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Ask HN: How do you fix engineering culture?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you fix engineering culture?

#141
In my experience, you need to fix the major issues first, and that's the racism and sexism. Lay down policy to all employees, tell them you'll be backing it fully, and if anyone falls prey to it they'll be out of a job. Culture or ability be damned. Ability in a role should not mask sackable offences.

From there, I'd start by laying down some process. One of my old workplaces was rife with micro-management, and the only way around it was to define a process for how the development team work, interact, test, etc. We had numerous hiccups, despite all sides agreeing to this method of working, but the strongest team in the company at the time was the dev team, and that quality saw us through.

I like The Joel Test suggestion, because it sets some ground rules for how the dev team should work. I'd go further, and I'd work with your own dev team(s), and the managers of other departments to find out what they want from a unified process. From there, build an internal process document and an external document, and ask for time to implement this process. Treat it like a project and assign time/resource to it, especially if your developers have downtime. At my last place we did this, and naturally ended up filling many of the blanks in The Joel Test through trying to improve our processes. We switched to automated builds and deploys, we created a robust hiring process, and vastly improved how we test software.

Finally, despite your worries, I'd thank your dev team for doing the job they've been doing. Everyone knows when a project is going to shit, but positivity goes a long way towards salvaging it and turning it into valuable lessons. In my view, bugs are a good thing, because it provides another iteration of tests and fixes, and if you can buy time for your team to iterate over your product(s) while building a robust development process, you'll naturally see happiness increase.

Re: Ask HN: How do you fix engineering culture?

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Unlike other positions, for engineers, it's the companies that are replaceable, not the employees. I read that a few times in this thread, but I'm not sure whether it's as true as pictured here. Maybe in some bubble environments (bay area and Seattle). But for most of us other engineers there isn't necessarily the next employer around the corner - even for those with exceptional skills.

So Italy is in the bubble :) Good to know So many positions for sw. engineers and so little experienced professionals to fulfill all those job openings, at least in my zone.

I can’t tell about Italy. But eg in Germany the air would be quite thin if one looks for a software position above 80k€ or even 100k€ (yes, there might be enough options in the 50k€ range).

Wouldn’t have expected italy to be much different

Re: Ask HN: How do you fix engineering culture?

#143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So Italy is in the bubble :) Good to know So many positions for sw. engineers and so little experienced professionals to fulfill all those job openings, at least in my zone.

I can’t tell about Italy. But eg in Germany the air would be quite thin if one looks for a software position above 80k€ or even 100k€ (yes, there might be enough options in the 50k€ range). Wouldn’t have expected italy to be much different

With 5 years of experience in (northern) Italy there are plenty of job offers in the 35-40k range, which I think is roughly equivalent to 60+k in Germany, maybe 70ish.

Note that I don't live in Germany so my numbers may be wrong, in that case well... let me know :)

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