How we Structured our Engineering Team for Happier, More Productive Devs — Even in Times of Crisis
Six months ago, we wrote an article. It was all about how much we love the organizational structure and culture here at eko. We were just about to hit “Publish” when, all of a sudden, COVID-19 happened. From one day to the next, we had to adapt to lockdowns, working from home, and social distancing. Plus, we didn’t think publishing an article about our organizational structure would be relevant, or even appropriate, at the start of a global pandemic. We decided to put the article on ice and spent the next few weeks getting used to “the new reality”.
We soon learned that good things come to those who wait, as we got to see firsthand how being a flat organization not only helped make our transition smoother but also introduced several opportunities for improvement.
Fast forward to today, we finally feel like it’s the right time to share some of our insight.
Long before the pandemic, the way our company was structured affected almost everything we did at work. It enabled us to lead projects from start to finish, become experts in various fields, interact and engage with people from different departments, fully understand WHY we’re developing things, and significantly impact the company’s decision-making process. All of these were key to our team’s happiness and job satisfaction.
That sense of autonomy combined with collaboration carried on during our months of working together, but apart and from home.
“The structure and processes we adopted throughout the years are an amazing fit to the challenges introduced by COVID-19, allowing us to keep on delivering even though many of us are working from home”. -eko CTO, Yuval Hofshy.
So, what does “flat organization” mean, anyway?
A flat organization has few to no levels of middle management between staff and executives, which means that unlike hierarchical organizations, most middle management and their functions have been eliminated and top management has direct contact with all employees.
Flat organizations are characterized by less employee supervision and more employee involvement in the decision-making process. They often relinquish things like job titles and seniority, view everyone as equal, and emphasize collaboration.
To become successful, any startup has to create awesome products, quickly deliver them to customers, and rapidly adapt to market demand changes.
As a startup company ourselves, we’re constantly trying to push the envelope of choice-driven entertainment in the competitive field of online video. This forces us, the developers, to think on our feet, come up with creative solutions, and execute them immediately.
For us, a flat organization means we can get things done — fast.
It also means no one is telling us to “do this” or “do that”. Instead, we come together as a group to solve issues and overcome challenges. It completely changes the company’s dynamics and enables us to fully understand not just the “what” part of our job but also, and more importantly, the “why” — putting us at an excellent position for some high-level decision-making. So, by the time we were working from home, all of us were pretty accustomed to managing ourselves and making our own decisions.
“The freedom to make decisions and operate as you see fit as long as you deliver.” -eko dev, Yariv Fruend.
A flat structure lets you focus on what’s important
When teams are built based on expertise and areas of responsibility, team members are focused on eliminating the team’s task backlog — regardless of the impact these tasks have on the business’ overall success. Getting people to work on what’s really important becomes more complicated. For example, an “iOS team” will only work on iOS-related tasks. There are always tasks waiting in the iOS backlog, even if the company’s most pressing tasks have nothing to do with iOS.
A flat organization improves the business’ response time to market changes and customer demands. But more importantly, it enables us to smoothly transition from one project to another while leveraging different skills and talents. It allows us to pursue different passions and discover more areas where we excel.
This approach enabled us to quickly kick off new and exciting projects, like Camp by Walmart, an ambitious online summer camp with 250 interactive experiences, which we helped bring from idea to production in fifteen weeks flat.
“We always feel connected to the bigger picture, each team member gains knowledge vertically and holistically and doesn’t just continue with the skills they had.” -eko dev, Maayan Arbiv.
Flat organizations reduce overhead
Multiple layers of management create a company with many employees who work at overseeing other employees. Once you eliminate these layers, the organization enjoys fewer meetings, shorter approval processes, and a boosted budget.
“There is no fear to speak your mind or ‘what will the boss say?’, this leads to everyone being able to make a difference.” -eko PM, Roe Shani.
Integrating a flat structure has improved eko’s decision-making, efficiency, and performance by empowering us to make decisions and take full responsibility for our work. So, even though we no longer enjoyed each other’s company during the workday, we always knew what we were responsible for. The only change we had to make, in that regard, was the medium we communicated on.
A flat structure creates organization-wide teamwork
When people are divided into teams, they collaborate within their group but not so much with other people. It raises issues such as who’s better? Who’s working on more important things? Who gets to impact decisions? And let’s face it, no one likes this kind of office politics.
Flat organizations enjoy better collaboration between all employees. Their leaders communicate more freely with staff instead of just passing on directions, and employees find more meaning in contributing to different projects.
