Shaping Engineering Culture in a Chaotic Environment

If you've worked for a rapidly growing tech startup, you know that in the blink of an eye your organization may go from 300 to 2000 people. Hiring craze, you can't keep track of the organizational chart anymore and your productivity takes a huge hit because there are so many conflicts.

This talk is about shaping an engineering culture and scaling it to your organizatio even when everything seems to be turned into chaos. Of course there are no single right answers to everything, but here are some valuable lessons learned out these "growing pains".

Transcript

1. Shaping Engineering Culture
   In A Chaotic Environment
   @tuttiq
   

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2. Hi there!
   ● Tutti (@tuttiq)
   ● From ⇒ ⇒
   ● Major in Computer Engineering
   ● Software Engineer for ~8 years
   ● Manager @ Mercari, Director of
   Women Who Code Tokyo
   ● Engineering Office Team
   ● Diversity & Inclusion +
   Learning & Development
   

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3. Engineering Office?
   Mission: The best employee experience for all engineers
   Activities: Organizational development, engagement, DevRel
   and people growth across the Engineering division
   E.g.:
   ● Hiring and onboarding experience for engineers
   ● Learning opportunities, engaging work environment
   ● Culture and Processes
   ● External relations with Dev community
   

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4. The Journey
   1 BOLD CHALLENGE
   2 HOW TO DEFINE CULTURE?
   3 CHANGE MANAGEMENT
   4 LESSONS LEARNED
   

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5. Bold Challenge What do you mean by
   "Chaotic Environment"?
   

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6. Rapid growth
   Mercari's headcount
   in 4 years
   

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7. Diversity taken to the next level
   Over
   40 Countries
   People from almost all regions
   of the world.
   

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8. Diversity taken to the next level
   ● 40 different nationalities mostly on the Engineering
   Division
   ● Japan, and Eastern Asia in general, have some of the most
   traditional and homogeneous cultures
   ● People from almost all regions of the world: all americas,
   west, east and north europe, middle east, africa, south,
   southeast, west and east asia, oceania, etc
   ● No such thing as "everyone is kinda used to western
   culture" like I've seen in other places
   

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9. Language barrier
   ● Only about 20% of Japanese
   people can speak
   conversational English
   ● Less than 10% can speak with
   business-level fluency
   ● Majority of the foreigners
   in Japan also speak English
   as a second language
   

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10. Rapid growth
    Mercari's headcount
    in 4 years
    

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11. Mercari
    organization
    in 4 years
    Organization development
    

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12. Organization Development
    

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13. How do you define
    culture in a large
    and diverse
    organization?
    Spoiler alert: it's not by
    sticking your values on
    your cool office walls.
    

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14. How do you shape culture in a large and diverse organization?
    ● How do we resolve
    disagreements?
    ● What should be considered
    a priority?
    ● How to evaluate engineers
    and their contributions?
    

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15. Engineering Competencies: An Open Discussion
    "What competencies make good engineers?"
    ● Led by the CTO, fed by everyone
    ● Open discussion on Slack
    ● Tons of research and references
    ● Open document that anyone could add
    comments
    ● Town Hall discussions
    

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16. Feedback loop of hell -- But it's worth it.
    

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17. One step back: from Competencies to Principles
    Hiring Onboarding & Training Setting goals
    Career ladder (core skills + technical skills)
    Evaluate / Promote
    Engineering Principles
    

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18. One step back: from Competencies to Principles
    CTO Vision +
    Town Hall discussions
    Interviews with EMs
    and Tech Leads
    Mercari Company
    Values & Culture
    Diverse committee with
    local & global experience
    Mercari Engineering
    Principles
    9 items that can be
    understood and applied
    to any member of the
    engineering division,
    from new grad to VP
    Research on other
    tech companies
    

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19. Mercari Engineering Principles
    Go Bold
    Seek Continuous
    Improvement
    Go Bold, Fail Fast &
    Learn Early
    Take Action &
    Responsibility
    All For One
    Focus On The
    Customer
    Strive For
    Alignment
    Foster Trust &
    Inclusion
    Be A Pro
    Deliver With High
    Quality
    Share To Empower
    Be Strategic
    & Efficient
    

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20. Mercari Engineering Ladder (more like a matrix)
    

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21. Make sure the message is clear
    We know every engineer is different from another and we
    encourage and celebrate diversity.
    We will not expect individuals of the same level to have exactly the same
    progress on the ladder. We know that people will grow in a different pace
    in different competencies.
    This diversity of strengths and weaknesses is good because
    engineers can complement one another with different skill sets.
    

