Res·Cog

Clarity on building thinking things,
by Gareth Price, CTO @ CorralData.

Engineering Teams Fail on Execution, Not Principles

Most engineering leaders know what good teams look like. The gap between knowing and practising is where most of them stall.

2 min read · Updated

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  3. f4a1299 +16 −16 Revise blog post title and content to emphasize execution over principles in building engineering teams. Updated sections to clarify the importance of hiring for potential, ownership of outcomes, and adapting processes to team needs. Enhanced focus on bridging engineering with business and maintaining culture intentionally.
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The principles for building engineering teams that ship are not mysterious. Hire well, give people ownership, keep process light, connect engineering to the business, and protect the culture. The scale changes — a 6-person agency operates differently from The New York Times — but the fundamentals do not.

The hard part is consistency.

Hire for trajectory, not résumé

The best engineers I’ve hired were not always the most experienced on paper. They were curious, collaborative, and showed a pattern of growth. At Codecademy, we redesigned the interview process to identify potential and improve diversity. The teams we built that way doubled monthly recurring revenue.

Make ownership mean outcomes, not codebases

High-performing teams own results, not just repositories. At the Times, growth teams owned subscription metrics — not just the code that affected them. That distinction changes how people think about their work.

Fit process to the team

I’m Agile-certified and have run plenty of sprints. But the best process is the one that disappears. At Ready Set Rocket, client work needed lightweight coordination. At the Times, cross-team dependencies demanded more structure. The methodology matters less than whether it helps people ship.

Bridge engineering and the business

The most effective engineering leaders translate in both directions — from pitching clients at an agency, to working with editorial teams at the Times, to presenting technical strategy to investors at CorralData. Teams led by people who cannot do this tend to build the wrong things well.

Protect culture deliberately

At Ready Set Rocket, I watched the company grow from 6 to 50 people. At the Times, I saw engineering culture maintained at scale. The common thread: culture does not survive on autopilot. It requires intention at every stage.

None of this is revolutionary. The gap between knowing these principles and practising them consistently is where most teams fail.