Rock Stars, Builders, and Janitors: You're Doing It Wrong, New Relic [FutureStack16]

Confidential ©2008-15 New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved.
Rockstars, Builders and Janitors:
You’re doing it wrong!
Alice Goldfuss, Site Reliability Engineer, New Relic

Confidential ©2008-15 New Relic, Inc. All rights reserved. 2
Rockstars JanitorsBuilders
@alicegoldfuss
You’re doing it wrong

This document and the information herein (including any information that may be incorporated by reference) is provided for informational
purposes only and should not be construed as an offer, commitment, promise or obligation on behalf of New Relic, Inc. (“New Relic”) to sell
securities or deliver any product, material, code, functionality, or other feature. Any information provided hereby is proprietary to New Relic and
may not be replicated or disclosed without New Relic’s express written permission.
Such information may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any statement that is not a historical fact
or refers to expectations, projections, future plans, objectives, estimates, goals, or other characterizations of future events is a forward-looking
statement. These forward-looking statements can often be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as
“believes,” “anticipates,” “expects” or words of similar import.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date hereof, and are
subject to change at any time without notice. Existing and prospective investors, customers and other third parties transacting business with New
Relic are cautioned not to place undue reliance on this forward-looking information. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such
forward-looking statements are based on New Relic’s current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs and are subject to substantial risks,
uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause the actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially
from those expressed or implied in any forward-looking statement. Further information on factors that could affect such forward-looking
statements is included in the filings New Relic makes with the SEC from time to time. Copies of these documents may be obtained by visiting
New Relic’s Investor Relations website at ir.newrelic.com or the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
New Relic assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as required by law. New Relic makes
no warranties, expressed or implied, in this document or otherwise, with respect to the information provided.

• Built new features / tools / systems
Scaled existing ones
Cleaned up existing ones
In the past 3 months, have you mainly:

I’m Alice
5
SRE @

• Define the roles
Examine the current environment
Discuss a better way

Rockstar

Rockstar Strengths
Curious and
open-minded
Can iterate fast
Always looking to
the next thing

Rockstar Weaknesses
Get bored easily
No patience for
maintenance
Not used to thinking
about end user
experience

Builder
11

Builder Strengths
Understand scale
Value reliability
Good at catching
“what ifs” that others
miss

Builder Weaknesses
Can move slow
while trying to build
out
Have hard time
letting things go
Can be resident
doom-sayers

Janitor
14

Janitor Strengths
Understands the
weaknesses in your
systems
Really good at
bandaids
Able to do a lot with
a little

Janitor Weaknesses
Can often resort to
cleaning manually
instead of
automating
Often gets stuck
down in the weeds
Resistant to change

Rockstars
Janitors
Builders

Organic == Good?

GMO

GMO
Greater Mobility, Okay?

• They get stuck

• They get stuck
They get tunnel vision

Current State of Tech

117 responses

47.9
%
Currently
Rockstars

55.2
%
Want to be
Rockstars

19.7
%
Currently
Builders

35.3
%
Want to be
Builders

32.5
% Currently
Janitors

9.5
%
Want to be
Janitors

47.9
%
19.7
%
32.5
% Current
State
Rockstars
Builders
Janitors

55.2
%
35.3
%
9.5
%
Preferred
State
RockstarsBuilders
Janitors

70.9
%
70.9% of
Rockstars
are Devs

58.3
%
58.3% of
Janitors
are Ops

54.4
%
54.4% of
Builders
are Devs

55.0
%
55% who
want to be
Builders
are Ops

70.
9
%
58.
3
%
54.
4
%
Dev OpsDev
Rockstars Builders Janitors

26.3
%
26.3% think
work distribution
on team is unfair

49.1
%
49.1% think
work distribution
in company is
unfair

people unhappy / not doing the work they want

can try to make something like reliability a first class citizen,
but people confuse that with not changing anything, so it’s a
tough sell
Focus on
Reliability

can try rotating responsibilities across teams, but some
teams will be better at some tasks than others, and this will
evolve back into an imbalance
Rotate
Teams

what to do?
What to
do?

Ursula Le Guin

“No physiological
habit is established,
and the mother of
several children may
be the father of
several more.”

“Burden and privilege
are shared out pretty
equally; everybody
has the same risk to
run or choice to
make. ”

Have everyone do everything

what??

That’s not what this is

Remove the Blinders

Build better
56

Foster
new skills
57

Rotate

4 engineers

1 week janitor
1 week builder
2 weeks rockstar

50.0
%
25.0
%
25.0
%
Proposed
State
Rockstar
Builder
Janitor

55.2
%
35.3
%
9.5
%
Preferred
State
RockstarsBuilders
Janitors

Technical debt

Velocity!

