S1E1 — Why Developer Productivity Is the Wrong Question
hello.
Dave:I'm not sure why you've done that.
Duena:I guess I could. I haven't heard it, so I don't even know if you went or not. Can you hear me,
Dave:I can.
Duena:I don't know if they can. Who knows, right? It's all invested to us. So we are now on episode 8,000,000,000 of our podcast. But this time, it's episode one because we've realized today when we were going to load too big of a batch that episode one is even worse quality than however bad this happens to be today.
Duena:You don't tell people this way?
Dave:I'm not sure we can relive it. It's so painful. So painful.
Duena:It has been quite a thing. So again, because this is the first time you hear from us, it's not an again. It's so first, who we are and why we're here. We have individuals supposed careers in technology and in the human side of technology, respectively. We both believe strongly in agile.
Duena:We both believe strongly in the importance of making strong cultures and clean code. And we're gonna be talking about that from two different points of view on this podcast. Now for those of you who have seen us on any other channels, you might have picked up that we are also a new couple. So a lot of these conversations are new to us as well. And we are also trying to kind of land on common understandings of various things.
Duena:I'll let you know that Dave is a producer. He's already taking a picture of something right now, as you can see. Mhmm. But what has happened in our many recordings of episodes one through three is that we have seen that we are not super capable with this. And we've decided that we could either one, outsource all of this to our various creative agencies that we are now working with.
Dave:Which sounds like a very good option.
Duena:Which is something that they have a stronger, stronger reform or the harder option, but the much more fun option of actually doing this part of the stuff ourselves, at least until such a time that we know exactly what the picture of excellence looks like. And let me tell you the picture of excellence is not not releasing for podcasts because we get them right And it is not polishing episodes while it's usable, and it is not attempting to redo it without testing, which is what we're doing now.
Dave:But there's a lot of our problems there really.
Duena:Mean it's a lot of the world's problems, isn't it?
Dave:Do you want to get to some meat of it? I'll do it when I moan about podcasting software, microphones not working, second camera's not working, feedback, crappy sound quality.
Duena:I want to do both, I want to do it all. I want to do 10 people who we really are as humans, and I wanna talk about the meat of the issue and the theory of it. I don't wanna do one or the other. We can't do one or the other. This is the meat of the issue.
Dave:Okay. The meat of the issue, I see.
Duena:We are an example of the meat of the issue. You are reluctantly being dragged into this humanity thing because you know it's needed and you know we can't make software any other way.
Dave:Absolutely, yeah. I think software development's always been a tricky thing, team management's always been a tricky thing, developer productivity's always been a tricky thing, right? And trying to improve, measure, help staff do better things, help staff turn out better quality software is just
Duena:I don't like calling them staff office, and I call you on every word that I think is a problem. Okay. I think these days we have to be intentional about words, not afraid of using them, but intentional about them because we and what do we want to call the people we work with? I just want to call them people because it's easiest, because otherwise you get tied up between developers versus technologists versus let's just call them our people.
Dave:Our people.
Duena:Our people, our teams.
Dave:Our people, we don't need to differentiate between UI developers, QA.
Duena:Of course we're going to name them, but our people are our people.
Dave:Our people are our people.
Duena:But they're not staff. They're not resources, they're not staff. This is the and you don't have them. This is a picture up on the silly point, that's why it's not okay.
Dave:You have, haven't you?
Duena:It's fine. It's for the reason of educating our audience. You should let it pass.
Dave:Right.
Duena:I would say.
Dave:Think? Okay, listen to the task, we're not using staff anymore. We're using people.
Duena:We're not using people. We're using the word people.
Dave:We're using the word people.
Duena:Yeah. Well we can't be doing this either. We did promise that we're going to try and stay on track. Now you also have to remember, I don't agree with your position of what the podcast should be offering this value, which is a set of very actionable insights or an amount of knowledge that you could have never found anywhere else. I think people to a degree listen for that, but they also listen to make a connection and to find another human they might agree with or they might like or they might resonate with.
