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Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

danluu.com

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Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#131

Post by ZephyrBlu »

Jensson wrote: post #130
ZephyrBlu wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less about setting up for the review and more about getting teammates to review the PRs promptly. I work remotely, so my (Small) team mostly works async even though we're in similar time zones. I doubt trying to ping them for 10 PR reviews in a single day would go well. Async + people trying to do their own stuff + 10 interruptions is not a great combo. Comments/discussion on a PR can grind things to a halt as w…

Could be about incentives then. At Google the code reviews you do are tracked so doing many looks good for your performance reviews, so some people try to be fast with reviews to get more reviews. If you don't get any credit for doing code reviews then I can see it being very hard to get people to do them though. Also as long as you have a pending review sent to you it shows up as a "you have stuff to do" icon in the…

Interesting. We don't track code reviews as far as I'm aware, and we use GitHub so you just get an email if you're tagged as a reviewer.

I would say it's not uncommon to have to wait a day for reviews.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#132

Post by Jensson »

ZephyrBlu wrote: post #131
Jensson wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could be about incentives then. At Google the code reviews you do are tracked so doing many looks good for your performance reviews, so some people try to be fast with reviews to get more reviews. If you don't get any credit for doing code reviews then I can see it being very hard to get people to do them though. Also as long as you have a pending review sent to you it shows up as a "you have stuff to do" icon in the…

Interesting. We don't track code reviews as far as I'm aware, and we use GitHub so you just get an email if you're tagged as a reviewer. I would say it's not uncommon to have to wait a day for reviews.

The the first thing to do if you want to improve that is to ensure you track code reviews. Meaning, you can see what changes each person reviewed and not just submitted, and then you can use that data to talk about performance etc. If one person does all the reviews then he should get a ton of credit since that is hard important work. Typically lead programmers do more reviews and juniors writes more changes, so a person doing a lot of reviews is associated with seniority and something to strive for rather than avoid. Also I bet your manager would be interested in that information as well, so maybe you just need to suggest it to them.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#133

Post by jkhdigital »

Darkstryder wrote: post #123
hardwaregeek wrote: post #31

I suspect the dissenters and Dan are not as far apart as one would expect. What I see in the dissent is a rejection of the specific brand of Silicon Valley rah rah productivity cult. There's a lot of mysticism in SV style productivity, whether it's the new hottest app or the latest lifestyle craze. It's also almost always directed at squeezing more work out of someone who's already working far too much. What Dan's pr…

Something Dan is not talking about at all but is at the core of my personal productivity troubles is energy level management. There is a world of difference between my average productivity and my peak productivity as I tend to work in short productive bursts then need a lot of time to recharge. My yearly work output is OKish but my daily or weekly productivity has very high variance, which has caused me some trouble…

> Before thinking of improving specific skills, just being able to be focused and working without distraction all day every day would be an order-of-magnitude improvement for me.

I solved this problem by going to a psychiatrist, getting diagnosed with ADHD (at age 35), and starting medication.

Not an exaggeration—I struggled with compulsive video gaming for almost my entire life; now on medication that issue has just completely vanished.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#134

Post by Darkstryder »

jkhdigital wrote: post #133
Darkstryder wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Something Dan is not talking about at all but is at the core of my personal productivity troubles is energy level management. There is a world of difference between my average productivity and my peak productivity as I tend to work in short productive bursts then need a lot of time to recharge. My yearly work output is OKish but my daily or weekly productivity has very high variance, which has caused me some trouble…

> Before thinking of improving specific skills, just being able to be focused and working without distraction all day every day would be an order-of-magnitude improvement for me. I solved this problem by going to a psychiatrist, getting diagnosed with ADHD (at age 35), and starting medication. Not an exaggeration—I struggled with compulsive video gaming for almost my entire life; now on medication that issue has just…

Thank you.

I was fearing/expecting someone to mention ADHD. I have never been formally diagnosed but everything I read about it feels suspiciously similar to the way my brain is wired. I might have to look into it more seriously. I’m currently 33.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#135

Post by db48x »

necovek wrote: post #84
ltbarcly3 wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: I only skimmed your comment, so consider this about something else. Programmers protest too much about 10x programmers. Saying there isn't a 10x programmer is the same as saying nobody could possibly work hard and improve enough to be that much better at something. But we know that every single activity we can objectively measure has far more than a 10x variation in performance. Why is there someone 10x better…

You went from "10x the average" (which the claim is about) to 10x between arbitrary people: it's obvious why the latter is true (some people just need to terribly suck at something), it's harder to buy into the 10x the average performance because of... how hard it is to define (improvement in) performance when you are not starting off of (near) zero.

