Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast

Nigel Finley
Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast

As software engineers, we build software with people and we build software for people; to enhance, improve, optimize and make our everyday lives better. Every month I am joined by guests from all reaches of the software world to discuss their unique journeys, why we build software, discussions on a specific software related topic, and we examine problems they are solving through the products they are building. Topics discussed include software development, engineering enablement, frameworks, DevOps, mentoring, accessibility, leadership, accessibility, testing, soft skills, and more.

  1. 10/09/2024

    Ep. 35: Be A Force Multiplier - Amplifying Engineering Impact with Jeff Bailey

    The software world is vast and ever changing. Cutting through the noise of language fads and building a system that meets your organization’s goals, is maintainable, scalable, performant and clean is no easy feat. It is the Principal Engineers that stand at the helm and steer the ship in the right direction. Today we dive into the world of one Principal Engineer steering the ship for an iconic brand and how he views his role, what it means to be a principal engineer, his thoughts on AI in software, the importance and meaning of InnerSource software development, and more. Our guest, Jeff Bailey, is one of those superheroes guiding a famous brand to success. He started his software journey as a teenager and his first computer was a White Box 286, that he traded his Sega Master System and some games to acquire. He now has over 25 years of professional software development experience. He has worked for companies like Internet In A Mall, Earthlink, Evoque and Axian doing consultant work, and has a wide range of experience in languages like Perl to Cold Fusion to Python to Java to Javascript. He is currently a Principal Software Engineer at Nike and the co-leader of the Tech Modernization Team. He believes you must be a force multiplier to enable maximum efficiency for your team and prioritizing the right tool for the job. When our guest is not designing architecture or driving excellence at Nike he is gaming on Nintendo Switch, Steam and Xbox or creating a moody vibe playing his guitar. Enjoy the conversation!! Connect with Jeff: LinkedIn Website/Blog Sponsor: Clairity: Do you know how your engineers feel about your company? About their work? Connect your Github and install Clairitiy’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year to discover real insights about your engineers experience. Show notes and helpful resources: Alfred Productivity App - A MacOS productivity app for automating workflows and tasks NuShell - A tool that allows running commands against JSON, CSVs, and other file types using a consistent query language. Jeff’s Tools Jeff's blog post on Learning, Earning and Growing InnerSource Commons - A global community focused on promoting InnerSource practices and building InnerSource programs Principal engineer role - Jeff describes his role as a "force multiplier," amplifying the effectiveness of his team by solving complex problems, exploring new technologies, and always thinking a step ahead. A principal engineer isn't just a tech expert but a leader who can look beyond code to the broader organizational needs Building software for and with people - For Jeff, the ultimate goal of any technology is to serve people. Whether it's through enhancing productivity or solving everyday problems, software should make life simpler and less complicated for its users. His focus is always on understanding the real needs behind the code. Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    57 min

  2. 28/05/2024

    Ep. 34: Watch, Learn and Wynn: Automated Observability with David Wynn

    Ding ding... It's 3 am and your phone has just sent you multiple P1 alerts. Your site is down and you need to find out what the issue is and fast, but your log data is all over the place, metrics on your services are sub par and it's really hard to know where to go to find the issue. What if there was a way to leverage AI to help you make sense of your data in a clear and concise way, making your 3 am alert wake up call a walk in the park? This is exactly what our guest, David Wynn, is doing at Edge Delta, an automated observability platform that monitors your services, alerts you when something is wrong, and guides root-cause analysis. Today, we dive into observability; what it is, the data pieces that make up this ecosystem, tips on how to start your data collection journey, ways our guest is integrating AI with human expertise to enhance system observability and more. David received his Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from Duke University and with over 15 years in the industry he has worked at companies like Intapp, Sumo Logic and formerly was Head of Solutions at Google Cloud for Games. Currently, a Principal Solution Architect for Edge Delta, an automated observability startup, he applies his visionary approach to automated observability, ensuring systems are not only monitored but also intelligently guided through root-cause analysis when issues arise. When our guest is not making your production monitoring a breeze, he is reading philosophy and participating in the vibrant geek culture in Atlanta attending events like DragonCon. In his LinkedIn profile he calls himself the “People Machine Liaison”, enjoy the conversation! Connect with David: LinkedIn Ftwynn.com EdgeDelta Sponsor: Get Space: Are your engineers happy? Productive? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to find out real insights about your engineers experience. Show notes and helpful resources: Definition of observability: Understanding what the system is doing and whether it's doing what it's intended Three pillars of observability are Logs, Metics and Traces Logs are like notes to yourself from the code, and are only as structured and useful as the notes you write Metrics are numbers, usually counts or measurements, that represent what you want to track Traces tie together the different components of a distributed system into one object, capturing the flow and timing of a transaction or operation Events are narrative-level components that describe key occurrences in the environment MELT is the acronym for Metrics, Events, Logs, and Traces Context as a 4th pillar Three layers of Context; 1. Team context (developers, what maps to code), 2. Architecture context (how services are architected), 3. Business intent context (what the system is supposed to do) Collection is step number 1 - getting the data into a place where you can understand it Automated observability: Makes the collection process easier by automating aspects of it and makes the analysis process easier by using techniques like clustering algorithms Edge Delta uses the k-means clustering algorithm to group similar events and apply sentiment analysis to identify issues. Engineers should focus on understanding and implementing the business requirements correctly, as that will lead to better observability signals Large Language Models (LLMs) are not reasoning machines; they are associativity machines that cannot truly understand or reason about concepts Reality has a surprising amount of detail article - by John Salvatier ReBoot cartoon - The main character Bob acts as the Guardian of Mainframe. Correction from the episode: he has a keytool named Glitch (not Gadget as mentioned) that he wears on his left wrist Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    1 h

