This is part of a series that dives into my years at Roblox. Quick link back to the main post here, where it has links to all the topics I have discussed so far.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in my blog posts are opinions of my own and does not reflect any views/opinions/positions of Roblox.
Without a doubt, initially, the Builders – employees are some of the best engineers I’ve ever met. By the way, we kept changing what we refers to ourselves as.. it was Robloxers, Robloxian, then some other names, which I say I prefer Robloxian the most.
During my first few years there, the team started out small. The company was in the low hundreds in headcount in HQ. The entire engineering team that worked on the game engine was under 30 engineers. All of us wore multiple hats with some area of specialization where you become the SME. If you need help or has questions about a specific subject, person you need is probably only a stone’s throw away. On top of that, competitiveness between engineers was close to nonexistent . We were all very willing to help out each other, whether it is helping to ship features or just gain a deeper understanding of various corners of the engine.
As time pass and as the team grew, we, as individuals, all grew more and more distant. Each group has their own agenda; their own schedules for deliverables. Yes, this was a necessary change for the organization. But connections between engineers are no longer organically formed. If you’re assigned for a cross team feature/products, then it’s still possible to make these connections. Or if you’re lucky enough to meet the very engineer in what seems like hundreds of teams, you might be spending some time hunting down the right place. Albeit, there is an effort by a selected few to build out an internal directory; it isn’t super helpful given some of the team names may not even describe what they actually do. Although old connections do stay, but new connections outside of the team lessens. Thus, feeling of isolation between teams grows.
That’s not to say that people culture changed! People are still genuinely willing to help for the most part after you find the right person and when they have time. So yes, people are still willing to help. But the velocity that you’ll get it is dramatically slower than before. This phenomenon, I believe, stems from teams has their own feature agenda which engineers needed to focus 100% of their time on, so assisting other teams isn’t their highest priority – more on why this is in an upcoming part!! Just don’t expect to have your questions and concerned addressed within the day unless your manager escalates… Like I said… it’s certainly a process…..