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Tech Lead Journal

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Jun 21, 2021 • 58min

#43 - The SPACE of Developer Productivity and New Future of Work - Dr. Jenna Butler

“Hybrid work is here to stay. It is going to continue. But we want to make sure that it comes in a way that’s equitable and everyone gets to experience the benefits of it." Dr. Jenna Butler is a Visiting Research Fellow at Microsoft Research in the Productivity and Intelligence Team. She is also an adjunct Professor at Bellevue College in radiation therapy. In this episode, Dr. Jenna shared about the SPACE of developer productivity framework and how developer teams can use the 5 dimensions to measure and increase productivity. Dr. Jenna also shared about the New Future of Work research by Microsoft, especially on the impact of working from home on people and their well-being. Towards the end, Dr. Jenna also mentioned some predictions of the new future of work post COVID-19, that includes some of the upcoming and exciting tools and the potential societal impact of this new work environment. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:54] SPACE of Developer Productivity - [00:10:06] S = Satisfaction and Well-being - [00:13:48] P = Performance - [00:17:45] A = Activity - [00:19:53] C = Communication and Collaboration - [00:21:50] E = Efficiency and Flow - [00:27:11] New Future of Work - [00:31:26] Emotional Aspect of WFH - [00:35:52] Remote Work Meetings - [00:40:00] Impact of WFH to Well-being - [00:44:52] The New Future of Work Predictions - [00:49:08] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:53:17] _____ Dr. Jenna’s Bio Dr. Jenna Butler is a Senior Software Engineer who is currently doing a Research Fellowship with Microsoft Research in the Productivity and Intelligence Team. She received her PhD in Computer Science from Western University in Canada in 2015. Her work examined cancer simulation using cellular automata with a focus on the hallmarks of cancer and combination therapy. She has always been interested in interdisciplinary studies and the intersection of different fields such as biology and computer science, social science, technology. Currently, she is focusing on developer productivity, specifically on the human element in software engineering. She is interested in individual and team well-being, decision making within an organization, relationships between engineering disciplines, and diversity in engineering organizations. Follow Dr. Jenna: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-jenna-butler-44209a3b/ Website – https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/people/jennbu/ Researchgate – https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Jenna-Butler-6 Email – jennbu@microsoft.com Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/43.
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Jun 14, 2021 • 53min

#42 - Chaos Engineering - Mikołaj Pawlikowski

“Chaos engineering is the discipline of experimenting on the system in order to increase your confidence that the system will survive difficult conditions." Mikołaj Pawlikowski is an engineering lead at Bloomberg and the author of “Chaos Engineering: Site reliability through controlled disruption“. In this episode, Miko shared about what chaos engineering is, including clarifications on some of the common misconceptions. Miko also mentioned about the chaos engineering tools, steps and prerequisites to do chaos engineering, and the skill set required of a chaos engineer, and how we should explain the rationale and motivation behind chaos engineering to get the management buy-in. Towards the end, Miko also shared about chaos engineering for people; an interesting excerpt taken from his book, and his mission over the last few years to make chaos engineering boring. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:26] Chaos Engineering - [00:05:15] “Chaos“ in Chaos Engineering - [00:08:37] Getting Management Buy-in - [00:13:08] Running in Production - [00:18:29] Other Common Misconceptions - [00:20:53] 4 Steps to Chaos Engineering - [00:25:41] Skill Set of a Chaos Engineer - [00:28:11] Examples of Chaos Engineering Tools - [00:32:09] Chaos Engineering for People - [00:37:48] Make Chaos Engineering Boring - [00:42:08] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:46:12] _____ Mikołaj Pawlikowski’s Bio Mikołaj Pawlikowski is an engineering lead at Bloomberg. He’s the author of “Chaos Engineering: Site reliability through controlled disruption”, a frequent speaker, and the maintainer of Goldpinger and PowerfuSeal open source projects. Follow Mikołaj: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/mikolajpawlikowski/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/mikopawlikowski Github – https://github.com/seeker89/chaos-engineering-book “Chaos Engineering“ book – https://www.manning.com/books/chaos-engineering Chaos Engineering Newsletter – https://chaosengineering.news/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/42.
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Jun 7, 2021 • 59min

