00:00:00.919
so I'm here today uh not to talk about
00:00:03.760
uh technology so much or languages but
00:00:06.240
optimizing for developer happiness and
00:00:08.960
the way that we do it at
00:00:10.480
Etsy um how many of you is anyone in the
00:00:13.240
audience Etsy
00:00:15.680
seller
00:00:17.680
awesome who has bought something from
00:00:20.400
Etsy even
00:00:22.519
better um well thank all of you thank
00:00:25.480
you sellers and buyers um so at Etsy uh
00:00:29.720
we deploy code to production about 25
00:00:32.079
times per day um and this is across a
00:00:35.079
team of of 70
00:00:36.680
Engineers I said I wasn't going to talk
00:00:38.640
about technology but this this is uh
00:00:41.399
this fits into happiness um we have a
00:00:44.360
lot of people depending on us many of
00:00:45.719
you in the room we have over 400,000
00:00:48.760
active sellers on Etsy we have over 9
00:00:51.600
million registered members um we had
00:00:54.760
over $300 million in sales across the
00:00:57.280
community in
00:00:58.440
2010 um right now uh just last month we
00:01:01.600
did about $40 million in sales so it's
00:01:03.559
still growing um and we do over a
00:01:06.040
billion page views a month so a lot of
00:01:07.640
people depend on us to do our work and
00:01:09.240
do it
00:01:11.240
well um and in over 150 countries also
00:01:15.000
so how do we do it um the way we do it
00:01:17.880
primarily aside from all the technology
00:01:19.840
is is all cultural and about culture and
00:01:22.840
that culture is one that optimizes for
00:01:24.840
developer
00:01:26.159
happiness um Eric Kastner who some of
00:01:28.799
you may know is the first person on my
00:01:30.360
team who actually talked about um
00:01:32.640
developer happiness as something that we
00:01:34.479
should optimize for um and so we've been
00:01:37.600
building on
00:01:38.720
that I think everyone in this room uh by
00:01:42.159
the nature of of the way Ruby was
00:01:44.200
designed um has a feel for what it means
00:01:46.960
for developer happiness to be important
00:01:50.960
um so what we do at Etsy is we we do a
00:01:54.000
lot of things uh have a lot of
00:01:55.680
institutions in place to really connect
00:01:57.159
Engineers to their work I think what
00:01:58.560
Glenn was saying about craftsmans ship
00:02:00.920
is really about connection so we
00:02:02.759
emphasize that we do it by making it
00:02:05.119
really easy to ship software to get it
00:02:07.360
out to to the people who use Etsy and we
00:02:10.160
do that with the support of a community
00:02:12.239
uh the community inside the company and
00:02:14.080
the community outside the
00:02:16.319
company um are you guys able to see
00:02:19.560
these okay good uh I think maybe we're
00:02:23.080
cut off just a little bit um so Noah
00:02:26.160
susman who's uh runs the testing team on
00:02:28.280
Etsy said that Etsy runs as a chaotic
00:02:32.080
Community that's irreverent and self-
00:02:33.760
sustaining with all sorts of different
00:02:35.160
mechanisms to make it work um the way we
00:02:38.720
do things at Etsy with 25 times a day 70
00:02:42.519
Engineers actually shouldn't work
00:02:44.080
there's actually no reason it should
00:02:45.319
work there's no book that you could buy
00:02:47.680
saying this is the way you should do it
00:02:49.239
but it actually does
00:02:50.640
work what we do is we emphasize constant
00:02:54.159
progress on the team shipping frequently
00:02:57.599
and that's powered by a really radical
00:03:00.599
decentralization of authority which
00:03:03.000
really means we actually trust people
00:03:05.040
the way the way we're able to ship 25
00:03:07.239
times a day with 70 Engineers is because
00:03:09.200
we trust the people on the
00:03:11.080
team um we also trust dogs uh if you
00:03:15.080
read our jobs page you'll see that every
00:03:17.879
job description says that dogs are part
00:03:20.599
of the team and are expected to commit
00:03:22.080
code so Dy and Milo have both uh
00:03:25.599
committed code and have both deployed
00:03:28.280
code which we'll talk about a little bit
00:03:29.519
later
00:03:32.439
two button mouse works pretty well with
00:03:34.560
a uh with a
00:03:37.360
paw um so we have a one button deploy at
