Process

The fintech startup started using RFCs (Request for Comments documents) when we hit seven engineers and decisions stopped being made naturally in conversation. Before RFCs, we’d build something, present it, discover disagreement, and partially rewrite. The disagreement was always there — we just discovered it late. RFCs in theory: write down what you’re proposing before building it, get feedback, align, then build. RFCs in practice, initially: long documents that people didn’t read, discussions that went in circles, and decisions that weren’t really made. The format that fixed it took six months to evolve. ...

The standard startup narrative is that small teams move fast because they cut process. No PRD approval chains, no design committee sign-off, no six-week delivery timelines. Just engineers and a product idea, shipping. That narrative is true as far as it goes, and incomplete in important ways. The startup I joined from 2019 to 2021 was fast for reasons that went beyond “we skipped the bureaucracy.” Understanding those reasons changed how I think about engineering productivity in any context. ...