One of the most nebulous tasks I face as an engineering leader is how to develop engineers. I don’t think there’s a real “best framework” or pattern for doing it. It’s just something you get a feel for after a while. This makes it really hard to write anything good about it. There is still a TON written on it but most of it isn’t widely applicable, some of it is just really bad. Whenever I do come across something that IS highly generalizable I take notice. One of these bits of process I’ve built recently is a weekly, hour-long session for my team where each week a different team member or I share something interesting and at least loosely related to our work.

I’ve seen different flavors of this kind of thing succeed and fail over the years. The first and most important distinction to make is in naming. More often than not I’ve seen this process named “Lunch and Learn”. Nobody has ever genuinely enjoyed a Lunch and Learn other than maybe the person organizing it and even then… The naming implies that you’ll be working instead of eating at lunch, which puts things off to a bad start. If your team is in person, you’ll all be in a meeting room during the session. Between the deafening sounds of the person next to you OPEN-MOUTH-CHEWING a salad and the smell of someone’s leftover spaghetti, you’ll actually envy the presenter for not eating. When does the presenter eat anyways? I’ve always wondered this but been too afraid to ask - do they simply not eat lunch that day? Lunch and Learns - more like Crunch and Churns.

The Roots

I didn’t invent the studio class, I just adapted it for engineers. In grad school my composition instructor would host a weekly studio class where all of the grad students studying her would meet up and present work, usually in a casual manner. Some weeks this would take place over beers at a bar with the topic of discussion being centered on something like the latest Pullitzer Prize for Music. Another week might be a mock firing squad for someone to dry run an upcoming presentation. Flexibility and informality was the magic element - not an “anything time” but not something that added a bunch of prep work for a given week’s presenter.

Host Your Own

The studio class is a democratic process so it will change and adapt to the needs of your engineers over time. I can offer some pointers on how to start it but it will be the job of you, the engineering leader, to curate the class over time, and to get out of its way even, so that it grows to fit your team’s needs.

First - set aside time every week, as in, book it on your team’s calendar. 30 minutes is too little for the low level of formality, two hours is way too long to stay focused without breaks. An hour to an hour and a half is good. Make it towards the end of the day but not the last thing. I typically like Thursday afternoons, it just feels “right” in that spot.

Second - brace yourselves for the first few because they’re going to be touch-and-go. It’ll feel a bit forced for some people and too casual for others, this is normal and the team will calibrate over a few weeks. You’ll need to prescribe topics directly for the first few and you should take one of them. Work with a few of your engineers in 1:1s to tease out intersting topics. Some good ideas to start with - summary of a book related to subject matter or programming, presentation of an interesting framework (even if you’ll never use it at work), walkthrough of your code editor (I’ve found this to be a huge hit), the list is as long as you are creative. The key thing to emphasize is INFORMALITY. No prep work. Show up and start diving in. Go on tangents. If it feels “done” at 20 minutes in, end early.

Third - once the routine is established, maybe about five or so classes in, cancel it for a few weeks. If nobody mentions the absence of studio class in 1:1s or otherwise stop here and abandon the idea, it’s not for every team.

Assuming people are bummed that you haven’t had studio for a few weeks your job now is likely to just schedule out the calendar. If you create a peer atmosphere of thinking “that might be good for a studio class” in standup, Slack, etc. the ideas will pop out everywhere so you’ll just want to make sure you’re staying on topic but not too on topic and making sure everyone gets an equal opportunity for presentation time.

It might seem a big tangential but these sessions have produced some huge wins for every time I’ve conducted them with. Those wins usually come from part of a presentation or discussion that was unassuming too, that’s why you must allow them to be wide-ranging. I hope this is helpful - if you find it works I’d love to hear about it on LinkedIn.