  3. 26/04/2024

    Ep. 33: Ready Set Flow - A Conversation in Momentum and Troubleshooting with Arty Starr

    You know that feeling when you are in the zone and time seems to standstill? You’re on fire, completely focused, and distractions vanish? That feeling is FLOW.  In today's world with constant interruptions and demands on our attention, achieving flow can feel impossible. But what if there was a way to cultivate this state and optimize your productivity? That's where "flow as a practice" comes in. It's the art of getting in and staying in that magical flow state.  We are joined today by a Flow Experience expert to help us understand what Flow is, why it’s important for our joy, ways we can achieve it and more. Our guest, Arty Starr, has been a software engineer for over 20 years doing work in various areas like semiconductor factory automation, supply chain optimization, data pipeline automation and helping companies identify and solve their biggest problems with data. Today she is a recognized Flow Experience expert, researcher, speaker and thought leader, and author of the book Idea Flow: How to Measure the PAIN in Software Development. During the pandemic our guest decided to get her PhD at the University of Victoria, where she is now a researcher at CHISEL - The Computer Human Interaction & Software Engineering Lab, working with Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey.  Her thesis project is developing a theory of Developer Flow, and the two cognitive processes of Momentum and Troubleshooting. She is also the founder of FlowInsight, helping developers thrive and find joy through more time in the flow state.  Additionally, she is on the advisory board of CodeScene, a painter, a 2D/3D animator, and is working on a new play-based approach to learning coding and animation with a 3D character, called "Learning with Fervie". Our guest believes that we as software engineers are the magicians of this world because we can bring our dreams to life. When our guest is not finding ways to bring the invisible to the forefront, and bring joy and hope back to our work, she is spending her time outside, hangin’ with the trees. Enjoy the conversation! Connect with Arty: LinkedIn Sponsor: Get Space: How do you know if your engineers have time in the day to experience flow? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience. Show notes and helpful resources: Bridges Summit - YOU DON’T WANT TO MISS THIS Flow Insights - Sign up for BETA to use the tools Arty talked about during the show - join her to help build a better product Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi The Computer Human Interaction & Software Engineering Lab at the University of Victoria run by Dr. Margaret-Anne Storey Arty is speaking at UberConf Augmenting Human Intellect: A Conceptual Framework by Douglas C. Engelbart The Human Equation: Building Profits by Putting People First by Jeffery Pfeffer The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of The Learning Organization by Peter Senge Getting into the optimal performance state by Robert Nideffer What Makes Interruptions Disruptive?: A Process-Model Account of the Effects of the Problem State Bottleneck on Task Interruption and Resumption, by J. P. Borst, N. A. Taatgen Shape UP by Ryan Singer Prerequisite conditions to get into flow state: Clarity of the goals and rules of the task, challenge skill level balance and unambiguous feedback. Intrinsic motivation is a very important piece to flow Setting clear goals and breaking down work into micro intentions will help you achieve flow If we focus on experience and thriving we ought to get productivity for free Other talks by Arty: Enabling Powerful Software Insights by Visualizing Friction and Flow and Keynote at SpringOne on Flow State Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    1 h 28 min

