A Positive Culture
In my last post I began discussing the idea of purposefully building a strong, positive engineering culture. I pointed out many roadblocks–improving a culture is not easy. So why bother?
Why Bother?
Investing time and effort into creating and sustaining a great engineering culture is not just a “nice-to-have” – it’s essential for the success of your team and company. Here are a few hallmarks of a great culture, and why building it out is worth the effort:
- Engaged and Motivated People Do Their Best Work When people are genuinely engaged and motivated, they produce higher-quality work. Engineers who feel valued and inspired are more likely to go the extra mile, which ultimately leads to better products and faster delivery.
- Positive Collaboration Drives Better Ideas In a great culture, collaboration isn’t just encouraged—it’s a natural part of how things are done. The best ideas emerge when teams are free to share perspectives, experiment, and challenge one another.
- True Ownership Drives Motivation Giving engineers ownership over their work is one of the most powerful motivators. When people have control over the problems they solve and the solutions they implement, they feel a stronger sense of responsibility and pride in their work. This ownership creates an environment where engineers are not just completing tasks—they are actively shaping the direction of their projects.
- Measure Twice, Cut Once A great engineering culture helps ensure that the team does the right things early in the process, reducing costly mistakes and rework later on. This is the concept of “measure twice, cut once”—making thoughtful, well-informed decisions up front saves time and effort down the road. In a culture where thoughtful decision-making is prioritized, engineers are empowered to ask the right questions, consider the broader picture, and make decisions that align with the company’s long-term goals.
- Good Engineers Want to Be Part of a Positive Culture Engineers are highly sought-after, and a positive culture can be a significant differentiator in hiring and retaining top talent. The best engineers don’t just look for interesting problems to solve—they also want to work in an environment where they feel valued, trusted, and supported. When your company fosters a great culture, you create a compelling reason for talented engineers to join your team.
- You Want to Manage Happy People—Trust Me Leading a team of engaged, happy engineers is a manager’s dream. When people enjoy their work and feel fulfilled, they are more likely to take initiative, have fewer conflicts, and bring a positive energy to the team that can be infectious. Managing a happy team means less time spent on micromanaging or putting out fires and more time spent on building relationships, developing strategy, and achieving company goals.
Investing in a strong engineering culture isn’t just about improving workplace happiness—it’s about creating a more effective, productive, and innovative team. It’s a long-term investment that pays dividends by attracting top talent, improving the quality of work, and fostering an environment where everyone can do their best work. Ultimately, a great culture is not just good for the people who work in it, but good for the company as a whole.
Ignored at the Elevator
A story I often share happened a few years ago when I was heading out to grab lunch and found myself waiting for the elevator. When the doors opened, three engineers from my team stepped out, each with their lunch in hand. They didn’t stop to greet me or chat, but I wasn’t bothered by it. Why? Because they were completely absorbed in discussing their project. They were so immersed in their work that even while grabbing lunch, they couldn’t break their focus.
I hadn’t instructed them to think about work during lunch, but I had helped foster a culture where their work was engaging, meaningful, and rewarding. They were naturally giving their best effort because they cared deeply about what they were doing. As you might imagine, that project turned out to be a great success.
Establish Your Engineering Culture
Start Now
When should you begin building a positive engineering culture? The answer is simple: as soon as possible. Don’t wait for your company to scale, go public, or undergo a merger before you start thinking about culture. The sooner you establish clear expectations for how your teams should perform, the better positioned you’ll be for long-term success. Set the foundation early so that your teams are already in a good place as the company grows.
However, it’s important to recognize that creating a positive culture is not a one-time task—it’s an ongoing effort. A great culture today might not be enough in the future, so you need to continuously invest in maintaining and refining it. Leadership and coaching will be essential components in keeping the culture alive and relevant. The culture needs to evolve and adapt over time, just as the needs of your team and business will.
Start Simple, Grow Over Time
To be clear: you don’t need to implement complex processes on day one. The early days of your company or team may require only the most basic practices. Your processes and best practices should reflect the needs and capabilities of the team. In smaller teams or early-stage startups, these processes will likely be looser and more flexible. As the team grows, you’ll naturally refine and build upon them to meet new challenges and accommodate more people. This adaptability is a hallmark of a healthy culture.
Once your initial processes are in place, focus on scaling the team. New employees will tend to adopt the culture that already exists, whether positive or negative. If you lay the right foundation early, your culture will act as a magnet for the talent you need to grow successfully.
