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A New Era of Medium Engineering
22 Aug 2024
~~As Medium turns the page on becoming a profitable company, in engineering we are looking ahead at how that milestone changes the way we think about the work we do and how we want to approach it going forward.~~
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Team,`
We spent the last few years improving everything about our engineering culture: our processes, the way we collaborate, the way we plan and build and review code, cleaning up tech debt, improving our systems, raising the bar for what we expect. We’ve come a long way. We did some really great work and we should be proud of our results.
At past off-sites, and over the last couple years, we have talked a lot about continual improvement. I think it’s time for a step change in our engineering culture and expectations. Yesterday, Tony talked about this marking the start of a new era of Medium. I also want this to mark the start of a new era of Medium Engineering.
The last couple years were focused on a furious effort at a turnaround. It called for some necessary short-term decisions with front loading impact as much as we could. We’re now shifting into a new era of Medium focused on long term value and success. Medium is responsible for over a million members and a lot of subscription revenue with the expectation that that will grow a lot more over the next few years. We need to act like that’s the case.
It makes me think about a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote “Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.” We want to be a world class engineering team and company. We’re also aiming to be a reliable multi-billion dollar company. Let’s act like that. Let’s treat ourselves and our teams that way. It will push us to become that faster than we would by continuing to operate as we have been.
What does this look like in practice? Here are a few principles that I think can help clarify what that should look like:
We default to correctness and completeness. We can make decisions to make tradeoffs on specific decisions but we never start there. We aim for the ideal state, and work backwards from there. This applies to both technical decisions and the way we operate.
Engineering is responsible for the how. Taking the goals, we research and explore the options and clearly communicating those to stakeholders. We should have an opinion on what to do, but those are group discussions to decide how to proceed.
Processes are not optional. We are pragmatic about our processes. They can be short circuited to fit the needs of the project but we never skip them.
We do our best work when we focus. Balancing 4 projects at the same time is when we make mistakes and poor decisions. It is our responsibility to make sure our work load is properly balanced.
Innovate on what makes us unique. We default to industry standard on everything we build. That includes following the common trends in which languages/platforms we use, using off the shelf solutions for commodity problems, and adhering to published standards and practices whenever possible.
It’s easy to read this list and say “yeah… I think we’re mostly trying to do this”. I don’t think that is the case. If we embrace this properly, the expectations and the way we work should change meaningfully.
Principles are difficult because in practice everything is nuanced. The key here is that we want to lean more towards these principles than we have in the past. This is what we’re aiming for. We can do this! This is how we build Medium not just for today but for the long-term future that we have ahead of us.
As a company goes through stage transitions there are times where you need to directionally change the way you work. This is our time and opportunity to commit to the future. We’re not just building for next week or next month. We’re building for next year and the years after that. We’re building for our future coworkers. We’re building for our next million members.
`
Team,`
We spent the last few years improving everything about our engineering culture: our processes, the way we collaborate, the way we plan and build and review code, cleaning up tech debt, improving our systems, raising the bar for what we expect. We’ve come a long way. We did some really great work and we should be proud of our results.
At past off-sites, and over the last couple years, we have talked a lot about continual improvement. I think it’s time for a step change in our engineering culture and expectations. Yesterday, Tony talked about this marking the start of a new era of Medium. I also want this to mark the start of a new era of Medium Engineering.
The last couple years were focused on a furious effort at a turnaround. It called for some necessary short-term decisions with front loading impact as much as we could. We’re now shifting into a new era of Medium focused on long term value and success. Medium is responsible for over a million members and a lot of subscription revenue with the expectation that that will grow a lot more over the next few years. We need to act like that’s the case.
It makes me think about a Ralph Waldo Emerson quote “Treat a man as he is, and he will remain as he is. Treat a man as he could be, and he will become what he should be.” We want to be a world class engineering team and company. We’re also aiming to be a reliable multi-billion dollar company. Let’s act like that. Let’s treat ourselves and our teams that way. It will push us to become that faster than we would by continuing to operate as we have been.
What does this look like in practice? Here are a few principles that I think can help clarify what that should look like:
We default to correctness and completeness. We can make decisions to make tradeoffs on specific decisions but we never start there. We aim for the ideal state, and work backwards from there. This applies to both technical decisions and the way we operate.
Engineering is responsible for the how. Taking the goals, we research and explore the options and clearly communicating those to stakeholders. We should have an opinion on what to do, but those are group discussions to decide how to proceed.
Processes are not optional. We are pragmatic about our processes. They can be short circuited to fit the needs of the project but we never skip them.
We do our best work when we focus. Balancing 4 projects at the same time is when we make mistakes and poor decisions. It is our responsibility to make sure our work load is properly balanced.
Innovate on what makes us unique. We default to industry standard on everything we build. That includes following the common trends in which languages/platforms we use, using off the shelf solutions for commodity problems, and adhering to published standards and practices whenever possible.
It’s easy to read this list and say “yeah… I think we’re mostly trying to do this”. I don’t think that is the case. If we embrace this properly, the expectations and the way we work should change meaningfully.
Principles are difficult because in practice everything is nuanced. The key here is that we want to lean more towards these principles than we have in the past. This is what we’re aiming for. We can do this! This is how we build Medium not just for today but for the long-term future that we have ahead of us.
As a company goes through stage transitions there are times where you need to directionally change the way you work. This is our time and opportunity to commit to the future. We’re not just building for next week or next month. We’re building for next year and the years after that. We’re building for our future coworkers. We’re building for our next million members.