Cie Career Growth & Development

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 team philosophy stems from being full-stack thinkers; people that are naturally curious and whose passion extends outside of their specific role. This transcends engineering and lands us in all parts of the business, whether it be product, sales, people or other areas. We prioritize this mindset during the hiring process, allowing us to hone-in on people who are curious and collaborative from the very jump. It all cascades from there. We’re constantly leveraging a feedback loop that showcases any breakthroughs or cool projects/ideas we’ve cooked up through our communication platforms, lunch and learns, and cross-pollination (leading teams and projects across our start-ups). This doesn’t happen by accident; it’s a byproduct of wanting to learn more and we constantly cultivate that.

How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?

We are always testing and constantly getting feedback, which doesn’t just come from our customers, but from the very people that create the products themselves. Every role at Cie is empowered to give feedback, to share what they’re working on, to fill holes — so the impact isn’t just felt in short release cycles, people are invested in what they’re building. The fun thing about constantly learning and sharing is that we create blueprints that make our overall processes more streamlined. And everything comes from that. It’s not just shareable code, but shareable processes altogether.

A specific example would be leveraging an automated code creation pipeline using AI with our developers leading those processes and output. The entire workflow has safeguards and is reusable across our teams. And the best part? We’ve adopted this workflow to QA and other parts of the business.

What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?

When you foster a culture of learning, title and role shouldn’t matter. It empowers everybody. When you lead by example, provide clear guidance to your team, and positively reinforce, it’ll keep the spark alive. Make sure to reinforce both on the micro level, by giving feedback in the moment, as well as on the macro level, by ensuring the team knows what the context and strategic vision is 'the why.' Include your team early and often in the product life cycle. And lastly, positive reinforcement should be given even for what others might consider mundane examples. By reinforcing both small and large contributions, it means everybody at any time can contribute and collaborate.