For Ritesh Manchanda, building new skills in engineering feels a lot like learning how to swim — literally.
The vice president of engineering at Click Therapeutics taught himself how to swim by watching YouTube videos and practicing drills, and he applies this same approach to his current role.
“I learn by watching, doing and persistently reinforcing each skill,” Manchanda said. “That same focus applies at work; if you can teach yourself one thing with consistency, you can learn almost anything.”
On a day-to-day level, this consistent focus on learning takes the form of various initiatives, such as biweekly tech demos, during which the entire technology organization comes together to showcase new projects, spark discussions and share insights. Manchanda said that practices like this one make it easy for team members to spread knowledge across the organization.
At Metropolis Technologies, Jisung Hwang, senior manager of machine learning engineering, and his peers have their own set of practices to drive knowledge-sharing, which is critical in order to keep up with the evolution of AI and ML. One of these practices includes the use of daily dedicated forums, which enables team members to share new research, open-source projects and industry insights.
“This isn’t just about sharing links; it’s about building collective intelligence,” Hwang said.
By facilitating the spread of knowledge, engineering teams can ensure they have the expertise needed to stay on the cusp of industry advancements, leading to more informed technologists — and more impactful products.
Below, Manchanda, Hwang and engineering leaders from Braze and EliseAI share how their teams cultivate a culture of learning, how this impacts their work and the advice they’d offer others in their field who are eager to foster knowledge-sharing on their own teams.
Braze is a leading customer engagement platform that powers lasting connections between consumers and brands they love through cross-channel messaging and journey orchestration to Al-powered experimentation and optimization.
How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?
My team does this in a bunch of different ways. One common exercise across all teams in the product engineering org is knowledge-sharing sessions. In these sessions, engineering managers will ask someone to present on a topic they’re familiar with. Sometimes, the presenters are engineers talking about technical topics, other times, they’re people in other roles and teams diving into a different topic that’s relevant to the team’s work.
We also encourage engineers to drive their own learning. Some have used our yearly Braze Global Learning Stipend — $2,000 per year — to take courses in new engineering topics, while others use it to buy books. When possible, engineers try to use each other to stay accountable by reading through the books as part of the larger Braze engineering book club or occasionally going through one as a team.
But the biggest way we do this is mixing learning into the flow of regular project work. By talking to engineers about their interests ahead of time, we can match them up with projects that will help them grow technically. This usually means setting aside time in the project plan for engineers to ramp up and ensuring they have mentors and resources as needed.
“By talking to engineers about their interests ahead of time, we can match them up with projects that will help them grow technically.”
How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?
In the long run, building a learning culture should improve the velocity and quality of the team’s work. A couple of years ago, we hired a very strong front-end engineer who had an immediate impact on our code quality and output. But he made it his mission to level up the rest of the team on the front end as well, constantly teaching through presentations, pairing, code reviews and design reviews. Two and a half years later, more than half of the engineers feel strong on the front end, and it shows in their output: we’re able to deliver work more quickly and with higher quality than we were before.
Other times, exposing engineers to new problems through knowledge-sharing sessions has turned into potential project ideas. In one case, SMS operations came to talk to the engineering team about their workflow for setting up new customers. We left that session with a bunch of new ideas for places to automate some of the manual things ops had to do, letting their team spend time on higher value work and speeding up the onboarding process for our customers.
What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?
As a leader, the most important things to do to help build this environment is to make space for learning and to incentivize engineers to prioritize teaching others. It’s really easy to deprioritize something like preparing for a knowledge-sharing session against a project that needs to be delivered, but doing so would cause you to lose out on a lot of the benefits I mentioned above.
You also need to make sure engineers are rewarded for mentorship and teaching work. For us, this is part of career ladder expectations, and before someone gets promoted to a senior engineer role, we expect them to have multiple examples of cases where they helped uplevel another engineer through things like knowledge-sharing sessions, direct mentorship or advising on a project. You don’t have to drive everything yourself as the manager; you just need to make sure engineers are encouraged to help build this culture themselves.
EliseAI’s AI automation platform is designed to enable multifamily housing and healthcare organizations to streamline their communications and improve operational efficiency.
How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?
We believe the fastest learning happens when engineers share context as they solve problems, and that means everyone is teaching as much as they’re learning. Most of it happens in the flow of work: tapping someone on the shoulder, sketching on the whiteboard or pairing on the code until it’s clear. When someone builds something new, they’ll walk the team through it, record it and make sure others can build on it. We keep learning and teaching lightweight, continuous and part of the way we work.
“When someone builds something new, they’ll walk the team through it, record it and make sure others can build on it.”
How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?
This culture shows up directly in the work; knowledge spreads quickly, engineers unblock themselves faster and the team keeps moving at high velocity even as we grow. New engineers land a pull request on day one and ship real work in their first week. By the end of their first month, they’re already owning full features or products. They’re not waiting on long training or digging through stale docs; context comes from pairing, a quick whiteboard session or a short walkthrough they can replay. Because learning always comes with teaching, explaining your work forces clarity. It surfaces issues early and results in a higher-quality product.
What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?
Normalize questions and context-sharing. Treat asking questions as a strength, and recognize that sharing context is high-leverage work. Ten minutes at a whiteboard can save hours later.
Capture and improve knowledge. Write down or record the things that come up repeatedly. When new people ramp up, ask what was clear and what wasn’t, and then have them improve the docs as part of the process.
