Engineering Principles

Welcome to the Motiv Engineering blog! In this series, we hope to share more about our team, how we work, and some fun and informative stories about lessons learned on our journey.

To start with, we wanted to share a little about how we think about teams and how we work together.

A few bold claims

The best teams share a common purpose: tactical execution towards a strategy to complete a mission to fulfill a vision. They work together to achieve this vision by excelling in their individual roles and collaborating effectively towards those shared goals.

In complex, uncertain, ambiguous environments (hat tip to Andy Grove¹), it’s only possible to be effective through shared culture — by that, I mean what kind of behavior is tolerated and encouraged.

One great way to build culture is intentional: by writing down what you want and having every team member embody and reinforce the team’s principles and standards. This helps create psychological safety² and cultural predictability.

What are some tools we use to encourage effective and positive human behavior? Let’s look at principles, standards, and autonomy.

Principles

Principles should be inviolate. Every action we take should be in accordance with our principles. Therefore, we should have a few, carefully chosen, memorable principles that are in natural harmony.

Motiv Engineering has chosen the following four principles, in no particular order:

• User-centric: Everything we do is centered around the users of products.
• Pragmatic: We balance the short term and the long term, acting in the best interest of our customers, teammates, and the company.
• Holistic: We embrace big-picture thinking, taking responsibility for the outcome, and owning our work end-to-end.
• Respectful: We treat our teammates with respect and empathy — healthy conflict is important to any functioning team; handling it well is critical.

So what?

How did we come to these principles? What do they mean, practically? Stay tuned for another post in this series and even more about standards and autonomy.

What principles and standards have made your teams effective and happy? What anti-patterns have made your teams ineffective or unhappy? Share your experiences.

Lastly, we’re hiring in a variety of engineering roles across the company. Apply at our careers site!

Citations

High Output Management, Andy Grove

What Google learned from its quest to build the perfect team