00:03:40.239
Etsy uh with this button and there's
00:03:43.480
some Fanfare before you get to this
00:03:45.000
button but with this button when you
00:03:47.360
press this button your code goes out to
00:03:49.840
to the millions and millions of etsy
00:03:52.000
members
00:03:53.000
immediately
00:03:54.760
um which is a really great
00:03:57.480
thing so basically anyone you see
00:04:00.360
when you're walking around Etsy who's an
00:04:01.599
engineer can deploy code and here are
00:04:03.159
some of the engineers deploying that
00:04:05.519
code and you can see it's very colorful
00:04:07.959
office um very
00:04:10.360
inspirational product managers can
00:04:12.239
deploy code at Etsy we hire product
00:04:14.920
managers who are technical so Leland who
00:04:17.359
just joined us recently to run our
00:04:19.440
mobile efforts deployed code on his
00:04:21.199
first day he marked up the HTML to put
00:04:24.000
his own photo on the about page and he
00:04:25.960
actually deployed the
00:04:28.320
code we've even had board members deploy
00:04:31.440
code
00:04:33.000
uh we had a board meeting a couple
00:04:35.080
months ago and Fred Wilson on our board
00:04:36.880
was walking out and I said hey Fred you
00:04:38.919
want to deploy Etsy and he looked I
00:04:41.560
don't think anyone's ever asked him that
00:04:43.479
before um but he smiled and said sure
00:04:47.280
and I think uh you can see in the back
00:04:49.880
Adam freed our coo is so bored with the
00:04:52.520
idea of a deploy that he's checking his
00:04:55.840
BlackBerry um so we've made it really
00:04:58.639
simple to deploy code at Etsy um to the
00:05:02.240
point that we're comfortable with board
00:05:03.360
members Fred actually deployed code
00:05:05.639
related to checkout which when I asked
00:05:07.560
him to deploy I wasn't quite aware of
00:05:09.240
but it all it all turned out really
00:05:13.080
well so this is Milo deploying
00:05:16.800
code um his his paw is being guided to
00:05:19.800
the mouse as you can
00:05:21.639
see um but Milo just like any other
00:05:24.280
engineer at
00:05:25.680
Etsy um watches what's going on on the
00:05:28.600
screen he can see the C code being
00:05:30.080
synced out to the servers there's a
00:05:32.039
progress bar and you can see him looking
00:05:34.600
expectantly making sure that the code
00:05:36.479
deploy went okay and it
00:05:39.120
did and then now just like Leland before
00:05:42.039
him Milo was able to deploy his photo to
00:05:44.639
our staff
00:05:46.280
page um which made Milo happy you can
00:05:48.720
see that sort of dog smile on his face
00:05:51.919
those of you with dogs know what the dog
00:05:53.400
smile
00:05:54.840
is um I was really excited listening to
00:05:57.160
Glenn's talk about craft because at Etsy
00:06:00.600
um we have an engineering blog that we
00:06:02.240
call code is craft so if you read the
00:06:04.639
about page on our blog we talk about um
00:06:08.560
that Craftsmen sign their work and you
00:06:10.759
see this this is mentioned I think in
00:06:12.280
the pragmatic programmer and our
00:06:14.240
engineering blog is the way that
00:06:15.680
engineers at Etsy sign their work it's a
00:06:17.599
way that we give Engineers a
00:06:20.720
voice um so those of you who sell on
00:06:23.720
Etsy or buy things on Etsy know that um
00:06:26.880
the members of etsy the people who make
00:06:28.479
things on Etsy they use things like wool
00:06:31.440
and cloth and metal and all sorts of
00:06:34.560
things to make to make things to sell an
00:06:36.840
Etsy and again they're over 400,000
00:06:39.199
people selling on
00:06:40.400
Etsy at Etsy we use the way we think
00:06:43.080
about it is we use max we use texmate we
00:06:45.919
use VI some insane people use
00:06:49.039
emac um and sometimes you know we play
00:06:53.599
guitar while we're actually doing code
00:06:55.039
which you'll see one guy coding one guy
00:06:57.000
accompanying on guitar makes it all the
00:06:59.720
more
00:07:00.560
nicer and this is by the way what our
00:07:02.759
office actually looks
00:07:04.280
like sometimes I forget there's like a
00:07:06.280
pastoral scene of deer on the
00:07:10.080
wall um so Bill Massie an engineer on on
