1 00:00:07,820 --> 00:00:10,672 Welcome back to another episode of Adventures in DevOps. 2 00:00:10,672 --> 00:00:21,418 And today, since last week went so well with talking about Dora 2025 report and everything related to AI, we've decided to drill down into just one specific piece of that. 3 00:00:21,418 --> 00:00:24,720 Oh, what is that going to be? 4 00:00:24,720 --> 00:00:25,680 Productivity. 5 00:00:25,680 --> 00:00:29,242 I forgot, you know, being productive or effective. 6 00:00:29,302 --> 00:00:36,716 I'm actually not entirely sure what that is, but uh because we're on that topic, I brought back Dorota, CEO at Authors. 7 00:00:37,304 --> 00:00:38,174 Hi. 8 00:00:38,174 --> 00:00:41,575 So from what I understand, you don't know what we're going to talk about. 9 00:00:41,575 --> 00:00:43,576 That's a great start. 10 00:00:43,956 --> 00:00:50,548 No, from the notes that I have, uh engineering productivity, I believe is the name of the game. 11 00:00:50,548 --> 00:01:00,461 I've been at one last conference at the end of the year, December, 2025, built stuff in Lithuania. 12 00:01:00,901 --> 00:01:04,545 And there were a few occasions where the topic came up and I feel like... 13 00:01:04,545 --> 00:01:10,127 This topic always comes up whenever you talk to engineers, especially the more senior ones. 14 00:01:10,347 --> 00:01:15,668 And to me, it seems like as an industry, we're just obsessed with productivity. 15 00:01:15,768 --> 00:01:22,470 And whenever there is a new technology coming up or like a new way of doing things, everyone starts talking about productivity. 16 00:01:22,851 --> 00:01:33,294 And obviously the whole AI topic came up and productivity is once again a key concern for lot of people. 17 00:01:33,710 --> 00:01:35,991 I don't think it's just the conference. 18 00:01:35,991 --> 00:01:44,915 think since AI has been a thing, I just continually hear productivity, productivity, productivity as if AI has any impact on it. 19 00:01:44,915 --> 00:01:55,300 I remember recently someone was saying AI increases your productivity, which wasn't a new thought because I've seen it on LinkedIn and other news streams recently. 20 00:01:55,300 --> 00:02:00,232 And the question that just keeps coming back to my mind is what exactly do they mean when they say productivity? 21 00:02:00,232 --> 00:02:03,664 How can AI increase something if they're not measuring anything? 22 00:02:03,664 --> 00:02:05,388 are measuring something, what is that? 23 00:02:05,388 --> 00:02:06,729 Well, measuring, right? 24 00:02:06,729 --> 00:02:14,783 That's em something of a challenge because, and here's maybe my perennial problem. 25 00:02:15,203 --> 00:02:17,224 There's just no way to do that. 26 00:02:17,224 --> 00:02:22,808 uh I feel like in software, everyone wants to measure productivity or output. 27 00:02:22,808 --> 00:02:27,266 ah But so far, I don't think anyone has a way to actually do that. 28 00:02:27,266 --> 00:02:30,700 Well, I think in Scrum they talk about velocity. 29 00:02:30,700 --> 00:02:32,932 Velocity, which is different. 30 00:02:33,814 --> 00:02:40,056 Velocity just tells you how many units of work as you defined you can do. 31 00:02:40,056 --> 00:02:41,557 Well, I think that's a fair metric, right? 32 00:02:41,557 --> 00:02:49,732 If everyone is talking about who talks about productivity is thinking about AI productivity and how much AI increases our productivity, I should say LLMs are increasing 33 00:02:49,732 --> 00:02:50,633 our productivity. 34 00:02:50,633 --> 00:02:55,555 The only metric that really can come to mind is a number of lines of code per unit time. 35 00:02:56,897 --> 00:02:59,160 That's like one-to-one with like engineering. 36 00:02:59,160 --> 00:03:04,916 He said it, he said it, he thinks that engineering productivity is just the amount of code that you write. 37 00:03:04,916 --> 00:03:08,039 LLMs don't increase anything else on any other metric, right? 38 00:03:08,039 --> 00:03:10,666 So what else can I include? 39 00:03:10,666 --> 00:03:11,916 all, I don't want to talk about LLM. 40 00:03:11,916 --> 00:03:14,017 Let's shelf that discussion. 41 00:03:14,017 --> 00:03:16,688 There's too much of that everywhere. 42 00:03:17,428 --> 00:03:18,328 So here's the thing. 43 00:03:18,328 --> 00:03:23,870 Obviously the idea of productivity, the whole notion comes from manufacturing, right? 44 00:03:23,890 --> 00:03:36,353 And if you are a company manufacturing gizmos, then you can easily count how many gizmos you have after a certain amount of time, like per hour. 45 00:03:37,232 --> 00:03:38,944 widgets per unit time 46 00:03:39,766 --> 00:03:44,368 So, and per machine, so, and that will tell you your productivity. 47 00:03:44,368 --> 00:03:50,891 And if you make tweaks to your process, or maybe you change a machine, then you can compare the new number to the old number. 48 00:03:50,891 --> 00:03:53,933 Then you can see, okay, this is better because we have more gizmos now. 49 00:03:53,933 --> 00:03:56,994 ah It's not how it works in software. 50 00:03:56,994 --> 00:04:00,699 Why, maybe I'll take the other side of the perspective and disagree. 51 00:04:00,699 --> 00:04:08,410 Isn't the whole goal to deliver value to users or customers in which case you're delivering units of value and maybe units of value is features. 52 00:04:08,410 --> 00:04:11,570 so features per unit time turned out maybe that's. 53 00:04:11,570 --> 00:04:13,051 you made so many jumps here. 54 00:04:13,051 --> 00:04:14,113 So here's the thing. 55 00:04:14,113 --> 00:04:15,113 Value, yes. 56 00:04:15,113 --> 00:04:18,706 However, the whole problem boils down to how do you measure value? 57 00:04:18,706 --> 00:04:20,477 How do you capture that? 58 00:04:20,558 --> 00:04:21,959 Where is the value? 59 00:04:21,959 --> 00:04:23,765 mean, is feature the value? 60 00:04:23,765 --> 00:04:24,902 I don't know. 61 00:04:24,902 --> 00:04:29,976 uh So like when you're manufacturing gizmos, gizmo is a unit. 62 00:04:29,976 --> 00:04:34,970 It's hopefully it's a thing that you can take in your hands and sell, right? 63 00:04:34,970 --> 00:04:38,453 In software, it is a little bit more vague, nebulous. 64 00:04:38,453 --> 00:04:39,894 It's just... 65 00:04:39,962 --> 00:04:51,789 I mean, I would argue if we are going to compare software to gizmos, then the whole software product is one gizmo, which, you know, it takes months, maybe years to make that. 66 00:04:53,176 --> 00:04:57,068 Some teams are definitely measuring number of products per unit time, right? 67 00:04:57,068 --> 00:05:06,198 I'm sure there are some product managers out there that instead of doing end user research and understanding what actually will bring value to the businesses or companies. 68 00:05:06,198 --> 00:05:11,880 the thing, unless you're making the same exact product the second time, it's going to be a different gizmo. 69 00:05:11,880 --> 00:05:13,781 So you can't really compare it. 70 00:05:13,781 --> 00:05:16,581 And that's the crux of the problem, I think. 71 00:05:16,581 --> 00:05:19,442 Software is inherently a creative discipline. 72 00:05:19,442 --> 00:05:26,765 You're always making things new that haven't been done before or haven't been done exactly like this before. 73 00:05:26,765 --> 00:05:31,192 So your gizmos that you're manufacturing are all different. 74 00:05:31,192 --> 00:05:32,905 productivity looks like in other domains. 75 00:05:32,905 --> 00:05:38,954 Like if we talk about creativity, I'm thinking like number of statues or works of art per unit time. 76 00:05:38,954 --> 00:05:42,338 Number of books maybe that writers write. 77 00:05:42,359 --> 00:05:44,084 Maybe that's a good comparison. 78 00:05:44,084 --> 00:05:53,102 number of albums released yeah i mean you can totally look at some of the artists you know and you can tell this artist was more prolific than the other and then 79 00:05:53,102 --> 00:05:56,236 I think that's the word prolific because that came to my mind too, right? 80 00:05:56,236 --> 00:05:59,130 If you have prolific artists, they release a lot. 81 00:05:59,130 --> 00:06:03,546 But usually it's used in the same phrase as quality. 82 00:06:03,546 --> 00:06:07,462 they also achieved, and I don't know enough about the music domain, like lots of what is it? 83 00:06:07,462 --> 00:06:10,634 Platinum records, basically, or top of the chart. 84 00:06:10,634 --> 00:06:13,623 Well, yeah, but you know, here's the thing. 85 00:06:13,623 --> 00:06:15,849 ah Is that productivity? 86 00:06:16,322 --> 00:06:18,063 They were very productive. 87 00:06:18,243 --> 00:06:21,788 I sat down and I said, I had a very productive session. 88 00:06:21,788 --> 00:06:22,519 What did I mean? 89 00:06:22,519 --> 00:06:23,763 I recorded a lot of... 90 00:06:23,763 --> 00:06:29,151 I have a feeling that the productivity thing is a lot like porn. 91 00:06:29,151 --> 00:06:30,990 I know it when I see it. 92 00:06:30,990 --> 00:06:33,956 Is Ruth Gators, oh Ginsburg. 