“There’s no bullshit bureaucracy here. You have the complete freedom and full ownership to make decisions. Your voice isn’t just heard, it’s listened to.”-eko dev, Asaf Menahem.
At eko, we have ad-hoc teams created to develop specific features or fulfill cross-product business requirements. Our teams often include developers with frontend, backend, devops, and other expertise.
These projects create cross-pollination of knowledge between developers with different expertise and prevent situations where one developer is the only domain expert for a task.
“You can contribute in the areas that interest you the most, rather than being shoehorned into a specific team or narrow specialty, and that makes us all more versatile.” -eko dev, Roy Taragan.
For some of us, the situation made it easier to collaborate with people from our New York office. Before quarantine, we had to come to the office and work during “normal” work hours, with the time difference between Tel Aviv and New York making it more challenging to work together. During quarantine, a few of us found it more comfortable to be with our kids during the day and shift work to the evenings — exactly during New York office hours.
“At eko, since you don’t get projects assigned to you from the top, you get to choose, I chose to join projects which require tight collaboration with the NY team, enabling me to spend time with the kids during the day, and work on NY clock.” -eko dev, David Silberstein.
Flat organizations encourage extreme ownership
An extreme ownership model is one where people take full responsibility for their work and its outcomes. It’s about learning lessons, not placing blame. It pushes companies to be proactive, dynamic, and problem-solving, which is what you want to be during a global crisis.
Ownership is tightly coupled with decision making. Excess layers of management contradict extreme ownership.
When managers become messengers and decisions are made over multiple meetings by people with different goals and motivations, information gets lost, distorted or misinterpreted along the way — causing great ideas and initiatives to get rejected simply because the people behind them couldn’t pitch them to leadership themselves. This process becomes even more tedious when you can’t get everybody under the same roof to communicate.
Since we truly understand why we’re doing whatever it is that we’re doing instead of just following other people’s orders, we have an actual stake in the project’s success, we care more about the results, and can accomplish things far more quickly.
“The flat organization forces you, in a good way, to take responsibility for everything you do.” -eko dev, Louai Ghalia.
eko developers lead tasks from ideation to production. When one of us leads a project, it’s our responsibility to connect with all the stakeholders directly; we pitch it to management, write specs with the product managers, build the architecture with other developers, come up with test plans with QA, work closely with the devops, creative, design, data, sales and marketing teams, and support the project on an ongoing basis after it goes live. We’re focused only on results and never have to sit and wait for the approval of a manager.
“Here it’s more than writing code all day. You have the ability to influence, to build something from scratch, to lead, and to constantly gain more knowledge.” -eko dev, Ran Gliksberg.
So, what’s the catch?
If flat structures are so great, how come so many engineering teams are still hierarchical?
The truth is that flat organizations are not for everyone. Large organizations will have a serious problem maintaining this kind of structure unless they divide into smaller, more manageable units. Some will apply models that support agility, such as the Spotify Tribe Engineering model. Some will end up with deep hierarchies. None can be flat.
Plus, for a flat organization to work, you need to have the right people with the right mindset.
You need the entire team to WANT to be proactive in contributing to ideas and tasks, understand WHY they’re doing what they’re doing and take initiative rather than check things off their to-do list one by one. While flat organizations offer greater freedom, they require more responsibility as a price.
This type of work environment is a dream come true for people who love the idea of being involved with multiple projects while having the freedom to make their own decisions, but a total nightmare for those who want to focus on a single domain or feel less comfortable without reporting to a direct manager.
“Having the right people with the right mindset, and keeping the organization as flat as possible, forces a management style that focuses on empowerment. It’s hard, but it pays off. “-eko CTO, Yuval Hofshy.
Bringing it all together
When a flat organizational structure meets the right leadership and staff, people find meaning and passion in their work, even when times get hard. They’re motivated to lead projects and see them to fruition, rely on their peers for assistance, and take full responsibility for the success of the company as well as their own and do their best to thrive.
A flat organizational structure enables us to be dynamic, innovate, and quickly react to business needs.
We really hope things will get back to normal sooner rather than later, but until then — we’ll continue to stay united (separately, in our own homes) in our goal to be the best dev team possible and to support one another through life’s unpredictable challenges.
Like what you’re reading?
Feel free to give us a clap (it’s okay, we’ve sanitized the hands icon) or, better yet, send us your resume!
We’re always looking for awesome devs to join our team.
