Building Tooling & Culture Together Nishan Subedi Sr. Software Engineer @subedinishan

@subedinishan Overview: • Present some tools we use at Etsy • Talk about why we use these tools • Highlight the inter relationship between tooling & culture

Culture Tooling

[email protected]

[email protected] Etsy (Dec 2015)

[email protected] We have lots of homegrown tools!

@subedinishan How did we get here?

Organically, with iterations.

[email protected] Virtual Madness

[email protected] Deployinator

[email protected] Supergrep

[email protected] StatsD

[email protected] Some functions of tools • Simplify • Empower • Automate

[email protected] Morgue

@subedinishan Why do we like these tools?

@subedinishan Encapsulate ideas

@subedinishan Provides reasonable defaults

[email protected] Make users feel comfortable

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@subedinishan Abstractions will not capture the complete context.

[email protected] Cool new feature!

[email protected] Cool new feature in production

[email protected] Obligatory devOps slide

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Technology is a product of the culture that builds it.

[email protected] Cultural differences in tooling

@subedinishan Every tool carries with it the spirit by which it has been created. Werner Karl Heisenberg

[email protected] Tools: window into the culture Implicit Assumptions Beliefs & Values Tools Edgar Schein

[email protected] Just Ship!

[email protected] If it moves graph it!

[email protected] Beliefs & Values @ Etsy • Just ship. • If it moves, graph it. • Optimize for developer happiness. • Don’t be an a**hole. • Engineering with a captial E.

[email protected] Manifestation of beliefs Implicit Assumptions Beliefs & Values Tools

[email protected] Implicit assumptions

[email protected] First Day Deploy

[email protected] Deploying changes

[email protected] Chatrooms are our watercoolers

@subedinishan We are a learning organization.

[email protected] We learn what we see

[email protected] Make the implicit explicit

[email protected] Conscious shaping of culture Implicit Assumptions Beliefs & Values Tools

Culture Tooling

Thankyou! etsy.com/careers codeascraft.com github.com/etsy

[email protected] References • Notes on the Synthesis of Form by Christopher Alexander • Cognition in the Wild by Edwin Hutchins • Organizational Culture and Leadership by Edgar Schein • https://www.thekua.com/atwork/2016/04/12-years-12-lessons-working-at-thoughtworks/ • https://learn.chef.io/skills/tools-for-devops/ • http://thehypertextual.com/2013/01/29/21st-century-management-and-the-virtues-of-operational-subculture/ • http://thehypertextual.com/2013/01/17/edgar-schein-organizational-culture-and-leadership/ • https://developer.ibm.com/urbancode/2014/09/22/curious-relationship-culture-tools/ • http://mathplugged.blogspot.com/2012/03/first-we-build-tools-then-they-build-us.html • http://oncommit.tumblr.com/post/46298334333/no-bull-chaos-monkeys-cap-triangles-and-conwa • http://laughingmeme.org/2015/08/31/five-years-building-a-culture-and-handing-it-off/ • http://sciencepolicy.colorado.edu/students/envs_5110/tecnics_and_civilization.pdf • http://www.kitchensoap.com/2012/10/25/on-being-a-senior-engineer/ • https://saltworks.stanford.edu/assets/zv585py2131.pdf • https://codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/