Mark Dorison

Question for engineering leaders (managers, directors, VP's, etc): I'm curious about the current landscape of developer productivity analysis + management tools - things like LinearB and Jellyfish. Which tool, if any, are you using? Any opinions/pros/cons on the tool you're using (or the entire domain overall)?

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In case you missed it while prepping for Flag Day 🇺🇸 Happy State of Engineering Management Report Day happened this week! The annual thought leadership piece from Jellyfish has dropped. Hear from Engineering leaders, managers and frontline ICs .... we cover a range of topics that matter to great R&D leaders. Key Points: 1️⃣ Engineers are now strategic partners! 🙌 2️⃣ Burnout continues to be a challenge 😱 3️⃣ The talent shortage is spiking back up. 4️⃣ Many teams have embraced #AI 🧠 5️⃣ Others have legit concerns about AI ⁉ If #developerproductivity #genAI #engineeringexcellence are important to you .... have a read! (link in the Comments)

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We often talk about how important it is for an organization to do one thing well and to avoid mission creep. So I'll never understand why the BBC has two time calculators for roast dinners: https://lnkd.in/eK5Gsu4W and https://lnkd.in/e6Sg9D89 It took a non-zero amount of effort to create this duplication. I get that, strictly speaking, they are separate organizations but from an end user point of view it's the same brand. I do wonder what the usage stats are for these two pages. This post brought to you by my latest roast dinner which, by the way, uses the https://lnkd.in/eK5Gsu4W version because this one suits my use case/persona much better than the one on bbc.co.uk.

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This week the ThinkLP team gathered for an onsite to align, connect, and kick off the quarter. What was particularly great about this workshop was that we collaboratively redefined the values and philosophies that we operate with. These weren't a platitude of immutable nice words set by faceless leaders of long ago. They're how we measure ourselves, our team, and our impact. And it starts with a foundational mission to make a difference in the world, making businesses safer, more profitable, and highly accessible for all. Not alone. It's together strong partnership with retailers, legislation, law enforcement, technologies, and of course, our team. And if you're a strong technical product manager that wants to join in the cause, well - good news: we've got a spot open! Check out the posting in the comments 😄 p.s. a shoutout to Mehak Chadha and Albert Lee. Organizing and facilitating large groups takes care and adaptability. You go above and beyond to make the experience better every time! #assetprotection #retailtech #productmanagement

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I envision a better alternative to Backstage: reusing an existing script and adding an intuitive interface. That's essentially what most people expect from a self-service portal for their software engineers — nothing more. #internaldeveloperportal #devex #developerexperience

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Alistair Gray gave a great talk at Write The Docs Portland, going into detail about our investment in Internal Docs at Stripe. He breaks down our thoughts about issues of fragmentation, discoverability, and document quality - and how we’ve tried to build great tools to improve the state of internal docs at Stripe across all of these axes. In Q&A, he touches on an important theme which is essentially “how do we convince engineers to use the tooling we build.” The answer really boils down to “ruthlessly build what engineers want” while maintaining our core primitives (eg, ownership, doc quality) that we know are vital to the health of Stripe’s knowledge base all-up. Let me know if y’all have any questions - happy to expand more on these themes! https://lnkd.in/em4QRFmH

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If you have a YC interview coming up - reach out and our team of YC Alumni can help set up some mock interviews

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Today we're launching our newest candidate quality-of-life feature on Ropes - IDE themes. There's a universal dislike for the rigid IDEs that assessment co's force on candidates. These code editors are slow, clunky, and missing the styes/shortcuts that developers enjoy. Developers are unique, and we work in unique ways. Ropes offers two new options to let candidates keep their style: (1) First, many employers on Ropes allow candidates to work in their own IDEs entirely. We've developed a way to gather insights like you were in the room, while allowing developers to use their daily environments. (2) For cases that need a browser-based IDE - we're giving the ability for candidates to choose their style/editor setup before the assessment starts - so they're comfortable when it begins. --- My bet is that if we build a great experience for candidates, we'll be building a great platform for evaluators, too. I hope you'll follow along as we pursue that mission - and we need help! We're hiring founding engineers in NYC - if you're interested, I'd love to talk to you.

