1 00:00:00,000 --> 00:00:07,120 I was reading one of your posts about code owners and you have an aside in there that the code owners file is basically lawful neutral. 2 00:00:07,380 --> 00:00:10,800 And I was thinking like I was I was trying to think about what is it? What does that mean? 3 00:00:10,800 --> 00:00:21,400 And so, you know, I went to go. Well, I mean, I know where it comes from, but like it's when you think about Dungeons and Dragons alignment, things aside from the extreme ends, things get a little confusing. 4 00:00:21,640 --> 00:00:26,300 I think I think everyone knows what lawful good is. Neutral is a little confusing. 5 00:00:26,640 --> 00:00:31,280 You know what chaotic good is, the one that everyone chooses. And you know what what chaotic evil is. 6 00:00:31,540 --> 00:00:34,680 Yes. And and like everything else is kind of up to interpretation. 7 00:00:34,680 --> 00:00:40,000 And so like I was realizing lawful neutral is maybe the most confusing one. 8 00:00:40,580 --> 00:00:44,440 And so like like what is your understanding of what lawful neutral is? 9 00:00:45,520 --> 00:00:52,640 Yeah, I guess like in the context of code owners, it's like having the file there is a neutral thing. 10 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:55,760 It's like lawful, right? There's no. 11 00:00:56,000 --> 00:00:56,840 It follows the rules. 12 00:00:57,380 --> 00:01:02,860 Yeah, it follows the rules and it's not in and of itself good nor evil. 13 00:01:03,660 --> 00:01:04,660 It's just there. 14 00:01:05,880 --> 00:01:12,080 But it's all about the implementation and what you choose to do with it that takes it somewhere else. 15 00:01:13,420 --> 00:01:18,420 And, you know, I've seen teams use code owners as a form of documentation and that's all it is. 16 00:01:18,520 --> 00:01:18,820 Great. 17 00:01:20,120 --> 00:01:28,060 I've also seen teams don't they don't let anything get merged unless you have, you know, two reviews from someone in the code owners file. 18 00:01:31,200 --> 00:01:34,760 Those teams are generally a little less healthy in my observation. 19 00:01:34,760 --> 00:01:51,760 So I don't think I don't think inherently, you know, the idea of a code owners file where you're listing out, hey, this person has the most subject matter expertise about this thing or they're responsible for this component because we can dig into some like team topologies sorts of things and cognitive load. 20 00:01:51,760 --> 00:01:58,320 And, you know, is it a best practice to limit the surface area that a group of developers should cover? 21 00:01:58,580 --> 00:02:00,180 I think that's an interesting conversation. 22 00:02:00,180 --> 00:02:02,920 And I think that ties into the idea of code owners. 23 00:02:03,620 --> 00:02:11,680 But I think the way code owners is often applied is like, I'm blocking you because this is my shiny thing and I don't want you touching it. 24 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:14,440 And that would get you more towards the evil. 25 00:02:14,800 --> 00:02:14,980 Right. 26 00:02:15,020 --> 00:02:19,940 Because in the Dungeons and Dragons alignment system, evil means selfish. 27 00:02:19,940 --> 00:02:27,240 I think it's basically like it means kind of guarding, trying to drive your own value at the expense of others. 28 00:02:27,600 --> 00:02:28,760 This is my cave. 29 00:02:28,920 --> 00:02:29,780 These are my resources. 30 00:02:29,960 --> 00:02:30,700 Please do not enter. 31 00:02:31,380 --> 00:02:31,640 Yeah. 32 00:02:31,800 --> 00:02:31,900 Yeah. 33 00:02:32,740 --> 00:02:36,600 I do see we have just over your shoulder the same D&D set. 34 00:02:37,180 --> 00:02:37,500 That's right. 35 00:02:37,500 --> 00:02:39,100 I have that one right there, right back there. 36 00:02:39,340 --> 00:02:41,000 So I'm glad that we're in good company. 37 00:02:41,060 --> 00:02:42,300 We can talk about these things. 38 00:02:42,540 --> 00:02:42,960 That's right. 39 00:02:42,960 --> 00:02:45,740 Hence, when I came across that, I was like, oh, this is interesting. 40 00:02:45,960 --> 00:02:46,920 Something to pick up on. 41 00:02:47,280 --> 00:03:01,720 I mean, I think just to close out my commentary on that, when I was thinking about it, it made me realize that there's – that's the issue with the alignment system is it doesn't – it has very simplistic understandings of moralistic behavior. 42 00:03:02,420 --> 00:03:05,120 And so, like, you know, it doesn't – there's not really a lot of latitude. 43 00:03:05,240 --> 00:03:20,700 You know, if you're in some sort of societal system in the Dungeons & Dragons world and you are following the rules to it, but those rules were kind of, like, cruel, that doesn't necessarily mean that you're evil because you could think that they're good and you're following the right way of doing things. 44 00:03:20,880 --> 00:03:21,420 So, like, it's very – 45 00:03:21,420 --> 00:03:21,940 That is true. 46 00:03:21,960 --> 00:03:22,920 It gets kind of confusing. 47 00:03:23,420 --> 00:03:24,780 It does get a little dicey in there. 48 00:03:24,780 --> 00:03:35,200 I wonder what it would be like to kind of list out all of these, you know, methodologies for measuring developer productivity or developer performance on that matrix as well. 49 00:03:36,540 --> 00:03:54,680 Because, yeah, I think there's going to be a – I think there's definitely – and maybe that's actually a nice way to describe it is, like, from the stance of the business, which metrics and ways of measurements are selfish for the business because they have something to gain from keeping tabs on everything versus what is really empowering for the developer and gives up control. 50 00:03:54,680 --> 00:03:56,400 From the business side of things. 51 00:03:56,980 --> 00:03:57,300 Yeah. 52 00:03:57,300 --> 00:04:00,540 I think that's a whole – I think that's an interesting conference talk. 53 00:04:00,700 --> 00:04:01,540 I'll just put that out there. 54 00:04:01,640 --> 00:04:01,920 Anyone? 55 00:04:02,280 --> 00:04:07,000 And I think the perspective you brought into it is good, too, right? 56 00:04:07,080 --> 00:04:15,800 Like, the – it's really – when it comes to metrics, it's the alignment of the people who use them that really matters more than the people who are being measured by them. 57 00:04:16,660 --> 00:04:24,420 And, you know, I mean, that's, like – so, we were – you wrote some stuff recently about, like, technical debt. 58 00:04:24,580 --> 00:04:30,780 Or, you know, there's all sorts of words around it, like, you know, managing your legacy software and things like that. 59 00:04:30,780 --> 00:04:47,620 And as you're getting to, right, like, what I find interesting and what you were writing about in the technical debt sort of conversation is, again, that perspective of not necessarily the teams or the developers who are dealing with it. 60 00:04:47,620 --> 00:04:51,760 Because I feel like they know, right? 61 00:04:51,900 --> 00:05:05,440 Like, like – but I find what I struggle to live with, what I struggle to kind of comprehend is, like, why – to put it in a silly way, like, why it's an issue. 62 00:05:05,700 --> 00:05:09,080 Like, it seems like such an obvious thing that you would address technical debt. 63 00:05:09,180 --> 00:05:11,520 And yet, it's a huge issue out there. 64 00:05:12,060 --> 00:05:19,180 And I think a lot of what you are addressing is kind of getting to that point of explaining it to people. 65 00:05:20,240 --> 00:05:22,340 Like, kind of letting them think through it. 66 00:05:22,400 --> 00:05:29,360 So, I'm interested to hear you, you know, kind of go over how you explain tech debt to people where it's not immediately obvious to them. 67 00:05:30,320 --> 00:05:33,180 Yeah, I mean, I think this is all rooted – I don't know. 68 00:05:33,300 --> 00:05:37,140 Can we go back to, like, cavemen era? 69 00:05:37,400 --> 00:05:42,500 Like, this is all rooted in our displeasure with delayed gratification. 70 00:05:43,200 --> 00:05:45,260 Let's get – let's just, like, zoom way out here. 71 00:05:45,820 --> 00:05:52,580 And I think that's the trouble with tech debt is that you would look around and be, like, it's obvious that we should do these things. 72 00:05:52,580 --> 00:05:56,440 But there's something else that's going to give gratification more immediately. 73 00:05:57,680 --> 00:06:07,160 And as humans, that's just always our preference or the tendency of a business is to do the thing that's going to get more immediate gratification. 74 00:06:07,560 --> 00:06:11,780 So, you know, we were talking about how your office is a storage room. 75 00:06:11,920 --> 00:06:14,140 And, of course, I have this nicely manicured backdrop. 76 00:06:14,140 --> 00:06:16,760 But you could see that there's chaos everywhere in here. 77 00:06:16,980 --> 00:06:22,100 I know that I should spend some time tidying up my office. 