Engineering teams that prioritize risk-taking over stability

We’re not a company of optimization or incrementalism; we consistently support each other in making big bets and finding out how to make the biggest impact we can.

This often means that we fail, so we choose to fail forward. Fail, learn, move on to the next. If you’re a perfectionist or risk-averse, you won’t be very happy at LDT at our current stage. We are currently in a run-around-and-break-shit phase and believe that done is better than perfect. All engineers are on the front lines, operate very close to production, and have complete autonomy to build, release, and revert.

Our technology moves very quickly, too. We don’t mean that in terms of using bleeding edge technology, but that we (probably because of our stage and ongoing search for product market fit) regularly add new tech into the stack, rip out experiments that didn't work, and replace early iterations of ideas as the product evolves.

What might be seen as “cutting corners” (be it some part of QA or rigor in test coverage), we see as necessary in order to meet deadlines. We always try to maximize how much we can fit into a sprint and go as close to committing as much as possible. We also don't worry about overcommitting. If we've estimated poorly and added too much to a sprint or phase, we reassess in the next planning stage and ask ourselves if projects are still a priority or have the goalposts moved (again)? The team members who have come from big and slow movers like Facebook and Google have thrived at how fast we work and get shit done here (after the initial shock that is 😉).