#41 - Building a Cybersecurity Career & Pandemic Security Gaps - Tony Jarvis

“Back when work from home became suddenly virtually overnight, it was all about enabling the business to continue. A lot of this move was rushed out of necessity, but the focus was on speed. The focus was not on security. And security took a backseat." Tony Jarvis is a CISO advisor and cybersecurity strategist who has advised Fortune 500 clients across the world and served as a thought leader within the industry. In this episode, Tony shared about the importance of network and Operating System knowledge in cybersecurity, the awareness of and attitude towards cybersecurity in enterprises, as well as the security gaps arising from the pandemic. Tony also shared his career journey, including his mid-career crisis, as well as some tips and wisdom for those who are interested in cybersecurity. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:24] Networking and OS Knowledge Importance - [00:10:04] Getting Started in Cybersecurity - [00:15:24] Mitigating Cybersecurity Risks - [00:20:04] Executive Awareness About Cybersecurity - [00:24:09] Some Cybersecurity Tips - [00:29:24] Security Gaps Due to Pandemic - [00:32:22] Interesting Cybersecurity Case - [00:38:32] Tony’s Mid-Career Crisis - [00:43:30] Out-of-Comfort Zone Career Principle - [00:49:13] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:53:47] _____ Tony Jarvis’s Bio Tony is passionate about educating audiences on the risks posed by modern cyber threats and advises business leaders as they undertake major cybersecurity transformation projects and initiatives. Having held a variety of leadership and advisory roles with recognisable brands such as Citrix, Check Point, FireEye, Standard Chartered Bank and Telstra, he has developed an acute understanding of how to successfully deliver cybersecurity engagements which strategically align with business objectives. He blends hands-on technical experience with a unique ability to distill complex ideas into language that resonates with all stakeholders, recognising that security is best addressed holistically, from the C-suite to frontline workers. Follow Tony: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/tony-jarvis/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/TonyJamesJarvis Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/41.
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May 24, 2021 • 50min

#40 - Data-Driven DevOps With Launchable - Kohsuke Kawaguchi

“By and large, the way people put together the delivery process is by gut and instinct. The next step up from there is to use the data that comes out of your system to help you make the right decisions. When I say data-driven DevOps, don’t rely on this human experience, and let the system tell you. We should be able to find that kind of information from data." Kohsuke Kawaguchi is widely known as the creator of Jenkins and currently is the co-CEO & co-founder of Launchable. In this episode, Kohsuke shared about data-driven DevOps, developers productivity, the future of software testing, and why he created Launchable to help us move closer to achieve those. And in the beginning of the episode, Kohsuke shared his story on how he created Hudson during his time at Sun Microsystems, which eventually led to become Jenkins, the most popular open-source CI/CD tool used by millions. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:24] Hudson/Jenkins Story - [00:07:30] Current CI/CD Landscape - [00:12:18] Developer Productivity - [00:15:04] Improving Our Productivity - [00:17:06] Launchable - [00:21:06] Launchable Customer Story - [00:33:54] Future of Software Testing - [00:37:13] Data-Driven DevOps - [00:40:41] Running Launchable - [00:44:09] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:14] _____ Kohsuke Kawaguchi’s Bio Kohsuke is the co-CEO & co-founder of Launchable. He is passionate about developer productivity. He created Jenkins, the most popular open-source CI/CD system used by millions. As CTO of CloudBees, he helped CloudBees go from <10 to 400+. Kohsuke has received the O’Reilly Open-source Award, JavaOne Rockstar, Japan OSS Contributor Award, and Rakuten Technology Award. Follow Kohsuke: Website – https://kohsuke.org/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/kohsukekawa LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/kohsukekawaguchi/ Launchable – https://www.launchableinc.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/40.
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May 17, 2021 • 1h 8min