Keep feedback loops tight. Don’t let people sit blocked or wait weeks for review. The faster you trade feedback, the faster everyone learns. And make teaching everyone’s job: If you learned it today, explain it tomorrow.
Metropolis Technologies’ computer vision technology enables drivers who are registered on the company’s app to pay for parking by simply driving in and out of a participating garage or lot, which in turn boosts revenue for property owners.
How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?
The pace of innovation in AI and machine learning isn’t just fast; it’s exponential. To stay at the forefront, we can’t just hire smart people — we have to create a system where the entire team learns together. We have found that a successful learning culture is built on a foundation of consistent, structured knowledge-sharing. On a daily basis, we use dedicated forums to share new research, open-source projects and industry insights. This isn’t just about sharing links; it’s about building collective intelligence.
Another important practice we embrace is our weekly reading group. We cover a vast range of topics in a structured theme, from industry best practices and the latest literature in AI research to foundational papers that relate directly to our work and groundbreaking topics like LLMs. The discussion goes beyond a simple review. We frame everything through the lens of our work, asking, “How does this new technology apply to the challenges we face at Metropolis?” This exercise builds a shared mental model of what’s possible and what’s next.
How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?
A culture of learning isn’t a vanity metric; it’s a force multiplier for innovation and execution. When the entire team shares a baseline understanding of a technology, you eliminate the psychological barriers and friction that come with adopting it. For example, after our team collectively studied the latest research on large vision language models, we saw an opportunity to rethink our data annotation pipeline. That shared understanding directly enabled us to bypass weeks/months of traditional exploration and research involving proof-of-concept work. Instead, we were able to quickly prototype and deploy a custom VLM solution that significantly streamlined our workflow. That wasn’t just a technical win; it was a testament to our team’s agility, born from that shared knowledge.
Hwang's Tips for Creating a Culture of Learning
“A culture of learning doesn’t happen by accident; we have to be intentional.
- “Make it a core part of the team’s DNA. Learning and educational sharing should be celebrated and expected, not tolerated.”
- “Lead by example. We must be the biggest learner in the room. Be the first to bring a new paper to the reading group or share an interesting finding. Let the team follow your lead.”
- “Align incentives. Learning takes time and energy, and that has to be a recognized investment. Whether it’s a small prize for the best presentation, a dedicated learning budget or including it in performance reviews, you have to show that you truly value it. Without that alignment, it will be the first thing to go when deadlines loom.”
Ultimately, a learning culture isn’t just a benefit; it is the fundamental foundation of a high-performing engineering organization.”
Click Therapeutics develops digital treatments that address a wide range of disorders and conditions, from major depressive disorder to obesity.
How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?
Our engineers actively create their own learning opportunities. One engineer, for instance, launched an optional daily engineering huddle. This informal, collaborative session brings the team together to solve problems and learn from each other. It’s entirely driven by the team and focused on practical, hands-on learning.
Our leadership champions a culture of knowledge-sharing. Biweekly tech demos gather the entire technology organization together to showcase new projects, spark discussions and share insights across teams. Additionally, our director of engineering partners with team members to host a monthly lunch-and-learn series. Topics are crowdsourced through polls and presented by in-house experts, ensuring the content is always relevant and practical.
“Biweekly tech demos gather the entire technology organization together to showcase new projects, spark discussions and share insights across teams.”
Twice a year, our “Click Bash” celebrations bring everyone together for in-person collaboration. Sure, there is a party, but it’s also a prime opportunity for cross-team workshops, collaborative planning and team-building outings that strengthen relationships. We also host Click-Fest, where the entire company can experience what our tech teams have been building, and we recently launched our first successful hackathon.
How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?
Click operates under six core values — Patients First, Act with Integrity, Expect Excellence, No Jerks, Own It and Make Work Fun — which are fundamental to everything we do. This culture of continuous learning has been the driving force behind our rapid advancements in AI. Our CEO, David Klein, is a firm believer in AI and has challenged every employee to master and integrate it into their daily tasks.
To achieve this, we created a cross-functional AI Exploration Stream, where teams meet twice weekly to share findings and apply AI to specific workflows. This initiative encourages learning and directly translates it into practical applications. The results have been remarkable. Our engineers, for example, are using AI coding agents to generate application components, and a manager developed an AI dashboard that projects a team’s ability to meet deadlines based on JIRA data, improving project planning and communication. What started as a learning initiative has quickly become a catalyst for innovation. As our teams embrace AI, the efficiency gains continue to grow, proving that empowering people to explore new technologies doesn’t just teach them; it transforms how work gets done.
What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?
For engineers: Learning starts with you. Be intentional about your own growth and share what you discover. You can host an open session, post a tip in Slack or demo something new. Find your preferred style, whether it’s structured courses or hands-on projects, and use it to sharpen your skills. Don’t fall into the trap of, “I don’t have time.” Instead, ask yourself, “Where can I make time?” Personally, I taught myself to swim by watching YouTube videos and practicing drills. I learn by watching, doing and persistently reinforcing each skill. That same focus applies at work; if you can teach yourself one thing with consistency, you can learn almost anything.
For leaders: A learning culture works when people see its value. Start with the “why;” show your team how learning can solve their problems and make their work faster, better and easier. Next, create a space for them to share. Poll for topics and pain points, connect them with internal experts and provide forums where sharing feels natural. Support grassroots efforts such as team-led resource groups and amplify them. The strongest learning cultures are co-created.
