In this blog post, Rene van Osnabrugge distills lessons on startup engineering culture from the LEAD podcast, with a focus on lean processes, trust, and DevOps principles.

Startup Engineering Culture in Action

Author: Rene van Osnabrugge
Published: June 18, 2025

Introduction

In 2024, Rene van Osnabrugge and Geert van der Cruijsen launched the LEAD podcast to explore different aspects of building an engineering culture. Through their episodes—sometimes hosting guests, sometimes just themselves—they shared stories and insights from the field. This blog post compiles key lessons from those conversations, with special credit to Geert, their guests, and Xebia, their employer.

Building Engineering Culture in Startups

One episode featured Harald, co-founder and CTO of Atlas, who discussed how to construct an engineering culture in an early-stage startup. The central challenge: creating an effective, cohesive team with minimal resources available—a reality for small teams where time, budget, and personnel are limited.

Lean Processes & Product Focus

When Atlas began, the team prioritized only essential processes. Heavy protocols were eschewed; instead, the focus was on the minimum needed for effective code review and testing. Synchronization practices typical of larger organizations were replaced by continuous alignment, with everyone deeply engaged in the product. Technical staff interacted directly with customer feedback and participated in using the product themselves. Internal challenges, such as building creative maps with their own tool, fostered product-focused engagement across the company.

The 90-10 Rule: Pragmatic Prioritization

In a startup, striving to achieve 90% of the value for 10% of the effort is a constant theme—whether it relates to security, performance, or feature delivery. Engineers must balance the drive for perfection with the reality of limited resources and deadlines. Atlas adopted a straightforward framework: evaluate features on a two-axis chart of effort versus business value. If a feature can’t be confidently placed, more research or input is needed. This simple method drove clarity and focus without bureaucracy.

Scaling Without Compromising Culture

As Atlas prepared for growth, Harald emphasized caution. Up to around twelve people, a single team model works well, but beyond that, the need for middle management and structure grows, along with the risk of losing what makes the early culture special. Atlas opted for measured growth, first expanding with skilled seniors who thrive in ambiguity, while also empowering junior team members with stretching challenges to support their growth into larger roles.

Trust and True Ownership

Trust underpins the Atlas engineering environment. New hires are given responsibility early, including deploying to production. When issues arise, team members are expected to fix them—not as a matter of blame, but as opportunities for learning. This reflects a core DevOps principle: the team owns what they build, runs, and maintains. It’s about shared responsibility, not finger-pointing, making DevOps a lived reality at Atlas.

Architecture to Enable Growth

Good architecture reduces knowledge transfer needs by providing clear separations of responsibility, allowing people to work more independently. Atlas avoids needless complexity (such as microservices for their own sake), focusing instead on a handful of clear, understandable services. This supports growth without introducing complexity that the team can’t manage.

90-10: A Lesson Beyond Coding

Harald’s key takeaway applies not only to engineering, but to life: make small changes for maximum impact. Focus, pragmatism, and the acceptance of “good enough” over perfection drive results and prevent burnout. Atlas’s ability to deliver new features and quick fixes builds ongoing goodwill with their customers.

Conclusion

For anyone building teams—whether in startups or larger organizations—the lessons are clear:

  • Keep processes and solutions simple.
  • Maintain a tight focus on customers and product usage.
  • Build trust and true ownership into the culture.
  • Relentlessly prioritize to maximize value.
  • Empower every team member to take responsibility and grow.

Listen to the Original Episode:

For more on engineering culture, DevOps, and team leadership, explore the LEAD podcast series or visit The Road to ALM.

This post appeared first on “René van Osnabrugge’s Blog”. Read the entire article here