DEV Community: LinearB

Labs: The Evolution of Continuous Merge

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 04 Aug 2023 21:56:03 +0000

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, co-host Conor Bronsdon and Ben Lloyd Pearson, LinearB’s Director of Developer Relations, detail the evolution of Continuous Merge and the tool behind it, gitStream. Joining the conversation is Nik LeBlanc, VP of Engineering at DevCycle.

Nik shares the ways his team is using gitStream to streamline code reviews and offers practical advice for anyone looking to implement the tool on their own team. He also explores the somewhat controversial practice of splitting up and reshuffling engineering teams, a strategy that DevCycle has used to great effect. Nik finds that this practice helps balance teams, manage diverse knowledge bases, and de-risk the organization.

Conor and Ben wrap up the conversation by casting an eye on the future, focusing on the potential and direction of gitStream.

Episode Highlights:

(2:50) Splitting and reorganizing dev teams
(9:20) How DevCycle is leveraging tooling to enable positive change
(14:50) Why teams are paying "a lot more attention" to PRs
(17:00) Nik's thoughts on DORA and shipping
(21:20) Threads & socials to follow
(23:35) Ben & Conor breakdown their convo with Nik
(27:30) Applying estimated time to review to PRs
(31:30) gitStream integrations
(32:30) The future of gitStream

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

Want to cut code-review time by up to 40%? Add estimated review time to pull requests automatically!

gitStream is the free dev tool from LinearB that eliminates the No. 1 bottleneck in your team’s workflow: pull requests and code reviews. After reviewing the work of 2,000 dev teams, LinearB’s engineers and data scientists found that pickup times and code review were lasting 4 to 5 days longer than they should be.

The good news is that they found these delays could be eliminated largely by adding estimated review time to pull requests!

Learn more about how gitStream is making coding better HERE.

6 Proven Strategies For Being A Great Platform Engineer

Conor Bronsdon — Sun, 30 Jul 2023 23:16:29 +0000

“The future is still so much bigger than the past.”

-Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web

For platform engineers, the future is bright. Commonly thought of as the next stage beyond devops, platform engineers are one of the most in-demand and well-regarded positions in tech.While there is a huge upside to being on the cutting edge of an industry, there is one major, potential drawback: A lack of tried and true wisdom you can apply to the role.

With the platform-engineering playbook still being written every day, I wanted to chip in with the best insights on being a successful leader and platform engineer I’ve heard from the best minds in our industry.

The Wisdom: Success is when engineers don’t notice your work

The expert: Kathryn Koehler, Director, Developer Productivity Engineering @ Netflix

There’s no better measure of success for platform engineers than to have the developers they support free from being blocked, stuck or disrupted. This is especially true when you’re building a fast-moving engineering juggernaut at Netflix, like Kathryn Koehler.

According to Kathryn, when your work goes unnoticed, it signifies a seamless, smooth development experience. This allows developers to concentrate on building applications and features, accelerating the development cycle and delivering high-quality software.

Ultimately, the goal of platform engineers is to create a stable and reliable platform that operates silently, enabling developers to excel in their work without unnecessary disruptions.

The Wisdom: Eliminate the most common sources of toil, like testing

The expert: Kaspar von Grünberg, Humanitec's founder and CEO

Eliminating the most common sources of toil, such as testing, is crucial for platform engineers.

This wisdom comes from one of the top leaders in platform engineering, Humanitec's founder and CEO Kaspar von Grünberg. Kasper rightly points out that by automating and streamlining testing processes, engineers free up valuable time and resources to focus on more impactful tasks.

Removing manual, repetitive testing work not only increases productivity but also reduces the risk of human error while making developers happier they don’t have to wase their time. In the end, it allows engineers to allocate their expertise and creativity towards innovation, problem-solving, and improving the overall efficiency of the platform.

