[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.