Building a Scalable Developer Culture

1. BuildingaScalable
DeveloperCulture
@jasoncwarner
SVPTechnology/CTO,GitHub

2. Poets and Librarians

3. Today we are poets

4. What we mean by
scalable

5. The Spectrum of Scale

6. Before we go too far,
let’s talk about culture

7. What we mean by
developer culture

8. Modern way
of working

9. Annnnd...the caveat slide,
technology

11. It all starts with
a solid base

12. START
WITHTHE
BASE
Mission &Vision
Principles & Practices
Leadership
Authenticity
Measurables

14. Things to add
Things to remove
Things to worry about
Things to ignore

15. ADD
SOME
Experienced Managers
Autonomy & Accountability
Just Enough Process
Disagree & Commit
Ownership
Relationships
Highly Initiated Individuals
Positivity

16. REMOVE
ALL
Politics
Zero Sum Games
Wrong Pronouns
SqueakyWheels
"DID MYJOB/NOTMYJOB"
Consensus
Negativity

17. DON’T
WORRY
ABOUT
Duplication ofTooling
"Culture Fits"
100% Alignment
The Perfect Org Structure
Getting Everything Right

18. DO
WORRY
ABOUT
Too Many Programming Languages/Frameworks
Political Agendas
Internal Competition as Survival Mechanism
Toxic/Negative Attitudes
BeingToo Slow
Employee Churn
Morale
Output
Market Reputation

19. FINISH
ITWITH
Writing Everything Down
Systematic Review, Refresh as Needed
Iterating Up andTo the Right
Leadership/ManagementTraining
Reward the Examples of Your Culture

21. Great minds discus ideas; average
minds discuss events; small minds
discuss people
Eleanor Roosevelt

22. Gruenter and Whitaker
The culture of any organization is
shaped by the worst behavior the
leader is willing to tolerate

25. @jasoncwarner
SVPTechnology / CTO, GitHub