78 00:06:22,100 --> 00:06:29,660 And it would definitely probably make me think more clearly and, like, be less, you know, less stressful for my life. 79 00:06:29,820 --> 00:06:33,820 But I choose not to do it because I can get gratification by doing something else. 80 00:06:34,320 --> 00:06:34,720 Sure. 81 00:06:35,120 --> 00:06:39,320 And, you know, I think there's a point where my office will become so untidy. 82 00:06:39,320 --> 00:06:46,780 Or if you think about cooking a meal in your kitchen, when you don't have any more pots and pans to cook with, you need to stop and do the dishes. 83 00:06:47,420 --> 00:06:58,220 And if you go into any Michelin-starred restaurant, that kitchen is going to be immaculately clean, just beautiful, regardless of how many people are in the dining room. 84 00:06:59,020 --> 00:07:13,320 And so there's, I think there's definitely some, something to talk about, like human motivation and what we're drawn to, what businesses are drawn to, that makes technical debt something that we know we should do, but something that's easy to put off. 85 00:07:13,520 --> 00:07:30,580 And I think the key to getting it front and center, because it is annoying, it's not fun to live with, is, like, you need to be able to express the value better to the external stakeholders about why this can provide more immediate gratification than building feature X. 86 00:07:31,220 --> 00:07:42,920 Yeah, I mean, I like the avenue you have into this, because, you know, not normally, but, like, one approach would be to start with the financial outcomes, right? 87 00:07:43,020 --> 00:07:44,840 Like, or risk managing it. 88 00:07:45,260 --> 00:07:51,640 But it is, you know, it's always nice to start with a, just like a real life analogy. 89 00:07:52,900 --> 00:08:03,740 I mean, you wouldn't buy a car and never expect to have to rotate the tires or change the oil or work on the engine or charge it or whatever it is that you have to do, right? 90 00:08:04,140 --> 00:08:08,660 Everything comes with a cost of maintenance and everything comes with a cost of operation. 91 00:08:10,400 --> 00:08:14,980 But, yeah, in software, we kind of forget about that sometimes. 92 00:08:15,100 --> 00:08:22,360 Or I think some people that are not coming from a development background don't see that as part of the deal. 93 00:08:22,680 --> 00:08:24,440 When you build something, you've got to maintain it. 94 00:08:25,400 --> 00:08:28,280 Do you think, like, where do you think that comes from? 95 00:08:28,780 --> 00:08:35,940 The, I mean, I don't mean this to sound in a whatever way, but just, like, not understanding the full lifecycle of software? 96 00:08:37,140 --> 00:08:47,280 Yeah, I think, I think there's, I think that there's an education point of view, like a gap that could be closed, certainly. 97 00:08:47,460 --> 00:08:51,460 But I think it's something more, I think it's something deeper than that. 98 00:08:51,540 --> 00:08:55,880 It's just pressures of the business. 99 00:08:56,640 --> 00:09:01,580 I, one of my, I don't, I don't want to call it a hot take because it's not a hot take. 100 00:09:01,580 --> 00:09:08,800 This is just, like, this is the way that I see the world is, like, only successful companies struggle with tech debt. 101 00:09:09,680 --> 00:09:13,740 Only successful teams struggle with having crap in production that they don't want in production. 102 00:09:14,220 --> 00:09:22,920 It means that there was so much pressure on the business that your customers and your users were wanting more that you needed to deliver rapidly. 103 00:09:23,460 --> 00:09:25,600 And you're still around to talk about it. 104 00:09:26,240 --> 00:09:30,200 There's certainly a lot of companies out there that have crap in production that are going to go belly up. 105 00:09:30,540 --> 00:09:33,220 That's, that's, I'm not saying that that doesn't happen. 106 00:09:33,280 --> 00:09:35,760 That does happen in that, I mean, I guess that should happen. 107 00:09:35,840 --> 00:09:37,700 That's the, that's the game we play. 108 00:09:39,160 --> 00:09:44,240 But there's this, like, you know, I talk about always the prototype that ends up in production. 109 00:09:45,160 --> 00:09:48,920 That's not a problem that failing companies have. 110 00:09:50,100 --> 00:09:55,840 Generally, that means that there was enough business pressure and enough demand for whatever it was you're building that you needed to iterate quickly. 111 00:09:55,840 --> 00:09:59,120 And, like, you found something that was working and you just had to run with it. 112 00:09:59,120 --> 00:10:08,060 And you had pressure to build something different or give your customers what they wanted and it ended up with, you know, suboptimal stuff in, in production. 113 00:10:10,060 --> 00:10:13,820 I would also love your take on this because I was reading an article or list. 114 00:10:13,920 --> 00:10:15,100 I think I was listening to a podcast. 115 00:10:15,220 --> 00:10:16,260 I can't remember what it was. 116 00:10:17,280 --> 00:10:22,460 But that tech debt has been miscategorized. 117 00:10:22,460 --> 00:10:27,480 And right now our understanding of it is, like, suboptimal choices that we've had to make to cut corners. 118 00:10:28,200 --> 00:10:35,160 When really the definition of tech debt is, like, building something in the best way but without full understanding of the problem. 119 00:10:35,540 --> 00:10:40,860 And then when the problem fully reveals itself to you, you need to go back and rework what you did before. 120 00:10:42,140 --> 00:10:42,540 Yeah. 121 00:10:42,880 --> 00:10:47,760 That is, like, I like that thinking of it because, you know, kind of as you were saying, 122 00:10:48,420 --> 00:10:52,940 I've tried to think of tech debt and legacy software. 123 00:10:53,200 --> 00:10:54,740 I mean, obviously, I conflate them together. 124 00:10:54,980 --> 00:10:56,940 Or I put them in the same room. 125 00:10:57,160 --> 00:10:57,580 Ah, really? 126 00:10:58,160 --> 00:10:58,740 Yeah, yeah. 127 00:10:58,840 --> 00:11:04,280 And the way that I think about it is I'm always, you know, with my liberal artsy background. 128 00:11:04,420 --> 00:11:07,980 I spend too much time thinking about words and what they mean. 129 00:11:08,440 --> 00:11:14,740 And, like, whenever someone says tech debt or legacy, it means they don't like it. 130 00:11:15,020 --> 00:11:20,380 Like, no one's ever, like, boy, I'm excited to go work on that legacy software. 131 00:11:20,640 --> 00:11:23,980 I have worked with one such developer in my career. 132 00:11:24,300 --> 00:11:25,240 Sorry to interrupt you. 133 00:11:25,400 --> 00:11:25,720 Oh, no, no, no. 134 00:11:25,720 --> 00:11:26,040 Go ahead. 135 00:11:26,500 --> 00:11:33,400 When he told me, he was, like, yeah, you know, just give me that old Rails application and just, like, let me have at it. 136 00:11:33,860 --> 00:11:34,480 Yeah, totally. 137 00:11:35,020 --> 00:11:36,900 I was, like, we need more of you. 138 00:11:37,580 --> 00:11:44,080 Yeah, you know, there's totally that mode you get in where you're just, like, I want to fix stuff, right? 139 00:11:44,140 --> 00:11:46,480 Like, I want to, I like your framing. 140 00:11:46,640 --> 00:11:49,420 I want that gratification of fixing something, right? 141 00:11:49,500 --> 00:11:49,760 Yeah. 142 00:11:49,900 --> 00:11:55,560 Like, I had to replace a, well, we have those silly, we don't, what do you call them? 143 00:11:55,620 --> 00:11:56,480 They're not doorknobs. 144 00:11:56,600 --> 00:11:58,240 They're French handles or whatever. 145 00:11:58,380 --> 00:11:58,520 Oh, yeah. 146 00:11:58,520 --> 00:12:02,200 We got those everywhere, which are terrible when you have a dog because then the dog can go wherever they want. 147 00:12:02,480 --> 00:12:07,520 Like, I'd love to put, I'd love to put knobs in at some point and just confuse the dog, see what happens. 148 00:12:07,780 --> 00:12:10,260 But, so I had to replace one of those. 149 00:12:10,440 --> 00:12:15,120 And, you know, of course, we here in the household are very comfortable with tech debt. 150 00:12:16,160 --> 00:12:20,340 And it lingered for many months and you replace it and you're like, oh, that was wonderful. 151 00:12:20,340 --> 00:12:22,340 And so I imagine there's that gratification. 152 00:12:23,340 --> 00:12:28,340 But, like, you know, I often think when someone talks about legacy software, you know, 153 00:12:28,520 --> 00:12:30,260 they call it that because they don't like it. 154 00:12:30,300 --> 00:12:32,780 Otherwise, they would just call it their software, right? 155 00:12:32,820 --> 00:12:35,780 Like, you put legacy in purposely to say that you dislike it. 156 00:12:35,920 --> 00:12:42,340 But the perspective that you're getting from that I think, and you were getting to this earlier, that I like is, 157 00:12:43,380 --> 00:12:50,260 at some point, this was actually not only good enough, it was the right choice. 