Building an

Engineering Culture

Uri NativHead of Engineering, Klarna Israel

awesome

Uri NativHead of Engineering Klarna Israel

@unativ

a Story…

2005Startup

IT EnterpriseApplication

Java / J2EEOracle

Feature Request

New Report

on a reporting mechanism we already hate at that time

10 million rowsdate as primary keyGroup By month

10 million rows + Group By

DataHelper Table

2010

a Bugreported by a customer

Y2K + 10bug

Ouch!

StarCraft – High Quality Game• Patrick Wyatt (former VP R&D @ Blizzard)– “The game was as buggy as a termite nest”– “every programmer was coding like mad to

meet goals, with no time for reviews, code-audits, or training”– “the programming team continually worked

towards shipping in only two months for the next fourteen months!”

Successful companieshave

talentedengineers

that code like crap

Successful companieshave

passionate talentedengineers

that code like crap

Awesome Engineering CultureOutweigh

Bad Technical Decisions

Buy now, Pay later

700 employees

Ruby-on-Rails/Erlang

6 European Countries

25% of Sweden online commerce

€ 150,000,000 in revenue

Tel Aviv & Stockholm

Building Klarna Israeli Engineering Center in

Tel Aviv

The 3 Ingredientsof great

Engineering Culture

The secret sauce

1

1Short Feedback Loop

ContinuousDelivery

Fast Test SuitesFail Fast

Short Sprints

2

2Quality State-of-Mind

TDD

BDD

Zero-defectpolicy

SoftwareCraftsmanship

PairProgramming

Automatictests

Code Review

2½

2½Continuous Improvement

20% precentMeetups

Learn fromMistakes

Hackathons

Adopt newtechnologies

Teach

Retrospectives

3

3Peopleware

Humble

Respect Trust

PassionateEngineers

Learn fromMistakes

Hiring

Team players

Pair ProgrammingShared Code

Code Review

Ingredients of great Engineering Culture

1. Short feedback loop2. Quality state-of-mind3. Continuous Improvement4. Peopleware

Image source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9439733@N02/2043786951/

Building great culture is on the top of our

priority list

YOU can influence!

THANK YOU!