👨‍💻 Ben Matthews

My #1 management rule that I’ve seen even very senior people get wrong - people’s actions will mostly mirror how you treat them: If you treat devs like children with blinders on they will act like children. If you hide costs from devs they won’t care what things cost. If you don’t have devs on the hook for when things break they won’t care so much about when they break. If you treat office workers as untrustworthy they will act untrustworthy. If you force RTO to keep an eye on people they will waste more time in the office. The tighter you squeeze your fist the more falls through. Thats not to say there aren’t exceptions to this but it’s true in the general case.

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Does anyone else remember sitting in class thinking, "Am I ever going to actually use this?" 🤦‍♂️ I still ask myself this weekly when reading blog posts, listening to podcasts, catching up on massive Slack threads, or diving into documentation and feature listings. I don't always use the info, but it feels great when a memory from six months ago suddenly becomes relevant. I always think of that original Jurassic Park Unix scene. This often happens when discussing DevOps and Serverless, where boundaries blur already. Trying to keep all of the AWS documentation in my head while discussing the design of new features and optimizations feels like a superhuman task. What are some things you wish you had remembered when solving an issue or problem? For me, we designed a Lambda function to fail purposefully instead of attempting to recover for efficiency. Unfortunately, the Lambda control plane self-throttles a function once a failure threshold is reached... slowing our processing to a crawl and forcing some quick code changes. 😅 #AWS #lambda #serverless #learninginpublic #hugops

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So true! In my opinion, every effort, whether it's new features or services, should include the creation of proper data and analytics to measure its effectiveness and adoption. The necessity of a feedback loop through telemetry and analytics cannot be overstated. It turns data into actionable insights, enabling iteration and refinement of the offerings. Without this, we risk repeating the same errors or just offering the wrong solutions. understanding the customers and having a constant feedback look is a must!

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It is CRAZY how much weaker OpenAI GPT-4o is at coding from the completions API than GPT-4. I'm not sure if this is the intended result, but very surprising nonetheless. The training recency is very evident, i.e. it knows about much more modern things, but the difference between its logical output is great with GPT-4 just thinking in a much more sophisticated fashion.

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tldr: I'm hiring! As many of you know, I recently joined Lattice as their SVP of Engineering and I'm excited to announce that I'm hiring for all Engineering levels and more broadly, Lattice has open roles across EPD. If you're wondering, why Lattice? The last few years have seen a step change in how we think about the meaning of work and the employer <> employee relationship - add on the fuel of AI taking our jobs and you could be forgiven for thinking the future of work looks bleak for employees. It doesn't need to be that way - here at Lattice we're building the next generation of talent tools to give employers insights and employees purpose because people matter at work. Among other things, we're using generative AI to securely analyze enormous volumes of data to unlock career insights faster and investing in building equitable feedback, compensation and employer analytics tools - not just for one company but for all companies. If you're interested in making a difference to the future of work then let's chat - all roles are remote eligible and based in the US. We have physical offices in San Francisco and NYC if you prefer the in-office environment.

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Don't miss out on our upcoming streamcast on Thursday, Oct 17th at 8 AM PDT. Discover the ins and outs of Redpanda's architecture, deployment choices, real-world applications, and top tips 💻 Read the details here: #Kafka #datastreaming #dataengineering

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Jake and I sat down and discussed how to avoid failure in your software projects. I think my favorite method for this is the "General Contractor" approach, which leverages a software developer's knowledge of the craft and combines it with the leadership principle of detachment to produce someone who can oversee the software work and ensure it aligns with the business's goals. You can watch a clip of the discussion here: https://lnkd.in/g5J95E2w

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Just wrapped up a heated debate with my team about testing strategies. After 10+ years in the trenches, you'd think we'd have this figured out, but nope! 😅 Here's my two cents on test types that have saved our bacon more times than I can count: Unit tests: The unsung heroes catching silly mistakes Integration tests: Because components should play nice Functional tests: Making sure the thing actually works Performance tests: Nobody likes a slowpoke app Security tests: Keeping the bad guys out (hopefully) Usability tests: Real users, real feedback Regression tests: Stopping bugs from coming back for revenge Acceptance tests: The "customer is always right" tests What's your testing lifesaver? Any types you swear by or think are overrated? Let's chat in the comments! #SoftwareEngineering #QualityMatters #LessonsLearned

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One of my favorite acronyms in #SoftwareEngineering is WTF - Where to Focus. When you have a small team you should focus as much energy as possible on the pieces that make your business competitive and buy everything else. I guarantee your cost estimate to justify building a tangential capability over buying it is missing a bunch of hidden cost factors.

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Systems thinking is going to be even more important as AI gets more and more integrated with all of our workflows. If you can break down whatever you’re doing into clear and focused pieces of a bigger puzzle you can find a way to stitch together multiple agents to solve complicated problems. Folks doing this now will stand out amongst their peers. At some point the gap will be so large it will be tough for slow adopters to catch up.

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Progress = your QA release process growing from 15 minutes to 5 hours. A stat that’s both invigorating & frustrating at the same time. But I think the single best thing you can do to delight your customers is to personally guarantee “it just works”.

