/Management

Engineering Unblocked — Interviews With Leaders From Grammarly, Stripe, Webflow And More

tl;dr: A lot of academic research has gone into software engineering productivity. But unblocking organizations and teams in practice takes much more than theoretical knowledge. That’s why Engineering Unblocked brings you interviews with software leaders who have first-hand experience in navigating the challenges of scale, complexity, and growth.

featured in #447

Performance & Compensation (For Eng Execs)

- Will Larson tl;dr: Will discusses: (1) The conflicting goals between those designing, operating, and participating in performance and compensation processes. (2) How to run performance processes, including calibrations, and their challenges. (3) How to participate in a compensation process effectively. (4) How often you should run performance and compensation cycles. (5) Why your goal should be an effective process rather than a perfect one.

featured in #446

On Sizing Your Engineering Organizations

- Kellan Elliot-McCrea tl;dr: Kellan discusses the intricacies of determining optimal team sizes in organizations. He emphasizes that growth should address specific challenges not just increase numbers. Effective software development is best achieved by small, focused teams, which serve as units of concurrency. As teams expand, upgraded organizational infrastructure becomes essential. Kellan highlights the impacts of turnover, plan changes, and onboarding processes and suggests that a clear goal-setting approach, rather than arbitrary growth, leads to better outcomes.

featured in #446

Building Meta’s Threads App (Real-World Engineering Challenges)

- Gergely Orosz tl;dr: “Building Threads was a whirlwind. We started in January 2023 and launched in June 2023. Five months from zero to one of the fastest-growing apps ever,” which saw 100M downloads within five days of its launch. Gergely covers": (1) Building Threads. (2) Technology choices and engineering approaches. (3) Planning for launch. (4) The launch. (5) Learnings and next steps.

featured in #446

Why Fast?

- Matt Rickard tl;dr: “Why do ambitious things sometimes come together so fast?” Matt argues the following: (1) Right time, right place: “Sometimes, groundwork from many disparate threads comes together, making the previously impossible possible.“ (2) A sense of urgency is one of the best motivators. (3) Constraints foster creativity. (4) Fast favors prototypes. A focusing mechanism for pruning unnecessary details.

featured in #446

The Worst Programmer I Know

- Daniel Terhorst-North tl;dr: Dan introduces us to Tim Mackinnon, a programmer whose productivity score was consistently zero because he never signed up for any stories in the team's project management system. "Tim wasn’t delivering software; Tim was delivering a team that was delivering software." Mackinnon spent his time pairing with teammates, guiding less experienced developers, and co-creating solutions with seniors. His presence made the entire team "more effective, more productive, more aligned, more idiomatic, more fun." Dan argues against individual performance metrics, stating that they are flawed measures in a "complex adaptive system" like software development. Productivity should be measured in terms of tangible business impact, such as dollars saved, generated, or protected. 

featured in #445

Three Dimensions Of Developer Productivity

tl;dr: Abi offers a three-dimensional approach to understanding and measuring developer productivity. The dimensions are Velocity, Quality, and Satisfaction. The authors argue that "any picture of productivity would be incomplete if these dimensions are not considered." Velocity is the speed at which tasks are completed, but the authors caution that the type of task, its complexity, and routineness must be considered. Quality can be both internal (code quality) and external (end-user experience). Satisfaction encompasses feelings like happiness, autonomy, and flow, and it balances the other two dimensions e.g. "an increase in velocity may lead to reduced costs, but at the same time it can lead to increased stress for developers reducing satisfaction."

featured in #445

When, Why, And How GitHub And GitLab Use Feature Flags

- Ian Vanagas tl;dr: Ian discusses several benefits, such as reduced stress on developers, fewer failed deployments, and a higher rate of shipping features. GitLab calculated that fixing an issue without flags is as time-consuming as "developing a whole new feature." The article explores the advantages of feature flags over long-living feature branches for collaboration. Feature flags keep code changes small, make reviews easier, and limit merge conflicts. Both GitHub and GitLab use feature flags not just based on users but also on "actors" like organizations, teams, and repositories to create consistent experiences.

featured in #445

Push And Pull

- Kellan Elliot-McCrea tl;dr: Kellan discusses a model for understanding engineering processes that focuses on two elements: "Push" and "Pull." "Push" refers to the rules, templates, and expectations set by a team for a process. "Pull" is the inherent value or need that the process fulfills, making it worthwhile and valuable for team members to engage in it. The author notes that many processes fail due to a lack of "Pull," as seen in the example of weekly status updates that fade out because "It didn’t feel like anyone was reading it."

featured in #445

Measuring Developer Productivity? A Response To McKinsey

- Kent Beck Gergely Orosz tl;dr: “We wrote this article for software developers and engineering leaders, and anybody who cares about nurturing high-performing software development teams. By “high performing” we mean teams where developers satisfy their customers, feel good about coming to work, and don’t feel like they’re constantly measured on senseless metrics which work against building software that solves customers’ problems. Our goal is to help hands-on leaders to make suggestions for measuring without causing harm, and to help software developers become more productive.”

featured in #444