# How We Cut Process and Drove Growth at Synthesia

By [Jake Gillespie](/content/blog/authors/jake-gillespie/index.html)  
Engineering Lead at Synthesia  
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At Synthesia, we try to keep processes to an absolute minimum. That includes meetings, project management ceremonies, standups, and deadlines. We only have one meeting a week—a 15-minute sync on Monday afternoons—and we’re thinking about cutting it because it’s redundant.

## The values behind our low process culture

- **Ownership**: We assign ICs a huge amount of responsibility, including testing, planning, and analysis. 
- **Outcome-based effectiveness**: We focus on impact and outcome above all else.
- **Peer-based collaboration**: We don’t emphasize hierarchy between juniors and seniors.

## How we deliver projects

### 1\. Strategic alignment
Before we touch a line of code, we plan. We build a PRD (Product Requirements Document).

### 2\. Project planning
We make a different tradeoff by fixing timelines and resources and leaving the scope of each project up to the engineers to determine.

### 3\. Execution
Engineers publish three types of updates on a regular cadence:
- **Every day**: Brief, async standups for other engineers and their team lead.
- **Every week**: PPP (Plans, Progress, and Problems) update for PMs, designers, and leadership.
- **Every month**: Workstream review to communicate major updates to company leadership.

## How we hire for low process fit
### 1\. Finding the right candidates
We focus almost exclusively on hiring engineers who already have deep technical experience.

### 2\. Call with the hiring manager
We determine to what degree a given candidate is aware of project impact.

### 3\. Technical interview
This interview focuses on impact and asks technical questions that inherently involve users and metrics.

## Low culture prerequisites
- **Willingness to hire specifically**: Hiring speed that can sometimes feel scary.
- **Strong product and product team**: Low process and project ownership don’t work if ICs don’t have the opportunity to make an impact.
- **High engineer-engineer trust**: Engineers need to trust each other.
- **Organizational buy-in**: This is not a reactive way of working.

## Startup = (Opinionated) Growth
In 1975, Fred Brooks taught us in _The Mythical Man-Month_ that throwing more bodies at a problem will not solve it faster.