Today’s my last day at cinch, where I was a Tech Lead across multiple teams for the past two and a half years. I’ve learned so much working there, and I wanted to end my time there by collecting my thoughts on what I learned.

• The power of one tech stack - There’s enough new problems to solve at a growing company, there’s no need to reinvent the wheel when it comes to technology choices. cinch’s engineering principles are founded upon event-driven architecture using AWS serverless technologies. This decision, along with a set of reusable services and libraries, allowed engineering teams to solve customer problems, and not waste time on already-solved technology decisions. I’d later come to the conclusion this is a great example of leveraged work.
• Pioneers, Settlers and Town Planners - cinch was the first place I’d come across the concept, and it instantly resonated with my mental model of choosing companies to work for, and my role in them. I think I sit somewhere between a Pioneer and a Settler - taking something from zero to one is where I do some of my best work.
• The only constant is change - Being comfortable with change, and accepting this is a part of working at a fast-paced company. People will leave through no fault of your own, teams’ roadmaps will change, and top-down initiatives are to be expected. Accept this is a part of day-to-day life, and work with colleagues on navigating this change as smoothly as possible.

• Engineering leadership frameworks - Presented to me by Paul Ingham, I think these pillars succinctly describe the foundations of good engineering leadership:

  • Engineering artisanship
    • Emphasises mastery in technical skills, innovation, and quality in engineering practices.
  • Engineering strategy
    • Involves planning and executing long-term technical goals, aligning engineering efforts with business objectives.
  • Culture
    • Focuses on fostering a collaborative, inclusive, and high-performing engineering team environment.
  • Stakeholder engagement
    • Entails effective communication, collaboration, and relationship-building with internal and external stakeholders to ensure alignment and support for engineering initiatives.
• The fog of war - On reflection, the situations that felt big and “earth-shattering” in reality weren’t at all. This point is a personal reminder not to overthink situations and know the storm shall pass (apologies to whoever is reading this for the metaphors).
• Observability as a first-class citizen - Building observable systems was at the heart of cinch’s engineering philosophy. Not only from a systems perspective, but the routine and practice of what it meant to build a well-observed system was embedded into the engineering department.
• Lots of other stuff, such as using working groups for cross-org initiatives, DevOps checkpoints, DORA metrics & Team Topologies.

As a final thought, I just want to say how much I’ve appreciated the people I’ve gotten to work with at cinch. There are too many to name, but they were truly the best part of working at cinch.

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Published on February 19, 2024.

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