00:07:14.199
my team uh wrote to me and said this
00:07:17.080
this is one of the reasons that he loves
00:07:18.599
Etsy and he said that Etsy respects the
00:07:20.879
trade of engineering um and what he
00:07:24.240
feels and again in terms of optimizing
00:07:26.680
for engineering happiness when he first
00:07:28.720
came to Etsy there was a big banner that
00:07:30.440
said we love
00:07:31.840
engineers and you can feel it in the in
00:07:34.639
the environment that we do love
00:07:36.080
engineers and that's really meaningful
00:07:37.520
for the people at Etsy and this is the
00:07:39.960
banner a handmade
00:07:41.960
Banner so um that isn't the case
00:07:45.479
necessarily in many
00:07:47.520
companies and it's one of the great
00:07:49.919
frustrations for
00:07:51.440
me
00:07:54.240
that that we have Dilbert like we laugh
00:07:56.960
at Dilbert Dilbert is actually funny
00:07:59.080
there's no no doubt about that Dilbert
00:08:01.280
has been running for 22
00:08:03.720
years there's enough material to keep
00:08:06.000
Dilbert going for 22 years and it drives
00:08:07.800
me insane like everything I do at Etsy I
00:08:09.639
don't want to ever um ever look like
00:08:12.159
Dilbert so in this particular Dilbert
00:08:14.240
cartoon you see the point hered boss
00:08:16.720
basically saying Dilbert um Dilbert
00:08:19.039
saying we're going to use agile and and
00:08:21.080
uh pointed boss says find me some find
00:08:23.680
me a method that just gets more with
00:08:25.599
less that gets more productivity from
00:08:27.199
people so this has a long history
00:08:30.759
um in industry and as I was listening to
00:08:34.240
Glenn talk about industrial engineering
00:08:35.919
I was I was really excited I hadn't seen
00:08:37.800
his presentation before because I had
00:08:40.159
been watching um Charlie Chaplain in
00:08:42.959
modern times which was I think probably
00:08:44.920
the greatest satire on life in a factory
00:08:48.760
um which was released 75 years ago and I
00:08:51.800
think it's it shows sort of the Dilbert
00:08:53.800
mentality applied to um to factory work
00:08:57.440
or or perhaps Dilbert stole from chap
00:08:59.800
which is more like
00:09:00.920
it the way Charlie Chaplain describes
00:09:04.360
this um in literally the first frames of
00:09:06.920
the movie he says that modern times is a
00:09:09.880
story of Industry of individual
00:09:12.320
Enterprise and Humanity crusading in the
00:09:14.680
pursuit of
00:09:15.720
happiness which I think describes really
00:09:18.160
all of our lives here everyone is part
00:09:20.320
of humanity crusading in the pursuit of
00:09:23.760
happiness it doesn't go so well for
00:09:26.720
chaplain um he's on an assembly line
00:09:29.880
and he's moving as fast as he can with
00:09:31.320
the assembly line and he's got a foreman
00:09:33.839
who's sort of brow beating him and
00:09:35.120
saying faster faster faster and
00:09:38.000
eventually he gets behind he gets so
00:09:40.600
behind that he literally gets sucked
00:09:43.200
into the machine into the gears and he's
00:09:46.360
he's like trying to use his wrenches to
00:09:47.959
sort of get out of it um I think the
00:09:51.920
reason I was thinking about this I think
00:09:53.160
there's still many places in in our
00:09:55.320
industry and in our work where software
00:09:57.560
is viewed as factory work
00:10:00.079
um and we at Etsy just don't see it that
00:10:02.240
way so we don't design our environment
00:10:04.760
in a way that promotes the idea of of it
00:10:06.720
as factory
00:10:07.720
work so um the most absurd scene in
00:10:11.720
modern times I think is when chaplain's
00:10:14.920
boss who is you know the pointy haired
00:10:17.320
boss's grandfather I
00:10:19.160
think uh entertained some salesmen who
00:10:21.880
are visiting and they are trying to sell
00:10:23.720
him the Billings feeding
00:10:25.560
machine and the idea for the Billings
00:10:27.680
feeding machine is that
00:10:30.079
you can still be on the factory line so
00:10:32.320
underneath in this view here underneath
00:10:34.160
the table or chaplain's hands he's still
00:10:36.440
on the assembly line but what the
00:10:37.720
Billings feeding machine does is it
00:10:39.800
