By James WhittakerFailing Fast . Nothing destroys morale more than a death march. Projects going nowhere should do so with the utmost haste . The ability of a company to implode pet projects quickly correlates directly to a great place to work. Engineers working on these project gain not only valuable engineering experience, they experience first-hand the company's perception of what is important (and, in the case of their project, what is not important). It's a built-in lesson on company priorities and it ensures good engineers don't get monopolized by purposeless projects. You gotta like a company willing to experiment. You have to love a company willing to laugh at itself when the experiments don't pan out.20% Time . Any company worth working for has any number of projects that are worth working on. It's frustrating for many super-sharding engineers to see cool work going on down the hall or in the next building and not being part of it. A day job that takes all day is tiresome. Enter 20% time, a concept meant to send a strong message to all engineers: you always have a spare day . Use it wisely.Project Mobility . Staying fresh by changing projects is part of mobility. Continuous cycling of fresh ideas from new project members to existing projects is another part. The downside here is obviously projects with a steep learning curve but I scoff in the general direction of this idea. Whose fault is it when a wicked smart engineer can't learn the system fast enough to be useful in some (even a small) context? Only the weakest organization with the poorest documentation can use that excuse. The only good reason for keeping people on a project is because they have no desire to leave. his day to do as he pleases and now he can spend his time getting off the critical path of his old project and onto the critical path of his new project. make the hours I spend working better . Anything more is so dot com.
Excellent post! I really enjoy reading your blogs. One question- I heard Google engineers work overtime a lot. Is it because they spent one day on their own project and then have to work over time in the other 4 days to catch up?
ReplyDeleteOvertime? What's that?
ReplyDeleteDr. Whittaker, I'm a huge fan. Great post, although I'm curious about what sounds like an anti-startup bias..
ReplyDelete"Any company worth working for has any number of projects that are worth working on."
"Anything more is so dot com."
IIRC, Google sprang up from a small group working on a single project (search) in the midst of the dot com era..
More often that not perks are offered just because it's easier than building a strong engineering culture.
ReplyDeleteAs a rule of thumb I just distrust companies and engineers putting perks first.
Great post James, wish more companies would realize these three points.
ReplyDeletewilly, I couldn't agree more. Faizal: touche! It's amazing how much big company thinking has crept into my soul!
ReplyDeleteWe need to implement this at Zappos :). TY for an awesome post!
ReplyDeleteI don't fully agree with the 'Project Mobility' concept. While I understand the importance of having fresh ideas flowing, and it is good to rotate staff, I see a downside. In my organization, there are quite a few projects that require deep domain knowledge, and people with many years in it are invaluable to the organization. I have seen far too many people coming in due to 'mobility' and breaking things that were built on the solid foundation of experience and deep realization.
ReplyDeleteExcellent....Keep posting things like this dude....subscribed
ReplyDelete