93 00:06:34,083 --> 00:06:36,256 Yes, because I mean, how do you define it? 94 00:06:36,256 --> 00:06:37,227 No one can. 95 00:06:37,227 --> 00:06:44,737 I've talked to so many people over my 20-year career and no one ever can tell you exactly what productivity is. 96 00:06:45,208 --> 00:06:53,162 I think this is a lucid thing that you own that individual engineers only find when they're whole, like in a hole somewhere and no one's heard from them in weeks. 97 00:06:53,162 --> 00:06:58,321 Then they come back like, I was really productive or they leave the office, they come back the next day. 98 00:06:58,321 --> 00:07:02,344 I was super productive when I was sitting on a park bench somewhere that I've heard. 99 00:07:02,344 --> 00:07:07,326 Yeah, so it's just a feeling and then, know, again, how do we measure and capture feelings? 100 00:07:07,326 --> 00:07:10,776 mean, some people do think, okay, we can totally do that. 101 00:07:10,776 --> 00:07:11,396 That's true. 102 00:07:11,396 --> 00:07:16,890 An engineer a couple of weeks ago told me that she was, how should I put this? 103 00:07:17,391 --> 00:07:21,154 We couldn't meet because she was being very productive. 104 00:07:21,154 --> 00:07:31,054 And then I learned later that what she had done was completely rewrite all of the software that they had because it was so much better, I quote. 105 00:07:31,054 --> 00:07:32,844 After she rewrote it was so much better. 106 00:07:32,844 --> 00:07:34,795 Yeah, very productive. 107 00:07:34,795 --> 00:07:40,697 know, this is one of the things that has been, you know, going around in my head. 108 00:07:40,817 --> 00:07:47,919 I think the only reasonable way to measure productivity would be through revenue, right? 109 00:07:47,919 --> 00:07:50,960 Because that's the output that you can actually quantify. 110 00:07:50,960 --> 00:07:57,731 However, the problem is that's not engineering productivity because there's a lot more than just engineering that contributes to revenue. 111 00:07:57,731 --> 00:07:59,162 And we're back to square one. 112 00:07:59,162 --> 00:08:00,032 Okay. 113 00:08:00,330 --> 00:08:02,318 Is there anything to measure really? 114 00:08:02,318 --> 00:08:10,479 I just I feel like there are so many better metrics out there when we start looking at a business or product in a whole right you can look at and use our happiness not some bad 115 00:08:10,479 --> 00:08:13,484 metric like NPS score or anything like that but 116 00:08:13,484 --> 00:08:17,149 Here's the thing, end user happiness only matters for some companies. 117 00:08:17,149 --> 00:08:23,577 There's a lot of companies for which the investor happiness is what fundamentally matters. 118 00:08:23,577 --> 00:08:28,052 the stock performance, then again, tie that back to engineering. 119 00:08:28,052 --> 00:08:30,273 Is there actually a correlation? 120 00:08:30,335 --> 00:08:31,707 You probably know the answer. 121 00:08:31,707 --> 00:08:32,727 Do you know the answer? 122 00:08:32,727 --> 00:08:46,001 see I well the correlation doesn't imply cause maybe the new metric is really when we say productivity what we mean is investor product I was super productive as in I did things 123 00:08:46,001 --> 00:08:48,402 that will make some investors happy 124 00:08:48,759 --> 00:08:59,788 I really feel like there are so many steps in between the work that you do as engineer and that investor being happy that it's just not a practical way to think about this. 125 00:08:59,889 --> 00:09:09,868 I mean, I do like this idea of productivity as a feeling because fundamentally, I think that's what people are talking about when they talk uh about 126 00:09:09,868 --> 00:09:11,899 I've got it. 127 00:09:11,899 --> 00:09:18,621 Maybe what they really mean is this is the subjective metric that engineers are using instead of saying, I'm happy. 128 00:09:18,621 --> 00:09:20,141 They say, I'm productive. 129 00:09:20,141 --> 00:09:24,483 And so if you're looking at an engineering organization, you say, yeah, we want happy engineers. 130 00:09:24,483 --> 00:09:30,725 well, that's what I've heard a lot is that we actually don't care about our engineering. 131 00:09:31,505 --> 00:09:34,198 I don't care about my engineers being happy, just that. 132 00:09:34,198 --> 00:09:39,021 I've heard people say they don't care about their engineers being happy. 133 00:09:39,021 --> 00:09:45,624 And even though we know all the research says that happier engineers produce higher quality stuff. 134 00:09:45,624 --> 00:09:47,475 And I think it's cyclical, right? 135 00:09:47,475 --> 00:09:54,499 If you're producing higher quality stuff, you're on call less time, which means you're probably happier because you don't you can actually go out and enjoy your evenings 136 00:09:54,499 --> 00:09:56,738 without, you know, waking up at 3 a.m. 137 00:09:56,738 --> 00:09:59,820 But then your manager actually doesn't know if you did any job. 138 00:09:59,820 --> 00:10:01,225 they're like nothing ever, right? 139 00:10:01,225 --> 00:10:02,926 This is is maybe I 140 00:10:02,926 --> 00:10:04,221 Well, you were just you jumped. 141 00:10:04,221 --> 00:10:07,190 It was actually your talk at Vilnius. 142 00:10:07,190 --> 00:10:11,573 I did, yes, I gave a talk that touches on this topic. 143 00:10:11,573 --> 00:10:13,394 I feel like this is part of the problem. 144 00:10:13,394 --> 00:10:26,023 um If you actually do a really good job in software, if you are, let's say, productive in the sense that you very efficiently deliver high value, so software that is super stable, 145 00:10:26,023 --> 00:10:32,347 doesn't have any bugs, it works exactly as everyone expects it from the get-go, then what happens? 146 00:10:32,527 --> 00:10:33,358 Nothing happens. 147 00:10:33,358 --> 00:10:35,749 Well, exactly, nothing happens, 148 00:10:36,962 --> 00:10:39,509 Like no one really pays attention. 149 00:10:39,509 --> 00:10:41,011 Does that count? 150 00:10:41,574 --> 00:10:45,684 Would, you know, whoever's measuring productivity, would that be captured? 151 00:10:45,684 --> 00:10:46,926 I don't know. 152 00:10:46,926 --> 00:10:47,446 Probably not. 153 00:10:47,446 --> 00:10:52,238 And I feel like I've never heard productivity actually being used on a team or org level. 154 00:10:52,238 --> 00:10:53,479 know like engineering productivity. 155 00:10:53,479 --> 00:10:56,990 I only ever hear it being applied at the individual contributor level. 156 00:10:56,990 --> 00:11:00,101 Like I never hear a product project manager come back. 157 00:11:00,101 --> 00:11:01,232 Like I was super productive. 158 00:11:01,232 --> 00:11:04,033 I scheduled all my meetings for the week. 159 00:11:04,033 --> 00:11:06,366 said maybe I sent all those emails actually, right? 160 00:11:06,366 --> 00:11:06,707 know what? 161 00:11:06,707 --> 00:11:10,302 I think you're not talking to the right people because I hear this all the time. 162 00:11:10,302 --> 00:11:18,413 Oh, I managed to schedule all my meetings so that I get to, you know, it's basically just the calendar Tetris game. 163 00:11:18,413 --> 00:11:20,845 That's the favorite game of all project. 164 00:11:20,898 --> 00:11:25,803 we talk about productivity, maybe what we're really talking about is the toil and the waste. 165 00:11:25,924 --> 00:11:32,191 If you got through all of your toil, all of your waste, things that should not actually be done, then you are productive. 166 00:11:32,272 --> 00:11:38,039 Because those things don't inherently have any value for the business to begin with, Like scheduling a meeting has no value for the business. 167 00:11:38,039 --> 00:11:40,628 If we talk about it from a lean perspective, 168 00:11:40,628 --> 00:11:44,902 But I don't think people think about that when they bring up productivity. 169 00:11:44,902 --> 00:11:54,819 Yeah, but as we identify and I really like it is that it's a subjective measure There is no metric behind it when someone says they're productive It's a feeling and on the flip 170 00:11:54,819 --> 00:12:02,314 side when our feelings relevant It's well when they don't have a metric that goes along with the business So the only things that are important for the business that can't be 171 00:12:02,314 --> 00:12:07,798 measured by those metrics are the waste The things that shouldn't be done in the first place 172 00:12:08,024 --> 00:12:10,942 Well, some waste is necessary, arguably. 173 00:12:10,942 --> 00:12:19,524 Well, you know, I've worked at a bunch of companies and one of them was a global manufacturing company and they have to ship stuff to their customers and they would often 174 00:12:19,524 --> 00:12:30,367 tell me that in the spirit of lean that the box that items were shipped in was waste that means as it means it was just a mechanism to deliver the product to the customer and no 175 00:12:30,367 --> 00:12:31,808 one cares what the box looks like. 176 00:12:31,808 --> 00:12:40,234 However, in the last 10 years, I would want to challenge this actually in the last 10 years, we see that lots of companies have started branding their boxes. 177 00:12:40,234 --> 00:12:45,614 significantly that the box is an experience when you get a motherboard or a hard drive. 178 00:12:45,614 --> 00:12:51,358 It's all because of those YouTube unboxing videos, I think that's the reason. 