Allan Leinwand, SVP of Engineering @ Slack shares his core philosophy & approach to creating developer productivity AND happiness! You’ll learn how Allan combines what developers want most + metrics, & analysis of the dev pipeline to optimize productivity. Allan covers how to translate those principles to remote/hybrid work and how to tell (and what to do...) if your dev teams are unhappy.

"I generally say developers want to do three things... They want to solve hard problems at scale. They want to see that hard problem when they solve it... get put to use! The third thing that I think, honestly, is they just don't want to work with jerks. I think if you master those three things then you end up with a very happy and productive development team."

ALLAN LEINWAND SVP ENGINEERING @ SLACK

Prior to leading engineering & operations at Slack, Allan was Chief Technology Officer at ServiceNow, where he was responsible for overseeing all technical aspects and strategy. He has co-founded and held senior leadership positions at multiple companies and was a venture capital investor for seven years. He founded Vyatta (acquired by Brocade), the open-source networking company, and co-authored “Cisco Router Configuration” and “Network Management: A Practical Perspective” and has been granted a patent in the field of data routing.

Leinwand previously served as an adjunct professor at the University of California, Berkeley where he taught on the subjects of computer networks, network management, and network design. He holds a BS in Computer Science from the University of Colorado at Boulder.
 

SHOWNOTES

• Your team is more than the metrics! (2:19)
• The cyclical pattern & lifecycle of developer productivity (4:05)
• Allan’s essential components to developer productivity (7:48)
• How to account for people behind the metrics (12:12)
• The goal is not the metrics! The goal is to understand developer workflow! (17:40)
• How to know if your dev teams are happy (26:49)
• What to do if developer productivity goes up, but dev happiness goes down… (30:55)
• Staying present & how to context switch effectively (34:32)
• How to identify metrics serving the wrong purpose or incentivizing the wrong behavior (38:12)
• How Allan’s principles on dev happiness & productivity translate to remote & hybrid work (39:29)
• Takeaways (42:46)

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