It’s not only unwise and unprofitable to keep your tech team in the dark on business strategy and technical decisions–it’s unethical.
In the flood of interviews and stories about the cryptocurrency meltdown and the shenanigans of those crooks in the Bahamas, you might have missed the one about the CTO whose subtle, hidden software change removed a key financial control in software controlling money movement. As a result, the hedge fund that was syphoning money from FTX had, according to the SEC, “a virtually unlimited line of credit”--and we all know how badly that turned out when the market soured. Now think about the 10-20 other engineers in the company: why didn’t any of them raise the alarm? Surely not all were out-and-out thieves like the execs. My conclusion is that either the change was invisible to them, a dangerous level of obscurity, or they didn’t understand its consequences, revealing an equally perilous lack of knowledge. In your organisation, are multiple engineers reviewing every code change? And do they know enough about the business to recognise dangerous modifications, whether introduced through malice or innocent error? These are the questions to ask yourself–before your investors or the FBI do!
This first appeared on 19th December 2022 in my weekly Squirrel Squadron email which goes out every Monday. To get my provocative thoughts and tips direct to your inbox first, sign up here: https://squirrelsquadron.com/