Building With People For People: The Unfiltered Build Podcast

Episode Description: The software world is vast and ever changing. Cutting through the noise of language fads and building a system that meets your organization’s goals, is maintainable, scalable, performant and clean is no easy feat. It is the Principal Engineers that stand at the helm and steer the ship in the right direction. Today we dive into the world of one Principal Engineer steering the ship for an iconic brand and how he views his role, what it means to be a principal engineer, his thoughts on AI in software, the importance and meaning of InnerSource software development, and more. ...

Episode Description: Ding ding… It’s 3 am and your phone has just sent you multiple P1 alerts. Your site is down and you need to find out what the issue is and fast, but your log data is all over the place, metrics on your services are sub par and it’s really hard to know where to go to find the issue. What if there was a way to leverage AI to help you make sense of your data in a clear and concise way, making your 3 am alert wake up call a walk in the park? This is exactly what our guest, David Wynn, is doing at Edge Delta, an automated observability platform that monitors your services, alerts you when something is wrong, and guides root-cause analysis. Today, we dive into observability; what it is, the data pieces that make up this ecosystem, tips on how to start your data collection journey, ways our guest is integrating AI with human expertise to enhance system observability and more. ...

Episode Description: You know that feeling when you are in the zone and time seems to standstill? You’re on fire, completely focused, and distractions vanish? That feeling is FLOW. In today’s world with constant interruptions and demands on our attention, achieving flow can feel impossible. But what if there was a way to cultivate this state and optimize your productivity? That’s where “flow as a practice” comes in. It’s the art of getting in and staying in that magical flow state. We are joined today by a Flow Experience expert to help us understand what Flow is, why it’s important for our joy, ways we can achieve it and more. ...

Episode Description: Metrics are hard. Identifying which metrics to measure is even harder. So how do you get started? And how do you know when you have achieved true developer productivity zen? Like anything in life the path to mastery is a journey and today we are joined by a passionate staff engineer from Meta to share with us his theory on a developer productivity maturity model which paints a wonderful mental picture on knowing where we stand in our developer productivity journey and how companies can move through the stages. We also discuss productivity dashboards, if you actually need dashboards, how Meta thinks about developer productivity and more. ...

Episode Description: Our work could be more fun if…. My engineers could be happier if… Is this the right problem to solve?… Software development is all about solving hard problems in fun and creative ways and asking these questions in the work we do allows us to think more creatively. Our guest, Brit Myers, loves to ask these types of questions and solve them with her high performing teams. Today, we dig into how we can make sure we are asking the right questions to ensure we are solving the right problems, learning from failure, how to build high performing teams, how we can think about metrics as feedback loops and more! ...

Episode Description: Today on Building With People For People we delve into what and how we make our workspaces not just productive, but also joyful. Have you ever wondered what elements contribute to that feeling of fulfillment in your job? Is it flow state, or the immediacy of feedback, or the camaraderie of an exceptional team? These aspects are pivotal for anyone’s career satisfaction and effectiveness, no matter their field. But our focus is how do we gauge and enhance the developer experience? It’s more than just crunching numbers on things like build times or pull request cycle time. While these quantitative metrics have their place, they only paint part of the picture. The true essence lies in understanding the human factor behind these numbers, because, at the end of the day, we create tools for each other, as people. ...

Episode Description: Products are designed and created for their users right? Well at least they should be. A 2021 McKinsey Global Digital Sentiment Insights survey sites that 56% of users of digital services state they are dissatisfied by the user experience. Today, we are joined by Satyam Kantamneni, a master of design thinking to shed some light on why this might be and to share his insights on how we can create user-centric organizations that leave users delighted while also driving business growth through the practice of User Experience Design. ...

Episode Description: Developer Productivity Engineering is becoming more and more a mainstream idea. But what does it mean and how does it apply to me? Today we talk with an engineering wizard, Max Kanat-Alexander about how his company, LinkedIn, thinks about developer productivity. Using his team as framing we will investigate methodologies and approaches he and his team use that enables happier and more productive engineers. ...

Episode Description: Your password must contain at least one uppercase letter, one lowercase letter, one number, a special character and be at least 8 characters long. These directions should be all too familiar to you when creating a new password for some new account you are signing up for. Have you ever stopped to think about why these requirements exist? Today, we are joined by, Laura Bell Main, a passionate cyber security expert who will share her journey with us into the wide world of security, help us understand the importance of security and ground us in a daunting world with simple and effective ways to secure our digital lives. ...

Episode Description: For front end engineers there are so many frameworks that abstract away the actual HTML sometimes making accessibility and web fundamentals an afterthought. Accessibility in 2023 must be a 1st class citizen. How do you know if you are making things accessible for your users? Today we are joined by, Derek Fons, a passionate engineer to discuss building a community with empathy, web fundamentals, simple things you can do to make a more accessible website and more. ...