  4. 26/03/2024

    Ep. 32: Man, Meta, Maturity Model - Productivity Engineering with Karim Nakad

    Metrics are hard. Identifying which metrics to measure is even harder. So how do you get started? And how do you know when you have achieved true developer productivity zen? Like anything in life the path to mastery is a journey and today we are joined by a passionate staff engineer from Meta to share with us his theory on a developer productivity maturity model which paints a wonderful mental picture on knowing where we stand in our developer productivity journey and how companies can move through the stages. We also discuss productivity dashboards, if you actually need dashboards, how Meta thinks about developer productivity and more. Our guest, Karim Nakad, has his Masters of Computer Science from University of Wisconsin and previously worked for Amazon for SageMaker and Prime. He is currently a Staff Software Engineer at Meta making an impact in the productivity organization. He is dedicated to improving developer efficiency across the board and paving the way by generating and exposing productivity and code quality metrics across the tech industry and alongside leading experts and researchers. His excitement around improving the daily working lives of software engineers is palatable and contagious and I can’t wait to dig in. I met our guest at a developer productivity engineering conference last year and when he summarized back to me the purpose of a project I was working on in such an eloquent manner I knew then he had to come on the podcast to share his thoughts and efforts around bringing happiness to engineers and building products for people. When our guest is not helping engineers move fast and be productive, he games and travels the world. He also two Macaws a green wing and a blue and gold. Enjoy! Connect with Karim: LinkedIn Twitter Threads Sponsor: Get Space: Do you know what pain points exist in your company? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year Episode correction: Karim wanted to clarify the difference and intersection between qualitative/quantitative and objective/subjective: Qualitative: Non-number data such as the subjective free-form text in surveys. Quantitative: Data that can be counted, such as subjective multiple-choice in surveys or objective system measurements. Show notes and helpful resources: DORA The SPACE framework Karim’s best advice: “Anyone can be an expert you just need to read the code” Karim’s everyday tool: Obsidian - note taking app Reflect note taking app The Hack language Karim says developer productivity is about creating an efficient and enjoyable experience as that is what encourages devs to do their best work To measure, rely on frameworks our there like DORA or SPACE and Karim recommends using metrics you already have to start with AutoFocus paper: Workgraph: personal focus vs. interruption for engineers at Meta - improved personal focus by over 20% KPIs rule of thumb takes two forms: Latency and Reliability An example of latency is test latency and how quickly do they complete An example of reliability is test reliability and how often your test delivers good signal Productivity Engineering Maturity Model (5 stages): Ignorance: Not know about or not prioritizing developer productivity Awareness: Forming a team focused on addressing highest pain points for example around continuous integration or testing Initiation: Merging KPIs into a common productivity goal and creating dashboards Refinement: Making recommendations on dashboards to improve productivity Mastery: Automating and integrating productivity improvements into workflows Advice for smaller companies: Keep an ear on the ground for industry research from companies like Google and Microsoft, and leverage frameworks like SPACE and DevEx to measure and improve productivity. The importance of nudging teams in the right direction rather than mandating productivity solutions, allowing teams to find their own paths to improvement. Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    51 min

  5. 13/02/2024

    Ep. 31: ReframeOps - Rethinking problems, feedback loops, and multiplayer collaboration with Brit Myers

    Our work could be more fun if…. My engineers could be happier if… Is this the right problem to solve?... Software development is all about solving hard problems in fun and creative ways and asking these questions in the work we do allows us to think more creatively. Our guest, Brit Myers, loves to ask these types of questions and solve them with her high performing teams.  Today, we dig into how we can make sure we are asking the right questions to ensure we are solving the right problems, learning from failure, how to build high performing teams, how we can think about metrics as feedback loops and more! Brit was born and raised in Cleveland, Ohio and has 4 kids. She received her BS in Mathematics from Carnegie Mellon and has recently completed her Executive MBA from University of Michigan. During undergrad she had no intentions of getting into tech but during an internship she fell in love with programming. With over 15 years of experience now under her belt, she is a technology leader with experience in scaling high-performing engineering teams and building platforms across various industries. She worked at Hyland as AVP of Cloud Engineer, at Firebolt Analytics as Head of Cloud Engineering, and currently is the VP of engineering at System Initiative where she leads a team of talented engineers creating a new collaborative power tool designed to remove the "papercuts" from DevOps work. When our guest is not eliminating "papercuts" from DevOps she is spending time with her family,  building DIY projects with her kids, or working outside in her garden. Her passion is building amazing things with amazing people, so it was only fitting she join us on the show today. Enjoy! Connect with Brit: LinkedIn Discord Twitter System Initiative and Open Beta Signup Sponsor: Get Space: Want to collect feedback directly from your engineers? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience. Show notes and helpful resources: Brit Myers Readme Second Wave of DevOps blog post by System Initiative’s Co-founder and CEO, Adam Jacob Important advice she got from her grandfather: Figure out what people in power want and find a way to give it to them She views metrics and trends more as signals to ask questions rather than definitive answers; you need to look at context Strongly values empowering teams and giving them autonomy to make decisions Asks for feedback often to model good practices and help teams develop skills Focuses on facilitating the right conversations and alignment through process At System Initiative, she is building a collaborative DevOps platform to create infrastructure simulations and remove friction from workflows System Initiative is described by Adam Jacob (CEO) as if Figma and Miro had a DevOps Baby and it is changing how we collaborate Overall advice: Keep focused on the outcomes you want to achieve in software development and don't lose sight of them amidst new technologies and frameworks Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    1 h

