In some pockets of the industry, an axiom of software development is that deploying software quickly is at odds with thoroughly testing that software. One reason that teams believe this is because a fully automated deployment process implies that there’s no opportunity for manual quality assurance. In other pockets of the industry, the axiom is quite different: you can get both fast deployment and manual quality assurance by using feature flags to decouple deployment (shipping the code) and...| lethain.com
A few years ago I wrote about reading a Profit & Loss statement, which is a foundational executive skill. I also subsequently wrote about ways to measure your engineering organization. Despite having written those, I still spend a lot of time wondering about effective ways to represent an engineering organization to your board of directors. Over the past few years, one of the most useful charts I’ve found for explaining an R&D organization is a scatterplot of R&D spend as a % of margin vers...| lethain.com
I’ve been reading Steven Sinofsky’s Hardcore Software, and particularly enjoyed this quote from a memo discussed in the Zero Defects chapter: You can improve the quality of your code, and if you do, the rewards for yourself and for Microsoft will be immense. The hardest part is to decide that you want to write perfect code. If I wrote that in an internal memo, I imagine the engineering team would mutiny, but software quality is certainly an interesting topic where I continue to refine my ...| lethain.com
In 2020, you could credibly argue that ZIRP explains the world, but that’s an impossible argument to make in 2024 when zero-interest rate policy is only a fond memory. Instead, we’re seeing a number of companies designed for rapid expansion learning to adapt to a world that expects immediate free cash flow rather than accepting the sweet promise of discounted future cash flow. This chapter wants to tackle that problem head-on, taking the role of an engineering organization attempting to n...| lethain.com
One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company maintains their current margin and grows revenue at 25-30%, or they instead grow slower and increase their free cash flow year over year. In many organizations, engineering costs have a major impact on their free cash flow. There are many costs to reduce, cloud hosting and such, but inevitably part of the discussion is addressing engineering headcount costs directly.| lethain.com
If I could only popularize one idea about technical strategy, it would be that prematurely applying pressure to a strategy’s rollout prevents evaluating whether the strategy is effective. Pressure changes behavior in profound ways, and many of those changes are intended to make you believe your strategy is working while minimizing change to the status quo (if you’re an executive) or get your strategy repealed (if you’re not an executive). Neither is particular helpful.| lethain.com
Some governmental agencies have started to adopt No Wrong Door policies, which aim to provide help–often health or mental health services–to individuals even if they show up to the wrong agency to request help. The core insight is that the employees at those agencies are far better equipped to navigate their own bureaucracies than an individual who knows nothing about the bureaucracy’s internal function. For the most part, technology organizations are not complex bureaucracies, but some...| lethain.com
Whether you’re a product engineer, a product manager, or an engineering executive, you’ve probably been pushed to consider using Large Language Models (LLMs) to extend your product or enhance your processes. 2023-2024 is an interesting era for LLM adoption, where these capabilities have transitioned into the mainstream, with many companies worrying that they’re falling behind despite the fact that most integrations appear superficial. That context makes LLM adoption a great topic for a ...| lethain.com
One of the common conceits in leadership is that nobody is truly essential for a company’s continuity. I call it a conceit, but I do mostly agree with it: I’ve felt literally sick after hearing about some peer’s unexpected departure, but I’m continually amazed at how resilient companies are to departures, even of important people. About two-thirds of Digg’s team left in layoffs in 2010, but we found ways to amble on. Much of Uber’s leadership team turned over in the 2017 era, and ...| lethain.com
Pretty much every company I know is looking for a way to benefit from Large Language Models. Even if their executives don’t see much applicability, their investors likely do, so they’re staring at the blank page nervously trying to come up with an idea. It’s straightforward to make an argument for LLMs improving internal efficiency somehow, but it’s much harder to describe a believable way that LLMs will make your product more useful to your customers.| lethain.com
When you’re driving a car down a road, you might get a bit stuffy and decide to roll your windows down. The air will flow in, the wind will get louder, and the sensation of moving will intensify. Your engine will start working a bit harder–and louder–to maintain the same speed. Every sensation will tell you that you’re moving faster, but lowering the window has increased your car’s air resistance, and you’re actually going slower. Or at minimum you’re using more fuel to maintain...| lethain.com
Recently I was chatting with a Staff-plus engineer who was struggling to influence his peers. Each time he suggested an approach, his team agreed with him, but his peers in the organization disagreed and pushed back. He wanted advice on why his peers kept undermining his approach. After our chat, I followed up by talking with his peers about some recent disagreements, and they kept highlighting missing context from the engineer’s proposals. As I spoke with more peers, the engineer’s probl...| lethain.com
Early in my career, I navigated most decisions by simple hill climbing: if it was a more prestigious opportunity and paid more, I took it. As I got further, and my personal obligations grew, I started to think about navigating a 40-year career, where a given job might value pace rather than prestige. Over the last few years, what I’ve come to appreciate is that there’s another phase: purpose. Purpose isn’t intrinsically the third phase of a career, but it certainly has been for me, as I...| lethain.com
In Staff Engineer’s chapter on Managing Technical Quality, one of the very last suggestions is creating a centralized process to curate technical changes: Curate technology change using architecture reviews, investment strategies, and a structured process for adopting new tools. Most misalignment comes from missing context, and these are the organizational leverage points to inject context into decision-making. Many organizations start here, but it’s the last box of tools that I recommend...| lethain.com
In my early career roles, I worked at companies that never worried about their infrastructure costs at all. They were simply too low a cost and growing too slowly for the Finance team to pay much attention to it. This “ignore it until it’s too large to ignore” approach served me well. Until it didn’t. Working at Uber, I was caught me off guard when a new Director joined and overnight infrastructure costs were recategorized from insignificant to requiring urgent, detailed review every ...| infraeng.dev
