OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) are a framework for validating alignment through the organization. As a company, as a department, as a team: what are we focused on this quarter? What are we trying to make true? Alignment looks nice when the team OKRs roll up to the department OKRs, and those add up to ... Read moreCascading OKRs: We can do Better
In Engineering, quarterly OKRs (Objectives & Key Results) can feel like a duplication of product planning. Basically, they say “Ship the Roadmap.” What new information are they communicating in that case? And if the OKRs say anything else, they’re in conflict the roadmap! An example (that I made up): In Marketing, quarterly OKRs express our ......
My work does not reduce to measurable outcomes. Much of what I accomplish as an engineer and as a developer advocate amounts to creating conditions that make it more likely for the company to succeed. I resist and resent most metrics, yet I don’t mind OKRs the way Honeycomb does them. How not to OKR: ... Read moreOKRs for Evil and Good
Here’s a familiar 2×2, the Important & Urgent quadrants: Very early in my career, I was taught to beware the “Not Important & Urgent” quadrant. I’m used to working in the “Important & Urgent” quadrant most of the time, getting the important stuff done just on time. This is the quadrant of productivity. A friend ... Read moreProductivity v Impact
I don’t think I’ve worked at a company whose website satisfied me. It never gives me a clear explanation of what our product does. After a few years working closely with Marketing, I finally understand why. As a developer, my goal is to provide useful capabilities to people through the software I work on. To ... Read moreWhy is every startup’s...
I think of “command and control” as one thing. Is there a difference? That common phrase notwithstanding, command and control are two alternative structures, more opposites than synonyms! Command (like in the military) allocates responsibilities to parts of the hierarchy. So a general is tasked with winning a war, and each officer under them is...
When Honeycomb was a small company, All Hands meetings had announcements and discussions. Discussions mostly took place in the meeting chat, where everyone can answer anyone’s question. Between that and the announce channel in Slack, information got out to the whole company. Or did it? It’s hard to check for understanding in that big a ... Read...
In a startup that sells software, what is the “business” side of the company? When I worked in retail, developing software for internal use, there was a clear division between the engineering teams in IT and the Business, where people understood retail products and how to run a store. But now that I’m in a ... Read moreWho turns software into...
Last year I got my first experience of implementing software internally. My team found a SaaS (software as a service) product they wanted to use, so we bought it and used it. Sort of. It was NOT SO EASY. There’s money to pay, and that has to get through several rounds of budget approvals, and ... Read moreHow hard can it be to buy software?
a keynote from CppNorth This one is about everything else that a team needs to accomplish, besides writing the code, in order to provide useful capabilities to people.
a keynote for YOW! London Playing games, we can focus deeply and work really hard and also have a good time. This is what I want out of work, too. Traditional gamification adds points, competition, and badges to make work appear more game-like. This corrodes collaboration, replacing a deeper meaning with superficial characteristics of games. ......
This is a small talk for Bridges Summit, 28 August 2024. References and Recommendations: Combining, by Nora Bateson. ⬅ this is about seeing the second and third-order effects of what we do. It helps me live in a world that is so far from perfect, and work to make it better without despair. (I don’t ... Read moreBridges Summit
For a demo app, I want a simple-as-possible deploy script. The simplest thing is to hard-code the version number (which gives my docker image a unique tag, which gets kubernetes to pull the new image1). But I’m tired of updating the version number. So I made the script update it for me. Why not use ... Read moreStupid bash tricks: a self-updating...
Today, I’m working on our new deck. It’s a little uncomfortable, because there’s no furniture. I’m sitting on a blanket. The furniture is in the yard, being spray-painted. Before my husband left for the day, he said “If you have time, you could spray some more paint on the chairs.” Seems like I could contribute ... Read moreWorking with others is...
The court system is not created for “justice” as we tend to think about it. It’s a system that can only enforce the laws created by legislators whose interests often don’t align with the most vulnerable who are looking to be protected by the court. Sarah Galloway, Staff Attorney, Arch City Defenders … something something ... Read moreFear and...
Video from DevOpsDays Rockies, September 2024.Keynote at SwiftCraft, Folkestone, UK, 24 May 2024.also given at Explore DDD (video), March 2024; also given at Emerging Tech East, April 2024 At Honeycomb, we have a company value: Everything is an Experiment. Sometimes people take that too literally, and try to make every UI change an A/B test, ......
I want to create value in the world. That’s why this blog is public, my code is open-source, my newsletter is free. This means almost none of the value I create returns to me. It’s a tradeoff — the cheaper it is, the more value the world gets, and the less money I get. That’s ... Read moreDouble Loop of Value
The other day my partner said, “Thank you. You’re the best.” I thought: Yeah, I’m the best for a lot of people these days. My kids, work, you. When do I get to be my best? And then I remembered: people are people through other people. Meaning comes from between us, not within us. Connection ... Read moreBeing the Best
TL;DR: right now OTel Logs are a little harder to use than span events, but otherwise they are superior. Today I wanted to send OTLP Logs and see them correlated with my traces. First problem: logs aren’t available in the OTel JavaScript SDK. They’re still in development. (It is the end of 2023.) There is ... Read moreSending OTLP Logs from...