Duena:So while I think a point we should be offering some tangible value as well, I don't think we should be obsessed with the topic and turn this into yet another kind of scope, what would you call it, like a stiff colored
Dave:enterprise. Okay, no, no, no, it doesn't need to be stiff colored, but on the podcasts I've listened to, some of them just start with about twenty minutes of waffle before This getting into
Duena:is us right now. This
Dave:is us right now doing
Duena:Well, don't think that we can get into anything. We started with a confession. We are absolutely crap at setting up creators studios. I guess that wasn't a shock to anyone. But me.
Duena:But we are just crap for now. We should then give information to people, which is to say, ironically this is episode one, by the time we get to episode three or four, we would be transmitting this from the islands. Yes. Suppose you should have said that, because we're moving to the islands and taking more of the islands.
Dave:If everything comes together. I mean, it's hard to get it to come together in our home office.
Duena:Right. I think it's saying if everything comes together podcast wise, not if everything comes together and we move to the camera.
Dave:No, no, we've lots
Duena:different It
Dave:should do that. Isn't everyone's life term That's everyone's life term goal now, isn't it?
Duena:I saw, let's just complete the segue, I saw an video somewhere around the the other day that said so here, I'm not going to name what I see. I'm just gonna say the video or an audio or a meme or whatever, but I'm not gonna say it was on TikTok or LinkedIn because that's hold up a second, everyone, because this is live enough for us, so you don't have a time to do another take. And David sent tells me it's supposed to be a secret. What about you doing?
Dave:I need power.
Duena:He needs power, and that's supposed to be a secret. We are sharing power because we are very little. It's limited. We can't spend it all on him or me. So here you go.
Dave:We just cannot afford any more Apple specific cables,
Duena:Well, it is going which have been to turn into another Apple phone. That's another thing you're going to hear a lot on this podcast, which is that we work on two different types of technology. I'm not an Apple fanboy or girl. I am just happened to be on Apple technology, and he just happens to obviously to be very
Dave:Microsoft y. Well, Windows and Android. Seamless solution.
Duena:We're not going into that in this episode.
Dave:No, no.
Duena:But you know what? No, it's Microsoft, so anyone can talk about it. In fact, I'm about God. You can go into anything, right? Yeah.
Duena:None of us is having any desire to being hired by it. Would you mind me? On that first episode, we we touched on two things we wanted to do on this podcast. One, laugh a lot. We managed to not do that efficiently after episode or in any episode.
Duena:No. We're mostly doing
Dave:this one because it's just been painful getting to right here now, isn't it? So there's gonna be no fun, no folics, no
Duena:It has been some fun and I mean, people have seen it. There has been some some relevant to fun for it is being accepted in our you know stand ups, in our retros. Team has been forced to reconsider that for the products as well and the brands as well. We've had a lot of general fun over these last few weeks and months when we've tried to re understand our brand. And I think we've come to some serious realizations.
Duena:And I think this journey in itself is what we're giving people as the myth here. Not our ideas on technology. They come, they go, they change. We'll talk about the the the topics of the day, but maybe we won't. Who knows?
Duena:We write a lot. We have blogs that people can read what we where we're on and on about. And they've got it at co.uk. You can tell people what it is as well if you like, and at denablogstone.com, and obviously on LinkedIn, where some of us are top voice at the time of this recording.
Dave:Some of us. You just mean, yeah. Very, clear. I'm going to be a LinkedIn talker.
Duena:No, not impossible. Although you do have a stronger day job than just being able to talk about your passion and advocate for change, which is all I'm doing these days. Yeah. It's a very privileged position, but it's also one that makes me drives me to screaming frustrations and teary frustrations multiple times. But long story short, I've had a long career in technology, in financial technology, in then agile, DevOps culture and have learned it at this place where I don't think you guys can make technology without humans, and I don't think us humans can get you on in the workplace without taking something from the technical side of things and bettering our part.
