Decoding Duolingo: Returning to the Office, Enabling First-Time Managers, and More

Remote, hybrid, or in-office? Opinions are divided on what has quickly become one of the most controversial topics in tech: Should we return to the office, and if so, how and when?

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, we sit down with Duolingo’s Sr. Director of Engineering, Fabio Lessa, to discuss how to successfully transition your engineering org back to the office — and why Duolingo has done it so successfully. [Hint: it all starts with culture.]

Fabio also discusses Duolingo’s training program for first-time managers, the transition from IC to team lead, and tips to roll out a training program at your company.

"It's not black and white. Right? You can't really replace the acceleration that you get of everyone in the room. Like even whiteboarding together, doing ideas, laughing, joking, good ideas, bad ideas. Now you don't need to do that every day of the week, but there's certain situations that you can really accelerate."

Episode Highlights

• (3:03) Returning to the office
• (6:10) Balancing hybrid work
• (15:28) What makes Duolingo's culture great
• (18:38) Platform engineering
• (21:28) New manager training program
• (26:30) How to roll out your own training program

Episode Excerpt

Dan Lines: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is your host, Dan Lines, co-founder and COO at LinearB, and today we're joined by Fabio Lessa, Senior Director of Engineering at Duolingo. Fabio, welcome to the show.

Fabio Lessa: Yeah, thanks for having me.

Dan Lines: Yeah, awesome to have you on with us today. I think a lot of people know, but if you don't know, Duolingo is a great company.

In fact, some of our producers actually use the app, producers of Dev Interrupted. So they were excited to have the conversation today. And we're going to get into a lot of the things that you're doing at Duolingo. You have some interesting training programs for managers, so we're gonna touch on that.

I think our audience will be really interested in that. But also, we're gonna talk about some insights of how to create a great company culture that's not just a culture but transforms into a business value. But before we talk about those things, you are passionate about RTO, which for those of you who don't know what that means, I didn't know the acronym, so it's Return to Office, which is a really hot topic right now. Actually completely different than when we first started this podcast. It was during the pandemic, I think I was working out of a closet in my tiny apartment, and back then, everyone wanted to talk about remote work and how to make a transition to working at home, but as with all things in life, that we've learned, it's about balance. So maybe the pendulum's coming back a little bit here with the RTO. So if we fast forward to today, I think it's great. Let's just start there. You say Duolingo has a strong belief in this in-person office culture. Why is that?

Fabio Lessa: Yeah, I think it's something that we've always believed in. I think our founders always made put explicit effort into making sure that we had a nice office and we hung out together. So invested a lot in that. I think that, if you look at it, we don't do anything different in the office.

If you go to a Duolingo office, the things we have there are things you'll find in a lot of tech companies today, have good lunch. The setup is really nice, but I think there is something tangible about that investment and how people feel about work as a personal experience.

I can share that when I joined, I was actually still at Spotify, and I was looking for my next opportunity. I was interviewing with a few companies, and that's when Duolingo reached out to me. And so I was like, I'm already interviewing, preparing for interviews. Might as well add one more to the list.

But wasn't really thinking much of it. So it was right before the pandemic, and I actually traveled to Pittsburgh, where headquarters are, to do my interviews. And it was that day of interviews that I spent in the office and met everyone that I really got sold on the job. I don't know. I just felt tangible, like how that people were genuine, were happy working here, and enjoyed it.

It, it definitely bumped it to the top of the list.

Dan Lines: So how did the pandemic actually? Because, like the pandemic, we went all remote. Did that change your opinion during that timeframe about remote culture, or then did you like get sick of it a bit, and now how do you compare the pros and cons of each world?

Fabio Lessa: Yeah, that's a good question. I think one thing about the pandemic is funny. Complicates a little bit. The conversations that we have today about it are that I don't think personally it was a good experiment of remote work, right? Because although, as you said, we were all forced to be at home, and work, only like without interacting with anyone.

It was a really weird time. Everybody was stressed out. There were so many things happening in the world that — made that a really stressful time. I think one thing that today is that things are mostly back to normal. If you're working remotely, you can. You get the benefits of being able to spend more time with people outside.

You'll go outside and do go work from a cafe more often. And those options were not available. People were all just literally locked inside their houses for the whole day. So I think there's a, like that data is a bit polluted, so to speak. but one thing that we did learn is that people really enjoy the real benefits of also spending more time at home.

I think, especially on some of the ways that we work today. Remote working alone in your office in a good office setup, ha has real benefits, and for people with different life situations like young kids and things like that or long commutes as I do have, that makes a real difference.

We feel that it changed our perception more in that, like now we incorporated some of that, like what is the best of those two setups and I think. Now we settled a lot of other companies into a three to two. So, we do Tuesdays and Thursdays in the office and monitor credits optional to come in.

Read the rest of the transcript here.