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How to elevate engineering culture at large corporations?

What should I ask an interviewer to assess whether his or her company has a good engineering culture?

  • I understand that it is hard to make it sure. But hopefully I can get a question list that I can follow to identify if the company has a good engineering culture.

  • Answer:

    Assuming that your interviewer is another engineer who will be your peer, these questions should help you gauge the environment: How do you decide what you will work on? If the answer is basically "someone else sets the priorities and I do what I'm told," you're interviewing to be just another "resource" thrown at whatever project comes down the chain. The best places I've ever worked put together teams of engineering, design, and business minds with a mutual respect for each other's expertise, gave them challenging problems, and allowed them to collaborate on the right solutions. Respect is key. If you want a say in your product's strategy, look for an organization that asks engineering to evaluate suggestions and propose new ideas, not just to estimate effort. What do you measure? Groups that don't understand their impact to the business risk floundering and failure as they grasp for direction. Without a framework based in measurable business goals, priorities will ultimately be decided by passion, gut, and ego. It's hard to get excited about a vaguely justified "optimization" project, and it's extremely demotivating to see your hard work go to waste. If you want to see your work directly contribute to a company's success, look for an organization that knows its business metrics and measures them religiously. Find a team that understands the importance of testing, measuring, and learning as they go. How are you measured? The best organizations set expectations up front and make a habit of providing feedback so employees know what they are doing well (and what could be better). Look for an organization that is committed to regular communication and active involvement in their engineers' personal growth.

Rachel Kumar at Quora Visit the source

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Most companies put people who are great and feel positively about the company / team on interview duty. So even if someone is not trying to mislead you asking them questions might not get you a fair and balanced assessment. I think the best way is to find someone who is connected to your network and works in the group / company you are evaluating. Ask them to be candid about the good and bad about the team and the company. If that is not possible, try to do a consulting arrangement before coming on board as an employee. It will protect both you and the employer if there's a fit issue

Rajiv Bansal

Honestly? There's no good definition of what a "good" engineering culture is. Is it agile development? Everybody does that - to some degree, and it's never clear how far (or little) you take from the agile playbook to be considered following best practices. Is it source control? Again, everybody does that, and there isn't that much that can be implied from the choice of source control systems. (e.g., whether it's git or not) The same questions apply to autonomy, management structures, open source contributions, etc. The other variables in the equation are that: cultures often differ across teams, culture changes as the company grows (or shrinks), and how you yourself fit within a culture changes as you mature. So your best bet is to look for obvious warning signs (e.g., if they don't do what everybody else does and use source control), talk with the manager of the team you'd be joining, and really just determine on the job. The nice part is that if the culture is truly incompatible with your personality, it's no longer a huge stigma to quit early, and for smaller teams/companies you have a real opportunity to drive the culture yourself.

Allen Cheung

Ask if you can spend a day in the group/team/department you're being considered for.  Its very educational to see how people behave when the acting stops, which usually only takes a few hours if that.  There is no (IMO) list of perks, programs, or development methodologies that will actually answer your question.  If they do some kind of iterative development that's a good sign, but certainly not a guarantee.  Just because they have a Xbox in the corner doesn't mean its used in the right way or even used.

K. Scott Helms

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