#39 - Relearning ABCDEFG & Enabling Technology for Social Impact - Jim Lim

“Technology is really impacting our daily life, sometimes without us knowing, and it’s important that we start understanding or relearning what is ABCDEFG. In the future of business, or future of work, there are many use cases of technology that are non-traditional, non-techie people need to learn and know how to use them." Jim Lim is the founder of the socio-techno network 59stVentures, the healthcare sector lead for NCS, and previously the CEO of Good Doctor Technology. In this episode, I had a fun conversation with Jim to redefine ABCDEFG, which is a shorthand for a set of modern immersive technologies that are rapidly affecting our daily life, sometimes without us even knowing. ABCDEFG stands for AI, Blockchain, Cloud, Data, Ecosystem, and 5G. Jim also shared with me his unique multicultural career journey and the reasons why he started 59stVentures as a way to pay it forward and contribute back to the society. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:25] Embracing Multicultural - [00:11:15] Pay It Forward - [00:15:10] The 59 Number - [00:19:43] Redefining ABCDEFG - [00:21:57] A = AI - [00:26:15] B = Blockchain - [00:36:40] C = Cloud - [00:42:33] D = Data - [00:47:41] E = Ecosystem - [00:49:56] FG = 5G - [00:54:39] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:01:50] _____ Jim Lim’s Bio Jim is the founder of 59stVentures, a socio-techno network focussing in leveraging expertise, experiences and connections of senior executives globally to contribute back to the society. He is currently also the healthcare sector lead for NCS tasked to build digital healthcare ecosystem and to expand NCS footprint regionally. Jim also sits in the board of startup companies in China, Taiwan, Singapore and India. Prior to this, he was CEO for Good Doctor Technology, a Joint-Venture between PingAn Good Doctor from China and Grab. He joined the company as first employee to setup the entire business in Indonesia and Singapore. Jim is currently also adjunct lecturer for NUS, SUSS, Huawei University and FinTech Academy. Before Good Doctor, Jim was the Global Senior Director in Group Chief Transformation Office in Huawei Technologies and its Regional Chief Technology Officer for strategic digital transformation projects in APAC, focussing on digital transformation cross industries (e.g. Telco, Smart Nation/City, Retail, Healthcare, Logistics, Agriculture), domains (e.g. Cloud, IoT, Big Data, Mobile Money, Connectivity) and aspects (e.g. Business Modelling, Customer Journey, Design Thinking, Org. Change). Follow Jim: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-lim-shien-min-pmp-ba537a1/ Email – shienmin@gmail.com Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/39.
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May 10, 2021 • 1h 7min

#38 - The Tech Executive Operating System - Aviv Ben-Yosef

“Tech Capital is about creating something that enables things that weren’t possible before, that genuinely helps the business and enables other people in your organization, and those are the kind of stuffs that eventually end up paying long term." Aviv Ben-Yosef is an advisor and consultant for tech executives to help them create world-class engineering teams. In this episode, Aviv shared with me in-depth about “The Tech Executive Operating System“, his latest book for first-timers and veteran tech leaders to maximize their leverage, which includes the axioms of tech leadership, producing Tech Capital to drive value vs obsessing about tech debt, shifting the engineers mindset to create impact by adopting “Coders Without Borders“ mentality, moving up the decision stream to increase leverage, how to create impact within the organization, importance of product mastery, and organizational debt. Towards the end, Aviv also explained why we should not forget to put more emphasis on product-oriented engineers, instead of principal engineers who focus solely on just the tech. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:50] Tech Executive Operating System - [00:08:00] Why Does the Company Need You - [00:09:40] Executive Leadership is Long-Term - [00:12:30] Tech Capital - [00:14:00] Coders Without Borders - [00:17:49] First 100 Days - [00:20:43] Moving Upstream - [00:25:48] Balancing the Time - [00:32:55] Management by Walking Around - [00:37:06] Creating Impact - [00:39:58] R&D - [00:45:05] Organizational Debt - [00:51:06] Conway’s Law and Microservices - [00:54:15] Product Mastery - [00:55:24] Product 101 - [00:58:29] Less Principal Engineers, More Product Engineers - [01:01:39] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:03:48] _____ Aviv Ben-Yosef’s Bio Aviv Ben-Yosef is an advisor, coach, and consultant for executives and leaders throughout the tech industry. In his consulting business, he helps companies worldwide, ranging from day-old startups to Fortune 100 companies. Aviv’s mission is to help create world-class engineering teams that achieve the unthinkable by upgrading tech from a tool to part of the strategy, amassing Tech Capital, and creating Coders without Borders. In his work as a consultant, Aviv has developed a unique approach to aid software organizations’ leadership. Aviv’s online writing has reached over six million readers, and his publishing includes multiple blogs, podcasts, videos, and online courses. He is the author of The Tech Executive Operating System, a book for first-timers and veteran tech leaders who seek to maximize their leverage. Follow Aviv: Website – https://avivbenyosef.com/ The Tech Exec Podcast – https://www.techexecpodcast.com/ LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/avivbenyosef/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/avivby Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/38.
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May 3, 2021 • 56min

