
Does anyone else have codified principles and how useful are they? - anayar
At my small startup, we&#x27;ve been codifying our design and engineering principles to a much greater degree ever since COVID forced us remote.<p>You can find them here: https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.shapedlikeat.com&#x2F;articles&#x2F;a-few-design-principles<p>My question is, is this something folks outside the large Ubers and Airbnbs are doing and, if so, how useful have you actually found it? Is it something that is referred to often? Or does it become a relic that&#x27;s lost in the depths of Notion.<p>Curious to get a pulse on how much of our current documentation spree is warranted and how much is overkill.<p>Cheers!
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caminmccluskey
We use them in my current company. I've found them useful and they have great
buy in across the engineering org. There does need to be a certain level of
commitment to make it worthwhile, feedback needs to be taken onboard and
processes and reward need to align to the principles also.

Engineering Principles: [https://github.com/Skyscanner/engineering-
principles](https://github.com/Skyscanner/engineering-principles) Some
background (may be slightly out of date):
[https://medium.com/@SkyscannerEng/an-update-on-our-
engineeri...](https://medium.com/@SkyscannerEng/an-update-on-our-engineering-
principles-80405a96383a)

In summary - definitely useful, but to avoid the issue you raised around
documentation like this becoming a relic you need to commit as an organisation
to living by the principles and reviewing them often enough

(*all my opinions - not the necessarily the opinions of my employer)

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anayar
This is awesome, thanks for sharing that! Can I ask a quick prying question --
who writes these principles and who approves them over on your end?

Effectively trying to gauge - is it grassroots and from the ground up,
implemented and vetted by the engineers or is it more top-down "we need a way
to align engineering at scale" development?

Mostly wondering about adoption and imagining whether my approach of pushing
this into our team is the way to go or if it's worth allowing a collective to
determine the working principles. Sorry for all the questions, you sparked my
curiosity :)

Cheers!

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caminmccluskey
My pleasure, glad it was interesting.

It's a semi-grassroots initiative, there is a steering committee made up of
various engineers, some of whom are involved in engineering education. The
work is supported by senior engineering leadership.

The other core idea is that these principles are internally open source, and
as such are there to be refined by engineers.

