How this Hong Kong software company built a strong engineering culture

Are you a young tech company making your first hire? If so, it’s time to start thinking about company culture, especially your engineering culture.

Founded in 2008 by three engineers, Oursky is a web and mobile development company that retains a proud, geeky character since growing a team of 40 across Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Japan. In fact, the company’s Taiwan office began when a developer approached them to work remotely.

Below are some tips that their co-founder, Ben Cheng, shared with me.

Photo credit: startupstockphotos.com

Define the problem and let people debate about it.

Great engineering culture needs an open channel for ideas to solve defined problems.

Meetings are structured as problems, lessons learnt, and proposed solutions.

 The group wins when a solution is reached.

Oursky reinforces a supportive environment with a simple habit: when two team members begin speaking, both offer to let the other speak first. The gesture reinforces active listening even if two people disagree. In fact, debates are just teamwork to reach a solution.

The group, not the proposing individual, wins when a solution is reached, and everyone can get back to work.

Support autonomous problem solving.

The co-founder of Intuit, Scott Cook, said, “[I]ncreasingly, managers are not the source of the idea.”

Oursky empowers each team member to contribute to the company, and they can raise ideas in Quip, Slack, and in person. Team members also often have company support, such as reimbursement for the purchase of a Raspberry Pi, that encourages them to get started.

Individual projects usually spiral into team projects because people can take time during the day to help out, and finish company work at night. Products have included a foray into IoT with a cloud-based door lock to monetizing apps such as MakeAppIcon and Shotbot.

The engineering culture focuses on quality, not rank.

As a founder of a small team, be mindful of your influence on incoming team members.

Even in flat structures, founders and managers may unwittingly influence the direction of ideas.

Take ownership without owning.

Use bot and human tag teams.

Optimise for iteration speed.

Scout for team members before you’re ready to hire.