#37 - Lean Inception & Fun Retrospectives - Paulo Caroli

“Lean Inception is about aligning a group of people to be successful. It’s about aligning the vision and the MVP from three different angles: the business, the users, and the engineers, so they align and decide what is the very first step." Paulo Caroli is a Principal consultant at Thoughtworks, co-founder of Agile Brazil, and the author of the best-seller Lean Inception and the recent FunRetrospectives. In this episode, Paulo shared in-depth with me about Lean Inception, its connection with Lean Startup movement, the similarities and differences with Design Sprint, how to create a good product vision, MVP canvas, and also the importance of shifting our mindset from project to product. In the second half of our conversation, Paulo shared his latest contribution, FunRetrospectives, which brings together many techniques to conduct effective retrospectives. He explained the reasoning behind the fun techniques, shared some of those fun activities, and also emphasized the importance of psychological safety and facilitation skills in a retrospective. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:43] Lean Inception - [00:08:35] Lean Inception and Design Sprint - [00:14:06] Lean Inception Frequency - [00:17:18] Lean Inception Agenda - [00:20:33] Product Vision - [00:29:41] MVP Canvas - [00:33:50] Fun Retrospectives - [00:38:44] Retrospective Celebration Activities - [00:41:28] Lightweight Environment - [00:44:52] Retrospective Check-in - [00:48:29] Facilitation Skills - [00:50:24] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:52:47] _____ Paulo Caroli’s Bio Paulo Caroli is the author of the best-seller Lean Inception: how to align people and build the right product. His most recent contribution is FunRetrospectives, which brings together numerous techniques to conduct effective retrospectives. As a principal consultant at ThoughtWorks, he helped transform dozens of organisations worldwide. Follow Paulo: Website – https://www.caroli.org/en/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/paulocaroli LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/paulocaroli/ FunRetrospectives – https://www.funretrospectives.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/37.
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Apr 26, 2021 • 1h 1min

#36 - Building High-Performing Teams with Observability and CI/CD - Charity Majors

“A high-performing team is one that gets to spend almost all of their time solving interesting problems that move the business forward. Not doing a lot of toil. Not working on things they have to do in order to get to the things they want to do." Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, the observability tools for engineering teams to debug production systems faster and smarter. In this episode, we discussed in-depth about building high-performing teams by having observability and CI/CD as the critical pillars to support it. We opened up our discussion discussing what observability is and how Honeycomb helps to provide observability for distributed systems compared to the other monitoring tools available. Charity then shared her strong views on how to build high-performing teams by focusing on Continuous Delivery, the sociotechnical aspects of the team, and the 5th key metric as her addition to the widely known DORA metrics. Towards the end, we discussed the engineer/manager pendulum, how one should be conscious about it, and that we should not treat going into management as a promotion or a one-way street. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:04] Observability and Monitoring - [00:10:52] Observability Mindset - [00:13:08] Implementing Observability - [00:15:09] Observability Pillars - [00:18:35] Honeycomb Overview - [00:20:06] Honeycomb Cool Use Cases - [00:27:02] Writing Custom Database - [00:28:40] Building High-Performing Team - [00:31:20] 15-Min Continuous Delivery - [00:34:45] Testing in Production - [00:36:05] Shipping is Company’s Heartbeat - [00:38:47] Sociotechnical Aspect of Teams - [00:41:01] Good Traits to Look for in Engineers - [00:43:17] The 5th Key Metric - [00:45:51] Engineer/Manager Pendulum - [00:48:45] Effective Manager - [00:54:21] Concerns on Manager/IC Pendulum - [00:55:19] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:56:49] _____ Charity Majors’s Bio Charity Majors is the co-founder and CTO of Honeycomb, provider of tools for engineering teams to debug production systems faster and smarter. Previously, Charity ran infrastructure at Parse and was an engineering manager at Facebook, where she ran next-generation distributed systems at scale. Charity is the co-author of Database Reliability Engineering (O’Reilly), and is devoted to a world where every engineer is on call and nobody thinks on call sucks. Follow Charity: Twitter – https://twitter.com/mipsytipsy LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/charity-majors/ Website – https://charity.wtf/ Honeycomb – https://www.honeycomb.io/ O11ycast – https://www.heavybit.com/library/podcasts/o11ycast/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (incl. quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/36.
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Apr 19, 2021 • 54min

