The British bank where engineers are encouraged to complain

Engineers have a lot of legacy systems to deal with in finance and, as banks transform their tech stacks, they have a lot of new products to work with too. Not all of those products are good, but one British bank is encouraging its engineers to gossip about their product gripes.

Who is your Ideal Employer in finance? 💥 Answer our survey for a chance to win $1k

Speaking on Stack Overflow's Leaders of Code podcast yesterday, senior tech staff at Lloyds Banking Group revealed how the bank uses the Stack Overflow for Teams platform. Engineers are encouraged to participate in long-form discussions about products in use at the bank, and to contribute to a Q&A section on how to use those products. 

In the past, senior product owner Tom Kelk said Lloyds had "30 plus different platforms of people which contained thousands" of engineers, and that ~60% of tech staff hadn't spoken to anyone outside of their own team for product knowledge sharing. Kelk said the Stack Overflow platform encourages chatter and "brings all the conversations that are being had about individual products across the organization into one place."

Lloyds then uses the discussions on that platform to influence how it builds its products. In the past, Kelk said product staff would have to "go and speak to a few louder people", who may not represent the consensus. Through the platform, he said data is curated to provide "an unfiltered view of what people are searching for about their product." The by-product of having to talk to fewer engineers with more... abrasive personalities, is also presumably a benefit for product staff.

The Q&A section also influences how products are rolled out. Lloyds' head of engineering excellence, Hilary Lanham, said that the bank will "cascade information" about its products down in the form of best practice documentation and how-to guides. The Q&A section shows if those materials have "hit the mark," based on whether questions keep appearing on material those guides cover. 

Lanham said the platform allows Lloyds to treat its engineers like customers rather than employees in a product sense, but complaining won't always get you what you want. Due to the highly regulated nature of banking, Lanham said the product team is constantly "managing the balance between engineers' expectations and what we can offer them in terms of the freedom of access" they could find in a less-regulated environment. Engineers want a "zero-ticket process" but it's not always possible, especially in banking. 

Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: Telegram: @AlexMcMurray, WhatsApp: (+1 269 237 3950). Signal: @AlexMcMurrayEFC.88 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.

Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libellous (in which case it won’t.)