Silos survive because systems block cross-team work; setting shared goals, open code ownership, monorepos, mob programming, and protected time are practical levers to force collaboration.
Engineers often work in isolation, building duplicate solutions because the organisation's architecture mirrors its chart. The article shows that this isn't a cultural flaw but a systems problem: when incentives reward individual velocity, teams duplicate effort and waste talent.
Shared, measurable goals that span multiple squads create a reason to collaborate. When a department commits to a concrete target-like cutting deployment time by 40%-teams must coordinate, expose dependencies and share learnings, turning collaboration from a mandate into an obvious choice.
Code ownership is presented as a spectrum. Weak ownership lets anyone contribute while preserving stewardship, which the author argues is the sweet spot for most orgs. Making all repositories visible and allowing cross-team pull requests removes gate-keeping and nudges engineers toward collective responsibility.
The piece recommends concrete infrastructure: monorepos to lower friction, regular mob-programming sessions to build relationships, and protected time (20-30% of capacity) for cross-cutting work. By institutionalising these practices and removing administrative barriers, leaders can turn collaboration into the path of least resistance and break the habit of siloed development.
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