Duena:Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Dave:sure. And I think obviously our focus here is on tech, but everything you've been doing can be applied to any team of people, right? It can be military, it can be cleaners, it can be car mechanics, it can be anything.
Duena:Our conversation, yes, is about how these things work in technology. But you're right, it is the same thing that we are. Us is people need more.
Dave:Yeah, and if you can imagine maybe an old school y Ford assembly line going on, where there's people putting on doors and engines and whatever else, whatever else, whatever else, you have to trust those people to be able to do their jobs before you can do your job. Because if one person doesn't do their job, then the whole thing falls down, doesn't it?
Duena:Yes. I more like the equivalent of organizations that move together as one, as a team, than assembly lines. I have a current anti Taylorist fetish, an anti fetish for the industrialism and the Taylorism side of the workplace.
Dave:For the benefit of our listeners, you could expand on that a little bit. Not just to me, obviously.
Duena:No, no, no, no, not to you at all. But we started in the business world and in the software making world with the idea of we make a thing, we ship a thing.
Dave:Yeah, I mean, classic use on. When I started in software way, way, way back when, on the ZX Spectrum, way, way back in the day, those game builders was a cottage industry. It was one bloke in his bedroom doing everything in its wind. The movement, the sports, the graphics, the music, everything, everything, everything. Now?
Duena:I have reacted to that live by interrupting a laughing thing that I have to control over because this audio we're using doesn't doesn't let me hear the control sound, doesn't show me how long it is, it doesn't need to tell me when it starts playing. My well timed, oh no, developer in a cage, But that wasn't developer in a cage,
Dave:it was developer in his back bedroom. The name that springs to mind is Matthew Smith, develops Manic Miner. He was one of the breakout gangs of the time. Look, there's going to be 50 year old blokes all around the country having a little bit of a semion now, now that I've heard that name.
Duena:Are you serious? We're going to be producing 50 blokes in some other way.
Dave:No. He's got a very interesting background. Just made a crap ton of money and then went completely mad, apparently.
Duena:I need to read a lot more about this. When we first started this podcast, I fancied that
Dave:And I used to remember his home phone number as well. He used to be the ticket code, to get infinite lives.
Duena:There should be lives, I don't get beliefs that I could do anything about my conservation, that it could be maybe edited out or you could explain about this. I so I don't get that belief this should be life, but it isn't. So I don't know anything about this. However, so won't other people that have come here to listen to this. It's called the name Manic Miner.
Dave:Manic Miner.
Duena:So it was a minor who was manic.
Dave:And it was followed up by Jits, Het Willie.
Duena:I'm sorry?
Dave:It it introduced the world to the whole genre of platform games.
Duena:Oh my life. Is it the guy who is in a boat and is just grabbing No. Gold? I have arrived at games a lot later than him and after a lot of communism, so we don't have to come a lesson. Right.
Duena:But So people who listen to this No.
Dave:Anyway, that's that was the cottage industry then. If you take, you know what, the Grand Theft Auto six in development now, Christ knows how much billions of pounds is being poured into that, and how many man hours is being poured into that, and how separate teams are working on that and not even talking to each other.
Duena:But the point you're making is?
Dave:That technology has changed and moved on from when it was one person doing it all, to now having to have teams of people who need to pull together in the same direction to get a new result.
Duena:I appreciate that because it's the same in every
Dave:It's the same industry, right? And it's like the production line.
Duena:There's no no. Don't believe it's like the production line.
Dave:You don't think Henry Ford when Henry Ford made
Duena:the bottle tea, he'd actually do it his own hands. The difference is the production line is a collection of individual tasks with with handovers. That is the opposite of teamwork that's creative and collaborative.
Dave:But it's now microservice system?
Duena:No. It isn't. The microservice system could very well be engineered and maintained, and it's a live organ, it's changed by people. It is not at all a handover.
