[HN Gopher] Ex-Finance developers mock McKinsey's dev productivi...
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Ex-Finance developers mock McKinsey's dev productivity metrics
Author : Terretta
Score : 90 points
Date : 2023-09-15 18:27 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.efinancialcareers.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.efinancialcareers.com)
| q7xvh97o2pDhNrh wrote:
| I clicked through to the linked McKinsey article [1] to see what
| all the hubbub was about, and I found this gem:
|
| > For example, one company found that its most talented
| developers were spending excessive time on noncoding activities
| such as design sessions or managing interdependencies across
| teams. In response, the company changed its operating model and
| clarified roles and responsibilities to enable those highest-
| value developers to do what they do best: code.
|
| The rest of the article is equally hare-brained. It's a sort of
| clueless MBA thinking that believes software engineers should be
| furiously typing all the time, and it entirely fails to
| understand that actual software engineering is about solving
| business problems.
|
| Stuff like this really makes me wish I'd optimized for $$$
| earlier in my career, and I only hope I can retire before this
| kind of absurd thinking spreads into real technology companies.
|
| [1]: https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-
| tel...
| ryandrake wrote:
| > It's a sort of clueless MBA thinking that believes software
| engineers should be furiously typing all the time
|
| (Your point is good, but the dig against MBAs is unnecessary
| and I wish it was less acceptable here on HN. It wouldn't be ok
| to make fun of people with Sociology degrees or History degrees
| here, but jokes about MBAs get a pass. We really should be
| better than that, but I realize I'm swimming against the
| current on this one.)
|
| That aside, I _have_ found a lot of clueless folks in tech
| leadership have that "furiously typing" misconception, as if
| developers are only productive when their fingertips are
| pounding keys. I once worked with a CEO who refused to set
| aside time in the schedule for things like setting up source
| control and a bug tracker, because he believed that developers
| should be furiously typing code in at all times.
| turndown wrote:
| If sociology or history degrees doled out management
| positions the way MBAs somehow do I guarantee you they would
| be met with derision. It's like making fun of politicians, it
| happens because they are often inappropriately given power.
| version_five wrote:
| What is the problem with criticism "mba thinking"? It's a
| legit complaint against the kind of naive "efficiency"
| analyses and measures that happen, and is completely
| justified. I have an MBA, I certainly don't find it
| offensive, I think the criticism is apt.
|
| The usual art student tropes are more offensive because they
| are about people in a chosen degree being dumb (incidentally,
| when I did engineering all the hardcore "haha artsies are so
| dumb" engineers failed out after first year). That's not the
| same as criticizing a specific flaw in their education. If
| there's some big blind spot the average sociology degree
| leaves, that should be fair game.
| heyoni wrote:
| How is that being better? There's a pattern of management
| coming out of business schools that's clearly not working
| because at the end of the day, you have managers trying to
| micro not macro manage highly skilled workers working in
| areas they don't understand well. The result is hilarious.
| We're supposed to suppress that? To be better? Is laughing
| bad now?
| jowea wrote:
| I wonder if McKinsey just skipped over the part where they
| hired/assigned specific people for design, inter-team
| coordination and code monkeying or if they actually decided
| that "design sessions or managing interdependencies across
| teams" should not be done.
|
| And maybe the corporate $$$ optimization means real technology
| company will avoid this.
| neilv wrote:
| Charitably, I guess they _might 've_ meant something different
| with that quote (say, they were referring to people who were
| only good at coding, and the roles for design and cross-team
| coordination were covered better by different people).
|
| But they keep coming across poorly on that metrics project.
|
| I'm imagining their clients optimizing their operations, by
| bringing in management consultants, to tell them that the
| earlier management consultants need to be enabled to do what
| they do best: stay the heck away from sabotaging software
| development organizations.
| jph wrote:
| A deep dive on developer productivity metrics tends to lead to
| queueing theory. This is an area some developers know because of
| DORA and metrics such as MTTR or shorthands such as "do one merge
| per day". It turns out that knowing some queueing theory can be
| very helpful when talking about productivity metrics, kanban,
| ticket servicing, and more.
|
| My notes on queueing theory for developers:
|
| https://github.com/joelparkerhenderson/queueing-theory
| siva7 wrote:
| I wonder how they retain senior talent with such bs? Pay must be
| exceptional i guess.
| IKantRead wrote:
| I don't think any leadership team has hired McKinsey because they
| think McKinsey does a world class job at leading software
| projects.
