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World Congress 2026 Europe • Jul 9, 2026 • Session details

Trust at scale

Mike Fynes

Mike Fynes warns that hiring to solve organizational friction only deepens underlying trust fractures. Discover how this DoorDash leader enforces definitive boundaries to build hyper-scaling engineering teams.

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#1 about 2 min

Defining the core concept of absolute team trust

A classic movie reference illustrates the ultimate organizational goal of establishing unquestioned interpersonal reliability.

#2 about 1 min

Managing scale across distributed engineering teams

Sustaining rapid organizational growth relies on establishing effective collaborative practices rather than continuously increasing headcount.

#3 about 2 min

The initial failure to build autonomous teams

The transition from individual contributor to management frequently exposes the pitfalls of eager over-involvement and unintentional micromanagement.

#4 about 2 min

Breaking team trust through top-down technical overrides

Overruling a team's thoroughly researched technical decision destroys their initiative and silences their input during planning meetings.

#5 about 3 min

Understanding the three concentric layers of trust

Human interaction is governed by an operating model consisting of broad societal norms, role-based implicit assumptions, and direct explicit relationships.

#6 about 2 min

Relying on explicit trust within small organizations

Early-stage companies function efficiently by depending entirely on direct interpersonal contacts and familiar processes.

#7 about 2 min

The societal responsibility and faith placed in engineers

Businesses and society place immense faith in software systems like cloud infrastructure and financial platforms to operate without interruption.

#8 about 2 min

How organizational growth degrades interpersonal team trust

Surpassing organizational thresholds weakens established engineering ceremonies and inadvertently isolates functional groups from one another.

#9 about 3 min

Avoiding the trap of tribalism and toxic silos

Encouraging a strongly inward-looking group identity fabricates short-term cohesion while ultimately damaging broader company alignment.

#10 about 2 min

Gaining trust in drops and losing it in buckets

Professional reputation relies on a delicate asymmetry where minor repetitive successes build confidence but singular failures cause instantaneous reputational damage.

#11 about 4 min

Rebuilding team autonomy by stepping out of technical decisions

Deliberately avoiding architectural discussions and acting privately as a devil's advocate forces developers to reclaim project ownership.

#12 about 3 min

Scaling inter-team trust to avoid invisible efficiency taxes

Unreliable dependencies between engineering functions manifest as padded delivery estimates, excessive oversight, and inefficient technical workarounds.

#13 about 4 min

Hiring for autonomy and building operational reliability

Achieving true organizational maturity requires hiring engineers capable of independent execution and solidifying operational stability prior to adding headcount.

Matching moments

4:21 min

Leveraging trust to launch new developer communities

Angie Jones Angie Jones +3 · World Congress 2024

2:22 min

Expanding the trust landscape to additional stakeholders

Alexander Günsche Alexander Günsche +1 · World Congress 2026 Europe

2:11 min

Scaling organizational trust across hybrid multi-repository workflows

Laura Thorson Laura Thorson · World Congress 2026 Europe

3:57 min

Building organizational trust and embracing remote developer teams

Rudi Bauer Rudi Bauer +1 · Cappuccino with HR

2:28 min

Three habits of high-trust hybrid developer teams

Laura Thorson Laura Thorson · World Congress 2026 Europe

8:09 min

Diagnosing crises of trust in system performance

Ivan Milanov Ivan Milanov · Europe 2026 Virtual

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