The Wisdom: Focus on making your team complete with diverse skill sets

The expert: Charity Majors, CTO of Honeycomb.io

Charity Majors’ charisma is just one reason she’s a great leader. The other? She knows how to build complete, diverse and complementary teams.

Firstly, diverse skill sets bring a variety of perspectives, experiences, and expertise to the table, enhancing problem-solving and innovation capabilities.

Different backgrounds and skill sets enable the team to approach challenges from multiple angles, leading to more comprehensive solutions.

Additionally, diverse teams foster a culture of learning, collaboration, and mutual growth, as team members can learn from each other's unique skills and knowledge.

A diverse team also ensures resilience, as it can adapt to changing requirements and tackle a wide range of tasks efficiently.

The Wisdom: Keep the whole engineering org regularly updated on what the platform team is thinking about

The expert: Ambassador Labs' Katie Wilde

Keeping the entire engineering organization regularly updated on the platform team's thoughts is essential - it fosters transparency, alignment, and collaboration across teams, ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding platform developments and strategies.

It can be as simple as what Katie Wilde suggests: Making a blog or short video about what she’s thinking about. She sends it off to her team and those small updates let the entire org know what a crucial member of their department is thinking about.

These regular updates promote a shared understanding of the platform's direction, goals, and challenges, encouraging input and feedback from different perspectives.

It enables other engineering teams to anticipate changes, plan their work accordingly, and leverage the platform effectively.

The Wisdom: Automate pull requests & code reviews

The experts: Dan Lines and Ori Keren, Co-founders of LinearB

There’s probably no easier win for platform engineers than helping fix the No. 1 undiagnosed problem in software development: Massive bottlenecks in pull requests and code reviews.

In helping engineering orgs get visibility into developer workflows with LinearB, Dan Lines and Ori Keren discovered that the majority of cycle time was being spent in pull request and code review. They found that:

The average cycle time for a piece of work was 7 days
Half of all PRs were idle for 50% of their lifespan
Cycle time doubled when pull requests went from 100 lines of code to 200 lines of code

The solution for this came in the form of gitStream, a tool that solved a host of issues keeping pull requests from being effectively picked up, including auto-assigning the best reviewer, adding estimated time to review, limiting PR size, segmenting PRs based on risk and more.

The Wisdom: Have regular meetings with devs on what their problems are

The expert: Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering @ Spot AI

Kelly Vaughn’s unique background makes her wisdom even more relevant. As a trained-therapist-turned-engineer, Kelly has a simple-but-impactful way to become the platform engineer your company needs: Find out the problems you should be solving based on unearthing the problems devs are actually having.

These conversations provide an opportunity for platform engineers to understand the specific pain points faced by developers and gain insights into their needs and challenges. By actively listening to developers, platform engineers can identify areas where the platform can be improved, optimized, or customized to better support development workflows.

This direct feedback loop fosters a collaborative environment where solutions can be brainstormed, prioritized, and implemented efficiently. By addressing developers' problems proactively, platform engineers can enhance developer productivity, streamline processes, and create a platform that truly meets the needs of the entire engineering team

Proven strategies for being a great platform engineer

When an industry changes as fast as ours, advice can be obsolete by the time it gets written down. That’s why it’s important to tap into the real-time wisdom of people whose opinions you respect and careers you admire.

If you enjoyed these takeaways and would like to hear more interviews with platform engineers, founders and tech leaders, consider subscribing to the Dev Interrupted podcast. New episodes drop each week wherever you listen to podcasts.

AI Tooling For Your Dev Team: To Adopt or Not to Adopt?

Conor Bronsdon — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 21:45:15 +0000

Amid the escalating buzz surrounding AI tools, many development teams grapple with deciding which ones suit their needs best, when to adopt them, and the potential risks of not doing so. As AI continues to pose more questions than answers, the fear of falling behind the competition lurks for many.