No, you have it backwards. The original claim about “10×” engineers is in the book Peopleware. The author specifically claimed that they had observed at least an order of magnitude difference between the best and the worst software engineers. This is very much talking about variation between individuals, not comparing the extremes to the average. The average engineer is I guess somewhere around 3×, but note that this was a qualitative statement rather than a quantitative one; I chose the geometric mean because we are talking about multiples, but we shouldn’t forget that this isn’t based on concrete numbers. The average could be 2× or 5× or anything else.

Note that they are referring to the worst software engineers that could keep their jobs; these people probably still had net positive productivity for their companies. Note also that this was across many companies that the author had consulted for; any individual company likely had a narrower range of ability. Because of company policies, management styles (aka manglement), mistakes, cost–cutting, or whatever, there are companies that absolutely fill up with 1× programmers. Also, the best and worst programmers are not necessarily at the same stage of their career; the 10× engineer is much more likely to be a greybeard who has seen it all and knows how to get results, while the 1× engineers are much more likely to be fresh out of college.

The whole point of the book is that we can deliberately set up an environment where engineers are allowed to grow and succeed, or we can set up an environment that drives away anyone with skill. If management can do the former, then the company can succeed. Too often management sets up a system that is actively hostile to success, and then has to hire consultants to come and tell them how to fix it.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#136

Post by db48x »

joshuacc wrote: post #122
graperapist1480 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Energy constrained? That’s odd. Just eat more? CICO after all. Maybe guzzle some lard? It’s very dense.

“Mental energy” is a pretty common phrase, and it refers to the ability to start and sustain work on tasks which require mental effort. Eating a candy bar can provide a temporary boost to mental energy, but it’s not an effective everyday approach. There are many physical and psychological issues which diminish people’s mental energy. ADHD and depression being the most obvious. Fortunately for many of those conditions…

And yet this advice is not necessarily wrong. We spend a significant fraction of the calories we eat operating our brain. I have personally measured a significant increase in my ability after a good lunch compared to just an hour or two prior.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#137

Post by necovek »

db48x wrote: post #135
necovek wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You went from "10x the average" (which the claim is about) to 10x between arbitrary people: it's obvious why the latter is true (some people just need to terribly suck at something), it's harder to buy into the 10x the average performance because of... how hard it is to define (improvement in) performance when you are not starting off of (near) zero.

No, you have it backwards. The original claim about “10×” engineers is in the book Peopleware. The author specifically claimed that they had observed at least an order of magnitude difference between the best and the worst software engineers. This is very much talking about variation between individuals, not comparing the extremes to the average. The average engineer is I guess somewhere around 3×, but note that this…

Great, thanks for the detailed clarification — I wasn't aware of the book reference: it was my impression that everybody compares to an "average engineer" when talking about 10x, so perhaps it has entered "common knowledge" as a misinterpretation (or maybe it's just my misinterpretation, which is most likely).

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#138

Post by Jensson »

Darkstryder wrote: post #134
jkhdigital wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Before thinking of improving specific skills, just being able to be focused and working without distraction all day every day would be an order-of-magnitude improvement for me. I solved this problem by going to a psychiatrist, getting diagnosed with ADHD (at age 35), and starting medication. Not an exaggeration—I struggled with compulsive video gaming for almost my entire life; now on medication that issue has just…

Thank you. I was fearing/expecting someone to mention ADHD. I have never been formally diagnosed but everything I read about it feels suspiciously similar to the way my brain is wired. I might have to look into it more seriously. I’m currently 33.

We didn't evolve to sit and focus for hours per day, some people can still do it but others need medicine. The main thing the medicine does is tell your brain "now is the time to focus, don't look for something else!". If being able to do that would feel life changing to you rather than just helpful then you should go get tested.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#139

Post by guhsnamih »

As this seems to be about productivity from a respected person, I want to make sure I get the important ideas and I have tried. Is there a context in which this article must be read? Is it a commentary to another? Neither its introduction nor its conclusion seems to capture all of its ideas it is about. I know it is not meant to be readable but I'll appreciate any help.

Re: Some reasons to work on productivity and velocity

#140

Post by Jensson »

guhsnamih wrote: post #139

As this seems to be about productivity from a respected person, I want to make sure I get the important ideas and I have tried. Is there a context in which this article must be read? Is it a commentary to another? Neither its introduction nor its conclusion seems to capture all of its ideas it is about. I know it is not meant to be readable but I'll appreciate any help.

It is related to this article:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28879240

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