[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":362},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/article/the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture":3,"/article/the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture-surround":355},{"id":4,"title":5,"body":6,"date":343,"description":344,"extension":345,"meta":346,"navigation":347,"path":348,"seo":349,"stem":350,"tags":351,"__hash__":354},"article/article/the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture.md","The Small Things That Build Engineering Culture",{"type":7,"value":8,"toc":333},"minimark",[9,13,17,20,23,26,29,32,35,38,41,44,47,50,55,58,61,64,67,70,73,76,79,82,85,88,91,94,97,101,104,107,110,113,116,119,122,126,129,132,135,138,141,144,147,150,153,156,159,162,165,168,171,174,185,188,196,199,202,206,209,212,215,218,221,224,227,230,233,236,239,242,245,248,251,254,257,260,263,267,270,273,276,279,282,285,288,291,294,297,300,303,306,309,312,315,318,321,324,327,330],[10,11,5],"h1",{"id":12},"the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture",[14,15,16],"p",{},"One of the most expensive engineering problems I've encountered wasn't a production outage.",[14,18,19],{},"It wasn't technical debt.",[14,21,22],{},"It wasn't even a bad architectural decision.",[14,24,25],{},"It was a flaky test.",[14,27,28],{},"Not because the test itself was important. In fact, nobody could remember why it existed.",[14,30,31],{},"The problem was what happened afterwards.",[14,33,34],{},"Over time, the test failed often enough that we stopped trusting it. We would rerun the pipeline and call it a day. We stopped paying attention to failures. Eventually, a red build no longer meant anything.",[14,36,37],{},"Nobody decided this would happen. It just did.",[14,39,40],{},"Yet within a few months, an entire team had collectively learned the same lesson:",[14,42,43],{},"A failing build is just noise.",[14,45,46],{},"At that moment, the flaky test stopped being a technical problem.",[14,48,49],{},"It became a cultural one.",[51,52,54],"h3",{"id":53},"the-problem-isnt-awareness","The Problem Isn't Awareness",[14,56,57],{},"We like to believe broken things stay broken because nobody noticed.",[14,59,60],{},"That's not what happens.",[14,62,63],{},"Not because they didn't care.",[14,65,66],{},"Because the sprint was full.",[14,68,69],{},"Because fixing a flaky test doesn't ship a feature. Features are what get rewarded.",[14,71,72],{},"Nobody decided the flaky test should stay broken. But nobody decided it should get fixed either. And in the absence of a decision, the default wins.",[14,74,75],{},"The broken things stay broken because the system has no mechanism for caring about them.",[14,77,78],{},"Sprint planning doesn't have a ticket for \"make the team's daily experience less painful\".",[14,80,81],{},"Performance reviews don't reward \"fixed the thing nobody complained about loudly enough\".",[14,83,84],{},"Roadmaps don't include \"stop wasting 20 minutes every deploy\".",[14,86,87],{},"So the flaky test stays.",[14,89,90],{},"The deploy script stays.",[14,92,93],{},"The broken onboarding stays.",[14,95,96],{},"And the team learns, quietly, what the organization actually values, regardless of what's written on the wall..",[51,98,100],{"id":99},"what-we-are-actually-teaching","What we are actually teaching",[14,102,103],{},"Here's the uncomfortable part: you're already building culture.",[14,105,106],{},"You're just not choosing what you're building.",[14,108,109],{},"Every broken thing your team tolerates is a lesson.",[14,111,112],{},"A flaky test nobody fixes, teaches engineers that quality is negotiable.",[14,114,115],{},"A painful deploy process that nobody owns, teaches them that their time isn't valued.",[14,117,118],{},"An onboarding experience that wastes weeks, teaches new hires what standards to expect, and those standards are lower than you think.",[14,120,121],{},"I call this cultural debt.",[51,123,125],{"id":124},"cultural-debt","Cultural Debt",[14,127,128],{},"We talk a lot about technical debt.",[14,130,131],{},"I think cultural debt can be more dangerous.",[14,133,134],{},"Technical debt accumulates when we take shortcuts in software.",[14,136,137],{},"Cultural debt accumulates when we repeatedly tolerate.",[14,139,140],{},"Individually, these problems seem minor.",[14,142,143],{},"Collectively, they teach people what standards actually are.",[14,145,146],{},"The danger is that cultural debt compounds.",[14,148,149],{},"A slow deployment process doesn't just waste time.",[14,151,152],{},"A broken onboarding experience doesn't just frustrate new hires.",[14,154,155],{},"Eventually, people stop believing improvement is possible.",[14,157,158],{},"Eventually, people