
Scaling and Developer Productivity (2016) - kaushikt
https://blog.coinbase.com/scaling-developer-productivity-d23ce491f869
======
user5994461
>>> As we started to deploy all of our services through Codeflow in July we
peaked at 27% of all deployments failing.

This strikes me as a lot. I can't imagine one quarter of all deployments
failing. Does it means cases where the application doesn't start in
production, like due to a typo in the source code?

~~~
drchopchop
Especially at a company which is essentially acting as a bank, powering non-
reversible crypto transactions.

I don't think, as a manager, I'd be prioritizing statements like "we encourage
new engineers to deploy coinbase.com on their first day" if I worked at a
financial institution.

~~~
SaltyBackendGuy
I wonder if the higher ups are doing risk assessments on their processes. I
totally understand the benefits of CD done right, but a quarter of deployments
failing must show up on come IT compliance / audit team's radar as a risk that
needs mitigation (Especially for a financial institution!!!). Hopefully we're
just missing some context.

------
tupac_speedrap
Surely relying on deployments as a measure of developer productivity is pretty
flawed. You could deploy the same code over two deployments instead of one or
deploy code that has no meaningful impact on the product and the metrics would
look good but actual value added would be low or zero.

~~~
mumblemumble
This is where metrics and KPIs part ways. Metrics are often poor proxies for
the thing you actually want to drive, but a thoughtful leader can easily
mitigate that effect by monitoring several metrics and understanding how they
combine to form a more holistic picture.

That can all fall apart rather quickly as soon as you turn something you're
measuring into a performance indicator that will be imposed on people as a way
of assessing how well they're doing their job. If there's any room at all to
game the numbers, then you've just created a huge incentive to do so, and it
_will_ happen. At which point the thing you're measuring has stopped being a
metric in any meaningful sense of the term.

~~~
mdgrech23
I can think of a good example of this. I worked at a fast food chain in high
school. Our goal was 30 seconds from the time a car pulled up and started to
order over the loud speaker to the time they pulled away w/ their food. We
would rush the customer through the ordering process to the detriment of
customer service and often have them pull over to the side to collect their
order to cheat the clock.

~~~
mumblemumble
I used to work in the kitchen at a restaurant that did similar things with
time to get food out to tables. I don't know exactly how much beef I wasted
due to keeping anticipatory burgers on the grill, even when I had zero open
orders in the queue. All I know is, when I die, I'll have to have a very
uncomfortable conversation with St Peter while a whole lot of angry cattle are
scowling over his shoulders at me. Such a waste.

------
swader999
For a second there I thought it said Scala and developer productivity.

------
tshanmu
whats with the sudden coinbase articles on first page?

~~~
matlock
Good article from blog gets published, people keep reading other articles in
the blog and more stuff makes it to the frontpage. Happens from time to time.

------
brandall10
It should be noted this article is from 2016.

