An outsider assessment of spotify engineering culture by an insider

1. An outsider assessment
of Spotify Engineering
Culture by an insider
Jason Yip
Agile Coach, Monetization Tribe, Spotify NYC
jyip@spotify.com
@jchyip
https://jchyip.blogspot.com
https://medium.com/@jchyip

2. What I learned
from Jerry
Weinberg

3. https://flic.kr/p/eCfWC

4. What I learned
from Dave
Dame

5. It’s not the success that motivates but
the willingness to show the struggle
(paraphrasing)

6. What problem is
Spotify trying to solve?

7. Everything comes down to “How do we
deal with rapid growth?”
# of communication channels = n (n - 1) / 2

8. How might you maintain level up speed
and quality even if you double in size?

9. The experience of working in Spotify
Engineering is one of being free of friction,
where everything makes sense, where you’re
not surprised by strange decisions, where
you can trust everything works as expected,
and where there is a strong sense of safety
that allows people to produce high quality
outcomes, quickly, and efficiently.

10. The air war vs
the ground war

12. “...those who master what venture
capitalist Ben Horowitz calls ‘the black
art of scaling a human organization’ act
as if they are fighting a ground war, not
just an air war.”

13. “Air war”
https://flic.kr/p/pbysvA
‣ Leadership buy-in
‣ Messaging
‣ Values
‣ Etc.

14. ‣ Individual buy-in
‣ Day-to-day conversations
‣ Day-to-day behaviour
‣ Day-to-day routines
‣ Policy
‣ Etc.
“Ground war”
https://flic.kr/p/5ABvbF

15. Spotify has air superiority

16. The ground war is fought Tribe to Tribe,
Squad to Squad, person to person

17. Here’s a taste of the
ground war

24. ‣ Speed of learning and execution lead us to create a best in
class product
‣ The fewer technologies we are world class on, the faster we get
‣ Shorter iterations yield faster learning, quicker value and higher
quality
‣ Small empowered cross-functional teams (squads) is the
foundation of fast paced product development and innovation
‣ Strong teams always beat rock stars
‣ Your ability to learn and adapt is more important than your
knowledge, merit and experience
Spotify Engineering Core Beliefs

25. ‣ Speed of learning and execution lead us to create a best in
class product
‣ The fewer technologies we are world class on, the faster we get
‣ Shorter iterations yield faster learning, quicker value and higher
quality
‣ Small empowered cross-functional teams (squads) is the
foundation of fast paced product development and innovation
‣ Strong teams always beat rock stars
‣ Your ability to learn and adapt is more important than your
knowledge, merit and experience
Spotify Engineering Core Beliefs
How might this reliably
affect decisions?

26. ‣ Role modeled by leaders and influencers
‣ Supported by systems and policies
‣ Communicated explicitly
‣ Mentioned regularly
Good shared decision principles are:

28. ‣ #technical-excellence
○ Get more people talking about it
‣ “Fearless Client Development”
○ Turn this into a prioritised TPD Bet
Existing initiatives to level up technical
competence

32. A doesn’t
quite work...
C depends on A...
Would be much
simpler if F was done...

33. 1. 2 week Feature Complete sync -> 1 week sync
(2 week release cadence, 1 week sync cadence)
2. Feature Complete sync -> master is always
releasable (aka Continuous Delivery)
Requires changes in ways of working and tooling
support
From Release Trains to Continuous
Delivery (client development)

35. When you can’t avoid the big project...

39. ‣ Spotify Engineering Culture cannot be
effectively decoupled from Spotify Product /
Business Culture
‣ TPD Bets vs Company Bets
“Agile” must spread past TPD

41. It’s not Community vs Structure

42. Community
Structure
followsfollows

43. Summary:
Recommended priorities

44. High
effort
Low
effort
Low
Impact
High
Impact
Change hiring criteria
for non-Coach roles
More involved
onboarding
Fundamentals
training
Convert Engineering
Beliefs into decision
principles
Bet to level up client
development
Ensure kickoffs and
integration milestones
for big projects
Agile outside of
product delivery

45. Appendix

46. Who was that guy?
‣ Jason Yip
‣ Agile Coach at Spotify since Feb 2015
‣ Previously Principal Consultant at
ThoughtWorks (started in February 2001)
‣ First encountered Extreme Programming in
1998

47. ‣ Part 1: https://labs.spotify.
com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-1/
‣ Part 2: https://labs.spotify.
com/2014/09/20/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-2/
Spotify Engineering Culture videos

48. Thank you
for your
attention