# Team Building Published articles for Team Building. This is one page of public article previews, not the complete archive. Follow Next page to continue. Summaries are not the original full articles. ## Why 37signals' Code Looks Different: Small Teams, Narrow Scope, and Selective Hiring DevFeed: [Why 37signals' Code Looks Different: Small Teams, Narrow Scope, and Selective Hiring]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Published: 2026-01-27T00:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Nate Berkopec]() Topics: [Rails](), [Code](), [Software as a service]() Tags: [code](), [open-source](), [rails](), [saas](), [team-building]() ### AI overview The article argues that 37signals' clean-looking Rails code reflects a distinct engineering strategy rather than inherently superior developers. That strategy emphasizes small teams, aggressively limited product scope, and hiring highly capable engineers. ### Source excerpt A recent episode of the Rails Business Podcast was about "striving for ideal code". The hosts are both typical "Rails Indie" owner/operators: a small team building a small SaaS. They were discussing a new podcast which is out from 37signals called "Recordables". The discussion was envy for how good and clean 37signals' code was. This is a fair assessment. They've been open-sourcing a lot of real world products lately, including: Campfire, the chat app. Fizzy, the Kanban tool. If you read them, the code looks great. We've only seen glimpses of this Rails style, which David has alluded to or shown small parts of in interviews or conference talks. Until now, we couldn't see what the Rails "house style" is because we never had a real open source application written in that style. Now we do. The discussion on the podcast was mostly a sense of envy of how good the good was, and wondering: "Why doesn't our code look that good?" Covet not thy neighbor's codebase. The reason why your code doesn't look "as good" as 37signals' is because your engineering strategy is not the same as theirs. 37signals, for all of its faults, has a unique engineering strategy, which I would summarize as: Stay small in terms of headcount to revenue ratio. Ruthlessly cut scope. 37signals' products usually do far, far less than their competition. Hire the top 10% of engineers. Most of the businesses I've ever worked for cannot say that any of these three points are honestly part of their strategy. Every time 37signals puts out a codebase or talks about their size in public, I am always shocked at how few LOC they are. Basecamp Next/2 was originally 10,000 LOC. Basecamp 3 was 18,000 LOC when released. Fizzy is 7,500 non-test LOC. Campfire is just 2,500 non-test LOC. That is fucking insane. 37signals employs 25-30 technical employees, meaning that for each individual codebase, they're maintaining under 2,500 lines per person. Most companies manage 10x that per headcount. Most indies ship 100,000+ line ## How to run a Personal User Manual exercise for Team Building DevFeed: [How to run a Personal User Manual exercise for Team Building]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Tom Published: 2025-08-27T00:00:00Z Content type: tutorial Language: en Sources: [Tomasz Gągor]() Topics: [Template](), [user guide]() Tags: [building](), [communication](), [culture](), [employee-engagement](), [guide](), [how-to](), [leadership](), [people](), [personal-manual-template](), [personal-user-manual](), [team-bonding](), [team-building](), [team-culture](), [team-exercise](), [work-relationships]() ### AI overview A practical guide to running a Personal User Manual exercise for team building. It explains how to prepare participants, facilitate presentations, encourage discussion, and identify shared interests, and includes an adaptable template. ### Source excerpt Learn how to run a Personal User Manual exercise with your team to boost connection, improve communication, and foster a positive team culture. Includes a ready-to-use template and practical tips for success. ## How outstanding teams form without team-building exercises DevFeed: [How outstanding teams form without team-building exercises]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) Published: 2023-10-28T04:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Tobias Mende]() Topics: [real-time](), [sessions](), [trust](), [incident](), [pull-requests]() Tags: [asynchronous](), [collaboration](), [collaboration-communication-engineering-excellence-software-craft](), [engineering](), [incident](), [pull-requests](), [real-time](), [team](), [team-building](), [trust]() ### AI overview The article argues that outstanding remote engineering teams can form without team-building exercises or frequent in-person meetings. It presents real-time collaboration on meaningful work--such as solving customer issues, programming together, resolving incidents, and discussing team goals--as the basis for trust, belonging, and high-performing teams. ### Source excerpt How outstanding teams form without team-building exercises Building outstanding and high-performing teams is the dream of every engineering leader. But how do you do it? And how do you do it when people work remotely, and getting everybody to the same place is difficult and costly? ## Shishir Mehrotra's 10 rules for leading great team meetings DevFeed: [Shishir Mehrotra's 10 rules for leading great team meetings]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Shishir Mehrotra Published: 2023-10-12T00:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Figma Blog]() Topics: [Development](), [hubspot]() Tags: [culture](), [development](), [interviewing](), [product-development](), [team-building](), [writing]() ### AI overview Coda co-founder and CEO Shishir Mehrotra shares principles for leading effective team meetings. Drawing on workplace rituals and interviews with more than 1,000 people, he argues that named, familiar, and templated rituals can improve company culture, collaboration, and hybrid-work meetings. ### Source excerpt Coda Co-founder and CEO Shishir Mehrotra explains why the best product teams often put as much care into how the work gets done as what product gets shipped. ## Improving Developer Experience, Level 2: Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication DevFeed: [Improving Developer Experience, Level 2: Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: tobi@techunicorn.builders (Tobias Mende) Published: 2023-08-19T04:00:00Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Tobias Mende]() Topics: [Developer experience](), [code productivity]() Tags: [collaboration](), [collaboration-communication-developer-experience-developer-productivity](), [communication](), [developer](), [developer-experience](), [team-building]() ### AI overview This article offers guidance for improving developer experience by strengthening belonging, collaboration, and communication within teams. It discusses inclusivity, recognition, networking, relationship-building, and team activities as ways to support cohesion, trust, creativity, and productivity. ### Source excerpt Improving Developer Experience, Level 2: Belonging, Collaboration, and Communication As part of the ongoing series about improving Developer Experience (DevEx), the last article highlighted the significance of psychological safety, stability, and work-life balance. ## How do you say ChiselStrike in Portuguese? DevFeed: [How do you say ChiselStrike in Portuguese?]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Glauber Costa Published: 2022-05-03T00:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Turso Blog]() Topics: [ChiselStrike]() Tags: [chiselstrike](), [company](), [remote](), [remote-working](), [startup](), [team-building]() ### AI overview The article discusses ChiselStrike as a fully remote company whose founders and employees are distributed around the world. It also mentions that the company is hiring for multiple roles. ### Source excerpt ChiselStrike is a fully remote company (and we are hiring for many roles!). Even the founders are spread around the world. We have worked like this before in at least two companies (before it was... ## Inside Figma: tips from the team that builds Figma DevFeed: [Inside Figma: tips from the team that builds Figma]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Alia Fite Published: 2021-03-03T00:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Figma Blog]() Topics: [Figma]() Tags: [branding](), [design](), [engineering](), [explore](), [figma](), [inspiration](), [livestream](), [product-design](), [prototyping](), [remote](), [research](), [team-building](), [themes](), [use-cases](), [video](), [work]() ### AI overview Figma team members share practical tips, keyboard shortcuts, templates, and brainstorming methods from a livestream. The article highlights how Figma is used across product design, engineering, research, team-building, remote collaboration, and branding work. ### Source excerpt In a recent livestream, Figmates across teams shared their favorite tips for using Figma, including keyboard shortcuts and templates for every skill level. ## Running a Hack Day DevFeed: [Running a Hack Day]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Jossi Wolf Published: 2020-12-01T20:46:31Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Stories by Jossi Wolf on Medium]() Topics: [Development](), [Learning](), [Compose]() Tags: [android](), [hack-days](), [hackday](), [jetpack-compose](), [learning](), [programming](), [stories](), [team-building](), [teamwork]() ### AI overview The article explains what a hack day is and discusses how it can help developers break from routine work, learn, collaborate across teams, and build connections. It also compares hack days with 20% time and notes that the two approaches can complement each other. ### Source excerpt Recently, some clients asked us about our opinion on a newly released framework. To get a better idea of it, we ran an internal hack day -- here's how! Stay tuned for the second part about our experiences with running Jetpack Compose hack day! What's a Hack Day? Basically, a hack day is a one-day event where you can work on whatever. This is awesome for exploring a new technology or just doing something different once in a while! There are no rules except for that what you're doing should probably be kinda related to your work, but it doesn't have to be! Why you should run a hack day There are lots of reasons to love hack days -- I'll focus on a few. The benefits will always be a different depending on your company, team and the tech you are working with. It helps people break out of day-to-day work life A hack day can enable working with different people and build connections If you do it right, people will be able to relax a bit A fun breakout First off, hack days are a great thing to break out of day-to-day dev life. Project fatigue gets everyone after a while. Maybe the work is not mundane or boring, but working on exactly the same thing every day can get tedious. The longer you work on a project, the harder the challenges become and the longer the cycles of success/no success become. On a hack day, you will be working on something entirely different, without any expectations. This makes it a lot easier to learn, takes