Driving an Engineering Culture with Collaboration

January 17, 2017 at 12:20 PM by Colleen Noonan

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A ton of companies talk about culture and how important it is. And they’re right.

Culture represents the values of an organization and communicates important shared principles that define the work you do and how you do. This is especially true in tech, where so much of our work is a result of collaboration and creativity.

When it comes to engineering, cultures can be based in a variety of hobbies and interests, from the foosball table and kegerators to the ramen aficionado/boba fan culture we have at Entelo. Culture is more than just the games we play, and what we eat and drink together. Those things are easy to see.

Culture is also how you collaborate, the workstyle you promote, and how you treat one another. It’s how we treat our interns and colleagues from other departments and how we conduct ourselves every day. See, culture is the product of values. What are our values and what do they mean?

For Entelo's engineering team, open source initiatives are a huge part of values – so is promoting diversity and inclusion both within our teams, the larger organization and through our products. Beyond that, we’re also driven by a commitment to openness and curiosity. We want our work to be valued, but we also want to be valued as people too, and not just productive cogs in the code machine. As the Director of Engineering, I try to keep my team engaged and driven toward making quality contributions to our products while at the same time keeping them happy, challenged and rewarded as individuals.

No matter where you’re based, finding great engineers is a genuine problem. There are far more opportunities than engineers, which means you have to offer a great workplace experience to keep people around. With a strong engineering brand and culture, you can set yourself apart from the pack, and that starts when engineers are still candidates.

Throughout the entire hiring process, we emphasize the importance of collaboration and communication to our candidates. Teamwork is paramount. There's no prima donna who rewrites everything over the weekend. That’s just not how we choose to operate.

To keep our culture intact while hiring, one of the first things we do is pair candidates with a member of our staff to solve an actual technical problem we’re facing. This way, we give both the candidate and our hiring team the opportunity to see what really working together would be like. Thus, we’re showing our authentic selves, and so are they. At Entelo, teamwork and communication are every bit as important as your technical skills.

Check out the Entelo Engineering Team blog to learn more about what we're working on and how we like to spend our free time. Interested in joining us? We are hiring!

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Why Transparency Builds a Positive Candidate Experience
Implement Interview Load Balancing and Never Give a Candidate a Bad Interview Again
What Happens When You Standardize Your Interview Process

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