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How much process is too little process? "The team isn't getting along, and they are fighting each other." "Customers aren't engaged with the sh*t we built." "Our burn rate is too high, and we are going to hit a wall." "I have to layer a cofounder. They're upset and will probably quit." "The founders keep going directly to my team members and telling them what to do." "We've hired some a**hole that is making everyone miserable." "We keep betting on a losing strategy and hoping something will happen, even though we all know it is doomed." "Engineering is going off in the weeds building stuff no one cares about." "My investors don't think I'm right for the job anymore." These are just a few common startup problems that are often symptoms of "a lack of process ." People never think, "You know, I don't think we have enough process." Instead, they start having problems that could have been avoided. While the idea of no process sounds great, issues emerge if you don't start adding a little early on. Again, I'm not suggesting lots of complicated processes, just a tiny amount to start building the muscles you will need later when the company is scaling up. Here are 5 key areas to address early that help prevent problems and chaos down the road: •⁠ ⁠Call out decision-makers. Centralize guidance, but make decisions locally. Assigning owners and pushing decision-making close to those doing the work will prevent slowing as you scale. At scale, centralized decision-making requires layers of process and communication. •⁠ ⁠Set clear goals. Teams that set goals outperform those that don't — it's that simple. Set some product, customer, and engineering goals. Holding a team accountable by setting challenging, measurable goals from day one can evolve into a more robust product process down the road. •⁠ ⁠Formalize hiring. When small, one bad hire can do a lot of damage. So, screen for values and behaviors. Do they value feedback? How do they deal with conflict? How do they influence? Etc. In short, don't hire jerks. They will bring everyone's game down, no matter how smart they are. •⁠ ⁠Build a culture of feedback. It's hard to get better without feedback. Set up a cadence to assess what people are doing well and where they need to improve. You will need a performance review process at scale, and it is tough to cold-adopt one when you have over 50 people. •⁠ ⁠Define your governing principles. IMO, this is the most important. Agreeing on the underlying rules on how decisions get made promotes consistency, provides clarity, and can help to prevent politics from developing later. It is important to note that having too little process is often better than having too much. Therefore, it is crucial to find the right balance of process and productivity that aligns with your team's individual needs and culture.

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There's an oft-cited stat from Pendo that 80% of software features are rarely, if ever, used. While it's impossible to know the accuracy of that, it's not hard to believe. I've been part of multiple feature factories, where emphasis was put on new features to 'claim' rather than taking time to ensure we've actually solved the desired problem before moving onto the next. If you're a Product Manager/Leader in the Indy area, join us on August 14 for a conversation around best practices for measuring product success. We'll have food, drinks, and hopefully some great learnings! (Registration link in the comments)

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How can these two things be true at the same time: our software dependent economy is reliant on open source software and that software faces a critical sustainability crisis? I recently spoke with a member of the Open edX community that uses our platform at scale.  The problem they told me is that because the software is free-to-use, it’s not part of budget conversations.  There’s no line item for it, no discussion about it. Let’s change that.  If you get value from open source software, and there’s little chance you don’t, make supporting and sustaining the projects you’ve built your business upon part of your annual budgeting process. #opensource #openedx

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Basecamp/37signals has (rightly) caught a lot of flak over the last few years, but the way they've written about building products for the web is still unparalleled. This excerpt from "Getting Real," first written in 2006 (!), is one of my favorites: "Some people argue software should be agnostic. They say it's arrogant for developers to limit features or ignore feature requests. They say software should always be as flexible as possible. "We think that's bullsh*t. The best software has a vision. The best software takes sides. When someone uses software, they're not just looking for features, they're looking for an approach. They're looking for a vision. Decide what your vision is and run with it. "And remember, if they don't like your vision, there are plenty of other visions out there for people. Don't go chasing people you'll never make happy."

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At Speakeasy we love working with devex leaders like Michael Heap to continuously raise the bar for what is "best in class" 🔥 We've been super lucky to work with him on what makes a great developer experience for iac and terraform. Come hear him and Thomas Rooney talk through how you can leverage OpenAPI and your API supply chain to build a provider and unlock the Terraform ecosystem. Link to the livestream in the comments 👇 #terraform #codegeneration #openapi

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🚀 Teaser Alert! 🚀 We're on the brink of unveiling a new feature powered by generative AI that will transform the way planners work. This cutting-edge technology automates tedious tasks and provides powerful insights, enabling our users to make more informed decisions with ease. ✨ But with great power comes great responsibility. ✨ At Reposite, we are deeply committed to the ethical use of AI and we have been working with the Gepeto team in partnership to deliver just that. We ensure transparency, fairness, and accountability in all our AI-driven features. By embedding these principles into our product and fostering a culture of ethical AI within our teams, we're not just embracing the future of tech—we're shaping it. Stay tuned for more updates! #Innovation #AI #EthicalAI #TechForGood #Reposite #FutureOfTech

