Trust your team, don't trust their code

In the fast-paced world of software development, trust is an essential component of a successful team. As the head of engineers in early and small startups, I understand the importance of relying on your team. However, it's equally crucial to maintain a vigilant eye on the code they produce.

Trusting Your Team

As a leader, my job is to assemble a group of engineers based on my startup budget, I have 2 lead software engineers, 4 backend developers, 4 Flutter engineers, 2 QA, and 2 skilled infrastructure teams. This team is good enough to tackle the challenges. With their strength and weaknesses, I trust in their capabilities to deliver solutions efficiently.

The Code Conundrum

This is the dilemma. While trusting your team is vital, it's equally essential not to blindly trust the code they produce.

Human Error:
We are all human after all. Even the most experienced engineers can make mistakes. Code reviews and testing are essential to catch these errors before they impact your product.

Use Standards:
Every person has have different background. Each person brings what they're considered best practice based on their experience. Establish your code convention for your codebase.

Pair programming/Explain or present their code:
It is crucial for team members to actively share their knowledge with one another. By doing so, each individual can challenge the perspectives of their colleagues and contribute to a more well-rounded understanding of the problem at hand. It is also important for team members to align their perspectives with the team's code standards and skills in order to maintain consistency and efficiency.

The Balance

So, how do you strike the right balance between trusting your team and scrutinizing their code?

Clear Standards: Establish clear coding standards and best practices. This provides a common framework for your team to work within.

Code Reviews: Encourage regular code reviews within your team. This peer review process helps identify issues early and promotes knowledge sharing.

Testing: Implement testing to catch bugs and regressions. Continuous integration pipelines can help automate this process.

Feedback Loop: Maintain an open and constructive feedback loop with your team. Encourage them to discuss code decisions and improvements openly.

With a team that has diverse backgrounds of engineers, we need to understand the value of trust. Trust your team's capabilities, but also trust the process of code review and testing to maintain a high-quality codebase. By striking this balance, we can ensure that the software remains robust, adaptable, and ready for future challenges. Trust your team, but don't blindly trust their code.