This week's episode of Dev Interrupted aims to dispel these uncertainties by welcoming CodiumAI’s founder & CEO, Itamar Friedman. In one of our most illuminating discussions this year, Itamar pierces through the AI hype, explaining what AI tools bring to the table, how to discern the ones that would truly augment your dev teams, and the strategies to efficiently identify and experiment with new tools.

Beyond the allure of AI, Itamar doesn't shy away from addressing its pitfalls and adversarial risks. He also probes into the future of the developer's role in an increasingly AI-driven landscape, answering the question: “Will there be developers in 10 years?”

Episode Highlights:

(2:40) Founding CodiumAI
(8:25) Will there be developers in 10 years?
(11:20) What kinds of AI tools are popping up?
(15:00) Core capabilities of AI
(19:30) Finding AI tools to solve pains you don't know you have
(23:00) Enabling your team to use AI
(26:45) Falling behind the competition
(33:00) Pitfalls of AI
(38:30) Adversarial risks of AI
(43:45) Experimenting with new tools
(47:40) Measuring the success of AI tools
(50:15) Will AI replace or empower us?

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

Want to cut code-review time by up to 40%? Add estimated review time to pull requests automatically!

The good news is that they found these delays could be eliminated largely by adding estimated review time to pull requests!

Learn more about how gitStream is making coding better HERE.

Have Engineering Leaders Become Too Hands-off?

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 21 Jul 2023 22:22:22 +0000

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, co-host Conor Bronsdon welcomes Francisco Trindade, Director of Engineering at Braze, to discuss strategies to improve collaboration and effectiveness within engineering teams.

Francisco notes a shift in the tech industry over the past decade from focusing on rapid hiring and individual growth to a need for more effective team dynamics. Criticizing the tech industry's aversion to micromanagement, he argues that it has inadvertently resulted in a lack of focus on team effectiveness and proposes a renewed emphasis on fostering productive environments for engineers to fully realize their potential.

Episode Highlights:

(2:20) Managers can't be micromanagers
(4:40) Francisco's three key aspects to improving team effectiveness
(11:15) Creating the right incentives for your team
(14:00) How to work with teams around the world
(21:15) Increasing engineering team efficiency
(27:30) What is Braze?

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

Want to cut code-review time by up to 40%? Add estimated review time to pull requests automatically!

The good news is that they found these delays could be eliminated largely by adding estimated review time to pull requests!

Learn more about how gitStream is making coding better HERE.

Reimagining DORA Metrics & Leveraging Feature Flags with Split

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 14 Jul 2023 23:57:17 +0000

Does the emergence of feature flags affect the interpretation and utility of DORA metrics?

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, host Dan Lines and Ariel Perez, VP of Engineering at Split.io, discuss the state of DORA metrics and whether they need reimaging in a world of feature flags. Listen as Ariel explains why he believes feature flags are more than a tool, and have begun to reshape our understanding of software development and the metrics we use to measure it.

Dan and Ariel also touch on how feature flags can drastically reduce lead time and mean time to recover, and conclude their chat with an intriguing look at the granular nature of control in the modern software engineering landscape, where the unit of control has shifted from the application as a whole to individual features.

Episode Highlights:

(2:05) Introduction
(7:15) Pursuing productivity at the expense of effectiveness
(15:50) Project allocation discussion
(24:55) Reimagining DORA metrics
(31:30) Radical ideas for DORA
(41:25) How teams should invest in shipping faster

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

Engineering executives, register now for LinearB's 3-part workshop series designed to improve your team's business outcomes. Learn the three essential steps used by elite software engineering organizations to decrease cycle time by 47% on average and deliver better results: Benchmark, Automate, and Improve.

Don't miss this opportunity to take your team to the next level - save your seat today.

The Art of Landing a DevRel Role with daily.dev

Conor Bronsdon — Thu, 06 Jul 2023 22:45:25 +0000

In this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, we’re focusing on the increasingly valuable role of DevRels. Francesco Ciulla, Developer Advocate at the open-source daily.dev community - which has more than 100,000 daily active users - joins us for a DevRel deep dive.

