This document discusses best practices for building a software development team. Some key points:
- There is high demand for software developers in Toronto, but talent is being lost to other tech hubs like San Francisco due to higher salaries. Remote teams and distributed work are seen as the future.
- When hiring, it's important to consider both generalists for startups and specialists for established companies. Thorough technical interviews are crucial, and culture fit is also important for attracting and retaining talent.
- Remote work is increasingly common and productive. Established companies should seek talent globally, not just locally. Equity is also important for retaining founding teams over the long run.
The Phoenix Project DevOps Simulation - Paul WilkinsonPink Elephant
ncorporating DevOps – The Phoenix Project Simulation
Businesses are demanding ever shorter release cycles for new applications. Traditionally ‘Operations’ is seen as a barrier with lengthy bureaucratic controls and delays in provisioning production systems. DevOps is a growing movement for shortening development and deployment and integrating Development and Operations. However, this requires a mind-set shift, new behaviours and a cultural shift in both Development and Operations. Traditionally suspicious of each other, they must now work closely together. Yet many companies are struggling to adopt and deploy DevOps and how to change the culture.
The “Phoenix Project” Simulation game is based upon The Phoenix Project. Parts Unlimited is in trouble. Newspaper reports reveal the poor financial performance of the organisation. The only way forward to not only save the company but to make it competitive and profitable is “The Phoenix Project” which represents an IT enabled business transformation, with Retail Operations as the business owner of this project. The VP of IT Operations is asked to take the lead of the IT department and ensure that “The Phoenix Project” will be a success. But the VP of IT Operations is facing a tremendous amount of work. A huge backlog of issues, features and projects. Are you up for the challenge…?
This session shows you how we do Kick-@$$ software development at Atlassian and actually get stuff done. Feedback cycles are short, code quality is awesome and customers get the features they lust after. Hear how we: use pull-requests for better code quality; collaborate fast to develop ideas; avoid meetings; tighten feedback loops to fail fast; shorten release cycles and work together happily on different continents. Sound like paradise? It is!
The Phoenix Project DevOps Simulation - Paul WilkinsonPink Elephant
ncorporating DevOps – The Phoenix Project Simulation
Businesses are demanding ever shorter release cycles for new applications. Traditionally ‘Operations’ is seen as a barrier with lengthy bureaucratic controls and delays in provisioning production systems. DevOps is a growing movement for shortening development and deployment and integrating Development and Operations. However, this requires a mind-set shift, new behaviours and a cultural shift in both Development and Operations. Traditionally suspicious of each other, they must now work closely together. Yet many companies are struggling to adopt and deploy DevOps and how to change the culture.
The “Phoenix Project” Simulation game is based upon The Phoenix Project. Parts Unlimited is in trouble. Newspaper reports reveal the poor financial performance of the organisation. The only way forward to not only save the company but to make it competitive and profitable is “The Phoenix Project” which represents an IT enabled business transformation, with Retail Operations as the business owner of this project. The VP of IT Operations is asked to take the lead of the IT department and ensure that “The Phoenix Project” will be a success. But the VP of IT Operations is facing a tremendous amount of work. A huge backlog of issues, features and projects. Are you up for the challenge…?
This session shows you how we do Kick-@$$ software development at Atlassian and actually get stuff done. Feedback cycles are short, code quality is awesome and customers get the features they lust after. Hear how we: use pull-requests for better code quality; collaborate fast to develop ideas; avoid meetings; tighten feedback loops to fail fast; shorten release cycles and work together happily on different continents. Sound like paradise? It is!
Teaching Elephants to Dance (and Fly!) A Developer's Journey to Digital Trans...Burr Sutter
We can be brilliant developers, but we won’t succeed—and won’t lead our organizations to succeed—without a new perspective (if you will) and new assumptions about the components of the “technology ecosystem” that are fundamentally critical to our success. This includes the operators, QA team, DBAs, security folks, and even the pure business contingent—in most cases, each of these individuals and groups plays a critical role in the success of what we create and give birth to as developers. What we do in isolation might be genius, but if we insulate ourselves—especially with arrogance—from these colleagues, neither our code nor our organizations will realize their full potential, and most will fail. The bottom line is that our old ways are no longer viable, and as the elite within our industry, we will be the leaders and heroes who discard old assumptions and adopt a new perspective in this exciting journey to digital transformation—where the impossible can become reality.
George Ross, CIO at CCLI, and Kam Figy, Solution Architect at ISITE Design spoke at WebVisions 2012 in Portland, Oregon on the topic of “Platformification” and the SongSelect development experience.