Dave:Okay, so we've got a slight difference between a one way process and then a living, breathing change
Duena:in Slightly different.
Dave:Right. Yeah. It seems like I'm gonna hang up on a small little semantic, but I'm
Duena:Not all small little semantics. Small little semantics is what has brought us to not being clear on working. I will not let that stand anymore. We're now fifteen minutes into it, and I'm to show people how horrible the other one was. Do you wanna show them a little bit what we were saying?
Duena:Let let's roll, like, the the first few minutes of how we didn't show Alright. One. Do you have it in your eyes?
Dave:I do. This is not gonna be a smooth handover either. So I've got to share the screen. Mhmm. First off, you need to know which screen I'm sharing, and it can't see that in the list of screens I've got for some reason.
Duena:Would you like me to play a a fun sound video?
Dave:No. No. Let's find that. Here we go.
Duena:We go. Here? No. Don't. Oh, god.
Duena:Make make it play because she looks awful. Oh god. This is what I mean. Maybe the eventually, recording is gonna be a lot better.
Dave:This is pretty much what we just said now, actually.
Duena:Okay. Well, then there's nothing of of any value, which is likely. Just turn it off!
Dave:Very frustrated with all those, thank you very much. Jesus, that was horrible. Let's not do that again.
Duena:I didn't know about it. Okay. And there was nothing of huge value in that episode. Always had to identify them correctly. Look.
Duena:We gotta be super real because we won't be getting someone keen to drop again after we've talked about all the things. Mhmm. We gotta be super honest and super authentic because we are at that time of our lives and because I am building the most authentic of leadership rights that have ever been built. We have to be I I'm launching a book called TechNet culture that's coming out in October. This is a second podcast that I've launched because this is the first one called the Secret Society of Human Work Advocates and Human Debt Fighters.
Dave:Which is And human debt fighters. Human debt.
Duena:It's a new it's a new added bit. Okay. And it's practically just a space where we talk about what is the product that we can do technology and people like that from an HR point of view. And, obviously, obviously, a new analysis invited to
Dave:Not exclusionary. But No. No.
Duena:HR role who's done any of the human work and has tried hard to get the people where they should be invited. And, obviously, I write once or twice a week on LinkedIn these days, zero time Right.
Dave:Let's just sum that one up then. What do you mean by human work?
Duena:Thank you. Good question. I'm ready to use that, but I mean anything that is the antidote to human death. So you should ask me what human death is.
Dave:What is human death?
Duena:Human death is I'm sick of myself saying the definition of this is, but I suspect I'm gonna have to say at least 200 more times, so I'm better off repeating it. Human death is a term I have come up with while researching for my second work, which is essentially the only encompassing amount of things that we have left undone when it comes to our humans in the workplace. All of the big initiatives, all of the small initiatives, all of the things we should have done to make them feel valued, loved, happy, and healthy, and we have left and done. Those things have a mass into an amount of debt that this organization has.
Dave:There's a few concrete examples.
Duena:But before that, I will give you concrete examples. Before that, I was wondering if your and if our viewers can think of anything that it reminds them of when you leave things undone and you end up or you don't quite do the right things and then you end up having shortcuts and unvaluable content and everything else that you in the technical world might be calling like that. Exactly the same thing.
Dave:Exactly the
Duena:Exactly the same thing. All of the problems you've cut with people. All of the problems you've cut with code. All of the times you could have tested, but you didn't. All of the times that you could have finished this document, but you didn't.
Duena:Or all of the shortcuts we've taken, all of the times when we haven't done the work we wanted to do at the highest performance as individuals or at the at the best way as an organization or as a team, all of those have created human debt. And to find it, we need to start to improve this quote unquote human work, meaning EQ, one on ones, understanding of conflict, psychological safety, most important, and the Google talents of the ISNU project.
Dave:Okay, so a lot more than just going out for a beer after work?
Duena:A lot more. A lot smarter.
Dave:Not a lot more than going out for a beer after work?
