The Delusion of Internal Borders
Breaking Down the Silo as a Systemic Act
There are few things more corrosive to an organization’s soul than a policy that treats its own people like strangers. When I first joined Shutterstock, I encountered a perfect example of this institutional self-harm: engineers with years of proven, high-impact work were forced to run the full external hiring gauntlet just to transfer to another team. It was more than a peculiar pathology, it was a systemic declaration of mistrust, a policy that announced an employee’s institutional memory and demonstrated value became worthless the moment they crossed an arbitrary internal boundary. This wasn’t merely operational friction; it was a self-inflicted wound, a symptom of deep-seated organizational distrust that actively encouraged tribalism.
This dynamic is tragically common. It’s a classic piece of organizational nonsense, a process designed not for the company’s health, but to soothe the insecurities of siloed leaders.
The Nonsense: The Disease of Institutional Mistrust
The requirement for a full, redundant re-interview of a known internal quantity is a powerful diagnostic indicator. It reveals a culture suffering from several interlocking pathologies:
Systemic Distrust: At its core, this practice signals that teams do not trust each other’s judgment. Team A does not believe that Team B’s assessment of an engineer is valid, credible, or sufficient. This lack of federated trust creates internal borders, transforming a single engineering organization into a collection of suspicious, competing fiefdoms.
Uncalibrated Standards: The practice is often a direct result of having no objective, organization-wide standard for what “good” looks like. In the absence of a shared leveling framework and a calibrated interview process, each team’s assessment becomes a proprietary, un-portable credential.
Operational Rigidity: By creating immense friction for internal mobility, the organization actively prevents its own talent from flowing to where it is most needed. This creates a brittle, static structure that cannot adapt to changing business priorities, trapping talent in one area while starving another.
The Core Pathology: Systemic Contempt: While systemic distrust and uncalibrated standards are the mechanisms, the true disease is the message this practice sends to every employee. It is an act of institutional contempt. It declares that your years of contribution, your deep context on the company’s systems, and the trust you’ve built are irrelevant. This profound invalidation is more than a tax on morale, it is an insult to their professional identity and a powerful incentive for your best people to seek opportunities at companies that actually value their internal track record.
Imagine an engineer who has successfully shipped multiple critical projects over three years. Forcing them through a full-day interview, including basic algorithmic challenges, isn’t just a waste of time, it’s an act of institutional contempt.
Achieving Coherence: Engineering for a Borderless Organization
Overcoming this pathology required a deliberate act of organizational re-engineering. The goal was to dismantle the internal borders by creating a single, trusted currency for talent assessment. This meant implementing a standardized technical interview process and a robust leveling framework, designed to be transparent and consistently applied across all engineering teams.
This initiative was built on several interlocking, synergistic elements:
A Calibrated Structural Framework: We developed a consistent set of interview domains (e.g., system design, domain expertise, behavioral competencies) led by specific functional representatives. This ensured that every interview, regardless of the team, was assessing against the same core competencies.
Codified Leveling Expectations: We built and ratified a new career ladder that explicitly defined the expected behaviors and impact for each level. The distinction between a Senior and a Staff Engineer was no longer a matter of opinion, but a clearly articulated standard.
Process Discipline: The Huddle: We instituted mandatory pre- and post-interview huddles. These brief, structured meetings forced the interview panel to align on what they were looking for and, crucially, to calibrate their assessments against the shared framework before delivering a final decision.
Comprehensive Documentation: We created detailed guides for every participant in the process—interviewers, candidates, and hiring managers. This wasn’t bureaucracy; it was the act of writing down the rules to ensure the game was fair for everyone.
For internal transfers, this new system enabled a dramatically streamlined process. Instead of a full re-vetting, the loop focused on what was actually new: team-specific context, domain knowledge, and mutual cultural fit. It respected the engineer’s existing, validated record of performance.
The implementation was not without resistance. Some team leads, conditioned by the old ways, feared a loss of autonomy. This is a predictable immune response from a dysfunctional system. We overcame it by involving them directly in the design of the new system and by demonstrating, with data, how a calibrated process would lead to better, more consistent hiring outcomes for everyone, especially their own teams.
Lessons for the System Architect
The work of a leader is the work of a system architect. The lessons from this transformation are enduring principles for diagnosing and healing organizational dysfunction:
Involvement is the Antidote to Resistance: Engage stakeholders at all levels in designing the new system. Co-creation is the most effective way to overcome the natural immune response to change.
Seek Agility within Structure: A standardized system should not be a rigid cage. Allow for flexibility to accommodate unique team needs, but never compromise the core principles of fairness and calibration.
Treat the System as a Living Product: These processes are not static artifacts. They must be reviewed, iterated upon, and improved with feedback, just like any other critical piece of technology.
Communicate the “Why”: The most important tool for change is a clear, compelling narrative that explains the benefits of the new system to all stakeholders, addressing their fears and anchoring on the positive outcomes.
As a company grows, its systems must evolve from implicit, trust-based networks to explicit, principle-based frameworks. By transforming the nonsense of internal borders into a lucid system of standardized assessment, we do more than improve efficiency. We build an organization where trust is the default, fairness is the operating standard, and employees feel valued enough to build their careers, not just occupy a job. Ultimately, this is the work: to dismantle the petty tribalism of the silo and replace it with a true sense of organizational citizenship. It is the deliberate act of architecting a community of shared purpose, not just an efficient machine. It is how you build a company worthy of its people’s loyalty.