Have you read the Duolingo employee handbook?
It's really remarkably good, and it's also not dry. I think that second point is really important: over my career, I've participated in at least a dozen of these attempts to write down engineering culture in a way that explains what is good and what is toxic. It's really hard to do this without being bland and dull. Bland and dull means "unread", and so I think the first goal of any employee handbook has to be: get the employees to read this thing! The Duolingo Handbook accomplishes that.
I really liked the little interlude about the Super Bowl advertisement.
When debates broke out over the “right amount of butt” to show, we knew we had a winning idea.
On a more serious note, here's a section that I strongly agree with. My current company spends a lot of time trying to reinforce this same idea, and I know how hard it can be to do this properly. Engineering processes typically involve a lot of review, which means a lot of feedback, which means you need to be thinking about this:
The standard here is “hard on the work, easy on the people.” That means giving constructive, clear feedback that sharpens ideas without undermining relationships. (We stick to the “what,” not the “who.”) It also means being open to receiving feedback and not taking it personally. This candid, constructive approach allows us to hold each other to high standards while fostering trust and collaboration.
If you're involved with engineering culture at your company, you would find it time well spent to read the Duolingo handbook.
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