Duena:Not a lot more. A lot smarter.
Dave:That's good news.
Duena:That is good news. You do all these things with beer, or after work, or work that's not as clear, recut as you used to think it was.
Dave:No, you're right. Work has ceased to be a nine to five thing for the majority of people out there. Obviously there are still people who are nine to five, and if people are working nine to five and cracking on with their day jobs and it's all good, that's all fine. But no problem with that. Generally in the tech industry, I think a lot of people do put a lot more effort, time and resources into not only the role they're actually doing, but training themselves up.
Dave:How often do people watch some form of YouTube video, which is microservices, agile, something, something, something, something over the weekend? That's all part of the job.
Duena:I disagree. That's what we do. That's of the job. I think the part of the job that we really wanna get doing even more. I think we are comfortable with those.
Duena:It's a bad individual. I think it's a common that they're not comfortable with, and that's what's gonna be most difficult. And that is why in my new book, Tech led Culture, I have spent a lot of time trying to explain the fact that we get lost in these new worlds of what is the new way to work, what is the new way of doing things that is more efficient, what is agile, what is lean, what what are all the credit ratings, great designations, what is should we go back to the office? And all of these are taking us away from day to day comprehension of things that matter, which are these interactions between humans. And they're also taking us away from really big transformations where we have to go back to the drawing board and say, is the world of work as we have it today by the models that have been given to us twenty, thirty years ago, fit for purpose when we're trying to make technology faster to love and that we can deliver joyfully.
Dave:Okay. So that's the brief synopsis of your book.
Duena:Of work. Of life.
Dave:Okay, but in the coming episodes, we'll be driving into that more. We'll be driving more into perhaps tech debt, and where these two worlds meet.
Duena:And you can tell us examples from your day to day life. I can tell you what I've learned around blanks,
Dave:and
Duena:many other software companies. And we can hopefully shed some light on, one, how have we arrived at this authenticator shifting? And why does it matter for us to be ourselves and lead this way? Because I think the more we're clear and the more we're ourselves and I forgot to say in this episode, I should have done that. I am neurodiverse as are you, and that one of us is diagnosed, one of us is undiagnosed and reluctant that we are faced talking about it.
Duena:I'm not interested. I am interested. I feel like neurodiverse people at work are the answer to the future of technology and the future of of culture, but that's another conversation for another episode. We're gonna have a couple of things in this podcast, some blind reacts, some joking, some explanation of how we do our mornings, which are stand ups by the sea, Some combinations between various channels, YouTube, you're gonna see us popping in various places from YouTube to TikTok to LinkedIn and, of course
Dave:Well, we hope they will anyway.
Duena:Oh, we we are.
Dave:Will. We will, but where's the notes popping? It's a hope
Duena:that Popping in the fun way. It's just popping around, just showing up.
Dave:Yeah.
Duena:Just much of us, not with the boss. Where do you want to get out of this? What are we gonna do? Who do you Dave Ballantyne want to get out of this?
Dave:That's a very good question. What does Dave Ballantyne want to get out of this? I'm all for talking to some interesting people, let's get some interesting guests on. You mean academia? As well as you?
Dave:There's a number of people at the back of my mind I would like to talk to, get on the show, I think they've got an interesting story to tell.
Duena:Yes, so from
Dave:the human side, But also let's get a few CTOs in and just see what their day to day life's like and how they're
Duena:I'm sorry. That's there. It's a problem. From the human side and some CTOs. And why are the CTOs from the human side?
Duena:Everyone we're going to have on this show is going to be from the human side.
Dave:Antech.
Duena:Oh my god.
Dave:My god.
Duena:This is the whole problem. We can die. No. No. All people.
Duena:All people. There is nothing that's only tech. You're kidding me now. This is a lie that we're for agent, and we're not obligating enough. Engineered.
Duena:It's just genuinely you are in trouble. Some human people and some thick people is what you said.
