Building Engineering Culture (Not Just Writing Values)

Every company has "values." Most are meaningless.

"We value innovation!" Okay, but do you actually ship new things or just talk about them?

"We value transparency!" Cool, but does leadership actually share hard truths?

Culture isn't what you say. It's what you do. What gets rewarded. What gets punished. What happens when things get hard.

What Culture Actually Is

Culture is the collection of behaviors that are normal in your organization.

• Do people help each other or protect their turf?
• Are mistakes learning opportunities or blame events?
• Do people speak up when they disagree?
• Is shipping valued over perfection?
• Do people stay because they want to or because they're stuck?

You can't mandate these through values statements. They emerge from hundreds of small decisions.

How Culture Forms

What leaders do. Not what they say — what they actually do. If leadership says "work-life balance" but sends emails at midnight, that's the culture.

What gets rewarded. Promotions, recognition, bonuses. Who gets them and for what behavior?

What gets tolerated. That brilliant jerk who treats people poorly but ships? Keeping them sends a message: results justify behavior.

What gets punished. What happens when someone takes a risk and fails? When someone speaks up against a bad decision?

Stories that get told. The legends of the organization. What do they celebrate?

Culture is the sum of all these signals.

Cultures I've Seen Work

High Trust, High Accountability

People are trusted to make decisions. But they're also expected to own outcomes.

• No micromanagement
• Clear expectations
• Freedom with responsibility
• Failure is okay, not learning isn't

This requires: hiring well, setting clear goals, giving real feedback.

Shipping Culture

Velocity is sacred. Perfectionism is discouraged.

• Ship early, iterate fast
• "Done" is better than "perfect"
• Measure by outcomes, not effort
• Remove blockers aggressively

This requires: accepting some mess, good monitoring, quick rollback capability.

Learning Culture

Growth is expected. Knowledge is shared.

• Regular retrospectives
• Blameless post-mortems (see Post-Mortem Analysis for a practical example)
• Teaching is valued
• Mistakes are learning opportunities

This requires: psychological safety, time allocated for learning, leadership modeling vulnerability.

Ownership Culture

Teams own outcomes, not just tasks.

• Teams have autonomy
• Decisions pushed to lowest level
• People are empowered to act
• Outcomes > activity

This requires: clear objectives, trust in teams, accepting different approaches.

Cultures I've Seen Fail

Hero Culture

Rewards individual heroics over sustainable practices.

Signs: Same people always saving the day. Heroic last-minute efforts celebrated. Burnout normalized.

Problem: Systems stay broken because heroes keep rescuing them.

Blame Culture

When things go wrong, someone gets blamed.

Signs: Nobody admits mistakes. Problems get hidden. Everyone covers their ass.

Problem: Issues don't surface until they're crises.

Meeting Culture

Everything requires a meeting. Consensus required for everything.

Signs: Calendars are packed. Decisions take forever. Actual work happens after hours.

Problem: Execution grinds to a halt.

Fear Culture

People are afraid — of failure, of speaking up, of leadership.

Signs: Nobody pushes back. Bad news is suppressed. People leave quietly.

Problem: You lose innovation, truth, and good people.

Shaping Culture

You can't mandate culture. But you can shape it.

Model the Behavior

Want transparency? Share your failures, not just successes. Want learning? Ask for feedback and act on it. Want ownership? Let people make decisions.

If you're not living it, nobody else will.

Reward the Right Things

Promote people who embody the culture you want. Celebrate behaviors, not just outcomes. Call out good examples publicly.

What you recognize becomes what people aspire to.

Address Violations

That brilliant engineer who treats people badly? They have to go. Keeping them tells everyone that behavior is acceptable.

Tolerating bad behavior destroys good culture faster than anything else.

Hire for Fit

Skills can be learned. Culture fit is harder.

Interview for behaviors and values, not just technical skill. A great engineer who doesn't share your values will do more harm than good. (More on this in Hiring Engineers: What Actually Matters.)

Create Rituals

Rituals reinforce culture:

• Blameless post-mortems
• Demo days
• Regular retrospectives
• Team celebrations

Make the behaviors you want part of the routine.

Changing Culture

Harder than building it from scratch. Culture has inertia.

Be explicit. Name what needs to change and why.

Go slow. Culture changes gradually. Quick fixes don't stick.

Find allies. Identify people who embody the new culture. Empower them.

Change systems. If the promotion criteria reward X, people will do X. Change the criteria.

Be patient. Culture change is measured in years, not months.

My Non-Negotiables

Things I won't compromise on:

Psychological safety. People can speak up without fear. No exceptions.

No brilliant jerks. Results don't justify mistreating people.

Ship over perfection. Progress beats polish.

Own your mistakes. Blame is poison.

Respect people's time. Outside work hours are theirs.

These are my values. Yours might be different. What matters is that you have them and live them.

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Culture isn't a poster or a manifesto. It's the thousand small decisions that happen every day. What gets rewarded. What gets tolerated. What gets celebrated.

Build it intentionally, or it builds itself. And you might not like what emerges.