158 00:12:50,460 --> 00:12:50,860 Yeah. 159 00:12:51,060 --> 00:13:00,180 So, like, and in fact, having been an application developer a long time ago and, you know, still 160 00:13:00,180 --> 00:13:07,200 talking with a lot of developers, there is a bit of too much perfectionism in the way developers 161 00:13:07,200 --> 00:13:08,140 sometimes think. 162 00:13:08,680 --> 00:13:14,020 And so it could also be the case that, like, what a developer calls tech debt is actually 163 00:13:14,020 --> 00:13:17,020 great to the rest of the organization. 164 00:13:17,020 --> 00:13:23,200 Like, you know, you could think in a different domain where, like, especially for developers, 165 00:13:23,200 --> 00:13:26,780 it's easy to think that meeting could have been an email, right? 166 00:13:26,860 --> 00:13:27,680 Like, things like that. 167 00:13:27,760 --> 00:13:33,240 Whereas, like, if you are the people who's, and I mean this in a positive way, whose job 168 00:13:33,240 --> 00:13:38,260 it is to be in meetings to run the company, you could think, like, no, that meeting was perfect. 169 00:13:38,660 --> 00:13:40,040 That's exactly what we needed. 170 00:13:40,180 --> 00:13:41,380 And so, I don't know. 171 00:13:41,420 --> 00:13:44,840 I mean, I think there's a lot of perspective that comes into play. 172 00:13:44,840 --> 00:13:49,580 Yeah, well, here's the thing, you know, I didn't pay cash for my house. 173 00:13:50,100 --> 00:13:53,400 I took out a loan, as most people do. 174 00:13:54,580 --> 00:14:00,920 Because, you know, sometimes you need to take out a loan in order to be able to do things. 175 00:14:01,060 --> 00:14:06,500 And I think there is an aspect of tech debt that we can kind of directly compare to, like, 176 00:14:06,520 --> 00:14:12,320 a financial transaction where, okay, we need to get to market with this thing, with this 177 00:14:12,320 --> 00:14:16,760 milestone by X, or whatever that time pressure is, or whatever the economic pressure is. 178 00:14:16,760 --> 00:14:24,260 And so, we make a choice to borrow against our future selves in order to expedite whatever 179 00:14:24,260 --> 00:14:25,360 it is we're trying to do. 180 00:14:26,180 --> 00:14:26,200 Yeah. 181 00:14:26,280 --> 00:14:32,200 The thing, though, is I can't just not pay back the interest on my loan. 182 00:14:33,240 --> 00:14:36,400 Yeah, it's obvious, like, what you've got you taking on. 183 00:14:36,420 --> 00:14:40,040 It's obvious the boundaries of that transaction there. 184 00:14:40,220 --> 00:14:41,540 It's like, I'm taking out a loan. 185 00:14:41,700 --> 00:14:49,140 And now, every single month, I'm going to pay back that plus an extra bit of cash, which 186 00:14:49,140 --> 00:14:53,500 is now becoming, you know, not so extra with insurance rates going through the roof. 187 00:14:53,680 --> 00:14:56,860 But it's very obvious that this is an obligation now. 188 00:14:56,940 --> 00:15:03,340 And I'm signing myself up for distributed pain across a longer term in the future in order 189 00:15:03,340 --> 00:15:05,220 to be able to expedite something now. 190 00:15:06,440 --> 00:15:10,500 And I think there are definitely times, and even myself and my own team, teams, I've been 191 00:15:10,500 --> 00:15:13,020 on teams that I've led, we've made a choice to do that. 192 00:15:13,120 --> 00:15:18,800 Because the benefit of what we could get by making that choice outweighed the cost of 193 00:15:18,800 --> 00:15:20,760 having to repay that debt over time. 194 00:15:21,500 --> 00:15:22,080 Yeah, yeah. 195 00:15:22,380 --> 00:15:23,140 Yeah, that's it. 196 00:15:24,040 --> 00:15:30,680 I'm so interested in your, the connection that you have of tech debt and legacy. 197 00:15:31,260 --> 00:15:35,180 Because I always say legacy code is revenue generating code. 198 00:15:35,840 --> 00:15:36,100 For sure. 199 00:15:36,100 --> 00:15:36,780 But you're right. 200 00:15:37,280 --> 00:15:40,800 Like, saying something is legacy is a value judgment in and of itself. 201 00:15:40,800 --> 00:15:42,800 We don't call things that we think are great. 202 00:15:43,120 --> 00:15:43,640 Legacy. 203 00:15:44,060 --> 00:15:47,440 It's always a slightly negative connotation. 204 00:15:48,100 --> 00:15:48,240 Yeah. 205 00:15:48,340 --> 00:15:48,980 And you're right. 206 00:15:49,060 --> 00:15:51,260 It is the, it's the thing that makes the money. 207 00:15:52,040 --> 00:15:52,520 Yeah. 208 00:15:52,520 --> 00:15:53,920 Otherwise, it wouldn't be around, right? 209 00:15:54,180 --> 00:15:54,580 Exactly. 210 00:15:54,840 --> 00:15:55,020 Yeah. 211 00:15:55,140 --> 00:15:55,360 Yeah. 212 00:15:55,800 --> 00:16:02,780 No, and I like the, the idea of, and that's what's intriguing about, you know, like some 213 00:16:02,780 --> 00:16:07,100 of the thoughts you've had about the type of thinking you've had about, we need a way 214 00:16:07,100 --> 00:16:09,920 of quantifying this, this, this technical debt, right? 215 00:16:09,920 --> 00:16:18,240 And it's, it's, it's trying to replicate exactly what you're saying is like you and, and I, you 216 00:16:18,240 --> 00:16:19,340 have to pay the interest. 217 00:16:19,340 --> 00:16:24,140 So you, you know, depending on how much you pay attention to this stuff and you automate 218 00:16:24,140 --> 00:16:27,720 your payments, but whatever, like every month, you know, you're paying interest. 219 00:16:27,720 --> 00:16:31,340 And if you think about it too long, you're like, I'm kind of paying twice as much as 220 00:16:31,340 --> 00:16:31,720 I should. 221 00:16:31,900 --> 00:16:38,380 That's, that's crazy how compounding interest works, but like, but it's, but you're aware 222 00:16:38,380 --> 00:16:41,600 of the cost of what you're doing. 223 00:16:41,600 --> 00:16:48,500 And maybe, maybe, you know, I think one of the frustrating things with tech debt is it's 224 00:16:48,500 --> 00:16:51,780 almost like that cost isn't apparent until it's too late. 225 00:16:51,980 --> 00:16:55,080 And back to what you're saying about, you know, more instant gratification. 226 00:16:55,080 --> 00:17:00,720 It's hard to, if you don't have to pay a bill, it's hard to express to people that there's 227 00:17:00,720 --> 00:17:07,360 a problem and like, and, and the thing I struggle with, with not struggle with, but that I find 228 00:17:07,360 --> 00:17:14,400 unsatisfying about tech debt conversations is when you try to come up with, you know, I'll 229 00:17:14,400 --> 00:17:20,740 use the word anyways, but a fake or a synthetic number that represents that tech debt, because 230 00:17:20,740 --> 00:17:23,620 it's kind of like, yeah, but you just made that up. 231 00:17:24,180 --> 00:17:29,320 And, and like the, the only, the only thing that is maybe hopeful that I can think of is I'm always 232 00:17:29,320 --> 00:17:35,480 very envious of like security people, because I feel like they're dealing with a very similar thing 233 00:17:35,480 --> 00:17:38,480 where they're like, nothing has happened yet, but it could. 234 00:17:39,020 --> 00:17:39,860 But it could, yeah. 235 00:17:39,940 --> 00:17:42,320 And when it does, it's going to be very expensive. 236 00:17:43,000 --> 00:17:43,400 Exactly. 237 00:17:43,520 --> 00:17:45,440 Much less expensive than fixing it now. 238 00:17:45,820 --> 00:17:50,620 And I feel like there's something we could not learn, but expressing the, 239 00:17:50,620 --> 00:17:53,900 the cost of tech debt feels like something similar. 240 00:17:54,060 --> 00:17:55,140 I'm, I'm, I'm not sure. 241 00:17:56,260 --> 00:17:56,360 Yeah. 242 00:17:56,380 --> 00:17:58,700 I think about it in, in a, in a lot of ways. 243 00:17:58,700 --> 00:18:01,380 I think at the end of the day, businesses speak money. 244 00:18:01,720 --> 00:18:07,440 And so if I'm working with a leader, coaching them to try to help advocate for tech debt 245 00:18:07,440 --> 00:18:12,580 project or tech debt time, one of the first things that I actually coach them to do is 246 00:18:12,580 --> 00:18:17,180 to stop using the word tech debt, because to an external stakeholder, to someone that you 247 00:18:17,180 --> 00:18:24,200 need to convince to spend time working on this stuff, tech debt just feels like, well, I don't 248 00:18:24,200 --> 00:18:24,820 like it. 249 00:18:24,820 --> 00:18:26,420 And I want a do over. 250 00:18:27,140 --> 00:18:31,800 It doesn't have great connotation in, uh, in a lot of contexts. 251 00:18:31,800 --> 00:18:34,560 It's hard to understand what's, what's meant by it. 252 00:18:34,560 --> 00:18:36,800 And the business value isn't clear. 253 00:18:37,120 --> 00:18:42,860 I guarantee you every other department, every other person has stuff in their daily working 254 00:18:42,860 --> 00:18:46,860 life that they would love a do over and they don't get to do it because there's business 255 00:18:46,860 --> 00:18:48,180 pressure and they need to move on. 256 00:18:48,780 --> 00:18:55,420 And what can come across as very unfair or even entitled from development teams is when, 257 00:18:55,700 --> 00:19:00,520 when there's this presentation of tech debt of like, well, I know better because I'm in 258 00:19:00,520 --> 00:19:02,160 the code, this is really bothersome. 