[jcp2fa]

> I think it is important that engineering organizations identify a primary thing that they want to excel at. It affects the day to day mindset of the engineers, gives context to help with decisions, and provides guidance for what types of engineers we want to hire.

Aligning expectations is extremely important, especially when hiring - the culture of an engineering organization has an outsized impact on the final product. I have seen a lot of contention when people are brought into an environment where they expect to be moving fast, only to realize soon into the job that stability is much higher valued than frequent releases.

[Jach]

I agree with your general point about engineering culture (there's also more broadly the company culture) and it's always frustrating when management can't decide what the engineering values actually are to any real specificity, leaving it in the hands of each team doing interviews.

I disagree though that stability and frequent releases need to be traded off -- it seems only at infrequently releasing orgs do people think that. As for new people coming in and being surprised by the slowness, I see it most happen with acqui-hires rather than new hires, since new hires who want to avoid being surprised by such things tend to ask enough questions (like "how are releases done?") in the interview stage.

[Tarks]

Bryan's amazing talk on this nails it for me https://vimeo.com/230142234