Dropsuite’s Engineering-First

Culture

1. We Hire Quality People (aka the Best Engineers)

2. We Have A High Engineering Staff Ratio

3. We Apply Engineer Thinking To Problem Solving

4. We Value Collaboration Over Cutthroat Behavior

5. We Code In A Desirable Workspace

6. We Cultivate & Encourage A Rapid-Response Mindset

7. We Strive For Creativity & Balance

8. We Foster An Open-Learning Environment

9. We Admit Our Mistakes

10.Fast Time-to-Market Is A Core Business Differentiator

10 Ways Dropsuite Aspires to BeAn Engineering First Company

Obviously, hiring is the most important process we follow to ensure that the best

and brightest software engineers are writing code for Dropsuite. We love

engineers who are self-motivated and have a willingness to explore, learn and

experiment. But being self-motivated and curious is not enough. We look for

engineers who are team players as well. Creating a solid product isn’t always

led by a single coder. More often, it takes a small team of motivated coders to put together a winning solution. Being able to communicate and assist our

weakest links is crucial — and people either have that type of compassionate

personality or they don’t. To find such software engineers, we have incorporated

unique ways to analyze prospective hires to better understand their personality

type. We also hire engineers based on recommendations from existing staff, as

well as from referrals from external sources we trust.

We Hire Quality People(aka the Best Engineers)

What better way to prove that we actually are an engineering-first company than to look at the type of people who are on our payroll. For the first two years of our

existence, the ratio of engineers to non-engineering staff at Dropsuite was about

1 out of very 2. We’re about 1 out of 4 currently, as we have added business

support staff in marketing, sales and service. The reason were are able to keep

our non-engineer staff count low, such as in customer support, is directly

proportionate to the quality of our coding. By hiring exceptional engineers who

write exceptional code, we’ve been able to limit the support team required to run

our business because our code works beautifully. This allows us to scale without

having to play whack-a-mole to a host of bug fixes. In our case, engineering-first has resulted in support less. We kinda like it this way.

Have A High Engineering Staff Ratio

Scale requires us to look at the world a bit differently — and the way software

engineers problem solve is by making decisions based on logic. Be it writing

code for a new program or adding a new feature in the existing solution — or

imagining where the future of cloud backup will take us — we enjoy taking a

methodical approach to problem-solving. We thoroughly gather and analyze all

requirement to better understand and architect to most efficient solution

possible. We try our best to ensure that our software engineers are not

overloaded with too much work by assigning the work in a distributed team.

We Apply Engineer ThinkingTo Problem Solving

Political infighting and blame games are common amongst employees working in many organizations. In such companies, employees are looking to stand out

to management and will do almost anything to make themselves look better

than their peers. But, this type of cutthroat working environment can destroy

trust and take the air out of an honorable, high-growth firm. In such a dismissive

culture, engineers might concentrate more on hitting their numbers rather than

writing exceptional code. Or completing their deadlines at the expense of their

peers who may need coaching or a bit of a helping hand. At Dropsuite, we value

personal integrity and positive work ethic. We believe that successful

collaboration ultimately can change Dropsuite’s core business strategy and social purpose of our business enterprise.

We Value CollaborationOver Cutthroat Behavior

Our experience has taught us that software engineers tend to prefer working in

a quiet workplace with limited sunlight, which is highly-conducive for work — a

place that doesn’t feel like your average office cubicle setup with unpleasant

fluorescent lighting and cookie-cutter surroundings. Instead, Dropsuite

engineers work out of our corporate headquarters at Block 71@ One-North,

Singapore, which is often referred to as Silicon Valley, Singapore — a young,

hip, high-energy location packed full of startups. We provide fresh fruit, free snacks and expresso coffee in our office kitchen. And if your taste buds crave

something more hearty, Timbre+, the first shipping container & food truck style

food place In Singapore, is located next to our office. The MRT subway station

is one block away and there are ample bus and taxis available to shuttle staff

back and forth from home to work and back. The end result? Dropsuite provides

an ideal environment for our team members to create the best quality code that

our clients expect and admire.

We Code In A Desirable Workspace

Dropsuite engineers tend to be very sensitive individuals. They hate bugs and

errors and prefer to fix these issues quickly before they fester and get out of

hand. Whether the problem is related to their own PCs, software they are

coding, or a partner integration, rapidresponses to any issue that might pop up

is a highly desirable outcome. Dropsuite’s work environment encourages and

rewards engineers to resolve issues as quickly as possible, as long as quality is

never sacrificed. This positive mindset is emulated by other Dropsuite departments as well, including HR, Finance, Customer Support, Marketing,

Sales and User Testing. Whenever issues arise that are not quick-fixes, we will

draft select engineering staff into company solve sessions. We will also work

with external experts if needed, and then share the learnings with our team.