259 00:19:02,160 --> 00:19:03,140 We need to fix it. 260 00:19:03,200 --> 00:19:04,020 Just trust me. 261 00:19:04,120 --> 00:19:09,420 And we don't expect them to come up with the same metrics, goals, outcomes that we would 262 00:19:09,420 --> 00:19:11,240 expect anyone else in the company. 263 00:19:11,680 --> 00:19:14,660 Um, and that's a disconnect that just needs to be resolved immediately. 264 00:19:14,660 --> 00:19:20,040 If we're going to make progress toward carving out time for these projects that are very important 265 00:19:20,040 --> 00:19:22,080 because they do affect developer experience. 266 00:19:22,080 --> 00:19:24,040 They add drag to development. 267 00:19:24,380 --> 00:19:28,080 You know, it's not fun to work in an environment that's full of broken windows. 268 00:19:28,180 --> 00:19:28,820 People will quit. 269 00:19:29,100 --> 00:19:30,460 It's expensive to rehire them. 270 00:19:30,960 --> 00:19:33,360 Um, there's a lot of business value to fixing these things. 271 00:19:33,540 --> 00:19:35,420 We just got to get better at talking about it. 272 00:19:35,820 --> 00:19:36,220 Yeah. 273 00:19:36,400 --> 00:19:38,040 I mean, you may be, I don't know. 274 00:19:38,040 --> 00:19:42,100 I mean, tell me what you think, but maybe one, one cool trick, so to speak, just like 275 00:19:42,100 --> 00:19:47,600 is to wait for urgency to make an uninvited call. 276 00:19:47,960 --> 00:19:48,360 Right. 277 00:19:48,360 --> 00:19:55,600 Like essentially like at some, at some point you might need to like implement as an organization, 278 00:19:55,600 --> 00:19:58,140 you might need to implement some feature or make some change. 279 00:19:58,140 --> 00:20:03,080 And at that point, if, uh, if there's a lot of tech debt, then it will become very apparent. 280 00:20:03,080 --> 00:20:05,400 You'll say like, oh yeah, well, we got to do this. 281 00:20:05,500 --> 00:20:06,160 We got to do that. 282 00:20:06,160 --> 00:20:12,100 Like there's all these things that we either, we either need to fix because we made compromises 283 00:20:12,100 --> 00:20:17,200 or we need to, I mean, there's another type of, I don't know if it's tech debt, but there's 284 00:20:17,200 --> 00:20:24,220 sort of like lack of agility that, that I think, I think, especially whenever you do, uh, I don't 285 00:20:24,220 --> 00:20:29,340 know what your experience is, but I feel like, especially during like the pandemic, this came 286 00:20:29,340 --> 00:20:32,980 up a lot, but even before that there was this desire to have like omni-channel retail. 287 00:20:33,140 --> 00:20:33,580 Right. 288 00:20:33,580 --> 00:20:37,580 And I remember like Gartner had like maybe eight combinations. 289 00:20:38,020 --> 00:20:42,560 If you take how you buy something, how you pick something up and how you return something. 290 00:20:42,800 --> 00:20:48,120 I think there's like, there's several combinations you can have of that from like in-store curbside 291 00:20:48,120 --> 00:20:49,380 online, blah, blah, blah. 292 00:20:49,520 --> 00:20:49,720 Right. 293 00:20:49,740 --> 00:20:50,800 Like all this kind of stuff. 294 00:20:50,940 --> 00:20:57,600 And so if you wanted to actually, as a grocery store, anyone selling physical items, which 295 00:20:57,600 --> 00:21:01,460 is what a delightful way to make money selling three additional objects. 296 00:21:01,460 --> 00:21:08,300 But like, if you try to apply that to your current way of doing stuff, I think you end up exposing 297 00:21:08,300 --> 00:21:12,460 a lot of lack of agility debt or something like that. 298 00:21:12,520 --> 00:21:17,360 And maybe at that point, it's good to say like, aha, tech debt, right? 299 00:21:17,480 --> 00:21:19,420 Like, and now let's start quantifying it. 300 00:21:20,040 --> 00:21:20,120 Yeah. 301 00:21:20,220 --> 00:21:26,740 I think that, that drag, and that's, I think a good, a good way to think about it is just 302 00:21:26,740 --> 00:21:27,740 like, it's friction. 303 00:21:27,920 --> 00:21:33,320 And it feels like you're just pulling a boat over like dry land sometimes, you know, and 304 00:21:33,320 --> 00:21:36,920 the water has been drained and you got to fill the water back in. 305 00:21:37,820 --> 00:21:43,900 But that loss of efficiency and effectiveness can be a really compelling way to advocate for 306 00:21:43,900 --> 00:21:50,180 projects that, you know, might also be resolving scalability, reliability issues, security issues, 307 00:21:50,260 --> 00:21:57,940 whatever it is, but also help accelerate development on the, you know, the feature side of things. 308 00:21:58,000 --> 00:21:59,360 I think that's always a compelling thing. 309 00:21:59,360 --> 00:22:05,540 I say, you know, everything comes down to money, but often time is a more compelling thing because 310 00:22:05,540 --> 00:22:11,680 even for, even for features that are brand new greenfield, it can be very difficult to articulate 311 00:22:11,680 --> 00:22:16,300 and to quantify and calculate how much, you know, revenue that that's going to bring, unless 312 00:22:16,300 --> 00:22:21,200 you have, you know, it's Amazon and you're fixing performance on the checkout page by however 313 00:22:21,200 --> 00:22:21,980 many milliseconds. 314 00:22:21,980 --> 00:22:27,280 And you can tell from your like, you know, terabytes of telemetry data that that's going 315 00:22:27,280 --> 00:22:29,820 to improve revenue by X percent or whatever. 316 00:22:30,180 --> 00:22:37,960 Most of us don't have that kind of data and most of our forecasts or calculations are, it's more 317 00:22:37,960 --> 00:22:42,440 than a hunch, no doubt there's data informed, but a lot of it is back of the napkin math that we can 318 00:22:42,440 --> 00:22:44,300 just hope is going to, going to play out. 319 00:22:44,680 --> 00:22:52,460 So if I can say, oh, this, you know, if we refactor this part of our, um, application and we're touching 320 00:22:52,460 --> 00:22:59,580 this thing, you know, once every month and it takes on average twice as long, I, I, maybe you can say 321 00:22:59,580 --> 00:23:03,460 that's going to save us 20 grand in developer hours. 322 00:23:03,940 --> 00:23:09,900 Um, but it's might even be more compelling if I say that's going to free up three extra days of 323 00:23:09,900 --> 00:23:14,920 development time per whatever cycle, what can you do in three extra days? 324 00:23:15,040 --> 00:23:18,320 Does that mean we get three extra days to improve quality? 325 00:23:18,540 --> 00:23:23,700 Or does that mean you get your, your stuff three days faster, but that's every month then now from 326 00:23:23,700 --> 00:23:25,800 this point forward, three days faster. 327 00:23:26,160 --> 00:23:31,120 And then it doesn't take long until now we're a week or a month or months ahead of schedule. 328 00:23:31,120 --> 00:23:32,860 And we've gotten efficiency gains. 329 00:23:33,080 --> 00:23:38,540 Um, I find that argument to be much more compelling when we're looking at opportunity costs, because 330 00:23:38,540 --> 00:23:41,560 really it's the call of doing it now versus when it's an emergency. 331 00:23:42,360 --> 00:23:46,500 Um, and trying to convince someone to do it now is always better. 332 00:23:46,920 --> 00:23:47,980 I, I like that a lot. 333 00:23:48,060 --> 00:23:52,360 I think, I think that probably is a good idea to start talking about friction or like if you 334 00:23:52,360 --> 00:23:55,400 use the metaphor of pipelines, the pipelines clogged, right? 335 00:23:55,440 --> 00:23:58,240 It's just like, you got to go in there, whatever, whatever it may be. 336 00:23:58,240 --> 00:24:02,920 But, you know, with so many of these terms, like, like the, the, the biggest term of all 337 00:24:02,920 --> 00:24:06,380 like agile, it's almost like, you should probably not use it. 338 00:24:06,840 --> 00:24:11,680 You should like, you should use a different word because it's got so much, like so much 339 00:24:11,680 --> 00:24:12,240 lore. 340 00:24:12,240 --> 00:24:14,940 And like, I guess the word would be baggage. 341 00:24:14,940 --> 00:24:16,000 The metaphor you would do. 342 00:24:16,320 --> 00:24:16,780 Baggage, scar tissue. 343 00:24:17,280 --> 00:24:19,960 I think just define it with whatever audience. 344 00:24:20,220 --> 00:24:26,280 Um, and you know, that is a, a crucial step that I think we often forget to do or just 345 00:24:26,280 --> 00:24:32,600 don't do because it's not a habit is like when you come into the, this conversation, not everyone 346 00:24:32,600 --> 00:24:34,040 is operating with the same dictionary. 