What We Actually Do
Most engineering culture documents describe aspirations. This isn't that. This is a description of what actually happens at Switchiify on any given Tuesday.
We ship every two weeks. Every engineer owns at least one thing end-to-end. We don't have code review as a gatekeeping mechanism — we have code review as a learning mechanism. The distinction matters.
How We Make Decisions
Decisions at Switchiify are made by the person closest to the problem, not the person with the highest title. This works because we invest heavily in making sure the person closest to the problem is also well-informed — not just about the technical constraints, but about the customer context and the business implications.
It fails when that person isn't informed enough to make a good call. So our job as a leadership team is largely to make sure that doesn't happen.
What We're Still Working On
We don't have this figured out. Our onboarding takes too long. Our documentation isn't good enough. We promote too slowly and sometimes too quickly. Every quarter we identify two or three things to get better at, and we try to make sure we don't improve the same things twice.