179 00:12:51,579 --> 00:12:56,062 And also if you have another surface to put your ad on, why wouldn't you do that? 180 00:12:56,494 --> 00:12:57,655 Well, I think it goes both ways. 181 00:12:57,655 --> 00:12:59,336 think the ad is a huge part of it. 182 00:12:59,336 --> 00:13:01,498 I think knowing who your audience is is important. 183 00:13:01,498 --> 00:13:04,350 Like if they're going to unbox it, they want a stellar experience. 184 00:13:04,350 --> 00:13:05,822 so having it there is important. 185 00:13:05,822 --> 00:13:09,344 I also feel like I don't want to have to open the box to see what's inside, right? 186 00:13:09,344 --> 00:13:11,186 So knowing what's there is important. 187 00:13:11,186 --> 00:13:16,828 I can get excited just by, you know, pulling up, know, walking in after getting off the. 188 00:13:16,828 --> 00:13:17,681 Are you a cat? 189 00:13:17,681 --> 00:13:20,311 Are you excited about boxes? 190 00:13:20,311 --> 00:13:25,493 feel like those boxes are more flimsy than the dirty cardboard boxes with the Amazon logo on them. 191 00:13:25,626 --> 00:13:28,209 or like the ones that are just playing cardboard. 192 00:13:28,209 --> 00:13:31,162 Those are the waste. 193 00:13:31,162 --> 00:13:33,734 The ones that were labeled waste. 194 00:13:33,735 --> 00:13:35,417 yeah, no, I see what you mean. 195 00:13:35,417 --> 00:13:42,785 um Anyway, um why should anyone care about productivity? 196 00:13:42,785 --> 00:13:45,047 mean, like individual engineers, right? 197 00:13:45,047 --> 00:13:48,140 Is it just a manager concept? 198 00:13:48,270 --> 00:13:55,042 Well, I've completely flipped this around because when we started this conversation where I was at was, yeah, no one should care about productivity whatsoever. 199 00:13:55,042 --> 00:13:56,193 It's not a real metric. 200 00:13:56,193 --> 00:13:58,013 It doesn't encapsulate anything important. 201 00:13:58,013 --> 00:14:02,385 There are business metrics that go forward and there are engineering metrics that are way more important. 202 00:14:02,385 --> 00:14:04,135 We talked about the DORA metrics last week. 203 00:14:04,135 --> 00:14:07,216 think DORA has been a thing for 10 years or so now. 204 00:14:07,216 --> 00:14:09,923 There's no reason not to adhere to these. 205 00:14:09,923 --> 00:14:11,852 There's also individual career lessons. 206 00:14:11,852 --> 00:14:13,644 do you mean exactly can you 207 00:14:13,644 --> 00:14:22,986 I Dorometrics, mean, mean time to resolution, change failure rate, you know how often there is a failure in production, deployment frequency, how many deployments per day you 208 00:14:22,986 --> 00:14:29,730 have and the change lead time, how long it takes to get software into production, into users hand from the moment you conceive of it. 209 00:14:29,730 --> 00:14:30,550 Yeah. 210 00:14:30,952 --> 00:14:33,467 So yeah, so where does that leave productivity? 211 00:14:33,467 --> 00:14:38,254 That's really just the deficiency of the capital you have deployed, I think, isn't it? 212 00:14:38,254 --> 00:14:43,134 it may be well, I think I like efficiency as an interesting aspect there. 213 00:14:43,134 --> 00:14:52,694 But I think there's also something also included in that because when people talk about productivity, I think they also assume that people are completely utilized, 100 % 214 00:14:52,694 --> 00:14:53,422 capacity. 215 00:14:53,422 --> 00:14:58,022 % yes, 120 % that's when you know that people are really giving their all. 216 00:14:58,022 --> 00:15:02,222 uh Yeah, I think that's another flawed concept. 217 00:15:02,222 --> 00:15:03,362 What do mean? 218 00:15:03,522 --> 00:15:12,822 Don't you want like, feel like there's a huge fight in engineering organizations where individuals should be performing their job for the length of time in which they're 219 00:15:12,822 --> 00:15:13,242 working. 220 00:15:13,242 --> 00:15:15,664 know, if they're working eight hours a day or 40 hours a week, 221 00:15:15,664 --> 00:15:18,898 because we're totally assembling gizmos on a manufacturing line. 222 00:15:18,898 --> 00:15:19,929 That's how it works, right? 223 00:15:19,929 --> 00:15:21,170 It's creative, right? 224 00:15:21,170 --> 00:15:23,202 It's thinking, so you cannot... 225 00:15:23,202 --> 00:15:27,023 But surely working longer produces more output, right? 226 00:15:27,023 --> 00:15:28,325 You're trolling me. 227 00:15:29,951 --> 00:15:32,382 Let's assume for a moment that that were true. 228 00:15:32,747 --> 00:15:36,010 Yeah, I mean, to be fair, for some people this is true. 229 00:15:36,010 --> 00:15:47,008 Like they absolutely have those spurts where they just sit at a computer 16 hours, like four hours of sleep, four hours, who knows. 230 00:15:47,008 --> 00:15:50,309 It's known in sports as being in the zone. 231 00:15:50,613 --> 00:15:51,365 You're in the zone. 232 00:15:51,365 --> 00:15:52,266 You're able to. 233 00:15:52,266 --> 00:16:01,933 in engineering as being in a zone and uh whatever it's just for some people they're in the zone for days and days and then they take vacation for three months. 234 00:16:01,933 --> 00:16:03,444 I'm I'm just I'm 235 00:16:03,571 --> 00:16:05,967 First they release the production and then they take vacation. 236 00:16:05,967 --> 00:16:11,261 Yeah, and I'm speaking from Europe, just for our American listeners. 237 00:16:11,261 --> 00:16:14,128 Three months vacation does happen here sometimes. 238 00:16:14,128 --> 00:16:15,430 em 239 00:16:15,554 --> 00:16:17,421 especially if they've during that time. 240 00:16:17,421 --> 00:16:20,390 was this was this one example that I think you were working with, 241 00:16:20,390 --> 00:16:23,883 yeah, I have a specific engineer in mind who did exactly that. 242 00:16:23,883 --> 00:16:26,615 He would just always pull in very long hours. 243 00:16:26,650 --> 00:16:35,122 I mean, he was a fairly good engineer, a great output, but then he would just take, would just batch his work and batch his vacation. 244 00:16:35,483 --> 00:16:41,768 And yeah, was, I mean, everyone else had to sort of adjust to that, it worked for him. 245 00:16:41,768 --> 00:16:48,693 so for majority of people though, we do need some time to just think. 246 00:16:49,966 --> 00:16:54,806 And if you're working, mean, does thinking count as work time? 247 00:16:54,806 --> 00:16:58,537 I mean, the problem is with thinking, you can't necessarily schedule it. 248 00:16:58,999 --> 00:16:59,820 At least I can't. 249 00:16:59,820 --> 00:17:00,946 Maybe some people can. 250 00:17:00,946 --> 00:17:01,933 I can't. 251 00:17:01,933 --> 00:17:04,576 It just happens when I'm... 252 00:17:05,158 --> 00:17:14,155 I wouldn't say I scheduled it, there are ways, after a while of working in the, I always say creative knowledge workspace, you do know when the thinking happens. 253 00:17:14,155 --> 00:17:20,169 It's usually in that four-walled cell in your house that usually has no windows. 254 00:17:23,402 --> 00:17:24,643 The bathroom. 255 00:17:25,343 --> 00:17:28,385 When you're in the shower, a lot of great thoughts come to you, right? 256 00:17:28,385 --> 00:17:30,707 And I think it's because you can't be in front of your keyboard. 257 00:17:30,707 --> 00:17:31,948 You can't actually be typing on it. 258 00:17:31,948 --> 00:17:32,788 You can't be engaging. 259 00:17:32,788 --> 00:17:35,266 So your mind starts to wander. 260 00:17:35,266 --> 00:17:38,638 Never once had a cool thought in a shower. 261 00:17:38,638 --> 00:17:42,950 No, is when I just, shower is when my brain just goes off completely. 262 00:17:42,950 --> 00:17:44,391 No cancel. 263 00:17:44,391 --> 00:17:53,746 However, like on the way to outside basically, to my grocery shopping or whatever, uh which is I suppose similar. 264 00:17:53,746 --> 00:17:55,217 Like I'm not in front of my machine. 265 00:17:55,217 --> 00:17:57,758 I'm not in my normal working environment. 266 00:17:57,758 --> 00:17:59,649 That's when things come to me. 267 00:17:59,649 --> 00:18:01,380 So on the train. 268 00:18:01,400 --> 00:18:05,068 Nowadays I work from home so I don't commute as much, but that 269 00:18:05,068 --> 00:18:09,585 I remember back when I did, that was like super valuable time. 270 00:18:09,585 --> 00:18:17,658 had like my best ideas sitting on a train, just eyes and mind wandering, looking through the window. 271 00:18:18,412 --> 00:18:24,633 Is there something special about the Swiss flora fauna that trigger? 272 00:18:24,876 --> 00:18:28,910 think so, think it's just that our trains are comfortable and peaceful. 273 00:18:30,111 --> 00:18:31,533 Everyone's on their phones! 274 00:18:31,533 --> 00:18:32,834 uh 275 00:18:32,834 --> 00:18:33,565 But that's interesting. 276 00:18:33,565 --> 00:18:35,196 mean, there's nothing to disturb you. 277 00:18:35,196 --> 00:18:41,679 So coming back to the original idea, maybe it is that productivity is subjective. 278 00:18:41,679 --> 00:18:52,445 The one thing that I could potentially be, someone could argue a counterpoint that someone could use against that would be maybe it's the ratio of value added work time versus 279 00:18:52,445 --> 00:18:54,346 non-value added work time. 280 00:18:54,630 --> 00:18:57,351 That is an interesting way to put it. 281 00:18:57,390 --> 00:19:05,675 I do think that there's something in there definitely because no one likes doing what they perceive as non-value added work. 282 00:19:05,815 --> 00:19:12,178 And it does feel good if you've done a chunk of work without the toil or without the waste. 