Listen as Francesco explains how a career change in his thirties set him on a path towards becoming a developer, being hired by the European Space Agency and, eventually, landing a role as a developer advocate, crediting much of his success on his ability to leverage social media to advance his career.

Outside of his personal story, Francesco shares his thoughts on connecting with devs, why YouTube is such a powerful platform and settles the debate on the kind of content developers are most interested in.

Episode Highlights:

(0:00) Accelerate State of DevOps survey
(3:05) Francesco's career change to programming
(10:15) How to leverage social media
(16:10) Best ways to connect with devs as a DevRel
(22:28) Challenges of being a DevRel
(25:42) What platforms should DevRels be using?
(30:07) Community building on YouTube
(33:12) Technical vs non-technical content

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

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LB Labs: Inside the Top 10% of Engineering Orgs

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 30 Jun 2023 19:25:39 +0000

Fact: You can’t become better at anything unless you understand what getting better would actually look like. This is especially true in the case of engineering teams.

Following the analysis of 2,000 dev teams and over 4 million code branches, the 2023 Engineering Benchmarks report is out.

To walk us through the performance metrics of the top 10% of engineering teams, LinearB’s Head of Developer Relations Ben Lloyd Pearson makes his first Dev Interrupted appearance.

From how long elite teams take to complete code tasks to the size of their pull requests, this is a great episode to understand where your dev team stands and where they have concrete room to improve.

Episode Highlights:

(0:00) Accelerate State of DevOps survey
(2:15) Introductions
(7:38) Research behind the engineering benchmarks
(11:23) Delivery lifecycle metrics
(14:51) PR automation tooling
(18:32) Elite developer workflow metrics
(25:40) State of business alignment metrics
(34:19) Predictability and planning accuracy

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

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You Are What You Build: Making Your Code More Human

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 23 Jun 2023 22:12:21 +0000

The world is what we make it. Tech - and AI - follow the same principles.

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, we sit down with Christina Enchevta, a Director of Engineering at GitHub, to unravel the link between the values we hold and the things we build. We delve into how AI applications mirror our values, intentionally or not, and how this can lead to surprising outcomes, no matter how benevolent our intentions.

Christina also shares practical advice for engineering leaders on how to take and provide constructive feedback, dismantle information silos, and infuse your values into the product development process.

“If you’re going to do AI, know the history, know how it works, and pursue it with a diverse group of people.”

Episode Highlights:

(0:00) Accelerate State of DevOps survey
(1:27) GitHub's secret sauce
(5:05) Being transparent with your dev team
(11:30) Providing constructive feedback
(17:45) Generative AI & art
(22:40) Dismantling information silos
(26:50) What devs should be excited about

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

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Healthcare’s Digital Accessibility Problem

Conor Bronsdon — Thu, 15 Jun 2023 21:58:03 +0000

The push for digital accessibility aims to ensure equal access and inclusion for all individuals. So why are healthcare companies failing to keep up?

In this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, we sit down with Plum Ertz, Director of Engineering at Ro, to dissect healthcare’s digital accessibility problem. Following explosive growth in telemedicine due to consumer behavior changes brought on by the pandemic, the healthcare industry has struggled to provide accessible healthcare services on the internet, regardless of the technology or disability someone may have. Plum sheds light on the work being done at Ro to address these challenges, emphasizing the simple steps that teams can take to enhance their digital accessibility.

Plum also shares stories from her time at Buzzfeed, where she accidentally took down the entire site after forgetting a semicolon and once mistakenly calling a midterm election 5 hours too early!

“Everything we do and everything that we're working on is built around: How is this solving a patient problem? Like if anyone said anything about the blockchain, I would straight up walk out of the building.”

Episode Highlights:

(1:35) Defining accessibility
(6:20) Why accessibility matters
(9:50) An explosion in the number of telemedicine users
(12:19) How Ro defines success
(16:05) Screwup stories
(18:15) Stories from Plum's time at Buzzfeed
(22:50) Getting started with accessibility at your company

Read the full episode transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

Don't miss this opportunity to take your team to the next level - save your seat today.