Dropsuite is a company that believes involving our engineers in solving the

problems of the day is the right thing to do. And by doing so, our employees feel

more satisfied and respected, which results in greater company loyalty and less

staff churn.

We Cultivate & EncourageA Rapid-Response Mindset

Let’s face it. Getting engineers to do things they don’t want to do is like herding

cats. It’s not going to happen unless there is an incentive to do so. The

employment contract we have with each employee ensures that 80% of the core

tasks of any job get accomplished. That leaves about 20% of our engineering

time that can be devoted to things that engineers really get excited about — like

creating products or services primarily for the sake of radical innovation.

Dropsuite invites and encourages our engineering staff to share their ideas and unleash they collective imaginations. Whenever possible, we incorporate the

best of our team’s ideas into our technology stack, or we allow select skunk

works initiatives to develop over time to see where they lead. By rewarding our

engineers with flexibility, time and recognition, we continually shine the spotlight

on our most value assets — our employees — while fostering a culture of

creativity and innovation.

We Strive For Creativity & Balance

Engineers love to explore new technologies that are related to their work. We have

noticed that if one engineer is good at a particular skill, they tend to enjoy teaching that

same skill to other engineers. Considering this willingness to teach co-workers for the betterment and goodwill of the organization, we have encouraged new ways of

learning within our organization. For example, we’ve set up hackathons for our junior

engineers, run by our senior engineers rather than by a professional instructor. We did

it this way to encourage the transfer of practical workplace knowledge from seasoned

staff to new staff in ways a teacher might not be able to do. We also hold weekly team

meetings that are very open and interactive. When we get special requests from our

engineers to learn more about a new technologies, we will take a follow up action,

such as arrange for a guest speaker to address our team, purchase and distribute

books all can read, or schedule a field trip to a customer location so that our team can see and feel what it’s like to integrate our product from the client end. This helps our

engineers learn new things without having to exert too much effort — and it injects

some fun into the workplace.

We Foster An Open-Learning Environment

Every human being — every company — makes mistakes. Be it an engineer or

a well-known CTO, nobody is perfect. At Dropsuite, we’ve created a culture

where accusations, scorn and embarrassment for bugs and mistakes are

shunned. When management is humble, thoughtful and understanding about

the human condition, it’s easier for staff to pony-up and admit mistakes after

they are made. Dropsuite saves valuable coding time that could be wasted by

hiding the mistake. For example, if one of our star engineers makes acoding error (the horror), instead of avoiding or covering up the error for fear of

retribution, our engineers are more likely to accept the mistake — saving us

countless hours of needless finger-pointing and investigation. A simple, if it’s

broken, fix it, model works. Holding engineers accountable for their work without

publicly highlighting every fault, is just one of the ways Dropsuite’s engineering

first culture leads to a better quality product and a faster time to market.

We Admit Our Mistakes

At Dropsuite, an engineering-first, culture means that at our core, we expect faster

reaction times to challenges and opportunities because that’s what engineers like

to do. This enables us to have speedier go-to-market capabilities than many of

our competitors. In fact, Dropsuite’s CEO, Charif Elansari, has a unifying vision for

how to get things done. His focused work style trickles down into everything the

company does, especially on the software development and support side of our

business. Charif expects each engineer to execute accordingly, and to his or her own ability. We’ve seen that quick reaction times of our engineers can drive better

coding outcomes because when speed of activity is combined with work flexibility

plus enhanced communication, the outcome is a time-to-market ability that is

unrivaled. The business benefits are clear: accelerating time-to-market is a

repeatable activity, which allows Dropsuite get our products to market faster. By

increasing our market opportunities, we increase our odds of growing market

share, brand recognition, and revenue.

Fast Time-to-Market IsA Core Business Differentiator

Creating an engineering-first culture requires much more than the 10 basic steps

we’ve outlined on this page. We thought that by sharing what we’ve done to

embrace an engineering-fist mindset might provide some insight into how we hire,

how we create our products, how we run our company and how we treat our

customers.

Dropsuite isn’t perfect. But we strive each day to live up to the ideals we hold

high. The software engineer mindset is about solving the problem. Roger that.

Conclusion

dropsuite.com