  6. 23/01/2024

    Ep. 30: Creating SPACE for Joy - Exploring Developer Productivity with Justin Reock

    Today on Building With People For People we delve into what and how we make our workspaces not just productive, but also joyful. Have you ever wondered what elements contribute to that feeling of fulfillment in your job? Is it flow state, or the immediacy of feedback, or the camaraderie of an exceptional team? These aspects are pivotal for anyone's career satisfaction and effectiveness, no matter their field. But our focus is how do we gauge and enhance the developer experience? It's more than just crunching numbers on things like build times or pull request cycle time. While these quantitative metrics have their place, they only paint part of the picture. The true essence lies in understanding the human factor behind these numbers, because, at the end of the day, we create tools for each other, as people. We are joined today by Justin Reock, an extremely passionate software engineer who makes it his daily mission to help engineers find happiness and joy in their work. We dive into his involvement in the Developer Experience community, frameworks you can use to help think about how and what data to collect to increase developer experience, and providing environments where developers can thrive like an internal developer portal. Justin has held roles like Solutions Architect and Chief Architect, previously worked at Gradle as their Field CTO and Chief Evangelist and is currently the Head of Developer Relations at Cortex.io, focusing on transforming businesses through internal developer portals. He is also a part of a movement to pull together multiple disciplines to discuss ways in which we can improve engineering productivity. When our guest is not helping engineers find joy in their work he is playing games of any format (board, video, etc), running, reading, grilling, and he and his wife are renovating their RV! Connect with Justin: LinkedIn Twitter Sponsor: Get Space: Do you know if your engineers experience joy in your organization? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code buildwithpeople and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience Show notes and helpful resources: Theory of Constraints as defined in The Goal by Eliyahu Goldratt The Phoenix Project book Justin’s early tech toys - Atari 2600+ and the Tandy 1000 EX Personal Computer He is creating a programable relay system for his RV using Rust Other videos of Justin: DevOps, 12 Factor, and Open Source and Breeding 10x Developers Beauty of open source is its ability to enable and equalize the playing field Internal Developer Portal - A system that attempts to pull disparate system data and put it in one place to make a predictive and personalized space The SPACE of Developer Productivity - A holistic developer productivity framework combining both workflow metrics and perception metrics. Developers mostly think about “Activity” metrics like lines of code or number of builds but we need to give equal weight to the perception metrics, the "Satisfaction" and "Communication" dimensions of SPACE If you curate a better experience for your developers you will lead to better productivity outcomes DORA - is only one part of the value stream, it is the creation and deployment of an artifact and captures throughput, but it doesn’t capture everything before that like writing the code, or meetings or slack messages SPACE is seeking a balance between the five metrics and wants to tell a story about the tension that exists between the different dimensions. The secret of SPACE is it is immune to Goodhart’s law - “When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure” Gitlab DevSecOps 2022 Survey The DevOps Handbook Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    1 h 22 min

  7. 12/12/2023

    Ep. 29: Listen To Your Users - The Power of User Experience Design Thinking with Satyam Kantamneni

