Chris Church, VP of Engineering at Rainforest, breaks down why a zero bug policy is more than a technical choice. It is a mindset, an operating model, and a culture shift that shapes how engineering teams build, release, and support software at scale.
In this conversation he goes inside the habits that actually make quality a strategic advantage and explains how small releases, strong visibility, and healthy engineering practices create real impact over time.
Key Takeaways
• Quality is not a feature. It is the foundation of trust, especially in a payments environment where even small defects can erode confidence.
• Small releases reduce risk because teams can actually reason about the changes they ship. Frequency builds confidence and reliability.
• Visibility is non negotiable. You cannot fix what you cannot see, so strong monitoring and clear alerts must exist before a quality culture can grow.
• Teams need real capacity set aside for fixes and improvements. Without that buffer, bugs turn into a silent tax that slows down the entire org.
• You can adopt a zero bug mentality even in a mature codebase, but you must commit to a long game of continuous improvement.
Timestamped Highlights
00:33
What Rainforest actually does and why their customers rely on embedded payments
01:44
Chris explains what a zero bug policy means in practice for a fintech engineering team
03:06
Why the policy must be strict and why a backlog of broken things creates a false sense of safety
06:13
How Rainforest structures ownership, on call rotations, and incident response to support quality
10:51
Smaller releases, lower risk, and why the size of a change has a direct impact on failure modes
12:59
Why test coverage and automation must start early and why teams struggle when they try to catch up later
14:27
How to adopt this mindset if your org is nowhere near zero bugs and where to begin
23:44
The biggest gotchas teams underestimate when they start this journey and why progress requires patience
One line that stands out
“People overestimate what they can fix quickly and underestimate what they can improve over the long run.”
Pro Tips
• Start by making your system noisy. More visibility will feel painful at first, but it becomes the foundation for every improvement.
• Reserve capacity for fixes before planning feature work. If you wait until later, that time will never appear.
• Break tech debt into specific problems. Vague labels hide real risks and slow down prioritization.
Call to Action
If you found value in this conversation, follow the show and share it with someone who cares about engineering quality, team culture, and building software that lasts. You can also connect with me on LinkedIn for more conversations that explore people, impact, and technology.