4 Rules for Leading Dev Teams in Tough Economic Times

Conor Bronsdon — Sun, 11 Jun 2023 20:42:05 +0000

It shouldn’t be a surprise that the outlook for many tech companies in 2023 is not rosy. With layoffs across the industry, we’re all going through a challenging time - whether you’re a dev or not.

The last 14 years have been an unprecedented boom time - but economic conditions will eventually challenge all companies. How do we, as leaders, handle these challenges?
I sat down with Michael Stahkne, VP of platform at Circle CI; Lewis Tuff, VP of engineering at Blockchain.com; Carolyn Vo, partner & head of engineering at Oliver Wyman, for a panel at Dev Interrupted's conference to answer that exact question. Here’s how these leaders described what effective leadership looks like in uncertain times.

1. Increase the quality and frequency of communication

Some people will see this as counterintuitive. If times are tough, don’t you need more time to get work done? However, stellar communication is one critical way to lead effectively in both prosperous times and times of crisis.

Michael had a strong viewpoint on this: in an async remote world, he will communicate when he needs to, and he expects his colleagues to share when they need time back. They have tools with settings to mute communications and get notifications as they see fit, and they can choose when to respond.

Why meeting communication matters

It’s important to acknowledge that part of communicating well involves meetings (gasp!). It’s common to hear engineers complain about meetings. Yes, it’s good to streamline meeting schedules to reduce synchronous status updates that force context-switching. There are, however, ways to have effective meetings—and some are essential. Many meetings are crucial working sessions where you can collaborate with your colleagues.

Yet not all communication is formal. Informal signaling is also key. For example, Carolyn shared how she jokingly refers to herself as “Jr. Probationary Intern” to break down the artificial separation between you and your teammates as you become more senior. You can’t get rid of the power dynamic completely, but you don’t want your new people to be scared of you, and you need to have their trust to understand people’s motivations. Carolyn chooses to try to lower that separation through humor and direct acknowledgment.

You can't let this happen:

2. Connect motivation to business results

Understanding your team’s motivation is also essential. When things are uncertain, you must determine what motivates each team member. They’ll have questions like “Will I get to write the code I like?” And you have to answer immediately, “Yes, you will,” or “Yes, but you’re going to be reallocated to this new group.”

Michael also noted an often underrated motivating factor: How is your company oriented?

If your company is customer-oriented, if you’re focused on what they’re trying to achieve and are helping them do that—it softens the blows that land on your own company in tough times. Cutting back on your bets and focusing on your high-impact projects can also help with this and is sometimes necessary; sadly, this is often seen in layoffs or “reductions in workforce”.

Instill excitement through experimentation

Once you understand people’s motivations, you can help bring joy by providing space for teams to have fun.

When valuations are going up and to the right, it’s a lot easier to have work feel fun - so in an uncertain period, it’s imperative to get teams excited when you can. It lets people stop focusing on the downturn and instead on things that excite them.

Everyone can define “fun” differently, but knowing your team’s motivation can help you find the right ways to provide some levity and keep everyone aligned. You can bring fun in simple ways, like sharing something interesting you learned at the start of a meeting or, in Michael’s case, by throwing in emojis on Slack and shooting memes at a high rate per day.

For Lewis, teammates can find fun by having space to experiment and try new things with little pressure. Even if you disagree with your direct report’s decisions, part of providing space to experiment is still advocating for them and letting their choices play out—even if what they’re making feels like something you’ve seen before. Even then, the variables can be different, and it could turn out entirely differently. Whatever you do, don’t tell everyone you disagree with your team member’s idea.

3. Have the tough conversations

One way to understand how much fun a team can have is to understand your tolerance for failure, which can get stricter as things get uncertain. But being transparent about this tolerance will continue to give team members the space to enjoy their work.

