I once remember going to some meetup (when meetups we’re still a thing, when people could meet and talk and share ideas) and some engineering leader say that the way they got their org to focus on “unglamorous” problems was by putting their best engineers to work on it.

IME, places where “unglamorous” work seems to be done “well” are also places where the org values this work, where (at least some of) this sort of work is done by some of the best/most senior engineers in the team/org.

It’s hard to build a culture of valuing things bottom-up.

Some things really need to be seen to be believed. Some things need to be experienced first hand (often multiple times) to be internalized.

When sufficient number of folks in the org truly believe in something and act accordingly, then a “shared culture” is formed.

You’re not going to get “operational excellence” or “a great culture of testing” or “best in class CI/CD” or whatever else by just wishing for it and saying it’s important.

You need to allocate your best resources (time, money, people etc.) to fix the problem. Very few orgs do.

Thread brought to you as I’m waiting to get my blood drawn for a test in a lab and I’m bored ...

... but also since I often see talk from the “leadership brigade” which barely talk about how much the org needs to be willing to invest (sometimes at the expense of other things).