feeds you so that you don't have to take
00:10:42.120
lunch so this plate rotates and these
00:10:44.519
morsels of food are literally pushed to
00:10:46.320
his pushed into his mouth and the idea
00:10:49.160
the the sales pitch was literally
00:10:50.839
eliminate the lunch hour um and give
00:10:54.000
yourself um you know a better
00:10:55.680
Competitive Edge so I was thinking wow
00:10:58.200
this is really uh
00:10:59.800
it's really
00:11:01.560
dehumanizing
00:11:08.839
um
00:11:11.000
so eating is such a human activity I
00:11:13.920
mean we we all have to do it every day
00:11:15.600
there are some days where you don't get
00:11:16.720
a chance because you're working really
00:11:18.040
hard without a doubt but in chaplain's
00:11:21.440
world this sort of horrific world he
00:11:23.040
doesn't even get the pleasure the human
00:11:25.240
pleasure of eating with his co-workers
00:11:27.399
he's literally on the line eating with
00:11:29.440
the Billings feeding machine what we've
00:11:31.519
done at
00:11:32.279
Etsy is we actually have a communal
00:11:34.560
lunch every Tuesday and Thursday that we
00:11:36.600
call
00:11:37.560
Etsy um amazingly it took a long time to
00:11:41.160
come up with the name you it was was
00:11:43.680
brainstorming like what do we call this
00:11:45.399
and then ety oh okay um and so what
00:11:49.560
we've done with ety you can see um
00:11:51.720
members of our support team our
00:11:53.279
editorial team Engineers we we actually
00:11:55.639
get together and sit around a large
00:11:57.160
table even with a 200 person company
00:11:59.519
many large tables we actually talked to
00:12:01.800
each other because eating together is
00:12:03.880
about about happiness so we've unlike
00:12:06.680
chaplain and his his Factory we've
00:12:09.200
actually optimized the lunch hour for
00:12:10.920
happiness not just for developer
00:12:12.279
happiness but for company
00:12:14.680
happiness um we'll go back to the
00:12:16.800
assembly line for just a moment
00:12:21.120
and so what's what is it about the
00:12:23.560
assembly line that that is so sort of
00:12:25.839
dehumanizing so I for here I turn to
00:12:27.680
Peter Ducker Peter Ducker is
00:12:30.040
widely known as one of the greatest sort
00:12:31.720
of business thinkers ever in in the
00:12:34.320
history of of the world and in some in
00:12:36.560
some ways is defined what management is
00:12:39.240
about and I find him to be really
00:12:41.079
fascinating so he wrote a book uh
00:12:43.760
published in 1946 called concept of the
00:12:46.560
corporation and it was really the first
00:12:48.560
book that ever looked as a company at a
00:12:52.040
company as a set of human relations and
00:12:53.880
kind of the human factors inside a
00:12:56.079
company and what Ducker said about the
00:12:58.480
assembly line is the problem with the
00:13:00.120
assembly line wasn't
00:13:01.720
monotony um it was the confinement of
00:13:05.160
the worker to one manipulation repeated
00:13:07.279
endlessly which denies the satisfaction
00:13:09.680
of finishing a job so it was all about
00:13:12.160
not having the satisfaction of
00:13:16.720
finishing so in essence when you when
00:13:18.839
you take it in software terms um when
00:13:21.800
you work on an assembly line you're not
00:13:23.240
really allowed to ship you're making
00:13:25.320
things you're you're putting on a widget
00:13:27.680
but you never get to see the finished
00:13:28.880
product produ um so duer tells a story
00:13:32.120
of a factory um just after World War II
00:13:36.720
where there were workers on an assembly
00:13:38.040
line working on airplanes and they were
00:13:40.000
all building uh working on particular
00:13:42.079
Parts like some people working on the
00:13:43.480
engines some people working on the wings
00:13:46.160
and what happened in this Factory is
00:13:47.519
that management was complaining that the
00:13:50.199
workers were really um kind of listless
00:13:53.160
and unproductive and there was a high
00:13:54.639
degree of absenteeism there were work
00:13:56.279
slowdowns and stoppages and manager had
00:13:59.839
an Insight where he said maybe these
00:14:01.639
people are feeling this way and acting
00:14:04.120