Finding and hiring talented developers takes more work than just hitting "send" on an email. With recruiting tactics of the past proving time and time again to be ineffective, it’s time to learn how today’s developers want to be recruited.
XRebel is a development-flow-friendly performance tool that enables developers to make performance optimizations during initial development. Find slow methods and HTTP calls, excessive queries, and hidden exceptions within your web application.
Confluence - From Wiki to Collaboration PlatformSven Peters
A retrospective on the last 2 years (2011 to 2013). Confluence has developed a lot! This presentation shows how Atlassian has added a ton of features to help people to get their work done faster and collaborate better together.
Get the Swag on! With Eliumstudio & Martin JulienTheFamily
It’s time to talk about SWAG! Design is not a pretty box you put around your product; it’s part of your product DNA ;)
For this edition, let’s talk about product design and branding! We’re glad to welcome:
- Fred Lintz, Co-founder of Elium Studio. Fred was in charge of the design for all the Withings products, in particular the Withings Watch ;) He will share with us his experience combining high technology and design… And we don’t want to brag about it but he was nominated by GQ for their award ‘Designer of the year’!
- Julien Martin. In his 8 busy years freelancing, He has designed a wide range of apps and products for established businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and passionate individuals who value the importance of great design. Julien will share with us how to adapt the branding to an app according to the technicals specificities.
What makes a great engineer [Given at MusesCodeJs in Sydney 07.03.2020]Mikhail Asavkin
Everything around us these days depends on technology. Teams of engineers create this technology. Our life depends on great engineers doing their best. On a quest to find and mentor the next generation of great engineers, I sought to identify the traits that make a great engineer. These slides are from the first talk about the subject on which I've been working on for 1.5 years. Here I present the first three of the seven qualities that (according to my research, survey and my very biased opinion) make a great engineer.
The Future of Work is REMOTE WORKING. There was a time when words like ‘work at home’ or ‘remote working made it sound like you were out of a job!, But that was before.
This presentation focuses on how to seek, recruit and retain good talent for your software development team. It also examines external human resource factors such as the job market, the competition and software trends.
Teaching Elephants to Dance (and Fly!) A Developer's Journey to Digital Trans...Burr Sutter
We can be brilliant developers, but we won’t succeed—and won’t lead our organizations to succeed—without a new perspective (if you will) and new assumptions about the components of the “technology ecosystem” that are fundamentally critical to our success. This includes the operators, QA team, DBAs, security folks, and even the pure business contingent—in most cases, each of these individuals and groups plays a critical role in the success of what we create and give birth to as developers. What we do in isolation might be genius, but if we insulate ourselves—especially with arrogance—from these colleagues, neither our code nor our organizations will realize their full potential, and most will fail. The bottom line is that our old ways are no longer viable, and as the elite within our industry, we will be the leaders and heroes who discard old assumptions and adopt a new perspective in this exciting journey to digital transformation—where the impossible can become reality.
George Ross, CIO at CCLI, and Kam Figy, Solution Architect at ISITE Design spoke at WebVisions 2012 in Portland, Oregon on the topic of “Platformification” and the SongSelect development experience.
Finding and hiring talented developers takes more work than just hitting "send" on an email. With recruiting tactics of the past proving time and time again to be ineffective, it’s time to learn how today’s developers want to be recruited.
XRebel is a development-flow-friendly performance tool that enables developers to make performance optimizations during initial development. Find slow methods and HTTP calls, excessive queries, and hidden exceptions within your web application.
Confluence - From Wiki to Collaboration PlatformSven Peters
A retrospective on the last 2 years (2011 to 2013). Confluence has developed a lot! This presentation shows how Atlassian has added a ton of features to help people to get their work done faster and collaborate better together.
Get the Swag on! With Eliumstudio & Martin JulienTheFamily
It’s time to talk about SWAG! Design is not a pretty box you put around your product; it’s part of your product DNA ;)
For this edition, let’s talk about product design and branding! We’re glad to welcome:
- Fred Lintz, Co-founder of Elium Studio. Fred was in charge of the design for all the Withings products, in particular the Withings Watch ;) He will share with us his experience combining high technology and design… And we don’t want to brag about it but he was nominated by GQ for their award ‘Designer of the year’!
- Julien Martin. In his 8 busy years freelancing, He has designed a wide range of apps and products for established businesses, startups, entrepreneurs, and passionate individuals who value the importance of great design. Julien will share with us how to adapt the branding to an app according to the technicals specificities.
What makes a great engineer [Given at MusesCodeJs in Sydney 07.03.2020]Mikhail Asavkin
Everything around us these days depends on technology. Teams of engineers create this technology. Our life depends on great engineers doing their best. On a quest to find and mentor the next generation of great engineers, I sought to identify the traits that make a great engineer. These slides are from the first talk about the subject on which I've been working on for 1.5 years. Here I present the first three of the seven qualities that (according to my research, survey and my very biased opinion) make a great engineer.
