Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter • Hacker News Board

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#21

Post by partisan » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:00 PM UTC

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

Whenever a junior team member comes to me for help, the first question I ask is, "what are we trying to accomplish". Unfortunately, we have a tendency to lose sight of purpose when going through process. Discussions usually start with what they have tried and what they are doing, but when the question of purpose is asked, it's easier to see the steps to get the result.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#22

Post by _gi12 » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:05 PM UTC

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the graph. We rarely achieved the perfect shape. On top of this we also had one week sprints, which made it difficult to plan for the future or work on spikes, so we ended up doing very little high-level, architectural planning.

I remember one week my team cranked through their allotted stories so fast that we ran out of work two or three days into the sprint. We decided to take on a couple extra easy stories that we knew we could finish before the end of the week. Rather than being praised for doing extra work, we were criticized for "introducing volatility into the sprint". In other words, we messed up the shape of the burn down chart.

I'm currently working at a place that has virtually no process, which has it's own challenges, but I'm happy that I'm not arguing about burn down charts anymore :)

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#23

Post by [deleted] » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

Retric wrote: post #17

hinkley wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

tl;dr: the map is not the territory This problem is pretty much every company I've ever worked for if/when they got over six engineers. I spend more time and a hell of a lot more energy than I should trying to keep managers or easily enthused engineers from hugging the project to death. I ended up becoming a process expert out of a sense of self preservation. I use process a lot, but it's always in support of the 'wh…

Your trying to solve the wrong problem, it's generally a people problem not a process problem.

[deleted]

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#24

Post by wjamesg » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

_gi12 wrote: post #22

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

Burn down chart?

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#25

Post by TheGRS » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

dpark wrote: post #4

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

> It’s not that rare to hear a junior leader defend a bad outcome with something like, “Well, we followed the process.” - Bezos > We sought volunteers and then followed our involuntary denial of boarding process - Munoz Ouch

Yea, I'm not going to share which airline or which branch (other than to say it wasn't United or Chicago), but I have a relative who works at a pretty high position in one of them and they were, to my great surprise, in defense of United and the police in that episode earlier this week. Statements like "airlines bump people all the time", "they can't offer anymore than what they did, its a set rule", and "if they just complied none of this would have happened, its a crime to disagree with flight crew" kept coming up. This is the mentality that permeates the airline industry and is what lead to that episode. They don't put satisfying the customer above following the rules. Its also why no one who has flown much was particularly surprised it happened in the first place.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#26

Post by fbonetti » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:07 PM UTC

hinkley wrote: post #13

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

tl;dr: the map is not the territory This problem is pretty much every company I've ever worked for if/when they got over six engineers. I spend more time and a hell of a lot more energy than I should trying to keep managers or easily enthused engineers from hugging the project to death. I ended up becoming a process expert out of a sense of self preservation. I use process a lot, but it's always in support of the 'wh…

> The worst of these are also the sort of people who, if your speedometer was broken, would insist that the car is not moving. Even after you told them to look out the window.

That's an amazing quote. I'm totally stealing this.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#27

Post by zer0tonin » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:08 PM UTC

wjamesg wrote: post #24

_gi12 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

Burn down chart?

Nice excel graph with the number of "points" burned each sprints.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#28

Post by fjdlwlv » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:09 PM UTC

wjamesg wrote: post #24

_gi12 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

Burn down chart?

It's a project management strategy named for how it makes you want to burn down the office.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#29

Post by fjdlwlv » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

_gi12 wrote: post #22

mstank wrote: post #2

"A common example is process as proxy. Good process serves you so you can serve customers. But if you’re not watchful, the process can become the thing. This can happen very easily in large organizations. The process becomes the proxy for the result you want. You stop looking at outcomes and just make sure you’re doing the process right. Gulp." Seems like this is exactly the kind of issue companies like United Airlin…

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

The trick is to retrospectively rescale the work estimates.

Re: Jeff Bezos’ Annual Letter

#30

Post by fbonetti » Thu, Apr 13, 2017, 4:10 PM UTC

wjamesg wrote: post #24

_gi12 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a surprisingly common trap to fall into. I worked at a startup in which the CTO criticized my dev team for not having a perfectly linear burn down chart. Every week in our retro we had the same discussion about how to improve the shape of our burn down chart; we tried putting higher valued stories at the front of the queue, involving QA earlier in the sprint, and cranking out 1 pointers mid week to tweak the…

Burn down chart?

It's a common metric used in the Scrum methodology. You start off the "sprint" with a set number of "story points" (say, 30 points), and end the sprint with zero points. When you graph the team's progress over the course of the sprint, it should ideally form a linear, downward slope.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burn_down_chart