347 00:24:34,700 --> 00:24:40,480 And when I say something is agile, that might be wildly, I might have this like, you know, 348 00:24:40,500 --> 00:24:44,740 idea from all of my previous experiences of what agile is. 349 00:24:44,740 --> 00:24:46,800 And you have a very different experience of that. 350 00:24:46,820 --> 00:24:50,560 And we're just going to end up talking past each other, or maybe we agree. 351 00:24:50,560 --> 00:24:55,500 And then it looks like we disagree because we're just not using the same terms, um, productivity, 352 00:24:56,120 --> 00:24:57,000 efficiency, effectiveness. 353 00:24:57,000 --> 00:25:02,200 These are all things that quite honestly, I think very widely depending on the organization 354 00:25:02,200 --> 00:25:06,980 and their goals, um, because organizations value different things based on how they make 355 00:25:06,980 --> 00:25:11,800 money and based on their engineering culture and just getting on the same page with people 356 00:25:11,800 --> 00:25:17,820 for these kinds of conversations, for example, what is tech that when does maintenance become 357 00:25:17,820 --> 00:25:18,580 technical debt? 358 00:25:19,680 --> 00:25:25,140 This is a question that I ask when I, uh, in, in some of my coaching programs. 359 00:25:25,620 --> 00:25:29,960 And honestly, I don't have a great, great answer. 360 00:25:30,180 --> 00:25:35,400 I can't tell you, Oh, it's after this amount of time that maintenance tasks become tech debt. 361 00:25:35,400 --> 00:25:39,900 Um, but it's interesting to see how different companies that I've worked with have categorized 362 00:25:39,900 --> 00:25:43,420 make regular routine maintenance tasks, updating dependencies as tech debt. 363 00:25:44,100 --> 00:25:48,480 Other companies, as you said, legacy code is tech debt. 364 00:25:48,480 --> 00:25:52,320 And that requires a lot more effort to, to course correct on. 365 00:25:52,840 --> 00:25:53,560 Um, yeah. 366 00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:57,020 So usually a bigger chunk, usually a bigger chunk. 367 00:25:57,440 --> 00:26:00,920 Um, but there's just wildly different definitions here. 368 00:26:01,260 --> 00:26:05,120 So, so there, you know, you, you brought up a few more things, some, some areas that I 369 00:26:05,120 --> 00:26:09,620 think, uh, uh, it'd be, it'd be great to, to, to, to talk with you about, but first, why 370 00:26:09,620 --> 00:26:10,540 don't you introduce yourself? 371 00:26:10,540 --> 00:26:14,280 You've mentioned a few things that you do here and there, but, but, uh, what's, what's 372 00:26:14,280 --> 00:26:14,680 your deal? 373 00:26:14,880 --> 00:26:15,360 Who are you? 374 00:26:15,420 --> 00:26:16,960 Hi, I'm Laura taco. 375 00:26:17,200 --> 00:26:18,720 Uh, I'm CTO at DX. 376 00:26:18,720 --> 00:26:20,620 We're a developer insights platform. 377 00:26:21,060 --> 00:26:27,620 Um, we help improve developer experience by figuring out what to change, um, from the 378 00:26:27,620 --> 00:26:29,060 source, which is your development team. 379 00:26:29,660 --> 00:26:34,200 So, um, aside from that, I'm also an, uh, an executive leadership coach for engineering 380 00:26:34,200 --> 00:26:34,560 leaders. 381 00:26:34,800 --> 00:26:39,360 I've been coaching for about two and a half years now, formally as kind of like, you know, 382 00:26:39,360 --> 00:26:40,660 a big part of my job. 383 00:26:40,660 --> 00:26:47,920 And I've worked with, um, you know, 300, I think now plus companies, um, either through 384 00:26:47,920 --> 00:26:54,300 coaching or through a course that I do on measuring development team performance to help them 385 00:26:54,300 --> 00:26:59,280 increase effectiveness, increase, increase efficiency, be, become better leaders. 386 00:26:59,920 --> 00:27:07,080 Um, and yeah, we know each other because of our good friend, Betty, who I know from way 387 00:27:07,080 --> 00:27:08,260 back in the day. 388 00:27:08,860 --> 00:27:14,600 Um, cause I was involved heavily in Docker and the Docker ecosystem when it was just a tiny 389 00:27:14,600 --> 00:27:20,900 little baby, a container was just a, a thing like that no one knew about. 390 00:27:20,900 --> 00:27:23,480 And then, um, now they're everywhere. 391 00:27:23,480 --> 00:27:25,800 They're everywhere to the point where we don't even think about them anymore. 392 00:27:26,220 --> 00:27:30,740 I, I, I hear, uh, there's, there's, uh, I hear someone's writing a book about all sorts 393 00:27:30,740 --> 00:27:34,920 of startups they worked at and including Docker and, and you, which, which should be interesting. 394 00:27:34,920 --> 00:27:38,440 We'll see if it ever comes out, but it is like there, there's certain companies that 395 00:27:38,440 --> 00:27:41,140 like many people have passed through and had experiences with. 396 00:27:41,140 --> 00:27:43,160 And, uh, I think, I think that's, that's one of them. 397 00:27:43,220 --> 00:27:48,520 Like, I remember at the time I was working, uh, in, in MNA at Dell back when I was in Austin. 398 00:27:49,020 --> 00:27:53,740 And, uh, I remember someone like kind of went over, man, I'm drawing a blank blank now. 399 00:27:53,780 --> 00:27:56,700 It used to be called something else, but they, they went over what it was and they were like, 400 00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:58,200 you should check out these container things. 401 00:27:58,200 --> 00:27:58,740 They're wild. 402 00:27:59,540 --> 00:28:03,380 And, and like, like at the time I was just kind of like, eh, I don't know, whatever. 403 00:28:03,380 --> 00:28:05,080 And I just kind of moved on from it. 404 00:28:05,120 --> 00:28:07,640 Then years later it was like containers, they're wild. 405 00:28:08,120 --> 00:28:08,160 Right. 406 00:28:08,820 --> 00:28:09,180 Containers. 407 00:28:09,320 --> 00:28:10,220 They do everything. 408 00:28:10,640 --> 00:28:11,040 Yeah. 409 00:28:11,160 --> 00:28:11,320 Yeah. 410 00:28:11,360 --> 00:28:16,420 But it's, it's a good, uh, it's a good little nexus point in the, uh, the, the history of, 411 00:28:16,560 --> 00:28:17,860 of time going through things. 412 00:28:17,860 --> 00:28:23,120 And, you know, I was, as you were describing the, uh, uh, the, uh, the DX work, I was, 413 00:28:23,200 --> 00:28:26,900 it was, it was making me chuckle a little bit because like you, you kind of, I think you, 414 00:28:26,900 --> 00:28:31,980 you, you put in a, you made a good litmus test for doing any sort of consulting or introducing 415 00:28:31,980 --> 00:28:38,240 some new thing is like, unless it's telling you something to change, why are you doing this? 416 00:28:38,660 --> 00:28:41,540 I had this deep thought this morning actually. 417 00:28:41,540 --> 00:28:45,640 Um, cause I'm, I'm working on a long blog post, which maybe by the time this episode 418 00:28:45,640 --> 00:28:49,620 is out, the blog post is out and we'll link it in the show notes or whatever. 419 00:28:49,620 --> 00:28:50,480 I'll send it to you. 420 00:28:50,940 --> 00:28:55,180 Um, but it's about just the, the fallacy of unobtrusive measurement. 421 00:28:55,800 --> 00:29:01,380 And I get questioned a lot, this question a lot, how can I measure, can I collect Dora 422 00:29:01,380 --> 00:29:01,760 metrics? 423 00:29:01,760 --> 00:29:04,500 Can I collect all these measurements about my team unobtrusively? 424 00:29:04,500 --> 00:29:06,420 Cause you know, I don't want to bother them. 425 00:29:06,880 --> 00:29:12,940 But then I thought in any other, any other avenue of life, if someone was collecting data 426 00:29:12,940 --> 00:29:19,360 about you unobtrusively, we would like press charges against them, you know, it wouldn't 427 00:29:19,360 --> 00:29:21,240 be categorized as like a good thing. 428 00:29:21,240 --> 00:29:23,620 I'm like, thank you for doing that for me. 429 00:29:24,140 --> 00:29:26,960 Um, it would be like, what are you doing? 430 00:29:26,960 --> 00:29:27,180 Yeah. 431 00:29:27,320 --> 00:29:29,920 You would call it spying. 432 00:29:29,920 --> 00:29:31,260 We would call it spying. 433 00:29:31,700 --> 00:29:36,540 And I think that is for me, that is such a deep rooted belief in a conviction that I 434 00:29:36,540 --> 00:29:38,280 hold that you should measure for change. 435 00:29:39,080 --> 00:29:44,220 And if you're not measuring for change and you're measuring for surveillance, for spying, 436 00:29:44,780 --> 00:29:47,040 uh, that's not healthy in general. 437 00:29:47,200 --> 00:29:52,740 I think there are times that you measure things that you don't take immediate action on and 438 00:29:52,740 --> 00:29:53,200 that's fine. 439 00:29:53,200 --> 00:29:59,660 Like health metrics, for example, we want to just keep, um, keep tabs on our cycle time 440 00:29:59,660 --> 00:30:04,720 or keep tabs on how many times we're deploying whatever, but it should be transparent, uh, 441 00:30:04,760 --> 00:30:06,220 and publicly available. 