Dave:Even with people's updates, we're need to meet in the middle.
Duena:No. They don't need to I don't know.
Dave:I know it's the same people.
Duena:It's the
Dave:same No. No.
Duena:No. We're not getting anywhere here. I might have an acupressia attack because this will not go live at all. Stop attempting to paint yourself because this human this is not a QT reaction that the tech world has. It is an upsetting, demeaning, and and just unuseful reaction for the universe.
Duena:If you're gonna be a tech person who is going to find the human bit cutesy, you don't need to be around me. You as a human or you as an exec or you as a team member or you as a husband, you will never play.
Dave:That sounds
Duena:so scary. It is super scary because you no one's ever going to play down the importance and the seriousness of doing the human work around me and get away with it. And people don't know that that's a nervous enough to renew. They're gonna think you're still making fun of it. They're gonna wait to see if you're gonna get whacked over the head with something, which your mother doesn't say.
Duena:I know. I I didn't change
Dave:it to be scared. I didn't change
Duena:it to be scared. Yeah. Change this. The thought is, like, I need the entirety of technologies, every technologies in the world, I I need to know that in ten years of me breaking my neck to to do this and talk about this and you breaking your neck. And and everyone else who's been talking about the heart of Agile, from to everyone else, the signatures, everyone who's been bleeding and leaving Agile, I we all need to know that at the end of all our work, in ten, fifteen, fifty years' times, there will be no technologist that could head on heart say, that's the people side.
Duena:This is the technology side. Because if we still have those people, then I failed. You failed. And technology and culture failed. So stop saying people versus technology.
Duena:It's one thing. There are no people people, there are no tech people. Other people on the show will be both or not at all.
Dave:Okay. Thank you, baby. Thank you for setting me straight on that one.
Duena:I feel much better about that one. I know you're on, you are.
Dave:No, no, no.
Duena:No. I can't say yes, no. And, you know, and people sometimes were bantering, they were joking, and we're having these all the time. But I this is not scripted, and we don't need to say this too many times to people, they know what about. Now, the fact that you panic when I start being super honest with our listeners is cutesy to me.
Dave:The cutesy. I love it. That's what I live for. Just to be cute, CTO.
Duena:Look, now that's something to me. I've done that, and I apologize. That wasn't useful. We activate the hidden states all the time, the programs. It's, I think, very useful to keep it real.
Duena:I don't wanna keep it off camera. I don't want us to to be as as podcast y as possible. People refer a 100,000 podcasts where I can sound podcast y all you like. If you want me to sound that way for forty five minutes and give them nothing, I will. I don't want to do that.
Duena:They have enough to take nothing from. What they expect from us is Right.
Dave:So the difference between this and any other podcast you've been on is is going to unloads?
Duena:No. Absolutely not. There are loads on every podcast she's ever been on. The difference between this
Dave:is Is she on lunch with her husband?
Duena:No. It is that she will now, her husband, I think he is going get into unloading as well. And then once he's done that, he will to drag his team into unloading. And everyone should unload and be honest and true to their feelings is what the difference So in in the next episode, you'll hear about the at the heart of agile, so this will serve as a good intro. Mhmm.
Duena:And on the next episode, you'll have a couple of interesting guests, at least one of them you already talked about with both a person and a city or type individual. Do you Yeah. Have him in episode four or five? We can call him from our location and try and get a couple of these episodes in. Yeah.
Dave:Well, thank
Duena:you for listening to our programming.
Dave:Yeah. Thank you, everyone. I've been Dave Valentine. I may not be here on the next show.
Duena:You will be. You've never really have smile.
Dave:Thank you, everybody.
Duena:We are really pleased that you're coming with us on this journey. You are, hopefully, take something out of it. And if not, at least you've laughed at us, if not with us. With us. And we'll see you next time.
Duena:Bye.
Dave:Have a good life, everyone. Have a good life if I don't talk to you again.
Duena:Bye. Great. Bye.
