[karmacondon]

I'm a huge fan of cross disciplinary rotations of all types. A startup company, or any organization, should act as a unified whole. "It's not my problem" is not an option, especially when the company is small and the stakes are high. Sales depends on engineering which depends on support and management, an interconnected web. Rotations build empathy, lead to innovative thinking from outside perspectives and give people greater context. I've proposed them at several of my past jobs only to be shot down each time. It says a lot about the management of Etsy that they encourage designers and product managers to do a rotation on the coding side, when I wasn't able to convince my team leaders to let php developers from one project rotate to work on another.

"Human resources" has come to mean paperwork and discipline, but the real value of the term is much closer to its literal meaning. Developing peoples' innate capability is very important. Any company can compete to hire the "best people", but the really smart companies put that effort into increasing the value of the people that they have. The capacity of the human mind is one of the broadest and most versatile things in the universe, but most of us quickly settle into limiting patterns of thought. Just a few days of seeing things from a new perspective can make all the difference in the world. Etsy's engineering rotations seem like fun, but I think they will pay off in a big way. It's hard to put a number on increasing teamwork and understanding. Programs like this are a great way to maximize that value.