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Engineering your culture: How to keep your engineers happy

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

Oren Ellenbogen

February 23, 2014
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  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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