Engineering Vision, Mission, and Principles
Invitation Homes is the nation’s premier single-family home rental company. Our engineering vision and mission support the company’s purpose and values, keeping the experience of our residents (the people who live in our homes) and our associates (our employees) at the center of everything we build.
Vision
Delight our residents and associates with innovative solutions built by happy teams.
Mission
Our collaborative teams craft high-quality, scalable software that can grow and evolve as our business does.
Principles
Our Engineering Principles are a reflection of the culture we aspire to build and the behaviors we want to reinforce across our teams. They serve as a north star for how we operate, make decisions, and grow as engineers.
The principles are designed to:
- Guide decision-making at all levels of engineering.
- Elevate our standards by making excellence a shared expectation.
- Promote individual growth.
- Encourage shared ownership of what “good” engineering looks like.
- Create alignment across teams, so we’re all moving toward the same goals.
These principles align with Invitation Homes’ core values framework, Genuine CARE: Connect the Dots, Aim True, Raise the Roof, and Embrace the Journey.
Our Principles
| IH Engineering is: | |
|---|---|
| Committed to Quality | We are committed to quality and continually reinforce this commitment by examining our actions and discerning how we can improve them (informed by data, when possible). |
| Collaborative | We are collaborative, and diverse viewpoints make us stronger. Speak up when you disagree, but once a decision is made, commit fully so we can succeed as one team. |
| Continuously Improving our Craft | We are continuously improving our craft, embracing our technical expertise, and striving to improve ourselves and keep our tools sharp. |
| Biased to Action | We are biased to action and prefer things that move us forward; everything we do should be in the service of getting something done. |
| Curious | We are curious and encourage exploration, but always with an eye toward pragmatic implementation. |
| Passionate about Automation | We are passionate about automation and don’t sleep well at night if there are things we’re doing manually that can be done automatically. |
| Shipping It! | We are always shipping it, continually delivering value, tackling blockers and challenges, and fostering a strong culture of momentum. |
As with all things, these sometimes exist in tension with each other. Commitment to Quality and Shipping It! can sometimes feel like opposing forces, but they must always be balanced appropriately.
How We Use Our Principles
Principles are meant to be lived. Here are some ways we integrate them into our daily work:
- Decision-Making: Refer to them when evaluating decisions. They are especially helpful in moments of ambiguity or disagreement, offering a shared language and framework to move forward with clarity and unity.
- Recognition: Recognize and celebrate when someone embodies a principle.
- Performance Conversations: Use the principles as a lens to reflect on growth, impact, and areas for improvement.
- Career Development: The expectations in our Career Progression Framework reflect these principles in action. Use them as a lens when reviewing your own growth across roles.
Anti-Patterns
Hero worship: Senior developers are not infallible. Projects should not require long hours from a hero who fixes everything at the last minute. All of our projects are team efforts.
Knowledge silos: We try to avoid knowledge silos. We have a culture of writing things down to help empower others with information.
“Well, actually…”: Being pedantic or attempting to shame team members on technicalities is never a good idea.
Best Practices: What’s best for others isn’t always best for us. We live in a complex world of trade-offs, and we will inform our decisions with what others have done, but not be constrained by those “best practices.” This doesn’t mean we can’t learn from what works well for others; we just shouldn’t automatically accept it as gospel.