Discussion on "The Ideal Engineering Team"

Shawn Axsom · 2022-04-03T16:50:44.545Z

What an ideal engineering team looks like Let's jump right in. What does an ideal team look like? What would your experience be on that team? Teamwork Your blockers are unblocked quickly You see that most Slack messages are responded to fairly quick...

I'm glad that I read this article, I didn't knew that people think about this topic so deeply. I really like working with people who actually do help out their juniors instead of looking them as competition, and treating them with hostility.

They often forget that they were juniors once as well, and didn't know a lot of the things which they learned later.

Thanks for this wonderful article, Shawn.

This is absolutely amazing, I love the idea of sharing from the experience background. I appreciate providing this wisdom Shawn Axsom

Loved the article! Thanks for sharing!

It takes relationship-building, practice in working as a team, and familiarity with each other to reach the potential safety level those individuals could feel

I thought a lot about this lately. That's why we started (Remote) Mob Programming sessions a couple of weeks ago. I love the way the devs participate. It just feels good to work this way! I think this activity leverages some of the things you mentioned, like Teamwork, Camaraderie and Growth. Also, feedback was great so far :D

That sounds nice. So like paired programming, but more than 2 people?

Are you going to write a blog post about it? Do share 🙂

Correct! We are 7.

I might write something in the near future. I'll let you know for sure :)

A very detailed write-up. Thanks for sharing. I like the hiring criteria you have at Docker - it provides a great insight into the team member.

Just curious - Do you share the individual response across the team once hired so the team can benefit from the knowledge? Personally, I tend to find out the pitfalls of one’s strength as well. This helps to ensure that an individual’s strength is not detrimental to the team’s success.

Hey Narmada Nannaka!

Nope, we keep the information shared about the candidate confidential to the hiring panel.

The hiring manager is usually the direct manager of the individual, and the manager will therefore have the knowledge of the strengths/weaknesses (along with aspirations, ideal work environment, etc that I often ask about), and some of that may carry over to employment.

Great write-up Shawn. Definitely like your points in relation to generalist vs specialist "Why not both?"

It's important to have a team of varied strengths.

Yeah!

Fullstack vs Frontend/Backend is a great example.

It's nice to have a mix of deep knowledge, along with others that are flexible when frontend/backend ebbs and flows.

Fullstack engineers can be great for throwing together POCs, unpacking tightly coupled UIs with APIs, etc.

Frontend or Backend can have much deeper experience in their domains and in areas like design, accessibility, or devops, infra, cloud.

Teams with both can work well for most teams.

And for specialists, it can be good to have a more technical Frontend Engineer, a more designer-focused Frontend Engineer, etc. Specialization doesn't stop at Frontend versus Fullstack.

Excellent writing with a lot of value once again, thank you Shawn Axsom! 👏

Thanks, Eleftheria Batsou!

I appreciate your feedback, as always 💛

This is something I am unfamiliar with. As I have never worked in a software team. But it helps me set a point of reference for my expectations. Thanks Shawn

I am curious on how would you handle groupthink, in cases where it may be damaging to the output of the team? I ask because of the emphasis you put on diversity and psychological safety, so I think you value honest opinions from team members 😅

Great topic.

Diversity and psychological safety help prevent groupthink.

Diversity helps bring diverse viewpoints.

Psychological safety helps make sure those individuals feel safe to share their viewpoints, rather than going with the group.

Other aspects for avoiding groupthink include anchoring.

In the book "Leadership is Language" IIRC (or some recent book I read 😅), it discussed if you're the leader, don't be the first to speak up, or you anchor the conversation, reducing variability of follow-up ideas more so than other people due to appealing to peoples' bias towards authority.

“A team is only as good as the sum of its parts, which includes having complementary skillsets.”

I absolutely love this quote. Shawn’s process from hiring teams to scaling them is masterclass. 💯

Aw thanks 💛

It's something I don't hear a lot of from hiring managers and recruiters.

People are overly focused on the individual, and finding "top talent".

Versus focusing on the team, and finding "top fit".

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