There is a myth that you must filter lousy news and hard decisions as a leader. But being transparent helps people understand the context behind why things are happening and helps ensure people aren’t being shocked. If you end up filtering news, you breed rumors and speculations, which can produce resentment.

Blame is a communication killer

Another pitfall to avoid with tough communication is blame. One example of blameful leadership is when a team member asks for a raise, and the leader says, “I want to give you one, but my boss won’t let me.” This type of blaming irks leaders like Michael, partly because it comes off as inauthentic. Authenticity is an integral part of being transparent and conducting successful challenging communication. There are a lot of discussions you can have during tough conversations beyond finding someone else to blame. Plus, people who own messaging are more likely to get promoted.

What to avoid when providing critical feedback

Providing harsh feedback can be challenging, particularly across cultural boundaries where how tough feedback is communicated can vary wildly. Like Carolyn, this is an area of improvement I see for myself as a leader, and somewhere, I’ve made mistakes. One example: I had to communicate critical feedback to a team member and thought I was writing a thorough and fair review by simply writing extensive feedback and including positives and negatives.

However, I didn’t spend enough time thinking about how to communicate that critical feedback: I started by addressing an area of concern and initially shared the feedback in writing vs. having a conversation with them. In some cultures, such as the Netherlands, this might have been perfectly acceptable--but in working with a US-based team member who was seeing layoffs at other companies, it backfired. Instead of helping provide feedback to initiate improvement, I’d caused them to worry that their job was at risk.

In the end, I had to assuage this team member's worries--and acknowledge my own failure in how I communicated the criticism; I lacked context and empathy in my communication. When sharing critical feedback, I needed to remember the old US business adage of two positives to one negative.

4. Remove team roadblocks but track team progress

While communication is crucial for leadership, particularly in tough times, it isn’t the only thing. It’s also important to buckle down and ask yourself, “How can we as leaders remove roadblocks?”

If we want our team members to direct how they want to progress, we need to figure out how to support that and track it. By tracking this for your reports, you can align how you feel they progressed with how they feel while tailoring things to the individual. For engineering leaders, understanding the health of your team - without being a data-driven tyrant - is a crucial first step.

A helpful next step is to find the individuals who are driving the company's principles and have them mentor teammates. Leadership can come from every seat but often requires effort to foster culturally and enable team members' progression.

Leading teams in uncertain times

Leading in uncertain times hinges on communication, transparency, and understanding motivation. You can’t treat everyone the same, as everyone has different goals and ideas for fun. The more you tailor to your individuals, the more you can help your team thrive in uncertainty.

Watch my whole conversation with Carolyn, Michael, and Lewis on our YouTube 👇

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

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Decoding Duolingo: Returning to the Office, Enabling First-Time Managers & More

Conor Bronsdon — Fri, 09 Jun 2023 21:24:32 +0000

Remote, hybrid, or in-office? Opinions are divided on what has quickly become one of the most controversial topics in tech: Should we return to the office and if so, how and when?

On this week’s episode of Dev Interrupted, we sit down with Duolingo’s Sr. Director of Engineering Fabio Lessa, to discuss how to successfully transition your engineering org back to the office - and why Duolingo has done it so successfully. [Hint: it all starts with culture.]

Fabio also discusses Duolingo’s training program for first-time managers, the transition from IC to team lead, and tips to roll out a training program at your company.

"It's not black and white. Right? You can't really replace the acceleration that you get of everyone in the room. Like even whiteboarding together, doing ideas, laughing, joking, good ideas, bad ideas. Now you don't need to do that every day of the week, but there's certain situations that you can really accelerate."

Episode Highlights:

(3:03) Returning to the office
(6:10) Balancing hybrid work
(15:28) What makes Duolingo's culture great
(18:38) Platform engineering
(21:28) New manager training program
(26:30) How to roll out your own training program

Episode Transcript

While you’re here, check out this video from our YouTube channel, and be sure to like and subscribe when you do!