283 00:19:12,178 --> 00:19:21,678 However, again, individual productivity, the subjective productivity, that feeling, that good feeling that I have, does that matter in the end? 284 00:19:21,678 --> 00:19:24,718 Well, you could argue it's akin to efficiency then, right? 285 00:19:24,718 --> 00:19:37,298 If an engineer spends five hours working and in that time four hours of it is dealing with the IDE, getting the theme colors just exactly the way I want them and one hour actually 286 00:19:37,298 --> 00:19:46,038 typing code out and delivering, obviously not including any of time I had to think, but literally just typing on the keyboard, you could argue that I was only 20 % efficient, 287 00:19:46,038 --> 00:19:46,838 right? 288 00:19:46,894 --> 00:19:49,156 Well, I don't know. 289 00:19:49,156 --> 00:19:51,517 What was the code that you wrote? 290 00:19:51,517 --> 00:19:53,209 What did that do? 291 00:19:53,209 --> 00:19:56,491 Because I actually don't care about engineers typing on their keyboard. 292 00:19:56,491 --> 00:19:57,694 Whatever. 293 00:19:57,694 --> 00:20:01,304 And I don't even care about the code that comes out. 294 00:20:01,304 --> 00:20:03,606 I care about the business problem solved. 295 00:20:03,606 --> 00:20:08,229 And the best engineers that I've worked with, don't write a lot of code. 296 00:20:08,389 --> 00:20:15,894 They spend a lot of time maybe thinking about maybe some of them absolutely spend a lot of time tweaking their IDE colors. 297 00:20:16,034 --> 00:20:20,377 Whatever what happens in that black box, none of my concern. 298 00:20:20,377 --> 00:20:24,420 However, in the end, they write a single line of code what it needs to happen. 299 00:20:24,420 --> 00:20:36,308 I I do think that uh simple solutions take often the most time to think about, but then they're also the most long lived ones. 300 00:20:36,489 --> 00:20:40,421 And then if I zoom out, because again, I actually don't care about individuals. 301 00:20:40,421 --> 00:20:43,133 I I do care about them as people, but... 302 00:20:43,133 --> 00:20:44,140 uh 303 00:20:44,140 --> 00:20:46,632 In a sense, in a business sense, I don't care about individuals. 304 00:20:46,632 --> 00:20:49,194 care about the whole team, the whole business. 305 00:20:49,695 --> 00:20:57,280 So I actually, I'm in this fantastic position that I don't have to care. 306 00:20:58,982 --> 00:21:01,945 No, no, actually I don't know. 307 00:21:01,945 --> 00:21:05,748 Um, yeah, but that's the thing. 308 00:21:05,748 --> 00:21:07,149 Individual productivity. 309 00:21:07,149 --> 00:21:08,494 I don't know. 310 00:21:08,494 --> 00:21:12,205 How important is that beyond, okay, does this person feel good? 311 00:21:12,205 --> 00:21:15,776 If they feel good, then maybe they will work better. 312 00:21:16,116 --> 00:21:29,700 then, talking about investors, that gave me this other idea that I wonder if this collective obsession with productivity actually comes from that Silicon Valley uh startup 313 00:21:29,700 --> 00:21:35,146 world where you are not profitable, yet you have to have... 314 00:21:35,146 --> 00:21:40,771 some numbers to show for investors to say, okay, you know what, this is great. 315 00:21:40,771 --> 00:21:49,619 Your money has been put to good use and productivity is one of those metrics that can be gained easily. 316 00:21:49,619 --> 00:21:51,801 can be just completely cooked up. 317 00:21:51,801 --> 00:21:54,583 Although I'm not saying that everyone's lying. 318 00:21:54,583 --> 00:22:01,469 I'm just saying that you can totally stretch the truth or even see what you want to see. 319 00:22:02,718 --> 00:22:09,858 is just Silicon Valley though it makes me think of any sort of culture that believes the output is important that 320 00:22:09,858 --> 00:22:11,609 they're very task oriented in nature. 321 00:22:11,609 --> 00:22:23,024 And this is an idea from there's a book and maybe that will be my pick for the episode, which really talks about some cultures really focus on or are task oriented versus ones 322 00:22:23,024 --> 00:22:28,987 that are maybe high level oriented or or think more about the bigger picture or society as a whole. 323 00:22:28,987 --> 00:22:35,220 And I think there are and Silicon Valley definitely falls into the task oriented nature where the doing is important. 324 00:22:35,220 --> 00:22:39,822 The being in the seat and typing on the keyboard is important compared to the 325 00:22:39,822 --> 00:22:49,963 value delivery is actually important because I really like your perspective where if you, code that you may be writing, even if you say, yes, we eliminated all the toil in the 326 00:22:49,963 --> 00:22:52,626 software development activity, that's gone. 327 00:22:52,626 --> 00:23:00,654 But the code that you write is now doing stuff that no one asks for actually causes tech debt be added to the product. 328 00:23:00,654 --> 00:23:04,414 just upgraded to that newest framework version. 329 00:23:04,414 --> 00:23:06,374 It's so much better. 330 00:23:06,374 --> 00:23:11,054 We just migrated to, I mean, insert your favorite framework here. 331 00:23:11,054 --> 00:23:12,574 I mean, it happened so many times. 332 00:23:12,574 --> 00:23:13,614 Was that worth it? 333 00:23:13,614 --> 00:23:14,074 I don't know. 334 00:23:14,074 --> 00:23:15,394 mean, again. 335 00:23:15,394 --> 00:23:21,728 Well then afterwards you hear, since we upgraded I feel so much more productive now than I did when we were using that old one. 336 00:23:22,136 --> 00:23:34,325 And from my perspective, every single one of those cases, I actually did not observe any significant impact on the level of the whole team or like how fast our customer requests 337 00:23:34,325 --> 00:23:35,086 were handled. 338 00:23:35,086 --> 00:23:38,249 Did you promote anyone for working on that project? 339 00:23:38,249 --> 00:23:39,010 No. 340 00:23:39,010 --> 00:23:45,376 So the project wasn't valuable for an individual, the project wasn't valuable for the business, so we did it, we did it, why did we do it? 341 00:23:45,376 --> 00:23:48,266 And also, but the engineer felt productive. 342 00:23:48,266 --> 00:23:48,906 Yeah, exactly. 343 00:23:48,906 --> 00:23:51,808 That's the problem with productivity as a subjective measure, right? 344 00:23:51,808 --> 00:23:58,362 Sometimes you need to let engineers do whatever makes them happy, as long as it's not harmful. 345 00:23:58,362 --> 00:24:01,853 And I think in those cases, it wasn't harmful. 346 00:24:01,954 --> 00:24:03,084 whatever. 347 00:24:03,442 --> 00:24:13,710 I think there is a point where if you're on an old enough version, sometimes you do want to introduce some new bug feature uh into your technology, new aspect for your customer. 348 00:24:13,710 --> 00:24:17,683 And it's exceedingly difficult with the solution that you have in place. 349 00:24:17,683 --> 00:24:19,514 And so you want to change something. 350 00:24:19,515 --> 00:24:23,692 I'm not saying that upgrading to the whatever framework, changing frameworks is bad. 351 00:24:23,692 --> 00:24:25,365 No, no, obviously it depends. 352 00:24:25,365 --> 00:24:30,693 I was just bringing up that as an example of just because the engineer felt productive. 353 00:24:30,693 --> 00:24:31,054 uh 354 00:24:31,054 --> 00:24:32,897 That's the point, right? 355 00:24:33,139 --> 00:24:38,338 Don't do it just because whatever arbitrary reason there has to be a benefit to the product, right? 356 00:24:38,338 --> 00:24:44,847 Yeah, and maybe this is just a matter of me being biased just because of the place I'm in. 357 00:24:44,847 --> 00:24:52,566 do think unless it is important for the customer, unless the customer will pay money for this, it doesn't matter. 358 00:24:52,566 --> 00:24:53,286 Yes, for sure. 359 00:24:53,286 --> 00:24:53,797 You're biased. 360 00:24:53,797 --> 00:25:07,192 You have a need for there to be a purpose actual valuable reason for doing it Honestly, I do think that there is value in Individuals engineers are not taking time away in their 361 00:25:07,192 --> 00:25:20,416 day to do work-related activities which don't directly add to the bottom line if it does make them feel better or engage more with technology or the company Yeah, no 362 00:25:20,416 --> 00:25:22,318 Just, you know, call it something else. 363 00:25:22,318 --> 00:25:29,954 But maybe it's okay if in software it's not, it wouldn't be the first time when we took a word that means something for the rest of the world. 364 00:25:29,954 --> 00:25:33,054 And we said, no, no, no, it means something completely different for us. 365 00:25:33,054 --> 00:25:35,495 Yeah, no, that definitely happens a lot. 366 00:25:35,495 --> 00:25:47,438 I brought it up because of your analogy to manufacturing where you don't want to run stuff at 100 % capacity all the time because break and you need normal maintenance, right? 367 00:25:47,438 --> 00:25:47,938 Right. 368 00:25:47,938 --> 00:25:48,318 No, no, no. 369 00:25:48,318 --> 00:25:49,278 So I agree. 