What Is Engineering culture?

Engineering culture is distinct from stated values. A team can have a values document that emphasizes psychological safety and a real culture that punishes mistakes. The document is aspirational; the culture is what people experience.

In distributed teams, culture is harder to transmit because so much of it is normally absorbed through proximity. Distributed teams that develop strong culture do it deliberately — through written norms, explicit examples, and the visible behavior of senior engineers in public channels.