Our corporate culture today has a recurring message that I think is extremely problematic: that Engineering should be special and different from other organizations. This has a number of knock-on effects across departments that are problematic.

What is Engineering? Link to heading

At its core, Engineering is a practice of communication. First, communication starts within oneself, by forming ideas and hypotheses, often from reading and understanding code. Second, communication extends to others, where hypotheses are discussed, architectures decided on, patterns chosen, and decisions made. Finally, communication extends to the computer, which is instructed how to achieve certain objectives through code.

Why is Engineering siloed? Link to heading

This is a complicated question.

I think predominantly this starts because we have a cultural mythos of the “hacker”, who performs unknowable tasks with deftness and speed. We’ve seen this recur in many movies and shows, from The Matrix, to Hackers, to even comedy films like Grandma’s Boy. We see this attitude ripple out into corporate culture, through the memes of rock star ninjas who are needed for companies to survive. Within these cultures too, we have discussion of “greybeards”, “wizards”, etc.

But this isn’t comprehensive enough. There is a saying “familiarity breeds contempt”. We could also say “unfamiliarity breeds awe”. Engineering, and coding by proxy, is a discipline that does take time to develop skills in. Some mastery of syntax, techniques for decomposing problems, and so on are a requirement. For a layman who is unfamiliar with the terminal, some of this can seem like actual magic.

This attitude can also extend to compensation, in cases where engineers are the only employees with equity.

Why is this a problem? Link to heading

Engineering is the art of solving problems - most usually, via code. If engineers are unfamiliar with the problems to be solved, they cannot choose the best solution. And in fact, if one is unfamiliar with a problem space, they may have solve the wrong problem altogether.

Engineers are often one of if not the most expensive resources at your company’s disposal, so the cost of this misalignment can be astronomical. In my experience, this associated real cost can easily top several million dollars, before calculating the opportunity cost of the time lost.

Misalignment on compensation also has subtle cultural effects - instead of fostering camaraderie, departments can view engineering with hostility if they’re the only ones compensated with equity. As a result, the necessary information from other departments can fail to reach engineering, for execution.

How to solve this? Link to heading

If you intend to solve this, begin by building bridges.

In my time at SalesLoft, I regularly had the opportunity to shadow our sales team, who regularly dogfooded the product. This was an incredible chance to build relationships, while also see live how real users were interacting with our features. This developed unparalleled insight into the product, knowledge of which bugs were real immediate threats, as well as relationships where work could be accelerated.

This had the effects of a virtuous cycle:

  • Increased product knowledge meant work was prioritized faster
  • Cross-department knowledge meant that we could supply data instead of spending money on SaaS (or duplicate subscriptions)
  • Stronger relationships meant a stronger company culture with less regretted attrition

The list goes on.

This isn’t the only solution - as mentioned, make sure to treat your teams the same. Not everyone needs the same compensation, but with only some employees with equity, this becomes more difficult. Similarly, if only one department gets some perk, that can foster resentment rather than camaraderie.

The most effective organizations win. Go out and build bridges, and speed your teams.