Challenges in Establishing a Strong Culture
One of the biggest challenges when building a culture is the temptation to simply dictate the processes and procedures you want to see implemented. While this may seem like an efficient way to establish order, it’s actually a false economy. Relying on top-down mandates can only work for so long—and it quickly falls apart as your team grows. You’ll find yourself spending all your time telling people what to do in each new situation, and more importantly, you’ll lose the initiative of your people.
The better approach is to gain your team’s buy-in. By involving them in shaping the culture and helping them understand why certain processes are valuable, you turn those processes into shared values rather than just directives. This deep understanding gives the team the autonomy to apply the processes effectively when faced with challenges and empowers them to improve the culture over time as it evolves. Their buy-in and ownership are key to sustaining the culture long-term. If the process is forced, even with the best intentions, it will likely fall flat because people don’t feel invested in it.
Leading Through Resistance
Another challenge you may face as a leader is when you have great ideas, but some of your team resists them. This can be disheartening, especially when you’re trying to create a culture of innovation and improvement. Change is hard, and even if the changes you’re proposing are for the team’s benefit, people may feel uncertain or threatened by them. As a manager, it’s your job to guide the team through this discomfort and help them see the long-term benefits.
Building consensus is key. Rather than imposing your vision, focus on communicating clearly, involving team members in the decision-making process, and addressing their concerns. This helps them feel more secure in the change and more willing to embrace it. By cultivating a culture of trust, transparency, and open dialogue, you increase the chances of gaining their support. The process might take time, but it will create a much stronger, more sustainable culture in the long run.
Changing a Larger Organization’s Culture
If you’re part of a larger organization with a poor existing culture, improving the situation becomes even more challenging. The deeper the dysfunction, the harder it can be to create real change. In such cases, it’s crucial to recruit champions within the organization—people who can help gather input from others, evangelize the ideas you’re promoting, and guide their colleagues through the change process. These champions will act as catalysts, helping to spread the message and lead by example.
Start small by identifying key wins—projects or changes that can provide clear, visible success without overwhelming the organization. Incremental wins are powerful because they build momentum and demonstrate that cultural change is not only possible but also beneficial. Think of it like changing one wheel at a time rather than attempting to replace all four while driving down the freeway.
You will also need to sell your ideas, both to leadership and to the broader team. Cultivating buy-in from various stakeholders is essential for driving cultural change, and this requires strong communication, empathy, and persistence. Once you’ve made some initial progress, coach your teams on how to implement the changes and integrate them into their daily work. In time, these small wins will accumulate, and the culture will begin to shift, one step at a time.
Measure It!
To take all this to the next level, determine ways to measure the work as your teams propose and implement new practices and processes. Think about the metrics that can be used to assess their impact.
For example:
- How do changes to your automated testing processes impact bug rates?
- Do updates to your build processes correlate with faster releases or better release success rates?
- How does your team assess team their interaction before and after introduction of new collaboration tools?
- Do changes in your hiring process lead to better candidates or more candidate acceptance?
The direct impact is that this will help you determine if the changes are useful, or should be improved. Insightful measurements may even suggest the ways in which you can make improvements, offering actionable guidance for continuous improvement.
When aligned with key performance indicators, these metrics become valuable tools for both teams and individuals in setting clear, data-driven goals. It’s harder to come up with meaningful metrics after the fact—such as during performance reviews. Integrating them into the change process is a more natural flow.
Some metrics may become part of your regular reporting to executives. Choose metrics that reflect progress on existing goals or against company values. Also useful are measurements that show how issues within a term are being addressed.
Finally, making measurement a consistent focus not only provides valuable insights but also helps refine your ability to develop and apply effective metrics over time.
Maintenance Mode
If you already have a strong and productive engineering culture that helps your team deliver high-quality work at a good pace, make changes carefully. But it’s important not to get too comfortable or complacent. Even the best cultures need ongoing attention and refinement. In this phase, focus on making incremental improvements—small, manageable changes that can be safely tested and incorporated when needed. No process or approach is perfect forever, and adaptability is key. If your team is performing at a high level, they should be able to contribute valuable suggestions for evolving the culture to meet new challenges.
A great culture cannot be forced or dictated. It’s unlikely you can create the level of influence and persuasion of a Steve Jobs-like “distortion field” to convince people that your vision is the only way. Instead, a successful culture evolves through collaboration with your team. Engage them in dialogue, seek their input, let them experiment with new ideas, address their concerns, and most importantly, gain their buy-in.
Maintaining a great culture requires continuous effort, but the payoff is substantial. If you’re a manager, having a team with a strong, positive culture is invaluable—it leads to empowered, self-organizing teams that are capable of driving innovation and success on their own. It’s worth investing in the ongoing work of nurturing and sustaining a strong engineering culture.