Sonia Connolly

The best engineering orgs are not the ones with the smartest, most experienced people in the world. They’re the ones where normal software engineers can consistently make progress, deliver value to users, and move the business forward.

Have you ever mentioned something that seems totally normal to you only to be greeted by surprise? Happens to me all the time when I describe something everyone at work thinks is normal. For some reason, my conversation partner's face morphs from pleasant smile to rictus of horror. Here are a few representative examples.

There's the company that is perhaps the nicest place I've ever worked, combining the best parts of Valve and Netflix. The people are amazing and you're given near total freedom to do whatever you want. But as a side effect of the culture, they lose perhaps half of new hires in the first year, some voluntarily and some involuntarily. Totally normal, right? Here are a few more anecdotes that were considered totally normal by people in places I've worked. And often not just normal, but laudable.