A 3-part Summer Workshop Series for Engineering Executives

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6 Keys to Human-Centric Software Development

Conor Bronsdon — Sun, 04 Jun 2023 21:02:34 +0000

“Treating devs like human beings” may sound like it should be an obvious idea. Yet we see the opposite happening on a regular basis - developers measured on lines of code, managers who expect engineers to act like automatons, and too many practices that sacrifice developer happiness and decay teams for short-term delivery.

To discuss how to fix these negative practices that too often damage our industry, I was joined by 3 experts in making the transition from churn and burn software development to more successful, human-centric development.

Here are the 6 major takeaways from my conversation with Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering at Spot AI; engineering leadership coach Lena Reinhard and VP of Engineering at Range, Jean Hsu.

1. Humanize Interviews

Sometimes, we must remind each other that developers are knowledge workers, not robots. During our conversation, Kelly shared her view on one of the roots of this problem: the belief that engineers shouldn’t be required to code as part of the interview process.

Her reason? Such tests don’t reflect actual working conditions. After all, when was the last time anyone stood over your shoulder at work and watched you code? Instead, she advocates for more problem-oriented system-design interviews that showcase how candidates think.

Jean aligned with this, saying interviews should focus more on what it’s like to work with a person instead of how technically strong they are. However, humanizing interviews starts before the interview itself - it means thinking about what your job descriptions and interviews cater to: Do they support people who have kids? People who already have a second job? Or do they hone in on “super passionate” developers who often have more free time?

2. API for Humans

Beyond interviews, Jean thinks that treating your working developers as humans is one of the industry’s biggest gaps. People moving into leadership and management roles are not trained to communicate and figure out, “Hey, what’s important to this other human?” She recalls one communication workshop where a person shared the takeaway “I feel like I just learned an API for humans.”

Kelly Vaughn brings a unique perspective to this discussion - that of a trained therapist. She leverages this training to monitor behavior and patterns of speech to see when interventions are needed and to understand the needs of her developers. It’s interesting to compare this approach to other managers who don’t get the same in-depth training in communication and in improving their emotional intelligence. So many times we promote developers to managers and actually set them up for failure. As a leader, it’s crucial to view developers not just as resources but as complex humans so that you can help them understand what they really want and how to create mutual value as part of the team. If we solely focus on the value to the business - and not the developer experience in building that business value - we sacrifice for short-term productivity bursts and decrease retention rates, causing major issues and costing the business money in the longterm.

One of my favorite examples of how to approach this dichotomy comes from Jean - one of her engineers told her they were having challenges balancing full-time work with other goals. This engineer was talented and a valuable member of the team, so Jean worked with them to transition them into a part-time role that let them have more time back for personal projects and more closely fit what they were looking for. This kind of relationship is challenging to develop, but when done right can both deliver for the business's needs and recognize each human's unique challenges.

3. Can a Dev Manager Be Non-Technical?

With this focus on communication and humanization vs. technical skills, the natural next question is whether or not developers need to be led by managers with technical skills. From Lena’s experience, many great engineering managers are people who haven’t been developers and likely never will. It doesn’t take someone from a technical background to enjoy working in tech and understand the motivations of their developers. Yet we continue to see companies where leaders seem to think that the way to fill gaps is pattern matching their engineers. They’re making people leaders who have similar skills or behaviors to their subordinates or who excelled as an individual contributor without necessarily having leadership skills. This contributes to engineers who struggle or burn out in poorly-fitting roles.

Part of the joy of engineering leadership is seeing your engineers grow. Part of letting them grow is to stop fixing for them and start coaching them to do the solving themselves. And when you come from a non-technical background, that temptation is less, which is part of why many great managers are not from a technical background.