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22. メルカリはそれぞれのエンジニアの個性や違いを認識し
    ダイバーシティを尊重し推し進めてきました。
    同じレベルにいるエンジニアが必ずし同じラダーのプログレスを進むことを想定して
    いません。個人個人で成長スピードや得意分野が違うことも認識しています。
    それぞれの強みや弱みにも多様性があるからこそ、エンジニア同士でそれぞれを
    補うことができ、良い結果につながります
    Make sure the message is clear: in 2 languages!!
    

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23. Make sure to explain the full picture
    Hiring Onboarding & Training Setting goals
    Career ladder (core skills + technical skills)
    Evaluate / Promote
    Engineering Principles
    

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24. Our Values
    Whatever we thought sounded cool for PR
    and the employees want to hear
    

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25. Principles "on the wall"
    Changing your words, your careers site and your employee
    manual is not enough.
    You will only begin to change culture if you live and
    breath your values everyday through your ACTIONS:
    ● Hire according to your principles
    ● Reward/praise (or give feedback to shift direction)
    ● Evaluate and promote the right behaviors/competencies
    

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26. Change
    Management Yes, it takes forever.
    Applying to your processes
    and systems
    

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27. A clear proposal to solve a clear problem
    ● An evidence-based and specific
    problem statement
    ● An aligned vision of the ideal
    future (for the specific thing you
    are trying to change)
    ● A clear proposal of your idea
    to solve the problem
    ● A high-level plan to implement
    your proposal
    

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28. Explain very clearly the full picture
    Hiring Onboarding & Training Setting goals
    Evaluate / Promote
    Engineering Principles
    1st step
    Career ladder (core skills + technical skills)
    

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29. How everything connects
    Hiring Onboarding & Training Setting goals
    Evaluate / Promote
    Engineering Principles
    2nd step
    Career ladder (core skills + technical skills)
    

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30. Step by step
    Hiring Onboarding & Training Setting goals
    Career ladder (core skills + technical skills)
    Evaluate / Promote
    Engineering Principles
    3rd step
    

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31. Create a framework to apply it to your cycle
    Level
    expectations
    Level
    expectations
    Level
    expectations
    SWE 1 SWE 2 SWE 3
    Goals
    Evaluation
    Promotion
    Goals
    Evaluation
    Promotion
    Management
    path
    Specialist
    path
    

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32. Training your managers
    ● Lots and lots of sessions,
    Q&As, open doors
    ● Hands-on workshops
    ● Bring the discussion to
    hiring managers
    

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33. Define a guideline / best-practices
    ● Start of the quarter: use it to set goals
    ● Middle of the quarter: use it to check progress
    ● End of the quarter: use it to retrospect
    Using the career ladder to reflect and discuss
    often, it will become a tool for better
    self-assessment, member review and feedback
    
    ✅
    
    ⏳
    

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34. Incorporate into the systems: Onboarding
    As soon as possible, add it
    to your onboarding process!
    ● Explanation of the
    principles, where to find
    the full matrix, how to
    use it on a regular basis
    ● New members and
    especially new managers
    

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35. Incorporate into the systems: Evaluation
    ● Part of the cycle (goals,
    1:1s, continuous feedback)
    ● Shape your evaluation
    questions (Self-assessment, peer
    reviews, manager review)
    ● Embed it into your system
    (literally!)
    

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36. Incorporate into the systems: Hiring
    ● Shape the hiring questions
    ● People involved in the hiring
    process should know how to
    assess candidates based on it
    ● Promotes consistency on the
    new member level placement
    

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37. More challenges ahead
    ● Refining expectations and
    implementation on all
    fronts
    ● Achieve full understanding
    across teams
    ● Promotion guidelines based
    on ladder progress
    ● Fluid/hybrid career paths,
    lateral change of roles
    ALWAYS
    

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38. Lessons
    Learned Oh, if only we knew...
    

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39. Lessons Learned (the hard way)
    ● Shorter experiment+learn cycle (leaner/agile)
    ● More diversity of roles, not only managers
    ● Better stakeholder mana-
    gement, no loose ends
    ● ALWAYS overestimate
    the effort
    

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40. Lessons Learned (the good way)
    ● Incremental implementation
    (step by step)
    ● Open and collaborative process
    ● Have all engineering functions
    represented
    ● 100% language inclusiveness is
    REALLY HARD, but possible
    

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41. Keep evolving!
    If your first version is great, you're probably
    late to release it
    If you are not unsatisfied with your work from 1
    year ago, it means you're not growing
    And remember, change management takes time,
    patience and practice
    

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42. Thank you!
    Questions?
    Tutti Quintella
    https://tuttiq.me
    @tuttiq
    About Mercari Group: https://about.mercari.com
    Mercari JP: https://mercari.jp | Mercari US: https://mercari.com
    Free illustrations on this presentation by Freepik
    

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