Work & Co Career Growth & Development

How does your team cultivate a culture of learning, whether that’s through hackathons, lunch and learns, access to online courses or other resources?

Our company operates with a lab mindset: We value experimentation, curiosity and sharing. What makes learning thrive here is not a specific format but the culture; people feel motivated when surrounded by colleagues who ask sharp, meaningful questions that push their thinking. We encourage everyone to find a peer who can be a sounding board, someone who challenges them with tough questions and helps refine ideas.

From there, individuals lean into different learning styles. Some attend conferences, others prefer structured online courses, while many alternate between deep exploration and lighter, faster learning, like lunch and learns and peer-to-peer sessions.

Of course, a huge amount of learning comes directly from the Work & Co model, in which team members form a single team with clients and are hands-on in the hard work of building and shipping complex products. An important driver for us is the belief that learning is amplified when we share a culture of curiosity and experimentation in a rapidly changing environment.

How does this culture positively impact the work your team produces?

Learning is a cultural flywheel; the passion and enthusiasm of team members learning and sharing what they’ve learned becomes infectious and spreads through the team. This mindset makes a big difference in our work. In complex projects, sharing knowledge across disciplines pushes us to test assumptions quickly and reinforces that measurable results matter. 

At Work & Co, clients come to us to strategize, design and develop digital experiences that simplify what’s inherently complex, whether it’s ecommerce systems, airline booking flows or healthcare platforms. For example, in a recent airline project, internal debates around edge cases in rebooking flows led us to propose a design that reduced user friction while still handling regulatory requirements. While working on a healthcare platform, tough internal questioning ensured our approach balanced usability with data security. 

Challenging each other and implementing knowledge from fellow team members in different disciplines such as design or product strategy helps us uncover hidden constraints, articulate trade-offs clearly and design solutions that feel effortless, even when the underlying systems are highly intricate.

What advice would you give to other engineers or engineering leaders interested in creating a culture of learning on their own team?

Start by focusing on what quality learning provides, not just how to provide it. A culture of learning isn’t built on courses alone but on a mindset where people are encouraged to pursue the right learning methods for them and drive each other to raise the bar. Encourage engineers to find peers who push them with hard, meaningful questions, as this builds sharper thinking and shared accountability. As a leader, your role is to create the conditions and spaces where people can challenge each other openly, give teams permission to experiment and share their discoveries in whatever format feels natural, from a quick demo to a deep dive talk. Teams shouldn’t be precious; get comfortable discarding ideas, and work in pursuit of the best outcome. 

What matters is not standardizing how people learn but making sure the environment rewards curiosity and critical thinking. Create an environment where the learning doesn’t stop at a certain job title; it’s a value that needs to be reflected at all levels of your team in order to stay connected to the work and relevant in the industry.