|
| McKinsey is in the business of reputation laundering. They start
| the process by building up reputation. They hire from prestigious
| schools, have prestigious customers, make themselves a household
| name for the people that matter.
|
| Then when you need someone to make an unpopular decision for you,
| or take the blame for a project failure, they swoop in and take
| you money in exchange for taking the reputation hit. It's fine,
| they know how to grow more reputation when necessary, and
| everyone at your org or in the media if the situation calls for
| it, points to them and says "what a bad/stupid/down right evil
| decision McKinsey made!" while remain the responsible person who
| tried their best by hiring what you and your peers thought was
| the best.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Tell that to my former manager.
| spamizbad wrote:
| You'd be surprised. I could very easily see former McKinsey
| alumni sprinkled through the industry slurping this stuff up.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| McKinsey is normalized industrial espionage. You pay them to
| validate what you're doing against your competitors. They'll
| tell you if you're ahead or behind. McKinsey is in business
| because McKinsey is in businesses.
| herewego wrote:
| This and it's very well known, but don't discount their
| talent. There are plenty of smart and effective people at
| McKinsey, even if they make mistakes like the rest of
| humanity.
| version_five wrote:
| That would be way better than why they actually are. It's a
| bunch of pretentious sycophantic kids who target empty
| "leadership" types with advice that sounds smart if you don't
| think to hard but has extremely good production values.
| There's a reason they exist but it has absolutely nothing to
| do with bringing anything of value other than reputation and
| knowing their audience. Actually bringing outside info from
| competitors would be cool but way too tangible for them.
| synaesthesisx wrote:
| McKinsey sells the "idea" that they're experts that know what
| they're doing, rather than actually doing a good job.
| [deleted]
| biogene wrote:
| IMO, you can take the dev word out, many productivity metrics are
| of dubious value, because corporate people love applying
| structures and systems to problems, only due to the fact that it
| is a structure rather than any inherent benefit.
|
| Person A might need a completely different style of
| management/metrics than Person B, and Person A after a year might
| need yet another style of management/metrics. Its all messy and
| ad-hoc, because such are humans.
|
| (Not a perfect analogy) If you replace humans with processors,
| and work with code, its the same efficiency paradox that devs
| know all too well. You apply an abstraction to solve a design
| problem, even if you already are aware that the Good(tm) solution
| is a hardware specific optimization or a new API design just to
| solve that one problem. Abstractions are seen as seemingly
| scalable, give you flexibility and leverage in other ways so they
| are Better(tm).
|
| Performance focused devs are the complete opposite they give you
| maximum efficiency, by have a near-perfect match with the
| code>compiler>hardware. But at the significant cost of increased
| dev timelines, code complexity, stress, etc. The manager
| equivalent here would be the same where they are able to match
| their own style to the specific person they're managing. But
| these styles are impossible to create a universal system around.
| swader999 wrote:
| Anytime I manage I refuse to track dev productivity individually.
| Its all about how much functionality (complexity points) gets net
| accepted in prod per unit of time from the whole team.
|
| If you measure at the team level you get collaboration and much
| better solutions. It's a friendlier and more rewarding way to
| work with little turnover. It encourages product, dev and QA to
| work together and solve user problems in economical ways, not
| just throw solutions over the fence to the next stage.
|
| And yeah sure I know if there's someone not performing up to
| their pay rate, you don't need numbers for that, you need to be
| involved and looking at their code.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| > looking at their code.
|
| I can't imagine many development managers do that. And even if
| they did, I'm not convinced that many would make a good
| assessment that way.
|
| Most of the managers I've had over my career have been poor
| coders. I'd hate to have them judging me by their conception of
| what good code is.
|
| EDIT: I guess many people have had better managers than I've
| had. So my "most" and "many" may be off base.
| the-smug-one wrote:
| Counting myself as fortunate that I can git-blame and find my
| managers' (admittedly often old commit) name in the code base
| :-).
| swader999 wrote:
| Fair point!
| swader999 wrote:
| Well do you think someone managing development shouldn't know
| how to code? How would they hire? I've never worked on teams
| where dev is larger than six and I've always coded though.
| Bigger than six is automatically create another team in my
| books.
| icedchai wrote:
| Sadly, it's very common. They typically ask one of the more
| senior engineers to assist with hiring. Earlier in my
| career, the managers knew how to code. Last 10 years... not
| so much.
| biogene wrote:
| How many managers have you had? Seems like an odd
| generalization.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| > I can't imagine many development managers do that.
