Engineering Leadership: The Hard Parts

Chapter 4. Building Cohesive Teams

In Chapter 3, we acknowledged that you likely didn’t get this job because things were going smoothly and that, more often than not, engineering leaders step in when something is broken. And nothing is better at breaking teams than chaos.

When Juan joined Splice as its first engineering leader, the team was about to raise a major round of funding and was preparing for explosive growth. From the outside, it looked like liftoff. Inside, it was barely held together: 12 people—5 of which were engineers—fragile engineering fundamentals, and no real team structure. It was just a team of smart but exhausted individuals sprinting toward burnout. That’s not unusual; most leaders don’t inherit a cohesive team. Often, they inherit chaos, drift, and the pressure to fix it—fast.

You don’t fix that with process. You fix it by rebuilding the team from the inside out. That starts with psychological safety, followed by functionality, and then capabilities. Only once those foundations are in place should you grow.

This chapter is your roadmap for that journey. And if you’re not stepping into a new team right now, pretend you are. Look at your current team with fresh eyes. What would you see if you’d just inherited it? Where would you start?

It Starts with Safety

You walk into the room, and suddenly everything’s a little quieter. People hold their questions a beat longer. They start editing themselves. Everyone’s wondering the same thing: “What does this new ...