The Future of Work is REMOTE WORKING. There was a time when words like ‘work at home’ or ‘remote working made it sound like you were out of a job!, But that was before.
This presentation focuses on how to seek, recruit and retain good talent for your software development team. It also examines external human resource factors such as the job market, the competition and software trends.
Are you on the road to build a career as a Full-Stack Developer and have a big interview to prepare for? Here are some top interview questions you can prepare for before the big day!
How To Do Kick-Ass Software DevelopmentSven Peters
With Kick-Ass Software Development you actually get stuff done. Feedback cycles are short, code quality is awesome and customers get the features they lust after. Less mangers managing, less testers testing and less IT-operators operating. The developers take the power back, making them much happier. Sound like paradise? It is! This session will show you how we do Kick-Ass Software Development at Atlassian.
I talk about how we: use pull requests for better code quality; collaborate fast to develop ideas; avoid meetings to get more stuff done; tighten our feedback loops to fail faster; shorten our release cycles; and work together happily on different continents. It's a great way to develop software and we think it can work in your company, too.
Watch the video if this talk: http://vimeo.com/70102926
The conventional wisdom is if you are a non-technical person who wants to build an app, you need to a.) learn how to code, b.) find a technical cofounder, and/or c.) pay an outside agency tens of thousands of dollars to develop it for you.
Now, mobile expert Drew Gorham demonstrates why each of these assumptions is misguided, and shows how you can tap into a global pool of top-notch developers as a non-technical founder.
By leveraging your domain expertise and existing skill sets, including your soft skills, your ability to manage people, etc... you can learn to translate your vision in a way that can be easily understood and executed by expert developers around the world -- getting quick and affordable development work without sacrificing quality.
If you are considering breaking into the world of web development, there are a myriad of technologies to decipher. What should someone trying to break into this exciting field try to learn? Devatory breaks it all down for you.
3. JAKE HIRSCH-
ALLEN @jakehirschallen
PARTNER
Functional Imperative @func_i
www.functionalimperative.com
DIRECTOR
BD - OODA Technologies @oodatech
www.ooda.ca
SPM
Incentives for Global Health @HealthImpact
www.healthimpactfund.org
7. "Software Is Eating
The World” Marc Andreessen, Aug 2011
Buy A 10x Software Developer: Its
The Best Investment You Can
Make… Venkatesh Rao, April 2016
23. WHITEBOARD: FIZZ BUZZ
Write a program that prints the numbers from 1 to 100.
But for multiples of three print “fizz” instead of the number
and for the multiples of five print “buzz”. For numbers
which are multiples of both three and five print “fizzbuzz”.
WHY CAN'T PROGRAMMERS.. PROGRAM?
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/02/why-cant-programmers
program.html
FIZZ BUZZ TEST
http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?FizzBuzzTest
24. INTERVIEWING SR.
DEVELOPER
Have more of your Sr.Devs interview them
Conversational approach.
More focus on past experience than writing
FizzBuzz
Discuss design patterns they like and solve
architecture problems, instead of SQL
statements
25. COMMON QUESTIONS
① But no one on my team (yet) is technical
enough to conduct a technical interview…
What then?
② Should I hire a developer that knows
language/framework X when we use
language/framework Y?
Eg: Python/Django <==> Ruby/Rails
31. "Why We (Still) "Stop whining
Believe in Working and start hiring
Remotely" remote workers"
32. WHY?
① Don't want to relocate
② Don't need to relocate
③ "My spouse is going to med school"
④ Productivity: "most of our remote
developers work longer hours than our
in-office devs."
⑤ Collaborative workspaces
⑥ Forces better communication
⑦ Not widely adopted (yet)
33. REMOTE TALENT
Works super well with collaborative
workspaces.
Search online for remote full time
positions today and you won't find
much.
... But in a few years almost everyone
will be doing it and it will be a no
brainer.*
36. EQUITY
Very heavily debated topic.
① Fairness > %
② Vesting
③ Slices
④ Shotgun clause
⑤ Equity ! = Currency
⑥ Dilution / Valuation !%#&
37. CONCLUSION
① High Demand: YYZ losing talent to SFO
② Remote talent & distributed teams => Future!
③ Startups: seek generalists
④ Established companies: seek both generalists &
specialists
⑤ Technical interviews are very important
⑥ Go where the talent is
⑦ Culture is important to attract and retain talent
⑧ Give vesting equity to your founding team