Conference Report: The Lead Developer NY 2017

A report on The Lead Developer NY, a conference I attended in February 2017. Talk given at Cocoaheads Ottawa/Gatineau on March 9th, 2017

Transcript

1. Conference Report The Lead Developer NY Philippe Casgrain February 2017
2. Overview • What is The Lead Developer NY • What topics were broached • Selected talks • Website and videos
3. What is it? A conference for senior or lead developers, with an emphasis on career growth and a sprinkling of technical talks.
4. Sample technical talks • Swift in 10 minutes • Guide to serverless • Blocking and chaining • Why I ❤ Polymer Usually lasting around 10 minutes, these talks are designed to pique your interest
5. Selected talks • Rebooting culture • Making developers on support work for everyone • The building built on stilts • Retrospectives - Look back, move forward • Leads go home - and take your reports with you! • You're the tech lead! Now what? • Lending privilege
6. Rebooting culture Camille Fournier Rent the Runway
7. Started with a culture of fear Converted to a culture of trust
8. Speed—Getting things done • Release once a week to once a day • Make coordination be less of an issue • Be impatient: look for bottlenecks, how to make lives better • Structure :: Transparency • Consequence of growth and scale
9. Structure • Helps people focus on their work—guardrails • Important to know where structure came from • Learning from failure • Success is a poor teacher
10. Relatedness • You are part of a team • Psychological safety • Admit guilt, move on • Avoid shame • The all-important 1:1 • Show you care as a human
11. Conflict • Inevitable • Share more • Replace it with curiosity No boring meetings
12. Developers on Support Camille Acey
13. “All-hands” support eventually changes to “Some- hands” support
14. Involving developers • Can increase support capacity temporarily • Better appreciation for Support • Increased empathy
15. The building build on stilts Nickolas Means
16. The story of the Citibank Building
17. Engineering challenge • Architect: Hugh Stubbins • Engineer: William LeMessurier • Structural load • Wind load • Oscillation dampening
19. Turns out... • Building less resistant to wind • 1:200 became 1:55 • Oscillation dampener runs on electricity • 1:55 became 1:16
20. LeMessurier saw the problem • Steel structure inadequate • Calculations became irrelevant • Proposed solution with expensive welders • Crew worked around the clock to avoid hurricane season
21. Today, that building is of course standing • LeMessurier only had a small fine paid by his insurance • Now a case study in engineering ethics classes
22. Retrospectives - Look back, move forward Jessie Link Twitter
23. Typical retrospectives get stale • When they are poorly facilitated • When things don't change or improve
24. Common mistakes • Agenda or pre-determined answer • Biais in the process • Airing of grievances • Ready stickies one-by-one • Post-mortem is not a retro • Retro is all about clustering
25. The four Ls • Liked • Lacked • Longed For • Learned Tactical vs persistent
26. Draw the sprint
27. Timeline retro
28. Gratitude retro High-risk, high-reward
29. Leads go home - and take your reports with you! Rafael Lopez Diez
30. Culture of workaholism
31. Do not compliment people who work long hours
32. Lead by example
33. You're the tech lead! Now what? Erin O'Neil
34. Tech lead is the owner of the technological vision It's about making food software with a team That team is made of people
35. Facilitate • Help other people do their job • Always ask yourself “what's next?” • Remove roadblocks in advance • Use tickets / hours / burndown to predict and look ahead • Data makes things less personal
36. You will get interrupted a lot
37. Advocate • Write everything down • Email conversations, meeting minutes • Then you know what you agreed on • Developers want to do things right (beware of over- engineering) • Management • Give them the facts with data • Give them options
38. Say NO to feature creep Go back to requirements
39. Motivate • Your attitude matters • Passive-aggressive whiteboarding • Instrinsic motivations • Trick people in finding out what you already know but they haven't accepted • Go after the parts that scare you the most
40. The wall that all the crazy splashes against, keeping developers dry
41. Lending privilege Anjuan Simmons
42. Diversity vs Inclusion One is just a number, the other requires empathy
43. HR is not the solution
44. Privilege • Birth • Selected • Education • Religion • ...
45. What can you lend? • Credibility • Access • Expertise
46. http://TheLeadDeveloper.com