Productivity =
Size(TechDebt)
Size(System)
1 -
Griffith, C. Izurieta, H. Taffahi, and D. Claudio, “A simulation study of practical methods for technical debt m
http://www.gregerwikstrand.com/technical-debt-reduction/

case study

missioned 1,139 applications in 201
ced systems 7,000 to 4,200 in three
69
“The Digital Transformation Symphony: When IT and Business Play in Sync” http://www.slideshare.net/cap

Reduced debt by €14 billion
“The Digital Transformation Symphony: When IT and Business Play in Sync” http://www.slideshare.net/cap

Where to start?

Ops team

firefighting

pile of sustaining work

pile of sustaining work
Don’t punish your ops team
for your dev team’s
SHITTY CODE

• What are you worried about?

What could we do better?

What do you want to add?

devs overburdened

devs overburdened
GOOD

Rockstar tasks
New feature / tool /
system
Research new
projects
Demo mockups

Builder tasks
Improve testing
Improve service
resiliency
Understand greater
impact

Janitor tasks
Bug fixes
Refactoring
Config cleanup

What do you want to add?

47.9
%
19.7
%
32.5
% Current
State
Rockstars
Builders
Janitors

55.2
%
35.3
%
9.5
%
Preferred
State
RockstarsBuilders
Janitors

Discuss a better way

50.0
%
25.0
%
25.0
%
Future
State
Rockstar
Builder
Janitor

Thanks!
98
@alicegoldfuss

This document and the information herein (including any information that may be incorporated by reference) is
provided for informational purposes only and should not be construed as an offer, commitment, promise or
obligation on behalf of New Relic, Inc. (“New Relic”) to sell securities or deliver any product, material, code,
functionality, or other feature. Any information provided hereby is proprietary to New Relic and may not be
replicated or disclosed without New Relic’s express written permission.
Such information may contain forward-looking statements within the meaning of federal securities laws. Any
statement that is not a historical fact or refers to expectations, projections, future plans, objectives, estimates,
goals, or other characterizations of future events is a forward-looking statement. These forward-looking
statements can often be identified as such because the context of the statement will include words such as
“believes,” “anticipates,” “expects” or words of similar import.
Actual results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements, which speak only
as of the date hereof, and are subject to change at any time without notice. Existing and prospective investors,
customers and other third parties transacting business with New Relic are cautioned not to place undue
reliance on this forward-looking information. The achievement or success of the matters covered by such
forward-looking statements are based on New Relic’s current assumptions, expectations, and beliefs and are
subject to substantial risks, uncertainties, assumptions, and changes in circumstances that may cause the
actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from those expressed or implied in any
forward-looking statement. Further information on factors that could affect such forward-looking statements is
included in the filings we make with the SEC from time to time. Copies of these documents may be obtained by
visiting New Relic’s Investor Relations website at ir.newrelic.com or the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov.
New Relic assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements, except as
required by law. New Relic makes no warranties, expressed or implied, in this document or otherwise, with
respect to the information provided.

1 https://www.flickr.com/photos/lydur/22006675124/
1 https://www.flickr.com/photos/qilin/491356901
16 https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:St_Anger_Album_Artwork.png
22 https://www.flickr.com/photos/tamakisono/14903068219
40 https://www.flickr.com/photos/46799485@N00/4470761409
43 https://www.flickr.com/photos/christinagallivan/8660375888/
44 Photo by Jack Liu, 2014
45 https://queerscifi.com/for-readers-the-new-pronouns/
49 https://www.flickr.com/photos/greencolander/3203922211
50 https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Woodwards_building
Image credits

53 https://www.flickr.com/photos/3059349393/8000156483/
54 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dalbera/4923032712/
56 https://www.flickr.com/photos/moonlightbulb/8025527585/
57 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dafnecholet/5374200948
62 https://www.flickr.com/photos/alebonvini/4757651199
63 https://www.flickr.com/photos/dave_see/15132684184
64 https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/1623358150/
70 https://www.flickr.com/photos/expertinfantry/
71 https://www.flickr.com/photos/adambelles/5044281763/
72 https://www.flickr.com/photos/cogdog/9090732482/
77 https://www.flickr.com/photos/twalmsley/5545712341
79 https://www.flickr.com/photos/athomeinscottsdale/3279949186/
80 https://www.flickr.com/photos/modofodo/14964870008/

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