|
| Wow, just a reminder that everyone's experience is unique and
| can't always be generalized. My first thought was "I can't
| imagine a development manager _not_ doing that. "
|
| Seriously, I feel for you. Essentially all of the engineering
| managers I've had at one point or another have been coders.
| Some were well, well out of practice by the time they were my
| manager, and as I moved up in my career my managers were less
| interested in the details of my code, but I could always talk
| with them about highly technical concepts. I really feel bad
| for folks who think their engineering managers can't judge
| good code. And as someone who's also been an eng manager, I
| can't imagine managing devs _without_ having an understanding
| of good code.
| justin_oaks wrote:
| I admit it; my experience is my own and I'm happy to find
| out that other people have had better management than I
| have.
|
| And you're right that it's absurd to try to judge
| developers without an understanding of good code. I just
| figured the world is absurd.
| paulcole wrote:
| Developers snark about MBAs! News at 11!
| darth_avocado wrote:
| Counter intuitive, but sometimes dev productivity revolves around
| actively not shipping things or making sure you drive initiatives
| that are purely a product of "banana measuring contests" to the
| ground.
|
| "Hey let's ship this AI chat bot I heard about at a conference".
| How about we save those hundreds of thousands of dollars that
| we'll spend on training a sub par chatbot that will result in
| frustrated users who will leave with whatever limited revenue we
| get from them.
| brolumir wrote:
| > Kent Beck, ex-fellow at payroll infrastructure fintech Gusto
| ...
|
| Really weird way to introduce Kent Beck
| jncfhnb wrote:
| What is this article?
|
| Why is it citing three seemingly non noteworthy people's opinions
| and crediting them with their former roles as a headline
| takeaway? Are we to take away that they are currently unemployed?
| badrabbit wrote:
| Their former roles and industry experience is why they are
| noteworthy and being quoted. I have no idea why your takeaway
| is that, if I said "I used to live in san francisco" would your
| takeaway be that I now live homeless outside of any city? And
| if the subject was about measuring crime in san francisco,
| would former SFPD cops being quotes seem abnormal to you?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| I do think it would be very strange to write an article with
| the headline "Ex-Cops mock a new office policy"
|
| It's a very pointless article and it's strange to focus on a
| few random people's opinions on something that does not have
| obvious importance. Especially when hundreds of thousands of
| workers who are active.
|
| One of these people seem to be a former entry level worker.
| Why? This is less valid than "some people on Twitter said"
| plasma_beam wrote:
| Gergely Orosz has a very popular blog/newsletter and has
| posted on the McKinsey report.
|
| https://blog.pragmaticengineer.com/author/gergely/
|
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/measuring-
| develop...
|
| https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/measuring-
| develop...
| jncfhnb wrote:
| That should be explained in the article then! Not citing
| his former role!
| ebiester wrote:
| Dave Farley, Kent Beck and Gergely Orosz are hardly non-
| noteworthy people. Farley is best known as being a significant
| contributor to Continuous Delivery. Kent Beck was an initial
| signatory to the agile manifesto. Gergely Orosz has four books
| to his credit and has a significant following.
|
| Farley didn't mock them - he had open contempt. Beck and Orosz
| wrote a great critique, but had no mocking involved.
|
| But calling them ex-fintech is kind of like saying Marjorie
| Taylor Greene is an ex-CrossFit gym owner. While technically
| true, it's not the relevant accomplishment in most
| conversations.
| jncfhnb wrote:
| Ok! So that makes sense. These are people with some
| credibility and authority.
|
| Why the hell is this not mentioned in the article in favor of
| their former jobs?!
| ebiester wrote:
| It's an article written by someone outside the community
| with low context, and likely for $20 or something similar.
|
| It's a low quality article.
| asplake wrote:
| Doing the rounds just about everywhere: "Yes, you can measure
| software developer productivity"
| https://www.mckinsey.com/industries/technology-media-and-tel...
| akomtu wrote:
| Anyone's productivity can be measured, or at least what's left of
| that productivity after measuring. You may know nothing about how
| musicians make music, but you can measure superficial traits,
| such as the number of distinct notes used per minute of music,
| the feedback score from a committee you hired, the lead time to
| deliver a musical unit, and so on.
| nitwit005 wrote:
| These people want to optimize making money. If you compare
| technical musical ability against musician income, I suspect
| you'll find a surprisingly weak relationship.
| realo wrote:
| John Cage might not fit into your simple models, I'm afraid:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/4'33''
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