370 00:25:49,278 --> 00:25:52,018 I would never chase that hundred percent. 371 00:25:52,018 --> 00:25:54,078 That's just outright stupid. 372 00:25:54,778 --> 00:25:59,278 aren't machines, first of all, and even machines need their breaks. 373 00:25:59,278 --> 00:26:01,518 I mean, you could argue, oh, the humans get breaks, right? 374 00:26:01,518 --> 00:26:04,157 They don't work 24 hours a day. 375 00:26:04,198 --> 00:26:13,838 But I'd say if every single one of your working hour is accounted for, then you don't have that freedom or that space to think. 376 00:26:13,838 --> 00:26:15,938 And that to me is an equivalent of a 377 00:26:15,938 --> 00:26:18,465 Preventive maintenance for a human. 378 00:26:18,465 --> 00:26:22,210 Anyway, I don't want to go too far into a- 379 00:26:22,210 --> 00:26:32,020 Well, I mean, I think that's interesting, though, because one of the things we're saying here is that you really need to focus on providing that capacity available in order to 380 00:26:32,020 --> 00:26:42,591 have downtime to think because even not thinking explicitly, your subconscious will wake up and start working on problems for you, extending and sometimes maybe your subconscious 381 00:26:42,591 --> 00:26:45,048 is more intelligent than your conscious. 382 00:26:45,048 --> 00:26:46,089 definitely it is. 383 00:26:46,089 --> 00:26:49,382 Yeah, I know better than to ignore my... 384 00:26:50,704 --> 00:26:51,764 Yes. 385 00:26:51,925 --> 00:27:04,306 Another thing that sort of bothers me about this whole productivity obsession, which is this sort of hidden assumption that the higher number is better and that you should expect 386 00:27:04,306 --> 00:27:10,982 that it gets better over time, which is super dangerous because, I mean, that's not how it works. 387 00:27:11,126 --> 00:27:13,848 Unless you keep changing the rules of the game. 388 00:27:13,888 --> 00:27:21,094 I'll take a stable system over a peaky system or any day. 389 00:27:21,174 --> 00:27:30,486 I think like a simple formula which goes up over time in a sustainable way is better than one with high volatility and low predictability. 390 00:27:30,486 --> 00:27:33,087 Yeah, so that's another problem. 391 00:27:33,808 --> 00:27:42,773 And I'm trying to figure out how to sort of put it in words, because this is an experience which I think is sort of hard to translate unless you've lived through that. 392 00:27:42,773 --> 00:27:53,819 I have been lucky enough to have worked with or on teams who had achieved that sort of stable, sustainable pace where things are just working smoothly, where there are no, 393 00:27:53,819 --> 00:27:56,530 there's no drama, no interpersonal issues. 394 00:27:56,530 --> 00:27:59,448 They just deliver work. 395 00:27:59,448 --> 00:28:02,760 The customers are happy, they get feedback and all of that. 396 00:28:02,801 --> 00:28:17,133 And those environments were super stable, which means there was none of that roller coaster of emotions or anticipation and then something big happened and then you had to 397 00:28:17,133 --> 00:28:21,756 deal with a lot of issues in a short amount of time. 398 00:28:22,097 --> 00:28:28,782 And so if things are stable and steady, even if you're moving super fast, you don't feel it. 399 00:28:29,230 --> 00:28:32,570 It's like high velocity is you can't feel it, right? 400 00:28:32,570 --> 00:28:33,050 Exactly. 401 00:28:33,050 --> 00:28:35,666 you're going on a plane or a train versus standing. 402 00:28:35,666 --> 00:28:38,087 As long as things are stable. 403 00:28:38,307 --> 00:28:50,890 And when I look back and try to sort of keep in mind the subjective idea of productivity, back in those days, I don't think I felt that much productive because things were stable. 404 00:28:50,890 --> 00:28:52,791 So there were no peaks and valleys. 405 00:28:52,791 --> 00:28:54,211 It was always the same. 406 00:28:54,211 --> 00:28:58,612 So if I take that subjective lens, then was I productive? 407 00:28:58,632 --> 00:28:59,653 I don't know. 408 00:28:59,653 --> 00:29:00,463 Did it feel good? 409 00:29:00,463 --> 00:29:02,153 It felt okay. 410 00:29:02,233 --> 00:29:05,154 However, when I look at the output of the whole team, like, 411 00:29:05,154 --> 00:29:08,156 The business outcomes, they were fantastic. 412 00:29:08,156 --> 00:29:19,093 And on the other hand, were times when I've worked with teams who had a lot of surrounding problems, a lot of interpersonal conflicts, like lack of clarity when it comes to division 413 00:29:19,093 --> 00:29:20,103 and all of that. 414 00:29:20,103 --> 00:29:25,926 There were those peaks and valleys and there were moments where you could ask them and say, yes, we are productive right now. 415 00:29:26,027 --> 00:29:31,022 Yet, if you look at the bigger picture, the business outcomes, not the best. 416 00:29:31,022 --> 00:29:33,262 And that's the subjective productivity coming in. 417 00:29:33,262 --> 00:29:36,462 Like we were productive despite everything else. 418 00:29:36,462 --> 00:29:36,822 Yeah. 419 00:29:36,822 --> 00:29:41,062 And the way you talk about it at the team level makes me think of like the four stages of any organization, right? 420 00:29:41,062 --> 00:29:42,080 You've got the org. 421 00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:44,072 Norming, storming, performing? 422 00:29:44,093 --> 00:29:45,204 Is that what you mean? 423 00:29:45,204 --> 00:29:47,572 Forming, norming, storming, performing. 424 00:29:47,572 --> 00:29:52,135 It's forming, storming, norming, performing. 425 00:29:52,135 --> 00:29:53,537 Something like that. 426 00:29:53,619 --> 00:29:58,582 you know that some of the teams will go through those cycles and they jump things out of order 427 00:29:58,582 --> 00:30:01,586 Of course, same like with the five stages of grief, right? 428 00:30:01,586 --> 00:30:11,317 But I think the interesting thing most most interesting about that is that it not only that doesn't necessarily go in order, but every single change that happens in any way 429 00:30:11,317 --> 00:30:13,189 causes the team to repeat the process. 430 00:30:13,189 --> 00:30:15,382 It's not like once a team is. 431 00:30:15,382 --> 00:30:21,594 so when we've upgraded to that latest framework, you say we're going to go through all the stages. 432 00:30:21,594 --> 00:30:23,145 Yeah, of course, right? 433 00:30:23,145 --> 00:30:33,321 Things are different in some way and the team needs to get into that problem space, understanding the new environment that they're working in now and push forward. 434 00:30:33,321 --> 00:30:42,206 And I think there's an interesting thing at the team level when I say performing that closely mimics what I think people want to say is productivity. 435 00:30:43,107 --> 00:30:44,908 Well, I don't know, they sound similar. 436 00:30:44,908 --> 00:30:46,834 They both start with P. 437 00:30:47,406 --> 00:30:52,068 Well, I have a lot of other words that start with P and have nothing to do with productivity. 438 00:30:52,068 --> 00:30:54,298 I mean, something that I keep... 439 00:30:54,298 --> 00:30:55,829 You're going with that. 440 00:30:55,829 --> 00:30:57,629 I don't know where I'm going with that. 441 00:30:58,109 --> 00:31:00,330 This is the thing that I also keep coming back. 442 00:31:00,330 --> 00:31:05,472 On one hand, I hear a lot of people talking about productivity, productivity, engineer productivity, so important. 443 00:31:05,472 --> 00:31:08,793 But then I also hear a lot of engineers who's like, why should I care? 444 00:31:08,793 --> 00:31:09,983 This is the management stuff. 445 00:31:09,983 --> 00:31:10,863 This is just fluff. 446 00:31:10,863 --> 00:31:12,606 Why are we even talking about this? 447 00:31:12,994 --> 00:31:19,239 Part of me thinks like, yeah, well, you should, this is all nonsensical, subjective, real metric. 448 00:31:19,239 --> 00:31:24,843 But there is part of that that I feel like everyone should care about, which is how do know you're successful? 449 00:31:24,843 --> 00:31:30,288 And you should care about that because, I mean, you as an individual may think, okay, I'm just going to write good code. 450 00:31:30,288 --> 00:31:31,489 Everything's going to be fine. 451 00:31:31,489 --> 00:31:32,589 Well, no. 452 00:31:32,730 --> 00:31:36,973 How does your manager know that you should keep your job if the layoffs are coming? 453 00:31:36,973 --> 00:31:38,944 How, you know... 454 00:31:38,969 --> 00:31:40,032 How do you get? 455 00:31:41,768 --> 00:31:43,812 How do you ever get promoted? 456 00:31:43,812 --> 00:31:45,154 You may say, I don't care about that. 457 00:31:45,154 --> 00:31:46,431 But yes, you do. 458 00:31:46,431 --> 00:31:47,091 You do. 459 00:31:47,091 --> 00:31:49,720 Your salary depends on that and all that. 460 00:31:50,306 --> 00:32:01,491 think it's a good thing to quickly dive into because I have heard that pretty frequently, obviously way more before the last five years when things were way more hectic, uh 461 00:32:01,491 --> 00:32:05,633 volatile and where companies weren't still laying people off. 462 00:32:05,633 --> 00:32:08,280 I think there is a question of what does matter. 