I will work for a company
    that does something like this. ”
    

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59. https://github.com/EverythingMe/redash
    

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62. http://randsinrepose.com/archives/bored-people-quit/
    

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63. Source: http://www.targetprocess.com/blog/2013/12/fun-at-work.html
    Experience
    distribution
    should fit
    existing
    problems
    

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64. Junior Engineers
    Practice, practice, practice
    Experienced Engineers
    Practice, lead, build trust
    Veteran Engineers
    Become an expert or pivot (+mentor as a Bar Raiser)
    

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68. photo credit bennylin0724
    

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