442 00:30:06,220 --> 00:30:09,540 And it should be known who's collect, who's collecting the data, why it's being collected, 443 00:30:09,660 --> 00:30:12,920 what they're doing with the data, who's seeing the data, all of those things. 444 00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:17,820 And, you know, maybe in some people's definition of unobtrusive, that is still true. 445 00:30:17,820 --> 00:30:19,660 And I think that's, you know, that's fine. 446 00:30:19,660 --> 00:30:23,960 We have a little wiggle room there, but, um, you know, this idea of like, well, I just 447 00:30:23,960 --> 00:30:25,740 don't want to bother the development team. 448 00:30:26,220 --> 00:30:29,240 So I would just like to collect this data, like kind of without them knowing. 449 00:30:29,400 --> 00:30:33,700 So that I could just see the state of things, um, to me as a smell. 450 00:30:34,460 --> 00:30:34,660 Yeah. 451 00:30:35,180 --> 00:30:36,520 What, what, what do you think? 452 00:30:36,660 --> 00:30:40,000 You know, I, I, uh, this is several months ago now, but you know, I love it when there's 453 00:30:40,000 --> 00:30:44,640 a big nerd fight, uh, about, about when there, when there's like a big and a specific type 454 00:30:44,640 --> 00:30:50,940 of nerd fight, when there's a, basically some large organization that mostly does consultative 455 00:30:50,940 --> 00:30:57,060 stuff that isn't kind of a big part of the, uh, the Gabby tech community. 456 00:30:57,060 --> 00:31:01,560 I know exactly where you're going when, when, when they come out with a PDF and, and people 457 00:31:01,560 --> 00:31:02,240 get very upset. 458 00:31:02,240 --> 00:31:06,900 And the first time this happened that I really paid attention to it was years ago when Gartner 459 00:31:06,900 --> 00:31:08,940 came out with this idea of bimodal it. 460 00:31:09,440 --> 00:31:14,540 And what they were saying there was basically like, you know, with the it estates you have, 461 00:31:14,540 --> 00:31:19,580 and we, we even talked about this at some point, uh, in our conversation here, like you 462 00:31:19,580 --> 00:31:24,460 have stuff that's running in a quote unquote old way and it's fine. 463 00:31:25,100 --> 00:31:27,340 And then you have stuff where you want to run in a DevOps way. 464 00:31:27,340 --> 00:31:31,580 And then of course the DevOps people are all like, you know, just burn it to the ground. 465 00:31:33,580 --> 00:31:38,540 Like if, if there's a, if there's, if there's an optimal way of working, you should apply it 466 00:31:38,540 --> 00:31:43,740 universally and not relegate these, uh, these, these other people to the terrible way of doing 467 00:31:43,740 --> 00:31:44,700 things or whatever. 468 00:31:44,700 --> 00:31:47,260 And like, it was, it was a, it was wonderful. 469 00:31:47,260 --> 00:31:53,500 Like from a, you know, it wasn't wonderful from, uh, uh, advancing the state of knowledge, 470 00:31:54,700 --> 00:31:58,300 but it was, it was entertaining, I guess, you know, uh, in that way. 471 00:31:58,300 --> 00:32:00,940 And then, and then of course, like, yes, as, as you well know, right. 472 00:32:00,940 --> 00:32:05,580 Like the most recent nerd fight was all about like McKinsey comes out with like, how, 473 00:32:07,660 --> 00:32:09,580 how, and it's, it's, it's kind of interesting. 474 00:32:09,580 --> 00:32:13,660 It has, to me, it has, it has a similar structure of the Gartner thing where it's like, 475 00:32:14,300 --> 00:32:18,940 maybe we should give them the benefit of the doubt and see where they're coming with this, 476 00:32:18,940 --> 00:32:21,100 um, and help them modify it along the way. 477 00:32:21,100 --> 00:32:24,380 Because I think they were, they were trying to do something exactly like we were talking 478 00:32:24,380 --> 00:32:27,260 about is like, how do we quantify this? 479 00:32:27,980 --> 00:32:28,220 Right. 480 00:32:28,220 --> 00:32:34,940 Like if I'm not a technical person, but yeah, I, I feel like the error and, and you were kind 481 00:32:34,940 --> 00:32:35,740 of going over this. 482 00:32:35,740 --> 00:32:41,980 I think maybe the lesson we learned from that is once you measure an individual in some way, 483 00:32:42,780 --> 00:32:46,220 that's dangerous for, for advancing your cause. 484 00:32:46,220 --> 00:32:49,260 Like it becomes political. 485 00:32:49,260 --> 00:32:51,820 It becomes lawful evil at that point. 486 00:32:53,260 --> 00:32:53,660 Yeah. 487 00:32:53,660 --> 00:32:58,140 I think, uh, first and foremost, software development is a team sport. 488 00:32:59,100 --> 00:33:07,660 And I think taking measurements on a team level is appropriate at times trying to quantify someone's 489 00:33:10,060 --> 00:33:17,340 country contributions, looking at things like workflow data alone is incredibly misguided. 490 00:33:17,340 --> 00:33:22,060 And I think if you asked any staff engineer out there and there've actually been quite some studies, 491 00:33:22,060 --> 00:33:25,900 and I think I saw a couple on at least one on LinkedIn that was looking at, 492 00:33:26,460 --> 00:33:30,460 you know, the, the 10 X engineer on this team, the staff engineer was spending, 493 00:33:31,340 --> 00:33:34,700 you know, all of their time coding and doing all of this stuff. 494 00:33:35,420 --> 00:33:39,740 But the only way they were able to do that was because the senior engineers on their team were 495 00:33:39,740 --> 00:33:42,620 doing all the planning and all the coordination and all the other stuff. 496 00:33:43,260 --> 00:33:48,860 And so it's so unfair to try to compare them because one enables another, and you can't 497 00:33:48,860 --> 00:33:51,260 just take them in isolation and apply the same. 498 00:33:53,740 --> 00:33:56,620 Rubric to whatever they're doing and get a fair outcome. 499 00:33:57,180 --> 00:34:01,020 So I will say this about McKinsey and I think this has been right. 500 00:34:01,020 --> 00:34:09,500 Nerd, nerd fought in, in public for long enough, but I think that McKin, the McKinsey came because 501 00:34:09,500 --> 00:34:14,940 we don't up until now have great benchmarks for things like developer productivity. 502 00:34:14,940 --> 00:34:21,180 We have Dora, which is, I call it the tomato of productivity because, you know, tomatoes are 503 00:34:21,180 --> 00:34:23,260 not a vegetable, but we treat them like a vegetable. 504 00:34:23,900 --> 00:34:25,980 Dora metrics are not productivity metrics. 505 00:34:25,980 --> 00:34:30,540 They measure capability, but at this point, everyone treats them as productivity metrics. 506 00:34:31,100 --> 00:34:33,420 So it's like, is ketchup a vegetable? 507 00:34:33,420 --> 00:34:34,220 I don't know. 508 00:34:34,220 --> 00:34:35,180 I don't know about that. 509 00:34:36,220 --> 00:34:40,380 But I think for a lot of intents and purposes, although the intention of Dora is to be capability 510 00:34:40,380 --> 00:34:46,620 metrics, everyone uses them as productivity metrics and it would, I can sit here and be 511 00:34:46,620 --> 00:34:49,980 like, well, that's not what they were intended for, but it's the reality of how they're being 512 00:34:49,980 --> 00:34:50,940 talked about and used. 513 00:34:50,940 --> 00:34:53,420 And so I have to, you know, meet people where they're at. 514 00:34:54,860 --> 00:35:00,460 But we don't have the equivalent of that sort of that industry-wide benchmarking on the developer 515 00:35:00,460 --> 00:35:01,340 productivity side. 516 00:35:01,340 --> 00:35:06,700 And that is what McKinsey offered with their DBI, their velocity index. 517 00:35:07,500 --> 00:35:13,020 So, I mean, I get the economic pressure and sort of like the draw. 518 00:35:13,020 --> 00:35:17,740 There's so many C-level executives that just want whatever it is McKinsey selling. 519 00:35:19,340 --> 00:35:24,780 And oddly enough, there was a great Last Week Tonight episode about McKinsey. 520 00:35:25,660 --> 00:35:29,180 I think it aired like in late November. 521 00:35:30,380 --> 00:35:34,380 Not at all about developer productivity metrics, just an interesting consequence. 522 00:35:35,180 --> 00:35:36,460 But check that out, brief aside. 523 00:35:37,340 --> 00:35:43,260 I will say this, my summed up position on McKinsey is like, I think there are actually a lot of 524 00:35:43,260 --> 00:35:44,460 good things in that article. 525 00:35:44,860 --> 00:35:49,580 It's calling for executives to better understand software development. 526 00:35:49,580 --> 00:35:53,340 It's saying, hey, we have to measure this like multi-dimensionally. 527 00:35:53,340 --> 00:35:59,180 I think those things are great, but the parts of it that are bad are really bad. 528 00:35:59,180 --> 00:36:05,660 Like, you know, equating developer productivity to just writing code and not understanding the 529 00:36:05,660 --> 00:36:07,980 subtleties and the nuances of a team sport. 