463 00:32:08,280 --> 00:32:16,494 Well, you need to at least be able to convey what is the value that you're providing to the company, simply so that you keep your job. 464 00:32:16,494 --> 00:32:19,015 You may assume, okay, my manager knows. 465 00:32:19,136 --> 00:32:20,236 Sometimes they do. 466 00:32:20,236 --> 00:32:23,852 Sometimes, I mean, they may create their own story. 467 00:32:23,852 --> 00:32:24,303 Do they? 468 00:32:24,303 --> 00:32:29,774 Have you had a manager who's like, know everything you're doing and that you should be promoted based off of your good work? 469 00:32:29,774 --> 00:32:34,974 Of course, but was that, that, so they sometimes they did that. 470 00:32:34,974 --> 00:32:40,714 However, their story was not necessarily the same as the reality. 471 00:32:40,714 --> 00:32:40,914 Yeah. 472 00:32:40,914 --> 00:32:42,094 Like most of us do. 473 00:32:42,094 --> 00:32:44,394 I do think it makes sense to care. 474 00:32:44,394 --> 00:32:49,634 I mean, if it's your first year of the, the job after university, sure, whatever you can ignore that. 475 00:32:49,634 --> 00:32:57,374 But after that, you actually need to start caring at least how your company, how your manager sees this productivity. 476 00:32:57,518 --> 00:33:07,042 Because they will have some definition of that and some way of measuring or not measuring it and you need to see how you are able to fit into that. 477 00:33:07,042 --> 00:33:16,290 Yeah, so my counter argument always was if you are standing still and everything else is moving ahead, then you are by interrelation falling behind. 478 00:33:16,290 --> 00:33:25,292 Yeah, which is, you know, especially right now, these days, it's important because more and more companies are starting to employ the stack ranking when deciding. 479 00:33:25,292 --> 00:33:25,893 God. 480 00:33:25,893 --> 00:33:26,713 Yeah, yeah, yeah. 481 00:33:26,713 --> 00:33:27,523 And it's back. 482 00:33:27,523 --> 00:33:28,333 It's back. 483 00:33:28,333 --> 00:33:31,544 mean, arguably some companies never dropped this practice. 484 00:33:31,544 --> 00:33:34,335 I mean, I don't know if everyone knows what I'm talking about. 485 00:33:34,335 --> 00:33:44,087 It's when you are doing the dreaded performance management, you usually rate your employees or your team on a certain scale. 486 00:33:44,087 --> 00:33:46,242 And some companies believe that. 487 00:33:46,242 --> 00:33:49,044 You cannot give everyone a 5 out of 5. 488 00:33:49,044 --> 00:33:50,286 You have to sort of... 489 00:33:50,286 --> 00:33:55,490 some of them have to be worse, some of them have to be better, and it has to fit a bell curve. 490 00:33:55,490 --> 00:34:00,362 Now this is obviously nonsensical, that's not how this works, especially if you have a high bar and high ring that 491 00:34:00,362 --> 00:34:04,753 If anyone has ever employed Outsourcers, you definitely know you can give them all one star. 492 00:34:06,658 --> 00:34:07,538 Right. 493 00:34:07,538 --> 00:34:08,778 And this is the funny part. 494 00:34:08,778 --> 00:34:15,238 I don't think any company has a problem with you giving everyone one star because they, hey, we can let them all go. 495 00:34:15,778 --> 00:34:25,198 But, but that's the thing, like these days more and more companies force managers, even those managers who are wise and know that this is nonsensical, they're still forced to use 496 00:34:25,198 --> 00:34:27,338 that sort of approach. 497 00:34:27,397 --> 00:34:30,439 I heard a good reason for that in some companies though. 498 00:34:30,439 --> 00:34:40,114 They acknowledged that not just all of their managers in the entire company, but even their leadership team was so bad at evaluating when to hire and fire people that 499 00:34:40,114 --> 00:34:43,645 statistically there must be people who are at the bottom of the stack. 500 00:34:45,610 --> 00:34:48,411 stack rank them and then let those go because they must be bad. 501 00:34:48,411 --> 00:34:57,376 However, I challenge this point not because there aren't bad people in the company who should be let go, but if you're not able to have managers who are effective at identifying 502 00:34:57,376 --> 00:35:02,324 and firing them at the right time, how are they going to be correct at stack ranking them? 503 00:35:02,324 --> 00:35:08,560 I mean, I think like there's another thing, like this whole stack ranking idea stops at a certain level. 504 00:35:08,981 --> 00:35:17,129 I mean, don't know, SVP or whatever, depending on how many layers the company has, but it's like a few levels down from the CEO. 505 00:35:17,129 --> 00:35:22,130 that's where you, I mean, above that, you don't ever let those people go. 506 00:35:22,130 --> 00:35:35,667 There was an interesting research done about publicizing CEO salaries where they thought that this would cause public uproar with the increase in salary ratios between the CEO and 507 00:35:35,667 --> 00:35:38,238 the median salary at every company. 508 00:35:38,319 --> 00:35:44,482 And you would think that maybe publicizing this information, high visibility is good. 509 00:35:44,482 --> 00:35:53,308 But what actually happened, it made CEOs at other companies who had a lower ratio to the median value be jealous and demand even a higher salary. 510 00:35:53,649 --> 00:35:54,889 What's like? 511 00:35:55,682 --> 00:35:58,229 Why have less if you can have more? 512 00:35:58,274 --> 00:35:59,886 I didn't know it was an option. 513 00:36:00,354 --> 00:36:01,482 Hahaha 514 00:36:03,839 --> 00:36:05,728 I didn't know I could have that. 515 00:36:05,728 --> 00:36:08,126 We'll have to have a discussion later about that. 516 00:36:08,126 --> 00:36:14,294 Well, uh so Warren, do you know what makes you productive? 517 00:36:14,874 --> 00:36:27,558 Um, I think I could say something like, know when during the day I'm being productive and I know that after a certain amount of time or into the evening when I stopped being 518 00:36:27,558 --> 00:36:32,109 productive and it's not like directly like I'm directly aware of it. 519 00:36:32,109 --> 00:36:33,029 It's that's a weird part. 520 00:36:33,029 --> 00:36:43,366 Like I know that I get worse at solving technical problems uh later as the day goes on, but I don't actually see that in the moment while the day is going on. 521 00:36:43,366 --> 00:36:45,798 yeah, it's like 11 p.m. 522 00:36:45,798 --> 00:36:47,430 It's like, what are you doing? 523 00:36:47,430 --> 00:36:49,192 I'm just fixing this one critical bug. 524 00:36:49,192 --> 00:36:49,952 Are you sure? 525 00:36:49,952 --> 00:36:52,465 Are you of your right mind? 526 00:36:52,465 --> 00:36:54,807 yeah, yeah, yeah, my mind is so sharp and clear. 527 00:36:54,807 --> 00:36:58,960 And next morning, so many bugs. 528 00:36:58,961 --> 00:37:00,542 I recall that situation. 529 00:37:00,542 --> 00:37:02,664 I don't think that ever happened to me. 530 00:37:04,146 --> 00:37:15,126 Here's my fear with productivity that if everyone is standing up and saying, oh LLMs, whatever, make us more productive, are they saying that the engineers are feeling more 531 00:37:15,126 --> 00:37:15,597 productive? 532 00:37:15,597 --> 00:37:16,862 Because that would be a good thing. 533 00:37:16,862 --> 00:37:18,663 I think they are feeling more productive. 534 00:37:18,663 --> 00:37:29,726 I think as we said that this must be a subjective way because there's no way for us to actually measure productivity unless we talk about revenue or know customer satisfaction 535 00:37:29,726 --> 00:37:33,801 however you want to call that which I don't think anyone's actually measuring. 536 00:37:33,801 --> 00:37:38,845 In fact we know from the Dora report that those values do not increase. 537 00:37:39,275 --> 00:37:42,277 Okay, so just a recap from last episode. 538 00:37:42,277 --> 00:37:49,864 ah Everyone says they're more productive and LLMs help a lot in every aspect of the job, but if you look at the outputs, they're worse. 539 00:37:49,864 --> 00:37:52,866 The stability of the product, the quality goes down. 540 00:37:52,866 --> 00:38:00,270 Some of it gets worse, some of it gets slightly minutely better, but it is such a small change that I would just describe. 541 00:38:00,270 --> 00:38:11,456 certain areas where it's like this process would be better if you suck an LLM in the loop and I think obviously there's even a broken clock is right twice a day, right? 542 00:38:11,456 --> 00:38:11,796 Yeah. 543 00:38:11,796 --> 00:38:14,638 So, mean, I do think that this is the thing. 544 00:38:14,638 --> 00:38:18,348 Individual productivity is subjective. 545 00:38:18,348 --> 00:38:22,502 I mean, if it is, I do think it is important to keep your engineers happy. 546 00:38:22,502 --> 00:38:35,069 I may be really old school at this point, but I do believe it is better to keep people happy because it's a creative industry and happier people generally tend to do better 547 00:38:35,069 --> 00:38:35,999 work. 548 00:38:35,999 --> 00:38:38,651 Maybe this is how I am fooling myself. 549 00:38:38,651 --> 00:38:41,152 You know, that's my sort of subjective. 550 00:38:41,198 --> 00:38:45,050 uh way of looking at it, but it does seem to correlate that generally. 