At Range, we’re curious about how you structure engineering teams so they are as effective as possible. To tackle this topic, we decided to gather a small group of leaders together for a mini-conference where they could share challenges and learn from one another in an intimate, trusted space.

We recruited experts to help guide the conversation: Kimber Lockhart, the CTO of One Medical; Grant Oladipo, an engineering manager from Airbnb; Shannon Arvizu, Ph.D. from Epic Teams; and Ron Lichty, author of Managing the Unmanageable.

Here’s what we learned:

There is no one size fits all for team structures

The optimal structure for your team should be grounded in the…

As a leader, it can be easy to miss the fact that your team is struggling to build trust with one another. There can be a lot going well: high quality work, goals met, etc. But you may start to notice that your team just doesn’t feel like a team.

This lack of trust can manifest in different ways like:

• A lack of vulnerability: The team may not share things about their personal lives or not go into much detail. They may not talk about things going wrong with their work or with the team.
• The absence of conflict: The…

Last fall, I was hit by a car.

I was biking down 8th street in San Francisco when a car cut across traffic and slammed into me. I was thrown to the ground, startled, and concussed.

I’m one of the co-founders of Range, and to be honest, my first step was to message my coworkers saying I’d be late for the team meeting.

Without hesitation though, two of my coworkers came straight to the scene. They proceeded to go with me to the hospital and to wait for hours as I got prodded, tested, and finally, released. …

You’ve finally found the right person to join your team, and you want to help them get started. 🎉 We all know onboarding is important—it impacts how likely a person is to stay at your company and how quickly they become productive. But as a small startup, it can feel daunting.

It’s easy to skip over, or assume an onboarding process is not a priority — especially if you’re only hiring a few people a quarter. …

Medium is a tight-knit group of incredibly dedicated, thoughtful people who are all obsessed with making Medium a phenomenal product for everyone to use. We’re so excited about what we do here, and we know that to have the best chance at success, we must build a diverse and inclusive company.

Armed with this knowledge, we’ve spent the past year focusing and prioritizing our diversity and inclusion efforts. We signed the Tech Inclusion Pledge, and as a part of that commitment, we’re using our platform to share an update on our internal demographics.

We have further to go, but in…

“Rituals are repeated behaviors that establish a sense of community. They tell the story of your culture and reinforce its values.” — Culture LabX

Like many companies, Medium often uses shared activities like all-hands meetings, game nights, and company meals to build and augment our sense of community. Yet one of the rituals that has had the most impact on our culture is a small action that is part of many of our meetings: a check-in round.

In a check-in round, each person shares a small status update at the beginning of a meeting. Unlike most meeting topics, however, this…