If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
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Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#2What an amazing article on "de-FAANGing" the perverse org/incentive structure of most startup/tech places. Would love to see more of this type of leadership in the real world.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#3That was a breath of fresh air. Thank you James.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#4There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#5There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
You can measure productivity by measuring the success, but that's kinda useless for day to day software engineering management.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#6There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
Those are two different concepts hiding in similar words. You can't [numerically or precisely] measure productivity, but some engineers are vastly more productive [such that you can easily tell the difference without a formal measurement].
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#7There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
We all "know" that, but there are also some engineers that only give a very strong illusion of being more productive.
Maybe engineer #1 is constantly pushing up code. In the time it takes them to merge 15 PRs, engineer #2 opens only 1 - but maybe they thought really deeply about the problem, and their approach actually saves the team hundreds or thousands of hours of future development work vs how engineer #1 would have solved the problem.
Part of what makes this so hard to measure is the long tail effects of development decisions. (Incidentally, that's also a source of burnout for me - the constant mental overhead of worrying about the long term implications of what I'm doing, and particularly how they effect other people. It's very challenging.)
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#8There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
You can measure productivity by measuring the success, but that's kinda useless for day to day software engineering management.
How do you define success? If a product bombs, is that because of the engineering or the product design?
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#9There’s a weird disconnect because on the one hand I agree you can’t measure productivity and on the other hand we all know that some engineers are vastly more productive than others. So what gives?
You can measure productivity by measuring the success, but that's kinda useless for day to day software engineering management.
I tend to go by results, and for me, "results" means shipped* code that is used and accepted by end users**, can be maintained and extended***, and doesn't generate trouble tickets.
* MVP doesn't count.
** Can include users inside the organization.
*** It's OK if it requires senior-level ongoing support. I think expecting it to be maintained by monkeys is a bad idea.
Re: If we had the best product engineering organization, what would it look like?
#10What an amazing article on "de-FAANGing" the perverse org/incentive structure of most startup/tech places. Would love to see more of this type of leadership in the real world.
The recent book The NVIDIA Way is about that org’s culture that prevent FAANG incentives from creeping in to destroy productivity.