530 00:36:07,980 --> 00:36:13,820 I think that it's sort of, you know, I was like, oh, this is not so, this is maybe okay. 531 00:36:13,820 --> 00:36:18,300 And then it was just like, oh, I really don't agree with this to the point where it sort of 532 00:36:18,300 --> 00:36:22,300 overshadows all the morsels of goodness that were in the article. 533 00:36:22,300 --> 00:36:23,180 Yeah. 534 00:36:23,180 --> 00:36:23,260 Yeah. 535 00:36:23,260 --> 00:36:23,500 Yeah. 536 00:36:23,500 --> 00:36:32,700 No, I, and I think I, I, I like, I like the idea of, of Dora match measuring, not measuring 537 00:36:32,700 --> 00:36:37,980 is even the wrong word, being an indicator of the capabilities that you have. 538 00:36:37,980 --> 00:36:38,460 Right. 539 00:36:38,460 --> 00:36:39,260 Like, yeah. 540 00:36:39,260 --> 00:36:44,060 And essentially, and it kind of, it touches on a lot of what we talked about here, where 541 00:36:44,060 --> 00:36:50,540 I don't even, I'm, I'm, I don't even really know how to articulate it despite knowing software, 542 00:36:50,540 --> 00:37:00,540 but like, it's almost like doing software development isn't really about productivity. 543 00:37:00,540 --> 00:37:05,020 It's about having capabilities available. 544 00:37:05,020 --> 00:37:10,220 And I'm purposely avoiding using the word flow because that's another like crazy blown 545 00:37:10,220 --> 00:37:11,180 up word at this point. 546 00:37:11,180 --> 00:37:16,940 But like, it's knowing that you can do something and you probably are going to want to do something, 547 00:37:16,940 --> 00:37:25,180 but like having the option, having the option to actually execute it and do it in a reliable 548 00:37:25,180 --> 00:37:27,580 way is like what ultimately is valuable. 549 00:37:27,580 --> 00:37:32,940 Like, like I was, I was doing something, I was talking about something, you know, to the 550 00:37:32,940 --> 00:37:34,060 camera yesterday. 551 00:37:34,060 --> 00:37:39,660 And I was thinking like, you know, I mean, if you're like a pharmacy or a chemist or whatever 552 00:37:39,660 --> 00:37:43,900 you want to call it, like, you probably don't really need to change your software every week. 553 00:37:43,900 --> 00:37:47,980 I mean, you only need to change it when you really need to change it. 554 00:37:47,980 --> 00:37:50,140 And then you got to change it, right? 555 00:37:50,140 --> 00:37:55,180 Like, and, and, and so like, if you, even if you were to look at the Dora metrics, like, 556 00:37:55,820 --> 00:37:59,980 again, if you were to look at the Dora metrics as, do you have the potential and the ability, 557 00:37:59,980 --> 00:38:01,740 the capability to release every week? 558 00:38:01,740 --> 00:38:02,940 That's great. 559 00:38:02,940 --> 00:38:06,940 But if you're measuring, are you releasing every week for like a pharmacy? 560 00:38:06,940 --> 00:38:09,100 It's kind of like, uh, who cares? 561 00:38:09,100 --> 00:38:09,740 Do you need to? 562 00:38:09,740 --> 00:38:10,060 Yeah. 563 00:38:10,060 --> 00:38:10,220 Yeah. 564 00:38:10,220 --> 00:38:13,580 Like, like, is that, is that capability 565 00:38:13,580 --> 00:38:16,460 giving you a competitive edge in your business? 566 00:38:16,460 --> 00:38:21,100 And like, you know, we can, for that particular one, we can talk about decoupling deployments 567 00:38:21,100 --> 00:38:25,420 and releases and like the subtleties between them and feature flagging and all this stuff. 568 00:38:25,420 --> 00:38:26,700 But you're absolutely right. 569 00:38:26,700 --> 00:38:33,660 It's like, um, you know, the difference between did we build the thing right versus did we build 570 00:38:33,660 --> 00:38:34,300 the right thing? 571 00:38:35,340 --> 00:38:39,740 There's going to come a time when you have the right thing to build and you want to make sure that 572 00:38:39,740 --> 00:38:40,860 you build that thing, right. 573 00:38:40,860 --> 00:38:40,860 Right. 574 00:38:40,860 --> 00:38:42,860 And that's where the capabilities come in. 575 00:38:42,860 --> 00:38:46,780 And that's where Dora and the benchmarks can be very helpful because if you have the right thing to 576 00:38:46,780 --> 00:38:50,220 build, but you can't build the thing, right, you're not going to get anywhere. 577 00:38:50,220 --> 00:38:53,100 And so there needs to be both. 578 00:38:53,100 --> 00:38:59,980 I think where a lot of the, the discussions about developer productivity and efficiency and 579 00:38:59,980 --> 00:39:06,540 effectiveness start to sort of get into dicey territory or sort of just lack clarity is when 580 00:39:06,540 --> 00:39:12,380 we talk about to what ends, like, you know, the name of the book is called accelerate. 581 00:39:13,420 --> 00:39:19,980 But the question I ask is like accelerating where, because I, I've worked with a lot of companies 582 00:39:19,980 --> 00:39:24,940 and I've worked at companies before that were elite right out of the gate, according to Dora. 583 00:39:24,940 --> 00:39:30,460 And I think honestly, if you're a new company or even in like the last, I don't know, post 584 00:39:30,460 --> 00:39:37,340 container post post DevOps world that your, your team was grounded or your, your founded grounded. 585 00:39:37,900 --> 00:39:38,300 I don't know. 586 00:39:38,300 --> 00:39:39,420 That's the German word. 587 00:39:39,420 --> 00:39:40,220 What did we say in English? 588 00:39:40,220 --> 00:39:40,860 I don't remember. 589 00:39:42,220 --> 00:39:45,900 Or the, you know, your team or your company. 590 00:39:45,900 --> 00:39:50,060 And I think it's hard to not be elite right away. 591 00:39:50,060 --> 00:39:50,940 If you're just using. 592 00:39:51,660 --> 00:39:52,060 Yeah. 593 00:39:52,060 --> 00:39:52,300 Yeah. 594 00:39:52,300 --> 00:39:53,820 You don't, you don't have all the baggage. 595 00:39:53,820 --> 00:39:57,420 You don't have any baggage, you know, it's like, oh, I'll just click, you know, 596 00:39:57,420 --> 00:40:02,540 circle CI check deploying to AWS, whatever, and just set up your, your workflow that way. 597 00:40:02,540 --> 00:40:05,500 And it's very easy to be elite continuously shipping stuff. 598 00:40:05,500 --> 00:40:08,780 If you have good engineering culture, of course, there's the people component to it. 599 00:40:10,540 --> 00:40:11,580 But what are you building? 600 00:40:11,580 --> 00:40:15,660 Because if you're building something very quickly that no one wants, it doesn't matter 601 00:40:15,660 --> 00:40:20,140 how fast, how many times you're deploying, because no one's going to buy it and your business 602 00:40:20,140 --> 00:40:21,580 is still going to fail. 603 00:40:21,580 --> 00:40:26,220 And I think there's a conflation of like, if we are elite in Dora, that means our business 604 00:40:26,220 --> 00:40:29,820 is good and successful and really building the thing right. 605 00:40:29,820 --> 00:40:32,300 And building the right thing are very different things. 606 00:40:32,300 --> 00:40:36,940 And often engineering is not even responsible for building the right thing. 607 00:40:36,940 --> 00:40:38,140 They don't get to make that call. 608 00:40:38,940 --> 00:40:39,260 Yeah. 609 00:40:39,260 --> 00:40:41,420 Yeah, that's, that's, that's, I mean, you're touching on it. 610 00:40:41,420 --> 00:40:47,020 I haven't gone and looked at the last, I don't know, three, four years in detail of those reports. 611 00:40:47,020 --> 00:40:52,380 But I, I was always curious to see, like, I want to see the spreadsheet where, where they relate 612 00:40:52,380 --> 00:40:56,460 higher performing to making money or, or whatever it may be, right? 613 00:40:56,460 --> 00:41:01,340 Like, I mean, I'm even forcing what I want to see in the spreadsheet, but it is, there is some 614 00:41:01,340 --> 00:41:05,980 relationship there, as you were just pointing out that, like, I never find in the, you know, 615 00:41:05,980 --> 00:41:11,740 the last four pages of in the methodology part, that would be, be fun to see just if only because 616 00:41:11,740 --> 00:41:14,700 it would be instructive to help answer what you're talking about, right? 617 00:41:14,700 --> 00:41:21,340 Like the, the, the, the car that efficiently drives, but ends up going nowhere is car commercial. 618 00:41:22,300 --> 00:41:22,620 Yeah. 619 00:41:22,620 --> 00:41:22,780 Yeah. 620 00:41:22,780 --> 00:41:23,020 Yeah. 621 00:41:23,980 --> 00:41:25,580 Well, it's fun, fun to drive. 622 00:41:25,580 --> 00:41:25,980 I'm sure. 623 00:41:26,460 --> 00:41:27,100 Yeah, exactly. 624 00:41:27,100 --> 00:41:30,940 You know, but before we wrap up, so like, uh, yeah, there's, you have, you have a lot of, 625 00:41:30,940 --> 00:41:34,460 uh, uh, a great articles on, on, on your blog to, to read through. 626 00:41:34,460 --> 00:41:40,300 And one of them, one of the themes that came up a lot that, that I, I was trying to boil 627 00:41:40,300 --> 00:41:45,820 down as much as possible is I don't know if I have the number right, but I feel like a lot, 628 00:41:45,820 --> 00:41:51,500 one of the common things that you're saying is like, probably 80 to 90% of meetings shouldn't exist. 