#35 - AirAsia Super App Transformation and Lessons from COVID-19 Pandemic - Pablo Sanz

“One of the technological opportunities that we have taken during the pandemic has been transforming the mindset to thinking on products, to thinking on platforms. And I think that’s the foundations of the super app." Pablo Sanz is the CTO of AirAsia. In this episode, Pablo shared with me the tough challenges that AirAsia had to go through during the recent COVID-19 pandemic, and how it has to pivot and transform in order to survive. He explained what the AirAsia leadership team did to align the company vision and steer the business and technology roadmaps during the challenging situations while keeping the people’s morale high. Pablo also shared the recent AirAsia ambition and transformation as a company from being a traditional airline company into becoming a digital platform and ASEAN super app, and how he envisioned to build a data-driven product engineering culture within AirAsia and to continue coming up with innovations based on data-driven hypotheses. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:09] Changing Career into Tech - [00:07:08] AirAsia Recent COVID Challenges - [00:11:18] Transforming Into Super App Platform - [00:14:03] Aligning Vision - [00:18:31] AirAsia Data Platform - [00:21:02] Aligning Technology Roadmap with Business - [00:27:07] Keeping The Morale High - [00:29:35] Critical Things of a Super App - [00:33:24] Integrating with Partners - [00:35:38] Frequency of Deployments - [00:38:59] Data-Driven Product Engineering Culture - [00:40:45] From Gut-Based to Data-Driven - [00:42:50] Recent Interesting A/B Tests - [00:46:30] Embracing Innovation Mindset - [00:48:19] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:52] _____ Pablo Sanz’s Bio Pablo Sanz is the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at AirAsia. He is a product and technology enthusiast, leading an awesome team to scale all product, design, engineering, and data, while transforming an airline into the definitive ASEAN super app. Follow Pablo: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablo-sanz-69409619 Email – pablosanz@airasia.com Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/35.
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Apr 12, 2021 • 1h

#34 - Improving Developers’ Productivity With Universal Code Search and Sourcegraph - Beyang Liu

“Developer productivity is not lines of code written. It’s not the number of commits. It has to do with the ultimate problem you’re solving and the users that you’re solving it for." Beyang Liu is the CTO and co-founder of Sourcegraph, a developer tools company that brings universal code search capability for developers. In this episode, Beyang shared with me his perspective about developers’ productivity and how we should go about measuring developers’ productivity, including the danger of measuring productivity by using proxy metrics. We then discussed the rationale for universal code search and why he thinks there is a massive need for it to increase developers’ productivity, borrowing from his experience working at Google, and especially to cope in the current era of “Big Code”. Towards the end, Beyang shared how individuals can improve their personal developer productivity and what the future state of developer tools would look like. Also, listen to some of the Sourcegraph cool use cases that Beyang shared based on the feedback given by his customers. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:53] Developers Productivity - [00:07:47] Measuring Developers Productivity - [00:12:15] The Danger of Proxy Metrics - [00:16:51] Productivity in Enterprise vs Startup - [00:23:40] Rationale for Code Search - [00:26:54] Code Search Case Studies - [00:33:16] Other Useful Developer Tools - [00:38:32] Ex-Googler’s Guide to Developer Tools - [00:42:20] Improving Personal Developer Productivity - [00:46:07] Future State of Developer Tools - [00:49:32] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:54:28] _____ Beyang Liu’s Bio Beyang is the CTO and cofounder of Sourcegraph, a developer tools company bringing universal code search to every developer in open source and every software organization, including leading companies like Uber, Dropbox, Yelp, PayPal, Cloudflare, and more. Follow Beyang: Twitter – https://twitter.com/beyang LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/beyang-liu/ Website – https://beyang.org Sourcegraph – https://sourcegraph.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/34.

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