some pressure off and can be very satisfying. Teamwork!Teamwork Since a hack day is a defined space and time for folks to work on something, this makes working together a lot easier -- you're there anyway! Working on something alone can be nice, and maybe that's exactly what somebody is looking for. For others, learning together is a lot more fun and more memorable. Interacting with folks from different teams In our case, we had people working together who normally work on different projects. This helps create connections and makes the team grow toge ## Pair Programming Explained DevFeed: [Pair Programming Explained]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Mihai Popescu Published: 2019-05-09T17:59:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Shopify Engineering](), [Shopify Engineering - Shopify Engineering]() Topics: [Software Engineering](), [Programming](), [Code](), [Architecture & Design](), [engineering-culture](), [Shopify]() Tags: [article](), [bugs](), [code](), [developer](), [developers](), [efficiency](), [guides](), [learning](), [onboarding](), [programming](), [review](), [safety](), [shopify](), [software-design](), [team-building]() ### AI overview This article explains pair programming, in which two people write, debug, or explore code together. It describes the practice's benefits, including knowledge sharing, collective code ownership, learning, efficiency, software quality, team resilience, onboarding, and developer confidence. ### Source excerpt Pair Programming is when two people write, debug, or explore code together. It's simple, but getting the most out of your pairing session can take some work. ## trivago Tech GetTogether 2016 DevFeed: [trivago Tech GetTogether 2016]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: Tom Bartel Published: 2016-08-02T00:00:00Z Content type: article Language: en Sources: [Trivago]() Topics: [Learning](), [Programming](), [Domain-driven design (DDD)](), [Kafka](), [Natural language processing](), [Python](), [Rust]() Tags: [collaboration](), [communication](), [company](), [domain-driven-design](), [engineering-culture](), [event](), [kafka](), [learning](), [natural-language-processing](), [programming](), [python](), [rust](), [talks](), [team-building](), [tech]() ### AI overview trivago's 2016 Tech GetTogether brought IT colleagues from its offices together in Noordwijk for three days of knowledge exchange and team building. The event used an unconference format in which participants proposed talks and voted on the sessions to schedule. ### Source excerpt With engineers spread across four offices, collaboration and communication in trivago's IT is a challenge. Additionally, new engineers join the company all the time, which makes it even harder to figure out who to talk to about certain products, packages, and technologies. ## FINN's Technical Leadership Field Trip on Quality, Team Building, and Open Space Sessions DevFeed: [FINN's Technical Leadership Field Trip on Quality, Team Building, and Open Space Sessions]() Original publisher: [Read original article]() Author: espen Published: 2011-03-03T09:35:37Z Content type: opinion Language: en Sources: [Finn.no]() Topics: [sessions](), [spaces](), [Users]() Tags: [mental-health](), [organization](), [quality](), [team-building](), [technical]() ### AI overview FINN describes a two-day field trip for Technical Leaders focused on technical excellence, defining quality expectations, team-building exercises, and company open space sessions. The group drafted a checklist for releases and reflected on the different dynamics of internal open space sessions. ### Source excerpt FINN recently created a position called Technical Leader which is going to be our champions of technical excellence. One of the objects for this two-day field trip was to get everyone in the same room and share ideas and challenges from a technological point of view. Quality does not cost ... it pays Most companies talk about how they work hard to "produce quality", but most companies also fail to follow through and make quality a focus for the entire organization. Our first session was about defining what quality means for different stakeholders such as: end users, our CEO, operations and product owners. These discussions lead us to a first draft of a checklist which will be used before each new release. No known bugs Tested in every environment Customer support is informed of important changes Walk'n talk for good mental health The term walk and talk is both a technique for making movies, but it is also a therapeutical technique. At FINN we practice this by randomly pairing two people who both have prepared a challenge they have in their daily work and then they walk and talk for about an hour. This was the first time this group did this exercise and it was a huge success. It was great to get out and talk about stuff to someone you do not get to talk to very often during the work day. As a team building exercise I think this is a great tool which is highly recommended! The challenge of company Open Space sessions During day two we had three open space sessions which was buzzing with excitement. Doing open spaces at conferences it is really inspiring and you learn stuff which you can bring back to your organization. Having open space sessions for just company employees has a different dynamic and can really be something to get your spirits down. When you do this inside a company you build up excitement during the sessions and along with the excitement comes expectations that "somebody needs to make this happen". There is nothing in "open space theory" about how you c