4. Bringing Your Full Self to Work

Our panelists views one-on-ones not as a place to give performance advice, but as a place for engineers to share their dreams, personal endeavors, and concerns. Kelly, Lena and Jean all felt that one-on-ones were a powerful tool for leaders to break through the dehumanizing barriers of software development as production line. In fact, because of Kelly’s background as a trained therapist, she views a successfull one-on-one as something close to the therapy, though she cautions this approach doesn’t fit everyone.

However, just like a therapy session, a good one-on-one should be individualized, confidential, difficult to cancel and devoid of surprises. A leader also needs to bring their whole self to the meeting, or the employee won’t bring their whole self.

Lena resonated deeply with this. It can be tricky for people to bring their whole selves due to culture, and a leader should figure out what their employees’ boundaries are between personal and work life. It’s also important to recognizes that it’s not just regional or company culture, but also generational culture that affects those boundaries. At Range, Jean’s team report their mood for the day as well as what they’re working on during check-ins. She shared a story where she was explaining this process to another older engineering leader and that that person laughed in surprise that people would want to share something like mood in the workplace.

Jean feels strongly that the way a company talks is really representative of how they view their employees. For example, consider when companies call it “resource allocation” instead of “how employees spend their time.” In a higher-level position, you need to watch the way you talk and how you’re feeling about the people who work for you.

5. Metrics

Kelly had a great example of humanizing vs. dehumanizing metrics: time to close a ticket vs. the impact of closing a ticket. The latter is much more powerful and speaks more to the nuance of what’s going on with a team. Metrics shouldn’t just track information, but also give people something to look forward to. People want to be doing their best work and as I’ve written, we can use metrics to improve productivity without sacrificing developer experience.

You can get a feel for how humanizing - or dehumanizing - a company is by what metrics they use when measuring their devs. For example, lines of code is a dehumanizing metric because it’s meaningless to the actual value a developer can bring. One key to humanizing metrics is making sure the metric is something that a developer is aware of and has direct influence over. Kelly had a great example of humanizing vs. dehumanizing metrics: time to close a ticket vs. the impact of closing a ticket. The latter is much more powerful and speaks more to the nuance of what’s going on with a team.

As we talk about ad naseum at LinearB, metrics should focus more on team performance than individual performance. Metrics shouldn’t just track information, but also give people something to look forward to. People want to be doing their best work and as I’ve written, we can use metrics to improve productivity without sacrificing developer experience

6. Burnout

Another crucial challenge that stops people from doing their best work is burnout. Jean shared about a time when her company shut down for a short break and people were hoping everyone would come back from the break refreshed. But the break was amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and instead of returning refreshed, she came back tired. During a morning check-in, she shared how tired she still felt and how the short break didn’t make up for months of pandemic stress. One of her direct reports told her later how relieved they were that Jean shared, because they felt the same way! Acknowledging the elephants in the room is crucial as a leader; everything can’t always be rosy and your team wants to feel seen in the challenges you share.

Another important thing to understand about burnout is that it’s not just something you need to accept: Kelly pointed out that burnout is recognized as a mental health syndrome. Knowing that, leaders must be aware that cultural influences impact people’s willingness to talk about mental health, including regional and national cultural considerations. Your team members may not want to talk about it, so you have to look for signs before the burnout hits full force. Address these signs as soon as you can, and give the employee the time and the space they need to heal from it.

You’ve also got to manage upwards around burnout: When the pandemic hit, many companies said, “We care about you,” but didn’t take action. Instead of reducing capacity to 80% and telling people they could be less productive during that time, they tightened goals. They worried more about their performance than their employees’ humanity. As a leader within your organization, you need to raise your voice in leadership discussions and challenge the organization's negative actions by showing that there is a better way to lead.

Humanizing Means Performance

Humanizing developers is critical and isn’t divorced from performance. As Jean says, it’s not like you can say, “Let’s just get the team running; then we can focus on caring about them.” Caring about your team allows them to perform with great results!

Watch my whole conversation with Jean, Kelly, and Lena on our YouTube 👇

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