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Who doesn't like free stuff?!? Now 👊 Digital Punch Cards 👊 are bringing the coffee shop "buy 10 get one free" experience to eCommerce. I'm extraordinarily proud of the hard work that my Engineering team did to make this vision a reality. Research shows that when customers can see themselves getting closer to a goal, they’re more motivated to reach it sooner 🏃🏽‍♀️ By gamifying your customers’ subscription journey, you can unlock a higher LTV. Digital Punch Cards are embedded directly into your customer portal, allowing subscribers to see and visually track their rewards journey in real-time and then seamlessly apply those rewards to upcoming orders. Now, your customers can - 👊Access Digital Punch Cards embedded directly in the customer portal 👊Track progress toward exclusive rewards 👊Apply exclusive rewards to upcoming orders All in just a few clicks ✔️ Stay AI’s Digital Punch Cards functionality is a first-of-its-kind. You won’t see another subscription solution utilizing the familiarity of punch cards with customizable and easy-to-set-up rewards functionality to drive strong customer retention and LTV. Interested in being one of the first to use it? Send me a message! #StayAI #Subscription #Rewards #Retention #eCommerce

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We've had an EM role open on our team for several months. This is a post about everything we learned from why we haven't filled it yet. I'd love to get your help in filling it! 🤝 The role: - EM for our 0-to-1 team within Postman, with the goal of defining and winning our category for a new kind of API-level monitoring/observability tool. Our team came into Postman through an acquisition and we're now building the Postman version of our product, using the same tech. - Help scale our product and team from alpha into beta. We are a department with six engineers and approved headcount to grow a lot more in the next year. - The role is 60% prioritization/roadmap management, 40% building the team. The current team members are high-ownership, independent, founding engineer types. 🤔 Misconceptions, miscalibrations, and lessons: - Initially, the role was called "Senior Engineering Manager, Observability." Instead of getting the product engineering managers we were looking for, we primarily got interest from platform/infra EMs. We got thousands of inbound applications and spent months zeroing that out. 🙀 - Previously, our recruiters were sourcing a lot of folks with observability backgrounds. We've learned that since we're actually building a new kind of observability product, much more focused on UX, the profile we're looking for is product-focused rather than tech-focused. No observability experience required. - When people think Postman, they often think of our core product: the API client. So we were getting more interest from folks looking to scale a product, rather than 0-to-1 "I want to build a team and product" types. Postman actually has several other products, for instance testing and Flows, our no-code tool. There is a lot of interesting 0-to-1 work on our way to growing as a multi-product platform! - Some people have the perception that Postman isn't one of the high-growth companies because they're not seeing lots of their friends joining Postman. Postman has quadrupled since 2020, BUT a lot of the engineering growth has been in India. (Postman is the biggest SaaS company to come out of India!) Our team is part of a recent change to grow our US engineering presence. Many of us leaders across the company are looking for folks to join early cohorts of US-based product engineering and platform teams. 💡 What we've changed on our end: - We've deemphasized the "observability" part of the job and emphasized the "new product" and "product engineering" parts of the job. - We've also switched our own reachouts to look for people with product engineering experience at SaaS companies with product-led growth. 👩‍🚀 Help us find our EM! We now have a solid pipeline, but haven't yet made a hire. We'd love to hear from you if: - You have thoughts about how to improve our EM search. - You know someone we should meet. - You're a scrappy EM looking for an opportunity to build a new product while growing a team. Look forward to hearing from you!

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How can you screw up with feature flags? Like most tools, feature flags can get messy and overcomplicated if they aren’t managed properly. e.g. - Naming feature flags inconsistently, or making the names incomprehensible - Not cleaning up old flags or considering their lifecycle (there are tools for this) - Creating feature flags that are obscure and have no descriptions, so it's not immediately obvious what they do - Providing business logic in a feature flag. Say, in complex rules that your code evaluates, state machines, references to other flags or other outside dependencies, or (erk) scripts, database queries or other code ^ This is a HUGE red flag that should prompt anyone to take a step back and rethink their life choices (Next post: how to use flags without running into things like the above)

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