There’s been a lot of talk lately about what role leaders should play as their organizations grow. Recently, Brian Chesky, the founder of Airbnb, and Paul Graham of Y Combinator sparked a debate about whether founders should stay hands-on or step back and let their teams take the lead.
This conversation doesn’t just apply to founders—it’s especially relevant to engineering leaders. As engineering organizations scale, leaders face similar challenges of knowing when to focus on foundational elements and when to step back and empower their teams.
While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, here’s a guiding principle that we use: as an engineering leader, you are likely to stretch yourself too thin if you focus solely on raising the ceiling—the growth, innovation, and endless possibilities. Instead, spend the majority of your focus on the floor—making sure your team’s foundation is solid. Leave the bulk of the ceiling raising effort to your teams.
Why the Floor Matters
When we say “focus on the floor,” we mean setting up a strong foundation that will hold everything together. It’s about ensuring the basics are solid, giving your company the stability it needs to grow. To do this…
Set Clear Standards
Your standards define the core of your engineering organization. Whether it’s the quality of your codebase, adherence to best practices, or team communication, these standards provide the stability needed for growth. But standards shouldn’t just be restrictive—they should also enable creativity.
Think of it this way: when the floor keeps getting raised, your team doesn’t need as tall a ladder to work on the ceiling. Clear standards allow your team to move faster and focus on problem-solving, rather than constantly rethinking foundational elements. By raising the floor through well-established processes, you give your engineers the freedom to experiment and innovate without sacrificing quality. Be quick to cull processes that are hindering your teams’ ability to innovate where it matters.
Secure the Bottom Line
In an engineering org, securing the bottom line goes beyond financial metrics. Yes, budget and resource management are critical, but non-financial metrics are equally foundational. Metrics such as lead time, system uptime, customer satisfaction, and employee engagement are just as crucial to the success and stability of your team.
By keeping a pulse on these foundational metrics, you ensure that your team has the stability it needs to grow. High-quality code and happy, engaged engineers lay the groundwork for long-term success, allowing your team to focus on innovation rather than constantly fighting fires.
Create Systems That Scale
Growth in engineering teams doesn’t happen by chance—it requires systems that can handle the scaling demands. Whether it’s how code is deployed, how customer feedback is integrated into product updates, or how your team is structured, these systems must work as well for a team of 10 as they do for a team of 100.
Your role as an engineering leader is to ensure the environment allows for teams to solve for their ever-evolving set of bottlenecks. With the right processes in place, your team can continue to deliver high-quality work, even as they take on larger projects and higher volumes.
Build a Strong Team
Your engineers are the future of your organization. It’s essential to hire the right people, provide them with the tools they need, and trust them to deliver. But beyond hiring, empowering your team means providing ongoing mentorship, removing roadblocks, and allowing them to take ownership of their projects.
A strong engineering team, equipped with the right resources and leadership, can push the company to new heights.
Striking the right balance
Empowering your team doesn’t mean stepping back from ceiling-raising activities completely. Leaders often struggle with finding the balance between giving the team autonomy and offering strategic guidance. The key is to provide direction without micromanaging the details.
Your team needs the freedom to make their own decisions, but they also need to know they’re aligned with the company’s broader goals. It’s not about controlling every step—it’s about ensuring they have a clear vision to work toward. When you step in at the right moments with guidance, rather than constantly overseeing the details, you can create an environment where innovation and focus thrive together.
Striking a balance could look like your team being tasked with launching a personalized recommendation feature to boost user engagement. Instead of mapping out every detail, you set clear goals: increasing engagement by a specific percentage and ensuring the feature aligns with your company’s long-term scalability plans. You set the desired outcome, your team gets to own the solution.
Throughout the process, you maintain regular check-ins—not to micromanage, but to offer feedback, remove obstacles, and make sure the work stays aligned with the overall strategy. When the team makes progress, you celebrate the wins. If they hit roadblocks, like delays due to inter-team dependencies or issues with legacy code, you provide strategic guidance to help them find solutions, but you don’t take over the project. This way, your team feels empowered to push boundaries while knowing they have your support when needed.
A Thought for Engineering Leaders
“Get the fundamentals down, and the level of everything you do will rise.” – Michael Jordan
Focusing on the foundation is what really drives long-term results. When leaders put their energy into strengthening the basics—clear standards, effective systems, and a solid, trusted team—the organization naturally moves forward. It’s not just about aiming for the ceiling but making sure the floor can support whatever comes next.
So, where’s your focus? Are your standards encouraging creativity? Have your teams been stuck on the same bottlenecks for a while? When challenges arise, are you offering the right level of guidance to keep your team moving? If you’re looking to bounce ideas around or dive deeper into these challenges, feel free to reach out—we’re here to help.