Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

How LinkedIn defines and tracks key developer productivity metrics | Grant Jenks (LinkedIn)

Dec 6, 2023

Abi Noda chats with Grant Jenks from LinkedIn about their developer insights platform, iHub. They discuss qualitative versus quantitative metrics, choosing the right metrics, and using AI in developer productivity teams. Topics covered include winsorized means, composite scores, and the difficulties of answering simple questions.

52:23

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Grant Jenks

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Quick takeaways

LinkedIn's developer insights platform, iHub, collects build, CI, and deployment data to provide teams with valuable metrics and data for data-informed decisions.

Combining qualitative and quantitative metrics is crucial for obtaining actionable insights in the productivity space, as subjective human input and objective machine-derived metrics both offer valuable perspectives.

The Insights Hub platform at LinkedIn has evolved from a collection of dashboards to a suite of products that aim to provide actionable metrics, measure productivity, and facilitate operational reviews for teams at LinkedIn.

Deep dives

LinkedIn's developer insights platform iHub and its history

Grant Janks discusses LinkedIn's developer insights platform called iHub and its history. The platform collects build data, CI data, and deployment data using business intelligence tools like Power BI and Tableau. The goal is to provide a single destination for metrics and data, allowing teams to understand and manage their metrics effectively to make data-informed decisions.

Empowering Innovation Through Embeddings Model

00:37

Goals Signals Metrics Framework Explained

02:43

Shifting from Commit Success Rate to CI Reliability

01:10

Introduction

2min

Qualitative vs Quantitative Metrics

9min

Defining and Tracking Developer Productivity Metrics

21min

Different Types of Metrics for Developer Productivity

7min

The Pros and Cons of Composite Metrics

8min

Exploring ways to use AI in engineering work and transforming data analytics and productivity insights

5min

In this episode, Abi chats with Grant Jenks, Senior Staff SWE, Engineering Insights @ LinkedIn. They dive into LinkedIn's developer insights platform, iHub, and its backstory. The conversation covers qualitative versus quantitative metrics, sharing concerns about these terms and exploring their correlation. The episode wraps up with technical topics like winsorized means, thoughts on composite scores, and ways AI can benefit developer productivity teams.

(1:10) Insights in the productivity space
(7:13) LinkedIn's metrics platform, iHub
(12:52) Making metrics actionable
(15:35) Choosing the right and wrong metrics
(19:39) The difficulty of answering simple questions
(26:23) Top-down vs. bottom-up approach to metrics
(32:12) Winsorized mean and selecting measurements
(39:25) Using composite metrics
(46:57) Using AI in developer productivity

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Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

How LinkedIn defines and tracks key developer productivity metrics | Grant Jenks (LinkedIn)

Episode guests

Podcast summary created with Snipd AI

Quick takeaways

Deep dives

LinkedIn's developer insights platform iHub and its history

Qualitative and quantitative aspects of insights

The challenge of qualitative and quantitative metrics

The insights hub platform at LinkedIn

Challenges with using composite metrics

Empowering Innovation Through Embeddings Model

Goals Signals Metrics Framework Explained

Shifting from Commit Success Rate to CI Reliability

Remember Everything You Learn from Podcasts