Building engineering organizations requires careful planning. After building teams from zero, here are the lessons learned.

Foundation Phase (0-5 Engineers)

Hiring

Priorities:

  • Culture fit - More important than skills
  • Learning ability - Can grow with company
  • Ownership - Takes responsibility
  • Communication - Clear and effective

Interview Process:

  1. Technical screen (1 hour)
  2. System design (1 hour)
  3. Culture fit (30 min)
  4. Team fit (30 min)

Culture

Values:

  • Ownership - Take responsibility
  • Transparency - Open communication
  • Learning - Continuous improvement
  • Quality - High standards

Practices:

  • Code reviews for all changes
  • Weekly team meetings
  • Post-mortems for incidents
  • Knowledge sharing sessions

Growth Phase (5-20 Engineers)

Structure

Team Organization:

  • Feature teams - Cross-functional
  • Platform team - Infrastructure
  • Shared services - Common components

Roles:

  • Tech Lead - Technical direction
  • Engineering Manager - People management
  • Staff Engineer - Technical leadership

Processes

Development:

  • Feature branch workflow
  • Code review required
  • Automated testing
  • CI/CD pipeline

Planning:

  • Weekly sprint planning
  • Daily standups
  • Retrospectives
  • Quarterly planning

Tooling

Essential Tools:

  • GitHub - Version control
  • Slack - Communication
  • Jira - Project management
  • Datadog - Monitoring
  • Sentry - Error tracking

Scale Phase (20-50 Engineers)

Organization Structure

Teams:

  • Product Engineering - Feature teams
  • Platform Engineering - Infrastructure
  • Developer Experience - Tooling
  • Security - Security practices

Management:

  • Engineering Managers - People management
  • Tech Leads - Technical leadership
  • Staff Engineers - Architecture

Processes

Development:

  • Monorepo or multi-repo strategy
  • Design reviews
  • Architecture reviews
  • Security reviews

Communication:

  • Weekly all-hands
  • Engineering blog
  • Tech talks
  • Documentation

Career Development

Levels:

  • Junior - Learning, supervised work
  • Mid - Independent contributor
  • Senior - Technical leadership
  • Staff - Cross-team impact
  • Principal - Company-wide impact

Best Practices

Hiring

  1. Define roles clearly - Job descriptions
  2. Standardize process - Consistent interviews
  3. Focus on culture - Fit matters
  4. Diverse candidates - Different perspectives
  5. Fast decisions - Don’t lose candidates

Onboarding

  1. Structured program - Clear path
  2. Mentor assignment - Support system
  3. First tasks - Meaningful work
  4. Regular check-ins - Feedback loop
  5. Documentation - Self-service

Culture

  1. Define values - Clear principles
  2. Lead by example - Walk the talk
  3. Celebrate wins - Recognition
  4. Learn from failures - Post-mortems
  5. Continuous improvement - Regular reviews

Processes

  1. Start simple - Don’t over-engineer
  2. Document everything - Knowledge sharing
  3. Automate - Reduce manual work
  4. Measure - Track metrics
  5. Iterate - Improve continuously

Common Challenges

Challenge 1: Scaling Too Fast

Problem: Hiring faster than onboarding

Solution:

  • Structured onboarding
  • Mentor program
  • Clear documentation
  • Gradual ramp-up

Challenge 2: Communication

Problem: Information silos

Solution:

  • Regular meetings
  • Documentation
  • Transparent communication
  • Cross-team collaboration

Challenge 3: Technical Debt

Problem: Accumulating debt

Solution:

  • Regular refactoring
  • Tech debt tracking
  • Dedicated time
  • Architecture reviews

Metrics

Team Health

  • Velocity - Story points per sprint
  • Cycle time - Time to production
  • Code review time - PR review speed
  • Deployment frequency - Releases per week

Quality

  • Bug rate - Bugs per release
  • Test coverage - Percentage covered
  • Incident rate - Production incidents
  • MTTR - Mean time to recovery

Conclusion

Building engineering organizations requires:

  • Clear vision - Where you’re going
  • Strong culture - How you work
  • Right people - Who you hire
  • Good processes - How you operate

Start small, scale gradually, and maintain quality. The practices shown here enable effective engineering organizations.

Building engineering organizations from December 2020, covering hiring, culture, processes, and scaling.