Unveiling the Hidden Side of Org Charts | David Yee
Plus, how you can help your enterprise deliver like a startup, 2023 trends that will impact 2024, and the State of IDPs.
In this week's episode of Dev Interrupted, host
is joined by David Yee, VP of Engineering at the New York Times. They dive into the often unseen aspects of organizational structures, discussing how every organization regardless of their defined values and principles, operates with a 'shadow'.David discusses the role of senior leaders in addressing systemic problems and navigating the tensions between innovation and consistency. He highlights the importance of recognizing and integrating these organizational shadows to foster better decision-making and operational efficiency.
Drawing from his rich experience leading engineering teams in media, this conversation offers a unique perspective on the complexities of engineering leadership and explores the challenges of aligning technology with the century-old tradition of news reporting at the New York Times.
“Every organizational leader has sat down at some point to think about two things. One, should I reorg? And two, what are the values and principles of my organization?
When we do that, We often ask ourselves what we're optimizing for. That's a very reasonable question. What we don't ask is, what do we do with the things that we're repressing? How are we going to reconcile with that?”
Episode Highlights:
1:48 All Organizations Have a Shadow
10:45 The Two Questions Every Organizational Leader Has Asked
18:26 Solving Unseen Problems: The Role of Senior Leaders
25:54 Balancing Tensions in Organizational Philosophy
31:35 Technology Meets Tradition: The NYT's Unique Challenge
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. How You Can Help Your Enterprise Deliver as Fast as a Startup
Unsurprisingly, enterprise teams have longer cycle times than smaller companies, but this isn’t just because of their legacy code or complex codebases.
Our very own Dan Lines recently published an article with DevPro Journal to take a quantitative look at what’s slowing enterprises down. The biggest blockers? Getting code deployed, collaboration, and communication.
Read here: A Quantitative (and Actionable) Analysis of Enterprise Software Delivery Speed
2. How Discord Scaled from 1M → 15m on One Server
OpenAI isn’t the only platform that had to overcome a seemingly insurmountable scaling crisis recently. When MidJourney came to Discord, the engineering team had to expand their guild capacity 15x to keep their largest community on the platform.
The
3. Trends From 2023 That Will Affect Software Development in 2024
With so many different reports from key players in tech coming out every year, it can be difficult to stay on top of all of the new data forecasting trends.
Thankfully,
Measure and Understand the Impact of GenAI on Software Development
Uncover the transformative impact of GenAI on software delivery processes and the metrics used to measure that impact in this must-attend workshop for engineering leaders.
Workshop Topics Include:
In-depth analysis from our GenAI Impact Report
Success stories: How leaders are leveraging GenAI
Key metrics: Adoption rates, benefits, and risk assessment
Live Demo: Practical steps to measure your GenAI project’s impact
Understand and quantify the real impact of Generative AI in your projects and elevate your strategy for the new year.
4. The State of Internal Developer Portals (IDPs)
If you want to retain top talent and help your team become more agile, an internal developer portal (IDP) has been touted as the solution for many R&D leaders to explore. To evaluate IDPs effectiveness, DevOps.Com just shared their State of Internal Developer Portals, including some quotes about platform engineering from our co-host
.“By automating routine tasks, providing standardized development environments, and facilitating continuous integration and deployment, platform engineering accrues efficiency benefits across the R&D organization.”
Read here: The State of Internal Developer Portals (IDPs)
Upcoming Events
January 25, 30 | Online
Highlights: GenAI is rapidly changing the software development landscape, but how do you measure its impact on your engineering org and the potential ROI? LinearB's upcoming digital workshop will help shine a light on the metrics you can use to measure the impact of your GenAI initiative.