551 00:38:45,050 --> 00:38:48,472 I'm not saying like they should be happy, they should feel like we're all family. 552 00:38:48,472 --> 00:38:49,203 No, no, no. 553 00:38:49,203 --> 00:38:50,033 Just content. 554 00:38:50,033 --> 00:38:50,983 Maybe that's a better word. 555 00:38:50,983 --> 00:38:55,628 Content engineers just produce much better outcomes. 556 00:38:55,628 --> 00:39:04,576 the word performing like say all of our engineers are performing better because I like looking at it as a sports team and and while you can be happy that you're 557 00:39:04,576 --> 00:39:10,069 say for football, you're on the pitch and you're kicking the ball or you take passes or you're shooting and getting goals. 558 00:39:10,069 --> 00:39:14,702 I mean, there's a lot of different aspects there and people do celebrate certain aspects of the game. 559 00:39:14,702 --> 00:39:23,021 You know, maybe this is celebration when you deliver your product, a new version or to a new set of users or, you know, get a huge company to come on board. 560 00:39:23,021 --> 00:39:29,930 There's a lot of different things there, but generally while you are, you know, heads down looking at the ball, you may not actually feel happiness. 561 00:39:29,930 --> 00:39:31,341 You stress there. 562 00:39:31,341 --> 00:39:34,200 So I think the word performing would be way 563 00:39:34,200 --> 00:39:39,861 way more interesting of a qualification to be using in those circumstances. 564 00:39:39,861 --> 00:39:44,669 We should say that AI increases our performance, not our productivity. 565 00:39:44,669 --> 00:39:46,625 sort of sounds off. 566 00:39:47,416 --> 00:39:49,174 Pick a different metric, I guess, with my point. 567 00:39:49,174 --> 00:39:50,619 It's not a metric, that's the thing. 568 00:39:50,619 --> 00:39:52,643 Productivity is not a metric. 569 00:39:53,006 --> 00:39:55,283 If it is a metric, I want to see the metric! 570 00:39:55,283 --> 00:39:56,366 Please show me the metric! 571 00:39:56,366 --> 00:40:03,346 Okay, so if we don't talk about how productivity is the wrong word, maybe we should talk about how do we measure teams effectiveness performance. 572 00:40:04,806 --> 00:40:09,890 So, you know, and a 10,000 engineer size company, individual engineer should be. 573 00:40:09,890 --> 00:40:13,823 So you don't have to same thing, like do you need to measure individual engineers? 574 00:40:13,964 --> 00:40:21,591 Well, I want to say no, but at the same token at this at some point you need to hire people, which means you need a metric for establishing how to hire them. 575 00:40:21,591 --> 00:40:25,098 When you're hiring people you have no idea about their productivity. 576 00:40:25,098 --> 00:40:26,968 Productivity is what happens after you hire them. 577 00:40:26,968 --> 00:40:28,188 But what if you could know? 578 00:40:28,188 --> 00:40:29,784 Would you hire them based off of that? 579 00:40:29,784 --> 00:40:31,235 But what if you could know? 580 00:40:31,235 --> 00:40:32,436 How could you? 581 00:40:34,037 --> 00:40:36,559 show me your record of your past productivities. 582 00:40:36,559 --> 00:40:38,591 But productivity depends on so many things. 583 00:40:38,591 --> 00:40:38,911 Sure. 584 00:40:38,911 --> 00:40:39,922 Right. 585 00:40:39,922 --> 00:40:42,123 What was your environment? 586 00:40:42,123 --> 00:40:43,625 Who were you working with? 587 00:40:43,625 --> 00:40:45,426 How was the vision communicated? 588 00:40:45,426 --> 00:40:46,347 What were your goals? 589 00:40:46,347 --> 00:40:48,007 Like all of those things. 590 00:40:48,869 --> 00:40:50,922 were the colors in your IDE? 591 00:40:50,922 --> 00:40:52,673 So here's a, here's a concern. 592 00:40:52,673 --> 00:41:01,499 If the ability for individual engineers to be productive or the organization to meet revenue goals is something outside of their hands, how can we ever have a performance 593 00:41:01,499 --> 00:41:05,864 conversation where we actually let people go for not meeting expectations? 594 00:41:05,864 --> 00:41:08,676 the thing, there are things that I absolutely pay attention to. 595 00:41:08,676 --> 00:41:13,259 Measure maybe is too strong of a word because some of them are not necessarily numeric. 596 00:41:13,520 --> 00:41:16,371 One is absolutely customer satisfaction. 597 00:41:16,371 --> 00:41:17,722 That's the high level. 598 00:41:17,722 --> 00:41:20,564 Our customers generally happy with what was delivered. 599 00:41:20,564 --> 00:41:25,027 We can use proxy for customers because sometimes customers cannot be bothered. 600 00:41:25,448 --> 00:41:26,528 Are there complaints? 601 00:41:26,528 --> 00:41:27,409 Are there no complaints? 602 00:41:27,409 --> 00:41:29,130 Are we actually reaching our business goals? 603 00:41:29,130 --> 00:41:30,091 That's one thing. 604 00:41:30,091 --> 00:41:34,974 The second thing, which uh may be helpful to some managers out there, 605 00:41:35,028 --> 00:41:37,825 I actually pay attention to resentment. 606 00:41:38,570 --> 00:41:39,311 Of whom? 607 00:41:39,311 --> 00:41:40,512 Towards whom? 608 00:41:42,316 --> 00:41:43,343 Towards. 609 00:41:43,343 --> 00:41:46,604 towards other people on your engineering team or their managers. 610 00:41:46,604 --> 00:41:55,086 eh This basically boils down to is everyone pulling their weight or does everyone feel like every, that the work distribution is fair? 611 00:41:55,467 --> 00:42:01,758 Because I find those are the indicators that something's off and those are maybe the indicators that you should let someone go. 612 00:42:01,758 --> 00:42:07,380 And not necessarily because they're a bad engineer, but because they don't fit in this whole environment. 613 00:42:07,566 --> 00:42:13,047 uh And rather than focusing on productivity and how many pull requests did you submit? 614 00:42:13,047 --> 00:42:20,049 uh I'd say, okay, does everyone think that you're good to work with, that you're doing your part? 615 00:42:20,049 --> 00:42:27,922 Or maybe a bunch of people think, okay, know, that person, like I'm not happy because we do all the work and they don't. 616 00:42:27,922 --> 00:42:30,652 I've had situations like that before, actually many times. 617 00:42:30,652 --> 00:42:37,208 I'd say that maybe is a better way to think about it rather than, was that engineer that we think? 618 00:42:37,208 --> 00:42:39,181 We should let go, productive. 619 00:42:39,303 --> 00:42:45,006 If everyone else on a team think they're not doing enough or they're not doing good enough job, that should tell you something. 620 00:42:45,006 --> 00:42:47,906 You still need some aspect that's tied to the business, though. 621 00:42:47,906 --> 00:42:50,920 It can't just be individuals, how they feel towards... 622 00:42:50,920 --> 00:42:58,956 don't think you can really truly see impact of an individual in a business because it's always a matter of the whole environment of the whole team. 623 00:42:58,956 --> 00:43:04,262 Why you need some lever in place to ensure that the team is doing the right thing. 624 00:43:04,262 --> 00:43:04,978 It doesn't matter. 625 00:43:04,978 --> 00:43:09,102 Yeah, customer satisfaction and the fact that things are being delivered. 626 00:43:09,102 --> 00:43:11,545 None of your stakeholders are complaining. 627 00:43:11,545 --> 00:43:16,868 And if they do, then you need to investigate why or what are they really complaining about. 628 00:43:16,868 --> 00:43:17,941 the first lover. 629 00:43:17,941 --> 00:43:21,698 If your customers, your users, whoever they are, not necessarily 630 00:43:21,698 --> 00:43:23,882 whoever's paying whoever's paying this out 631 00:43:23,882 --> 00:43:24,983 They don't have be external, right? 632 00:43:24,983 --> 00:43:26,902 Like, could be other engineering. 633 00:43:28,285 --> 00:43:35,088 So once that's out of the way, like once you are comfortable with that, then you go deeper and try to understand. 634 00:43:35,088 --> 00:43:47,495 And I mean, that's the point where you're stopping uh because there's an No, but I meant if there's an issue with how the customers feel, how the users feel about the technology 635 00:43:47,495 --> 00:43:52,482 that's being output or the teams that they're interacting with, what's the way to dive into that? 636 00:43:52,482 --> 00:43:55,295 Well, I mean, you obviously have like actual feedback. 637 00:43:55,295 --> 00:44:01,372 You can have conversa- you know, I know some engineers don't know about it, but you can absolutely have conversations with people. 638 00:44:01,372 --> 00:44:07,518 You can like meet and say words to each other until you feel like you understand each other. 639 00:44:07,518 --> 00:44:13,554 Sometimes it takes a while to actually get through, like make sure that you're talking about the same thing, but you can absolutely do that. 640 00:44:13,554 --> 00:44:15,606 then great things happen. 641 00:44:15,608 --> 00:44:17,803 I think we're getting a lot of angry emails. 642 00:44:18,868 --> 00:44:20,152 I'm so sorry. 643 00:44:22,712 --> 00:44:24,142 Like talk to another human. 644 00:44:24,142 --> 00:44:25,890 I can't believe you just suggested that. 645 00:44:25,890 --> 00:44:28,120 Well, can just talk to another lemon instead. 