Level-up Engineering Engineering Culture: Sally Lait (Senior Engineering Manager at Monzo)
16 snips
Mar 4, 2020 Sally Lait, Senior Engineering Manager at Monzo, shares insights on cultivating exceptional engineering culture in rapidly scaling fintech environments. She highlights key elements like transparency, diversity, and psychological safety as foundations of Monzo's success. Sally discusses innovative tools—like Slack bots—to promote inclusive language and the importance of cultural onboarding. She stresses the significance of hiring for values, recognizing signs of a weak culture, and balancing gradual change with visible communication, all while keeping the insights engaging and practical.
AI Snips
Chapters
Transcript
Episode notes
Balance Purpose With Wellbeing
- Great engineering culture balances meaningful work with people’s wellbeing.
- Psychological safety, diversity, autonomy and kindness are core drivers of sustained performance.
Transparency In Practice At Monzo
- Monzo defaults to transparency and publishes engineering proposals for company-wide comment.
- A senior engineer even gave a talk listing everything they'd broken in production to normalise learning from mistakes.
Hire For Shared Values, Not Sameness
- Assess culture fit by aligning values, not creating homogenous teams.
- Let candidates see your public values and ensure mutual fit during interviews.