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Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

blog.idonethis.com

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Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#21

Post by rickmb »

It's basically formalizing what happens naturally when you still have a small, physically colocated team. (Of course, most methods are.)

And like all formalizations, it's not so much the method but the people and how they deal with it that determines its success. All formal methods, no matter how lightweight, can become sheer bureaucracy if they become detached from their original intent, and I'm already seeing anecdotal evidence (including from inside Google!) in this discussion that "snippets" is no different.

It's all about communication. If your no longer deliberately communicating something and getting valuable feedback, alarm bells should go off. Always keep asking "why?".

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#22

Post by SystemOut »

loschorts wrote: post #9
SystemOut wrote: post #5

I really like this idea. Does anyone know of a project that implements this? I did an initial search but nothing turned up but it'd probably be easy to miss it. In a way it reminds me of Rands' trickle concept of keeping track of work done so that one's status/log is easily generated. It'd be pretty easy to link this into other sources to add details automagically as well(e.g. GitHub check-ins come to mind).

Hey, actually you can try our implementation at http://iDoneThis.com (author of the post here). We have a team thing we're rolling out and this post was in part to gauge interest.

Will take a look at it. Thanks! I don't always go up to the www version of blog.* domains and missed the sidebar.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#23

Post by kragen »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #16

Of course they don't mention how annoying writing snippets can be (although I agree they are a good way for an individual to remember what they've done). They also don't mention that you can tell who is 'in' at Google and who isn't by the fact that they haven't written a new snippet in over a year.

Can you elaborate for those of us who aren't Googlers? Why are they annoying? If you write new snippets every week, how can you not write new snippets for a year? Is it the "in" people who haven't written new snippets for a year, or the "isn't in" people?

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#25

Post by ericabiz »

loschorts wrote: post #9
SystemOut wrote: post #5

I really like this idea. Does anyone know of a project that implements this? I did an initial search but nothing turned up but it'd probably be easy to miss it. In a way it reminds me of Rands' trickle concept of keeping track of work done so that one's status/log is easily generated. It'd be pretty easy to link this into other sources to add details automagically as well(e.g. GitHub check-ins come to mind).

Hey, actually you can try our implementation at http://iDoneThis.com (author of the post here). We have a team thing we're rolling out and this post was in part to gauge interest.

Love the concept but hate the name. "iDoneThis" isn't even proper grammar...

This is a case where a few hundred dollars on a good domain name would go a long way.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#28

Post by codyrobbins »

ericabiz wrote: post #25
loschorts wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, actually you can try our implementation at http://iDoneThis.com (author of the post here). We have a team thing we're rolling out and this post was in part to gauge interest.

Love the concept but hate the name. "iDoneThis" isn't even proper grammar... This is a case where a few hundred dollars on a good domain name would go a long way.

It’s an excellent name. It’s not supposed to be proper grammar—that’s part of the playfulness of it. It’s not a sentence, it’s a name. What you’re saying is like saying ‘Flickr’ isn’t a word.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#29

Post by packetslave »

At previous jobs, I've always kept a journal.txt record of what I worked on from day to day, so translating that to snippets at Google wasn't really anything new or annoying (disclaimer: I've been here about 6 months).

Personally, I think it's great to get the automated email every week with what the rest of the team has been doing, and you can setup snippet reports for other teams you collaborate with as well.

These days, I'm using DayOne (http://dayoneapp.com) which make it trivial to type F5 + "met with Bob about new for the . He said it'll be ready on Friday". Then, at the end of the week (usually on the Friday afternoon shuttle), I just read through and cherry-pick the larger items for my snippets.

Re: Silicon Valley’s Productivity Secret

#30

Post by tlogan »

You have to careful with this. Really really careful. The status reports can be sign of a broken company - and in a broken company they are used for politics and other gains in the worst possible way. And sometime reports will make a good company into a broken company (I saw it with my own eyes).

Furthermore, please understand that for many types of positions the snippets will not work very well because work on hard problems is then discouraged (causing low quality code).

In short, I don't think TPS reports are the key of Silicon Valley's productivity...

YMMV

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