646 00:44:28,120 --> 00:44:28,896 Good luck with that. 647 00:44:28,896 --> 00:44:34,009 Yeah, so basically investigate why that's happening and then drill down and figure out where the problem is. 648 00:44:34,009 --> 00:44:42,294 eh My theory is that there's always a single responsible individual for any problem that can be resolved. 649 00:44:42,354 --> 00:44:46,210 there's multiple individuals sort of enabling each other. 650 00:44:46,210 --> 00:44:46,762 That's true. 651 00:44:46,762 --> 00:44:50,544 One last thing that I know I know you're just dying to share. 652 00:44:51,194 --> 00:45:01,168 So it's more like a thought, you know, we talk about productivity, engineering productivity, that maybe is something easy to reason about when we're implementing 653 00:45:01,168 --> 00:45:01,899 features. 654 00:45:01,899 --> 00:45:12,043 However, what about ops, the operations, know, dev ops, the operation part of that, you just have to run things, where you have to simply keep the lights on or make sure that... 655 00:45:12,463 --> 00:45:14,809 Yeah, that's the good question, isn't it? 656 00:45:14,809 --> 00:45:19,980 And maybe that's the reason why I have a problem truly understanding 657 00:45:19,980 --> 00:45:22,028 this concept or finding its value. 658 00:45:22,028 --> 00:45:30,446 know some people are going to respond to that as, well, we have a lot of tickets to create infrastructure for other teams, so we got through those tickets, or we wrote a lot of open 659 00:45:30,446 --> 00:45:32,148 tofu code recently. 660 00:45:32,148 --> 00:45:34,897 We just were able to get through all of those things and get that infrastructure. 661 00:45:34,897 --> 00:45:36,616 doing your job, that's productive. 662 00:45:36,616 --> 00:45:38,732 I mean, yeah, okay, great. 663 00:45:38,732 --> 00:45:45,361 Well, that I think is subjective, like what your job is even because there's an aspect of like what your scope is and what you can deliver in that area. 664 00:45:45,361 --> 00:45:47,644 And there is that aspect, as you mentioned, of deleting stuff. 665 00:45:47,644 --> 00:45:52,401 So can you imagine, oh we deleted extra replicas we didn't need or cleaned up some F3 buckets. 666 00:45:52,401 --> 00:45:54,304 Maybe that was being productive. 667 00:45:54,304 --> 00:45:56,258 We got through that work very quickly. 668 00:45:56,258 --> 00:46:05,437 You know, when I think what I think the best or the most productive or the really the best operations are, that's when really nothing happens. 669 00:46:05,437 --> 00:46:08,469 It's really when everything's so smooth that there's nothing. 670 00:46:09,190 --> 00:46:12,593 You have no job basically, that's the best. 671 00:46:12,594 --> 00:46:15,676 Because you've automated everything and it just works, right? 672 00:46:15,676 --> 00:46:17,197 But is that productive? 673 00:46:17,550 --> 00:46:20,518 See, I think, but with automation, didn't you remove something? 674 00:46:20,518 --> 00:46:21,590 The manual way? 675 00:46:21,590 --> 00:46:26,700 So I feel like your core definition of productivity is deleting stuff. 676 00:46:26,700 --> 00:46:30,205 That would check out, yeah, that would check out in a lot of ways. 677 00:46:30,205 --> 00:46:34,397 you feel most productive when you're removing waste from the organization? 678 00:46:34,397 --> 00:46:36,069 you know hit the nail on the head. 679 00:46:36,069 --> 00:46:40,054 I think I am something of an anti-horror. 680 00:46:40,054 --> 00:46:43,535 I do feel the best when I can remove things. 681 00:46:43,535 --> 00:46:46,548 Have you considered a career in cleaning staff? 682 00:46:46,548 --> 00:46:48,233 janitorial work? 683 00:46:48,450 --> 00:46:50,415 I feel like that's what my job is. 684 00:46:54,721 --> 00:46:58,213 I think that may be a good point to switch over to PICS. 685 00:46:58,941 --> 00:47:00,706 Again, pick axes from the mine. 686 00:47:00,706 --> 00:47:02,940 So what did you bring for us today? 687 00:47:04,032 --> 00:47:04,493 Right. 688 00:47:04,493 --> 00:47:08,902 So, um I brought, I don't know if anyone ever brought this here. 689 00:47:08,902 --> 00:47:13,283 I feel like it should have been because it's one nifty little thing. 690 00:47:13,283 --> 00:47:15,136 um I'm going to show. 691 00:47:15,244 --> 00:47:18,848 So she's holding up ah what looks like a credit card sized 692 00:47:18,848 --> 00:47:23,599 It is absolutely a credit side piece of, I think it's some sort of carbon fiber. 693 00:47:23,599 --> 00:47:26,184 So what you do is that you can switch it off. 694 00:47:27,478 --> 00:47:28,206 Okay, so you can. 695 00:47:28,206 --> 00:47:31,604 a little bit a transformer kind of play and what it is? 696 00:47:31,604 --> 00:47:33,310 It is a tripod 697 00:47:33,742 --> 00:47:36,310 So it was a credit card that transforms into a tripod. 698 00:47:36,310 --> 00:47:38,802 I carry it is for a mobile phone. 699 00:47:38,802 --> 00:47:44,416 Yeah, I carry it in my wallet because I travel a lot and sometimes, you know, you have to have a video call and all of that. 700 00:47:44,416 --> 00:47:47,528 It's you know, you get tired just holding your phone like that. 701 00:47:47,528 --> 00:47:54,163 It's a nice little tripod that's, you know, you can put it whichever way and it's very compact and small. 702 00:47:54,163 --> 00:47:59,706 And I don't know if you have said if I said this, I am something of an anti hoarder. 703 00:48:00,067 --> 00:48:03,499 No, I don't like the word because it got corrupted. 704 00:48:03,499 --> 00:48:04,400 No, no, no. 705 00:48:04,400 --> 00:48:04,760 I 706 00:48:04,760 --> 00:48:06,832 don't like having stuff. 707 00:48:07,333 --> 00:48:13,100 So I generally don't buy what I don't need, but this one was actually one that I'm really happy with. 708 00:48:13,100 --> 00:48:15,084 uh It's a nice little gizmo. 709 00:48:15,084 --> 00:48:18,100 Is there like a specific brand or company that produced? 710 00:48:18,100 --> 00:48:22,850 the thing is I forgot but let me just say it says something a pocket tripod uh 711 00:48:22,850 --> 00:48:25,883 We'll find the link and put it in the description of the episodes. 712 00:48:25,883 --> 00:48:29,026 Seems like a great gift. 713 00:48:29,026 --> 00:48:33,710 Okay, for this week, I had a different pick, but you convinced me to switch during the episode. 714 00:48:33,710 --> 00:48:38,925 And I think my pick is going to be a book called The Culture Map by Erin Meyer. 715 00:48:38,925 --> 00:48:49,678 She talks about about eight different spectrums that different cultures around the world are on from how they speak to each other, whether high context or low context. 716 00:48:49,678 --> 00:48:59,208 concerning the amount of information in the communication that individuals use to whether or not it's a task oriented culture or very high level or whether or not a culture or an 717 00:48:59,208 --> 00:49:04,913 individual is thinks organically or has organic conversations versus very structured ones. 718 00:49:04,914 --> 00:49:12,782 You know, do you go to a meeting as it always like very direct to the point with a strict agenda or do you talk about a lot of different topics until you find the one that's 719 00:49:12,782 --> 00:49:13,534 relevant? 720 00:49:13,534 --> 00:49:15,198 It's a really good book. 721 00:49:15,281 --> 00:49:16,344 I second that. 722 00:49:16,344 --> 00:49:18,444 Why do you like it? 723 00:49:18,444 --> 00:49:28,352 Well, I think it was definitely eye opening that there is a way that has been sort of measured of how different cultures work so that if you engage in a remote setting or 724 00:49:28,352 --> 00:49:34,087 you're in a larger organization that has people in different settings, they may have different expectations on how they communicate. 725 00:49:34,087 --> 00:49:42,950 And while there's like always been this joke about the translation between when you talk to someone in the UK and they say something versus the translation to like actual 726 00:49:42,950 --> 00:49:44,423 when you say, how are you doing? 727 00:49:44,423 --> 00:49:45,174 You say good. 728 00:49:45,174 --> 00:49:47,699 American would say, oh no, what's happening with you? 729 00:49:47,699 --> 00:49:50,463 And like a Brit would say, wow, this is awesome. 730 00:49:50,505 --> 00:49:51,344 Right? 731 00:49:52,998 --> 00:49:58,191 And with that, uh thanks, Dorota for coming back on. 732 00:49:58,191 --> 00:50:00,627 I hope this episode has been great for you. 733 00:50:00,627 --> 00:50:03,893 I hope it wasn't too boring, you know, productivity. 734 00:50:03,893 --> 00:50:04,746 cares? 735 00:50:04,746 --> 00:50:11,251 did have some concerns starting off, but I think there was a lot more here to discuss than I was prepared for. 736 00:50:11,826 --> 00:50:12,523 I'm sorry? 737 00:50:12,523 --> 00:50:13,314 I don't know. 738 00:50:13,314 --> 00:50:15,791 Well, maybe there was a lot of content here. 739 00:50:15,791 --> 00:50:19,338 So you may have said that in the length of time we recorded, we were very productive. 740 00:50:21,066 --> 00:50:28,666 And with that, I'll say thank you for coming on the show and thanks for all the listeners for tuning in for this episode and we'll be back again.