Creating an Engineering Culture That Lasts: Lessons from a Former Typeform CTO
Culture is an elusive yet essential part of every and any organization. For software engineers, understanding culture can feel as complicated as debugging the most complex code. Pau Minoves, a former CTO at Typeform and a specialist in addressing and fixing engineering culture, sat down with us at a Fireside Chat at our monthly tech sessions at Norrsken House Barcelona to offer valuable insights into what engineering culture really is and how it can be shaped.
What is engineering culture?
The way Pau puts it is simple: “People will forget what you say, people will forget what you do, but they will remember how you made them feel. I think culture is this. In a company, after 10 years of working there, how you felt is culture.” Culture is emotional - not rational - and quite subjective. You might thrive in a certain culture, while your coworker might struggle, showing that there’s no universally good or bad culture.
Engineering culture is how engineers work together - focusing on technical excellence, problem-solving, and teamwork. It values continuous learning and improvement, using the best tools and technologies to achieve high-quality results and create a supportive environment where engineers thrive and projects succeed.
For Pau Minoves, engineering culture is “a cloud that everybody feels but cannot touch, stemming from everybody’s behaviors.” Basically it’s how everyone in the company perceives the behaviors there. So if you want to change culture, you need to change behavior. You might not be able to create culture out of thin air, but you can shape it intentionally and explicitly.
A strong culture is one where everyone is aligned, moving in the same direction with shared visions and goals. Leadership plays a crucial role in spreading culture. The tone is set by the worst behaviors that leadership allows. Building and maintaining this is an ongoing task in a company that is never truly finished.
Shaping a strong engineering culture
When it comes to shaping a strong engineering culture, size matters (lol). Here’s how it changes across different stages of a company’s growth:
Small startups: In a small startup, culture naturally radiates from the founders. Their behaviors set the default culture. They have direct influence, and to change the culture, they need to change their own behaviors.
Scaleups: As companies grow, the distance between roles increases, making communication key. Making sure that behaviors, visions, and missions are aligned requires a large amount of time and investment. A strong culture becomes a major part of the company’s identity, attracting and retaining employees who connect with that culture.
Effects of a weak engineering culture
If a company doesn't have a clear culture, especially as it grows, the sense of identity can fade away. A weak culture leaves employees without direction, leading to confusion, inefficiency, and possibly even imposter syndrome.
A weak engineering culture causes poor communication, less innovation, and leads to low-quality work. Misaligned objectives lead to poor coordination and a waste of effort. This results in low morale and high employee turnover, as talented engineers look for places that will value their contributions and give them a voice. Without opportunities for learning and autonomy, creativity suffers. It might even get to the point where employees don’t want to adopt new technologies or tools, and this hurts an organization’s chance to advance and grow.
Additionally, lack of recognition and poor work-life balance lead to burnout and reduced productivity and project success.
On the other hand, a strong culture empowers employees with autonomy, giving them a clear understanding of what’s important and the ‘rules of the game’ within the organization. It helps them learn the best practices and supports them to grow.
What makes a strong culture?
There are quite a few factors that add to a solid culture:
Influence of top dogs: The culture is heavily impacted by leadership, especially the leading managers. Their ability to transmit the company’s culture transparently is extremely important. Upper management has to explain its importance and what values it stands for.
Shaping behaviors with a plan: To set up a new culture, start by analyzing the current one. Figure out what works and focus on behaviors—what’s allowed, penalized, and rewarded. Shaping an engineering culture involves a lot of trial and error: try different approaches, evaluate results, and adjust as you go.
This is where arol.dev can help. We provide services to tech teams like onboarding to help you create a strong culture right from the employee's first day. We make the process of new member integration seamless and efficient to the highest standards of the industry, with tailored soft and hard skill set up.
Onboarding can help with:
Improved time-to-produce
Better team and member fit
Output quality and uniformity improvement
Team loyalty increase in up to 70%
Arol.dev also focuses on improving engineering leadership in companies. This allows your company to make sure engineers who will be promoted are prepared to be managers, instead of being simply senior programmers.
Keeping track of culture (and nurturing it)
To keep a strong culture in engineering teams, track success through employee satisfaction and productivity. The biggest challenges to a great culture are usually weak leadership and lack of alignment. Two ways to sustain a unified and thriving culture are strong leadership and a clear vision.
By being intentional about behaviors and ensuring solid leadership, companies can create an engineering culture that empowers employees to perform at their best and drive success.