[HN Gopher] Devex: What actually drives productivity ___________________________________________________________________ Devex: What actually drives productivity Author : kiyanwang Score : 20 points Date : 2023-05-19 20:34 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (queue.acm.org) (TXT) w3m dump (queue.acm.org) | endtime wrote: | I ran a couple developer experience teams at Google over a period | of a few years. The motto was "easy, fast, and fun". Too much | software development isn't. | analog31 wrote: | I love Python, and Arduino too. ;-) | freddref wrote: | How do you maintain that as things grow? | jvanderbot wrote: | excellent modularity, ownership, fast tooling, and effortless | communication? | Bellend wrote: | Give me a life altering kickback as a fat cheque each April or | get the minimum possible work I can do to keep my job whilst | management tries to figure out what that is and if I am viable. | | I do maybe 20% a week of my total. | | To be clear, I have been through the stress. ESPECIALLY in the | games industry where a specific corner/corner collision had me | crying and wished I was dead coz it was on me. I solved it, I got | nothing. | rektide wrote: | > _I solved it, I got nothing._ | | Alas one of the most defining aspects of business seems to be | an entire lack of rewards for being the Johnny On The Spot, for | tackling shit. It's absurd how little benefit there is to being | good or caring or taking on the hard shit. | esafak wrote: | Move to greener pastures and let the competition eat their | lunch. Voting with your feet is how we have nice things. | TeMPOraL wrote: | I don't know if this is even solvable in principle. There's | just little to no correlation between the tough parts of this | job, and the outcomes visible to stakeholders (even technical | managers). | | Spent two days dealing with memory corruption caused by a | badly-written third-party library (proprietary, binary-only | distributed)? I may have felt like I own the universe when I | finally found the problem, but what does my manager see? Me | having promised the feature today, and now saying it'll be | next week. | Bellend wrote: | I'd personally solve it asap but I would never declare it | until it was absolutely critical and then look like a | superstar at day0. | jdbernard wrote: | One of the many ways management benefits from having hands- | on experience prior. | esafak wrote: | Options including selling your accomplishment, not doing | thankless work, moving to a better-run company, and | starting your own. I made my choice. | rektide wrote: | > _The Three Dimensions of DevEx Our framework distills developer | experience to its three core dimensions: feedback loops, | cognitive load, and flow state . These dimensions emerged from | real-world application of our prior research, which identified 25 | sociotechnical factors affecting DevEx._ | | IMO, solid groundwork for analyzing development. These feel like | good core principal components. | fnordpiglet wrote: | It's missing "soul crushing corporate culture" | | IMO that's the single most important factor in developer | experience. The rest is an effect of that. | karmakaze wrote: | Seems like a fine description/analysis. What it amounts to seems | to simply be to listen to what developers complain about, in | addition to other metrics. A problem is of course that sometimes | developers complain that they can't build their grand vision, | regardless of how unproductive it is to customers. Also managers | don't first-hand understand the importance of developers gripes. | A pragmatic approach where an aspect/complaint is worked on to | reduce friction etc and measure/survey improvements should inform | them what's worked and what hasn't. | | > To improve DevEx, teams and organizations should focus on | creating the optimal conditions for flow state. Disruptions | should be minimized by clustering meetings, avoiding unplanned | work, and batching help requests. Leaders should also recognize | that flow state depends on creating positive team cultures that | give developers autonomy and opportunities to work on fulfilling | challenges. | | Some things that address this: no meeting Wednesdays, large | meeting block Thursdays, rotating ATC (air traffic controller) | for one person to handle interruptions to save the team. One | thing that still happens is swiss-cheese meeting schedules | starting on the hour (or half hour) and rounding up to same, | which waste arbitrary-sized small gaps. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-05-19 23:00 UTC)