stop expecting things to be better.",[14,160,161],{},"This is no longer a technical problem.",[14,163,164],{},"It is a cultural one.",[14,166,167],{},"But here's the part nobody talks about: the same mechanism works in reverse.",[14,169,170],{},"If culture can be shaped by small tolerances, it can also be shaped by small improvements.",[14,172,173],{},"A flaky test teaches engineers that quality does not matter.",[14,175,176],{},[177,178,179,180,184],"em",{},"Fixing it teaches them that ",[181,182,183],"strong",{},"it does",".",[14,186,187],{},"A broken onboarding process teaches new hires what standards to expect.",[14,189,190],{},[177,191,192,193,184],{},"Improving it teaches them that ",[181,194,195],{},"high standards matter",[14,197,198],{},"Culture accumulates through small experiences, whether we intend it to or not.",[14,200,201],{},"The question is what those experiences are teaching.",[51,203,205],{"id":204},"one-small-thing-at-a-time","One Small Thing at a Time",[14,207,208],{},"I used to think leadership was primarily about vision.",[14,210,211],{},"Setting direction.",[14,213,214],{},"Inspiring teams.",[14,216,217],{},"Painting the big picture.",[14,219,220],{},"But the biggest cultural shifts I've witnessed came from something much simpler.",[14,222,223],{},"Fixing the things people had given up on.",[14,225,226],{},"The broken script.",[14,228,229],{},"The manual process.",[14,231,232],{},"The recurring deployment issue.",[14,234,235],{},"The dashboard nobody trusted.",[14,237,238],{},"Something interesting happens when enough of these small fixes accumulate.",[14,240,241],{},"People start paying attention.",[14,243,244],{},"They start noticing that things are getting better.",[14,246,247],{},"They start trusting that things can improve.",[14,249,250],{},"Not because of a speech.",[14,252,253],{},"Not because of a new initiative.",[14,255,256],{},"Because they have seen evidence.",[14,258,259],{},"Trust is rarely built through declarations.",[14,261,262],{},"It is built through accumulated experience.",[51,264,266],{"id":265},"excellence-is-a-byproduct","Excellence Is a Byproduct",[14,268,269],{},"Most organizations chase excellence directly.",[14,271,272],{},"I've never seen that work particularly well.",[14,274,275],{},"The best engineering teams I believe weren't those obsessed with excellence.",[14,277,278],{},"They were obsessed with eliminating friction.",[14,280,281],{},"They fixed things.",[14,283,284],{},"Constantly.",[14,286,287],{},"Small things.",[14,289,290],{},"Boring things.",[14,292,293],{},"Unimportant things.",[14,295,296],{},"And also.. quietly.",[14,298,299],{},"Over time, those small improvements accumulated into something that looked like excellence from the outside.",[14,301,302],{},"That accumulation is how good culture is built.",[14,304,305],{},"Not through a manifesto.",[14,307,308],{},"Not through a values statement.",[14,310,311],{},"Not through a transformation program.",[14,313,314],{},"One small thing at a time.",[14,316,317],{},"Technical debt slows systems down. Cultural debt changes what people believe is normal.",[14,319,320],{},"The first can usually be measured. The second often goes unnoticed until it is deeply embedded.",[14,322,323],{},"By then, the problem is no longer the flaky test, the broken onboarding flow, or the painful deployment process.",[14,325,326],{},"The real problem is that people stop expecting those things to improve and start accepting them as normal.",[14,328,329],{},"And once that happens, you're no longer fighting technical debt.",[14,331,332],{},"You're fighting culture.",{"title":334,"searchDepth":335,"depth":335,"links":336},"",2,[337,339,340,341,342],{"id":53,"depth":338,"text":54},3,{"id":99,"depth":338,"text":100},{"id":124,"depth":338,"text":125},{"id":204,"depth":338,"text":205},{"id":265,"depth":338,"text":266},"2026-06-06T00:00:00.000Z","Why do engineering cultures succeed or fail? A reflection on cultural debt and how small daily experiences shape trust, quality and excellence within engineering teams.","md",{},true,"/article/the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture",{"title":5,"description":344},"article/the-small-things-that-build-engineering-culture",[352,353],"reflection","culture","eG2x-TAxljyK3dcJmjc7RCPV1Ca9UWrwhQSuO-jSMDM",[356,357],null,{"title":358,"path":359,"stem":360,"description":361,"children":-1},"Why CTE is non-optional, but a Requirement in Financial Systems","/article/why-cte-is-not-optional","article/why-cte-is-not-optional","You might think \"CTE\" (Common Table Expression) is just a syntactic sql sugar, a nice-to-have feature for readability or organizing subqueries. In most domains, you might be right.",1781191765106]