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Setting up an engineering team structure for success | Coaching Founder

Setting up an engineering team structure for success

By Regina Gerbeaux (@_rpgbx) with Case Sandberg (@casesandberg)

Table of Contents

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Part 1: The necessary teammate archetype

<aside> 💡 “What’s the best engineering team structure to facilitate moving fast while building?”

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Before we discuss structure, first, think people.

In my opinion, the structure of the team matters significantly less than the people who make up the team.

The most important factor is that every person on the team should be someone who takes extreme ownership and moves autonomously.  With this setup, it matters less if you’re ultra-flat with no titles (like Spotify was in the early days), or more hierarchical.

What does extreme ownership and moving autonomously mean?  Extreme ownership means you:

• Know what your responsibilities in a project are. Whether you own the project overall, or you contribute to a larger project, you always have some portion where you are the directly responsible individual.
  • Managers should make clear what each person’s responsibilities are, so there’s never any confusion or politicking for projects that are shinier/look more appealing.
• Spread celebrations around and take criticism directly on yourself.

  • If your actions led you to a win, you had others who contributed to the success. Give that credit where it is due and openly praise those who helped you.

  • If your actions led you to a loss, avoid spreading blame. Instead, focus on the parts where you had shortcomings, and sunshine your mistakes. Below is an excerpt from CEO of Netflix Reed Hastings’ No Rules Rules to explain more about sunshining:

    “When you sunshine your failed bets, everyone wins. You win because people learn they can trust you to tell the truth and to take responsibility for your actions. The team wins because it learns from the lessons that came out of the project. And the company wins because everyone sees clearly that failed bets are an inherent part of an innovative success wheel.”

Similarly, moving autonomously means: