Engineering Code of Conduct
A practical code of conduct for engineering teams focused on building respectful, productive, and inclusive work environments.
What is Engineering Code of Conduct?
DigitalOcean's Engineering Code of Conduct is a set of social rules and guidelines designed to help engineering teams build respectful, productive, and inclusive work environments. It addresses common interpersonal pitfalls in technical workplaces, such as condescending corrections, microaggressions, and disruptive feedback, with the goal of fostering psychological safety and clear communication.
Engineering teams, managers, and tech organizations seeking to establish or improve their team culture, especially in distributed or collaborative environments where effective communication is critical.
It provides practical, actionable guidelines beyond generic conduct rules, focusing on real-world scenarios like code reviews and meeting etiquette, and emphasizes enforcement and collective responsibility to ensure it remains effective.
Overview
Code of Conduct for DigitalOcean's Engineering Team
Use Cases
Best For
- Engineering teams establishing their first formal code of conduct
- Improving communication and feedback culture in technical workplaces
- Distributed or remote teams needing clear collaboration guidelines
- Addressing microaggressions and subtle biases in team interactions
- Creating a more inclusive environment for underrepresented groups in tech
- Teams transitioning to or scaling within a collaborative engineering culture
Not Ideal For
- Organizations that already have a mature, legally integrated conduct policy with formal HR procedures
- Small, informal teams where documented social rules might feel overly bureaucratic
- Projects needing a one-size-fits-all template without customization for specific engineering cultures
- Teams seeking a code with built-in diversity metrics or automated enforcement tools
Pros & Cons
Pros
Specific guidelines like 'No feigning surprise' and 'No condescending well-actually’s' provide clear, real-world examples to prevent common interpersonal pitfalls in tech teams, directly from the README.
Focuses on creating a 'pleasant, productive, and fearless community' by addressing microaggressions and encouraging comfort with admitting gaps in knowledge, especially for underrepresented groups.
Offers practical advice for giving feedback that is actionable rather than critical, both in person and in code reviews, as detailed in the 'Giving and Receiving Feedback' section.
Includes mechanisms like immediate compliance expectations and a Code of Conduct Guild for resolution, ensuring it's more than a feel-good document, as stated in the 'Enactment' section.
Cons
The social rules are explicitly borrowed from the Recurse Center, which may reduce originality and require teams to adapt it heavily for their specific context, as noted in the footnotes.
Enforcement relies on a 'Code of Conduct Guild' and management chain, which might not exist or be effective in all organizations, especially smaller or less structured ones.
It focuses on social guidelines without deep ties to legal or HR policies, which could be a gap for teams needing formal disciplinary procedures or compliance frameworks.
Frequently Asked Questions
Related Projects
User ScriptsThe DigitalOcean User Scripts Library provides ready-to-use scripts that can be executed during the first boot of a Droplet to automate server setup and application provisioning. These scripts help developers quickly configure new servers with common software stacks and settings, reducing manual setup time and ensuring consistency across deployments. ## Key Features - **Cloud-Config Support** — Uses the declarative cloud-config format for readable, maintainable provisioning scripts - **Shell Script Options** — Includes traditional shell scripts for flexible automation tasks - **Pre-configured Stacks** — Provides scripts for popular applications and services like Docker, Node.js, and databases - **Standardized Variables** — Uses consistent placeholder syntax (`<%DESCRIPTIVE_NAME%>`) for user-provided configuration - **Documentation-First** — Each script directory includes detailed README files explaining usage and requirements ## Philosophy The project emphasizes simplicity and readability in provisioning scripts, encouraging the use of declarative cloud-config formats over complex shell scripts whenever possible to make automation more maintainable and accessible.
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