    Products are designed and created for their users right? Well at least they should be. A 2021 McKinsey Global Digital Sentiment Insights survey sites that 56% of users of digital services state they are dissatisfied by the user experience.  Today, we are joined by Satyam Kantamneni, a master of design thinking to shed some light on why this might be and to share his insights on how we can create user-centric organizations that leave users delighted while also driving business growth through the practice of User Experience Design. Satyam has a Bachelors in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Osmania University, an MS, of Human Factors Engineering from Wright State University, has attended Stanford, the School of Design Thinking, and received his Executive MBA from Harvard Business School.  He is currently the Managing Partner and Chief Experience Officer at UX Reactor. He has developed and curated the PragmaticUX framework, which is a scalable, consistent, replicable, and measurable approach to innovation in a digital world.  A subset of the framework is captured in his book:  User Experience Design: A Practical playbook to Fuel Business Growth. As our guest says Good Design is Good Business. Connect with Satyam: LinkedIn Website Email Sponsor: Get Space: Do you know if your developer’s user experience is a good one? Install Get Space’s real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year to get real insights in your your engineers experience Show notes and helpful resources: User Experience Design: A Practical Playbook to Fuel Business Growth Bv.d = m.p.p.e; Business value by design = Mindsets, Process, People and Environments The Experience Value Chain The 5 Mindsets Design is Business - Google Design Presentation by Satyam Collaboration Trinity - Magic happens when you have an Experience Strategist, a Product Owner, and an Engineering Architect As apart of Experience Transformation, everyone in your organization should be able to tell you four things: 1. Who are your top users; 2. What their top 5 pain points are; 3. What the org is doing to solve these pain points; 4. Knowing how the organization measures outcomes You should be collecting 3 research Insights: formative, sensorial and validation Formative: collecting insights on biggest user pain points Sensorial: collecting continuous real-time data about my users so I can adjust in real time Validation: collecting insights around where I have solved my top user pain points The power is knowing your user, tracking their journey, and constantly delivering user delight Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    59 min

  8. 14/11/2023

    Ep. 28: With Great Metrics Comes Great Responsibility - Max Kanat-Alexander on Developer Productivity at LinkedIn

    Developer Productivity Engineering is becoming more and more a mainstream idea. But what does it mean and how does it apply to me? Today we talk with an engineering wizard, Max Kanat-Alexander about how his company, LinkedIn, thinks about developer productivity. Using his team as framing we will investigate methodologies and approaches he and his team use that enables happier and more productive engineers. Max has held numerous roles throughout his career including Chief Architect for the open-source Bugzilla project and Tech Lead for Code Health at Google. Currently he is a Principal Staff Software Engineer at LinkedIn and is the founding technical lead for the Knowledge Systems team inside of the Productivity & Happiness org. He is also the author of two books, Code Simplicity which is now available for free online, and Understanding Software. When our guest is not finding ways to help engineers be more productive, he is spending time with his two-year-old son and making music. Our guest is an absolute delight, is a fountain of endless knowledge, is always so enthusiastic about helping others and I hope you enjoy our conversation about developer productivity with him today. Connect with Max: LinkedIn Blog Website Twitter Sponsor: Get Space: Install Get Space's real-time survey iteration tool now with code "buildwithpeople" and get 20% off your first year Show notes and helpful resources: Three pillars of focus for Max’s team: 1. Metrics, 2. Feedback and 3. Knowledge DPE Summit 2023 Talk Definition of developer productivity at LinkedIn - A developer can effectively and efficiently accomplish their intentions regarding the systems they are attempting to build and they are happy with the systems, tools, processes, and facilities that are involved in software development Max designed a metric called “Code Reviewer Response Time” - He will be releasing open source notes soon with more info You need to show metrics to the people who can take action on them and you need to show them metrics that they want to take action on Always start with the goals of the business or goals of team and if a team cannot tell you or cannot tell you what their metrics should be its because they do not know what their goals are Any survey is better than no survey and free text feedback is very valuable LinkedIn uses both a quarterly survey and a real-time feedback system Using their real-time feedback system they found that satisfaction rating is .5% higher than quarterly surveys Two questions he would ask when starting a survey are: 1. Using a 0-5 scale: “I regularly reach a high level of productivity”, and 2. Free text feedback: “What are some aspects of development that have frustrated you in the last three months?” High quality up-to-date documentation is the highest productivity driver 2023 DORA report For more show notes visit podcast.unfilteredbuild.com. Building something cool or solving interesting problems? Want to be on this show? Send me an email at jointhepodcast@unfilteredbuild.com Podcast produced by Unfiltered Build - dream.design.develop.

    59 min
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As software engineers, we build software with people and we build software for people; to enhance, improve, optimize and make our everyday lives better. Every month I am joined by guests from all reaches of the software world to discuss their unique journeys, why we build software, discussions on a specific software related topic, and we examine problems they are solving through the products they are building. Topics discussed include software development, engineering enablement, frameworks, DevOps, mentoring, accessibility, leadership, accessibility, testing, soft skills, and more.

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