A Day in the Life of a Mobile Product Engineer at Slack
Article Summary
Kevin, a Staff Engineer at Slack, shares how a distributed mobile team ships features across Vancouver and San Francisco without stepping on each other's toes. His secret? Strategic work separation and dogfooding daily builds.
This detailed walkthrough follows Kevin's day as an Android Product Engineer on Slack's Messaging team. From morning standup with SF counterparts to afternoon Office Hours, he reveals how Slack's mobile team maintains velocity while growing 3x in size.
Key Takeaways
- Daily dogfood releases via Play Store catch bugs before users see them
- Office Hours 3x weekly minimize disruptions and enable cross-team mentoring
- Strategic UI/infrastructure work splits let distributed teams move in lockstep
- Design Workshops with stakeholders prevent future-proofing oversights across pillars
- Front-loaded effort early in projects eliminates frantic shipping pushes
Slack's Android team scaled 3x while staying high-functioning through structured collaboration rituals, daily dogfooding, and strategic work distribution across time zones.
About This Article
As Slack grew to 5x its original size, Kevin's Android team struggled with fragmented code ownership. His name appeared in the git history of many files, which meant he was getting pulled into a high volume of pull requests that needed careful prioritization.
Kevin set up a structured mentoring program with Office Hours three times a week. Engineers could ask implementation questions and discuss design decisions in person, which cut down on the back-and-forth in Slack and let people learn from each other across different experience levels.
The Office Hours became both a way to solve problems efficiently and a chance for Kevin to build relationships with Android engineers he didn't normally work with. Important decisions got shared back to the broader team so everyone stayed informed.