Scaling Engineering Teams via Writing Things Down and Sharing - aka RFCs

Gergely Orosz presents RFCs (Request for Comments) as a critical scaling tool for engineering teams, demonstrating how writing things down transforms organizational communication and decision-making. The RFC process delivers five key benefits: increasing visibility across teams, reducing technical and architectural debt, spreading knowledge throughout the organization, creating accountability through documentation, and enabling early identification of potential issues. Best practices include planning before building, capturing plans in short written documents, having select people approve plans before work begins, distributing plans to all engineers for feedback, and iterating the process over time. As Orosz notes, 'If everyone agrees how the project should be done then writing the approach down should be a piece of cake.' Engineering leaders will learn that writing forces clearer thinking, inviting broad feedback creates trust culture, templates standardize documentation, and processes should remain lightweight and adaptable. The framework has proven scalable from small teams to large organizations like Uber, Google, and Facebook, helping teams communicate more effectively and make more informed decisions while building institutional memory.