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Engineering your culture: How to keep your engi...

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.
  2. 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
  3. 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?
  4. • 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.
  5. • Awesome mission statement make the world more open and

    connected • Fast iterations, small teams • Great technology (+ leftovers) PHP – I’m looking at you!
  6. • Some lame mission statement make more money than the

    church • Fast iterations, small teams • Great technology, at huge scale!
  7. Explicitly hire for: People who can prioritize & get things

    done on their own They focus on autonomy
  8. Changing code -> … -> something breaks -> lack of

    trust -> slower cycle (process++) -> new department of [trust issue] -> still breaks … -> death (of happiness)
  9. Changing code -> … -> something breaks -> quick release

    + retrospect -> automate/test stuff -> still breaks -> quick release + retrospect -> automate/test stuff -> …
  10. “ Google’s mission is to organize the world’s information and

    make it universally accessible and useful. WTF?
  11. The last person to join the company is responsible to

    create a “starter kit” for the next one to join
  12. “ One day I will work for a company that

    does something like this. ”
  13. Junior Engineers Practice, practice, practice Experienced Engineers Practice, lead, build

    trust Veteran Engineers Become an expert or pivot (+mentor as a Bar Raiser)