629 00:41:52,620 --> 00:41:52,860 Right. 630 00:41:53,580 --> 00:41:57,260 Like, like, and, and, you know, you've got to, you've got a good position of like, 631 00:41:58,140 --> 00:42:04,140 when people do say this meeting could, could have been an email, they're probably right. 632 00:42:05,420 --> 00:42:09,420 Like there's a lot of things we do that we don't really need to do anymore. 633 00:42:09,420 --> 00:42:14,380 Uh, yeah, it's like the information is available somewhere else. 634 00:42:14,380 --> 00:42:17,820 And then you have a meeting just to check that the information is still available somewhere else. 635 00:42:17,820 --> 00:42:19,820 Um, right, right. 636 00:42:19,820 --> 00:42:26,140 Any meeting that doesn't have anything at stake where there's nothing of substance being decided 637 00:42:26,140 --> 00:42:30,140 or of substance being discussed that hasn't already been discussed asynchronously. 638 00:42:30,140 --> 00:42:34,940 And you've decided that you need to have an asynchronous conversation because it's so 639 00:42:34,940 --> 00:42:37,660 complex or nuanced that you just need the people talking to each other. 640 00:42:37,660 --> 00:42:40,620 Um, most of those meetings don't need to happen. 641 00:42:40,620 --> 00:42:46,060 Um, I think the, the little caveat I would put there is, you know, I've worked remotely 642 00:42:46,060 --> 00:42:56,540 since 2012, um, primarily remotely, and it is nice to have face time with a team to build rapport. 643 00:42:56,540 --> 00:43:02,060 And so that is a consideration if like, if it is an important team ceremony to have everyone together 644 00:43:02,060 --> 00:43:07,660 once a week during a planning, just to like get the energy up and get feel united on a common goal. 645 00:43:07,980 --> 00:43:11,020 That's a very, that is a very fine reason to have a meeting. 646 00:43:11,420 --> 00:43:13,180 Um, but just make sure that that's clear. 647 00:43:13,580 --> 00:43:17,420 It's not like, I don't trust that whatever you put in JIRA is accurate. 648 00:43:17,980 --> 00:43:21,980 Um, it's like, no, we're going to just like come together and see each other's faces so 649 00:43:21,980 --> 00:43:23,980 that we can work together effectively as a team. 650 00:43:24,620 --> 00:43:25,980 Um, that's part of the deal. 651 00:43:26,620 --> 00:43:31,740 And so no, that meeting can't be an email because we miss out on that human time. 652 00:43:31,740 --> 00:43:35,020 Yeah, a lot of meetings can be emails. 653 00:43:35,020 --> 00:43:36,540 I like that categorization. 654 00:43:36,540 --> 00:43:42,860 Like one, if, if you're not, if, if there's not a decision that is going to be made, 655 00:43:42,860 --> 00:43:45,100 then you probably don't need to have the meeting, right? 656 00:43:45,100 --> 00:43:51,100 Like the point, like that's definitely one type of meeting and probably a lot of them. 657 00:43:51,100 --> 00:43:52,700 And then, and then exactly your point. 658 00:43:52,700 --> 00:43:57,500 There's the, the, this is another phrase that would be good to have a better one for, 659 00:43:57,500 --> 00:44:01,580 but there's the team building get together, right? 660 00:44:01,580 --> 00:44:06,860 And, and, and like just talking with someone, especially if you're remote, like, you know, 661 00:44:06,860 --> 00:44:11,100 you kind of get that if you just go out to with, to lunch with people all the time, 662 00:44:11,100 --> 00:44:13,420 or like, you know, you, you have those meetings in the hallway. 663 00:44:13,820 --> 00:44:15,020 There's no hallways anymore. 664 00:44:15,020 --> 00:44:18,620 I think the last time I really worked in an office, we actually had offices in the hallways. 665 00:44:18,620 --> 00:44:22,860 It was a glorious time, but like, uh, so there's that. 666 00:44:22,860 --> 00:44:30,060 And there's almost like, like, I, I guess there's a third type there's, and they become not meetings. 667 00:44:30,060 --> 00:44:33,900 There's like, you know, a workshop where you're actually a decision isn't made, 668 00:44:33,900 --> 00:44:36,780 but you're like working on something collaboratively. 669 00:44:36,780 --> 00:44:42,460 But again, I mean, I really like your, it's like those other two things like are almost not meetings. 670 00:44:42,460 --> 00:44:47,980 And, and really a meeting, a capital M meeting is like, we're here to make something happen. 671 00:44:47,980 --> 00:44:55,980 Yeah. Yeah. We're not here just to fill space. And this full circle back to your point of like 672 00:44:55,980 --> 00:45:00,380 developers saying, oh, this meeting was really unimportant. I didn't need to attend versus 673 00:45:00,380 --> 00:45:03,820 the person who called the meeting being like, that was the best meeting ever. It was so important. 674 00:45:05,100 --> 00:45:09,900 You know, knowing what you want to get out of that time together is really crucial. 675 00:45:10,780 --> 00:45:15,420 Here's a quick tip for anyone who finds themselves in the position of needing to 676 00:45:15,980 --> 00:45:18,300 organize meetings or facilitate them for any reason. 677 00:45:19,740 --> 00:45:22,300 There's a difference between a decision meeting and a discussion meeting. 678 00:45:23,180 --> 00:45:27,580 Decision meetings should be made clear. We're deciding this thing. And as soon as the decision 679 00:45:27,580 --> 00:45:31,100 is made and the meeting, you don't need to go the whole half hour or the whole hour. 680 00:45:31,100 --> 00:45:35,340 If you come to your conclusion in the first 10 minutes, it's fine. Just say, bye, everybody. 681 00:45:36,300 --> 00:45:39,740 Maybe get better at estimating how much time you need in the future, but that's fine. 682 00:45:40,460 --> 00:45:46,860 Discussion meetings should only happen if you've already done an async discussion and you figured 683 00:45:46,860 --> 00:45:51,820 like this just isn't enough. We need to address this point, this point, and this point. 684 00:45:52,860 --> 00:45:56,540 And have it clear that it's a discussion meeting and that no decisions will be made because then 685 00:45:56,540 --> 00:46:01,100 people are just going to leave unsatisfied if they're expecting a decision from a discussion meeting. 686 00:46:01,100 --> 00:46:02,860 Yeah, that's really good. I like that. 687 00:46:02,860 --> 00:46:04,460 Super easy. Super easy. 688 00:46:05,020 --> 00:46:08,940 And you're also building in motivation for people to come to a decision. 689 00:46:09,900 --> 00:46:10,220 Totally. 690 00:46:10,780 --> 00:46:16,060 I was thinking a jokey way in my mind. Someone made a decision here because they wanted to get to lunch. 691 00:46:19,020 --> 00:46:24,140 They just had a reason to finally get a decision, but that's great. Well, I mean, 692 00:46:24,140 --> 00:46:29,420 speaking of, if people want to check out your blog and stuff like that and other things you're up to, 693 00:46:29,420 --> 00:46:31,820 your coaching and courses, where would you send them to? 694 00:46:32,380 --> 00:46:38,540 Just go to laurataco.com. T-A-C-H-O is how you spell my version of taco. 695 00:46:40,220 --> 00:46:45,900 Head there. I have courses blog. I'm working on some new self-paced courses 696 00:46:46,700 --> 00:46:50,780 for anyone who's finding themselves in an engineering leadership position and thinking, 697 00:46:50,780 --> 00:46:53,500 oh, well, I never learned how to do any of this stuff. 698 00:46:54,700 --> 00:46:57,340 I know you're all very busy, so I'm making kind of an express 699 00:46:58,780 --> 00:47:03,500 self-paced leadership course that should be coming out in the next couple of months. So check that out. 700 00:47:04,380 --> 00:47:07,900 Yeah. Well, great. Well, it was really fun talking with you. I appreciate you being on. 701 00:47:08,620 --> 00:47:10,140 Yeah. It was a great conversation. 702 00:47:10,780 --> 00:47:15,900 Yeah. And I'll put links to that stuff if you want to find them. If you're watching a video, 703 00:47:15,900 --> 00:47:21,180 they'll just be below somewhere. That'd be odd in the future if they move links to somewhere else. 704 00:47:21,180 --> 00:47:24,540 And there's like, you know, 20 years of people saying you should click below. 705 00:47:24,540 --> 00:47:29,260 Yeah. But maybe by that time, they'll just be AI that can go fix everything. 706 00:47:29,260 --> 00:47:33,740 Yeah. It'll just be deep fakes. Someone can like deep fake this conversation and update it. 707 00:47:33,740 --> 00:47:36,620 It'd be great. Exactly. And if you're listening to it or otherwise, 708 00:47:36,620 --> 00:47:41,180 you can always go to tanzutalk.com and search around and find the episode. And with that, 709 00:47:41,180 --> 00:47:42,620 We'll see everyone next time. 710 00:47:42,720 --> 00:47:43,260 Bye-bye. 711 00:47:43,620 --> 00:47:43,980 Bye.