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Great article by Ray Carnes. In my 20+ years in the software industry I've seen companies learn and relearn the basics again and again because each generation of leaders think things are "different this time" because of such and such technology. The frameworks, platforms, underlying technology changes but the principles and foundations are still the same. #softwareengineering

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Part of the problem is legacy code. Even if we wrote perfectly testable code from here on out, we often still have to deal with legacy code. If you need help with that in LabVIEW I’ve got a bunch of effective tools and techniques. I’m working on a refactoring workshop among other things. If that sounds interesting let me know and I’ll add you to the waiting list.

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The entire plot of the Iliad is like one big code review gone bad. You just spent the better part of the week painstakingly building out that killer new feature. In fact, it's some of your best engineering, the unit tests are a work of art, and the function names would make Uncle Bob proud. But not so fast! The next thing you know your work is completely ripped apart by someone more senior. This is what sparked the rage of Achilles! Agamemnon used his opportunity to save the Greek army as a means to assert his dominance over Achilles, rather than leading as he should. Agamemnon took what was treasured by Achilles in front of everyone setting in motion the epic on anger and pride. At one time or another we've all been tempted like Agamemnon when giving a review. So remember, code reviews aren't a means to satisfy our own pride and insecurities about our position. Have you ever been in a code review that felt more like a battle than a collaboration? Let's turn these moments into opportunities to learn and grow with each other rather than using each other. How do you ensure your code reviews are constructive and empowering? "Achilles’ wrath, to Greece the direful spring  Of woes unnumber’d, heavenly goddess, sing!  That wrath which hurl’d to Pluto’s gloomy reign  The souls of mighty chiefs untimely slain;" - The Iliad, Book 1

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Many businesses claim to be tech companies—but are they really? 💡 In my latest Substack post, I delve into: The true definition of a tech company. Heuristics to determine if your organization fits the bill: Do you use data to drive decisions? Are you constantly automating processes to improve operations? Are technologists making strategic decisions at the highest levels? Drawing from my experiences at Carvana, we explore what sets genuine tech companies apart from those that simply use technology. #techindustry #innovation #leadership #datadriven #automation #techleadership #carvana

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I was watching a video that talked about what software developers focus on at different stages of their careers, and one notable take was that "Distinguished Engineers" are focused on the *industry*, and not just their company. This is typically because they've engaged with communities outside of where they're working for many years. They say travel "broadens the mind", and learning from and sharing with developers in a wide range of situations tends to give people a much broader sense of software development. Not everything is Big Tech or Fintech or Medtech or Gametech. Not every product is a smartphone app or a website. Not every product has millions or billions of users. (Proportionally, very few do, in fact; so it's interesting how much we obsess over scale.) Not every code base is 100 million lines. Not every code base is 100,000 lines. Not every system has contemporary hardware to run on. Not every platform can accept updates easily (many embedded systems are ship-once). Not every bug or outage is merely an inconvenience (just ask an airline pilot!) Not every product is about profit. And so on, and so on. Learning about what other people, in other roles, in other organisations, in other industries, in other countries, do will tend to make you a much more well-rounded software professional. It will expand your horizons, as well as create opportunities for the wider developer community to have their horizons expanded from your experiences. In particular, there seems to be fairly wide agreement that a "Distinguished Engineer" has made a notable and lasting contribution to the field and the profession of software development. This seems to be encouraged in organisations who pay it forward; who are happy for their most experienced engineers to "share the love" outside of the walls of their business. When a dev, say, creates a testing framework or writes a book or organises a meet-up on their employer's dime, the employer recognises the long-term value of paying it forward. When employers insist developers engage outside of the business entirely in their own time, and entirely at their own expense, those people will usually end up distinguising some other company. And, of course, if that dev-all-the-way-to-the-top career track isn't on offer, then ditto :-)

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Missed deadlines is a really common problem that development teams face. Dave Todaro shares some really helpful nuggets in this episode!

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Ticket velocity isn't the *only* measure of an engineering team's effectiveness. At a high level, the best engineering organizations can predictably deliver against the priorities set forth by the business. That involves proper monitoring (through metrics) and coaching by effective managers. Here's a few non-velocity metrics I use to measure my organization: - Tenure of the team. - Platform uptime. - Number of critical issues in the last 8wks. - Automated code coverage percentages. - *Employee* vs customer detected bugs. - Number of requirements missed during project planning. Read more about my leadership style here: https://lnkd.in/geP2m7DJ #metrics #engineeringeffectiveness #team #leadership #software #tech #startup #management #dora #space #agile #projectmanagement #podcast

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Leading a remote engineering team of 28 has taught me one thing—connection isn’t optional. It’s not just about keeping operations running; it’s about intentionally creating moments of connection and trust. As this article points out, remote leadership goes beyond virtual meetings and structured check-ins. Remote work doesn’t mean distant work—it’s just different. #RemoteWork #EngineeringLeadership #RemoteTeamManagement #Startups #WorkLifeBalance #TeamVibes

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