Why Great Engineering Teams Don’t Accept “Normal” Errors

Podcast

Why great engineering teams don’t accept “normal” errors

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Apple

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Ganesh Datta
Host
CTO & Co-founder of Cortex
Jeff Schnitter
Solution Architect

January 29, 2026

In This Episode

Cortex co-founder and CTO Ganesh Datta sits down with Jeff Schnitter, a Solution Architect at Cortex. Jeff shares insights from his time as a Senior Principal Engineer at Workday, where he led developer experience and release engineering, to explore how organizations can successfully shift their internal culture.

The discussion covers the transition from a "Stockholm Syndrome" mindset where teams accept broken processes to a culture of reliability and security. Ganesh and Jeff also dive into the importance of incentives, the role of leadership in empowering teams, and why the most effective transformations start with identifying individual pain points rather than issuing top-down mandates.

You’ll learn

Cultural change is more effective when it begins by asking developers what sucks about their daily workflows. When people can articulate their specific friction points, they are more motivated to adopt the solutions that fix them.
New hires provide a unique advantage because they have not yet developed an acceptance of inefficient rituals. Leaders should encourage new team members to question existing processes before they become accustomed to the status quo.
Teams are more likely to prioritize reliability when they own a service from design through deployment. This shift prevents the "throw it over the wall" mentality and ensures that developers are personally invested in the success of the software in production.
Attempting massive three-month pauses for technical debt often results in lost momentum or incomplete projects. Engineering leaders should focus on incremental wins that build trust and faith within the organization.
A leader's role is to sell the vision and then get out of the way. Great engineering leaders define the goals and then trust their teams to execute the rituals, much like a coach who prepares players during practice but stays on the sidelines during the game.

Quotes

"Culture is about the attitude that the organization has toward addressing problems. Are people aligned to solve the same types of problems in the same types of ways?"

Jeff Schnitter

Solution Architect

"I learned the hard way that you should not tell people how to run their business or what tools they should use. The outcome should be the key metric."

Jeff Schnitter

Solution Architect

"I always want to start with the pain. People understand the pain they have, and when they articulate it, you can identify what is preventing them from accomplishing their goals."

Jeff Schnitter

Solution Architect

"Software development is more of a faith-based business than a tech business. You have to prove yourself to your engineers so they believe in you, the organization, and the processes."

Jeff Schnitter

Solution Architect

Timestamps

01:44
Defining culture as an organization's attitude toward solving problems.
02:36
How organizational motivations like security or speed shape internal rituals.
07:51
Using the outsider lens to identify friction points that long-time employees overlook.
09:26
Why effective cultural change relies on the carrot rather than the stick.
10:26
Moving from a "throw it over the wall" mentality to end-to-end service ownership.
15:18
Why small, incremental wins are more effective for building trust than massive pivots.
16:36
Celebrating substantive value rather than just checking boxes or completing sprints.
17:46
The role of the engineering leader in setting goals and getting out of the way.
22:20
Applying the 80/20 rule to automate the easiest parts of production readiness.
26:10
Adopting a proactive mindset to anticipate ecosystem challenges six months in advance.