this way because they don't actually get
00:14:05.279
to see the finished
00:14:07.040
product so what they did the managers
00:14:10.600
invited the workers and their families
00:14:12.720
out to an Airfield where they had
00:14:14.399
several planes set up and each plane had
00:14:17.199
a crew member in it um and they let the
00:14:20.600
workers and encourage the workers to
00:14:22.120
kind of crawl in the planes and look
00:14:24.079
around and the crew members inside the
00:14:26.519
planes who were flying the planes um
00:14:28.560
would ask the workers you know what part
00:14:30.800
are you working on and the crew members
00:14:32.320
would explain to the worker how that
00:14:34.160
particular part fit into the plane help
00:14:36.800
them conduct a safe flight help them get
00:14:38.680
their business done so immediately um as
00:14:42.399
Ducker tells the story like right after
00:14:44.480
this happened worker productivity went
00:14:46.199
way up absenteeism went way down the
00:14:49.440
workers were able to see what they were
00:14:51.560
building and actually ship so no more
00:14:54.600
were they working on widgets they they
00:14:55.959
were actually shipping
00:14:57.839
airplanes um Dan arielli who wrote
00:15:00.199
another book called predictably
00:15:01.880
irrational um which is a great
00:15:04.680
read also just published a book called
00:15:07.160
The Upside of irrationality and he ran a
00:15:10.079
a bunch of Behavioral tests and what he
00:15:12.320
came out with was that allowing
00:15:14.800
employees to feel a sense of completion
00:15:17.560
and ensuring that the job was well done
00:15:19.600
is what creates meaning and
00:15:22.079
work so getting back to what we do at
00:15:24.759
Etsy these easy
00:15:27.279
deploys as Developers it's like they're
00:15:30.440
no longer making widgets on the assembly
00:15:32.160
line they're actually seeing
00:15:34.959
airplanes um so back back to the button
00:15:39.240
when you press this button at
00:15:41.440
Etsy I'm sure many of you have uh
00:15:43.959
similar one button deploys you actually
00:15:46.800
get to see the website immediately you
00:15:49.279
get to see what you've made you get to
00:15:50.600
see the airplane that you're
00:15:53.160
making even better um back to the
00:15:56.079
concept of community and I'm sure those
00:15:58.240
of you who run sites with really active
00:15:59.959
communities we get instant feedback from
00:16:02.639
the community so not only are you
00:16:04.319
getting the gratification of a job
00:16:06.440
completed you're actually getting
00:16:07.759
feedback you're getting feedback from
00:16:09.680
the crew members who are telling you how
00:16:11.199
your work fits into to their lives that
00:16:14.319
creates intense developer happiness you
00:16:17.399
get comments like this has been a dream
00:16:19.639
thank you so much um from pressing that
00:16:23.120
button to getting praise from someone
00:16:24.800
using your product is extremely
00:16:27.920
gratifying so at Etsy this whole cycle
00:16:31.240
from pressing from committing code
00:16:33.399
actually when you commit code to trunk
00:16:36.079
and we work on trunk all the time which
00:16:37.639
is probably the subject of another talk
00:16:40.480
um this whole cycle from committing to
00:16:42.399
trunk and having code live on the site
00:16:44.519
that the community can comment on it
00:16:46.120
takes 21 minutes so as a developer again
00:16:49.519
with this decentralized Authority which
00:16:51.120
I'll talk about more in just a minute um
00:16:53.560
21 minutes and you're you're in flight
00:16:57.160
so back to Ducker
00:16:59.800
another thing that Ducker said in
00:17:01.319
concept of the corporation is that the
00:17:03.079
corporation's social function as a
00:17:05.160
community is as important as its
00:17:07.280
economic function as an efficient
00:17:09.640
producer so it's really interesting to
00:17:12.079
me Ducker as one of the the fathers of
00:17:13.679
management thought would say something
00:17:15.000
like this but if you watch CNBC or read
00:17:17.240
The Wall Street Journal no one talks
00:17:18.559
about companies as communities but Etsy
00:17:20.959
we think of the company as a community
00:17:23.199
back to the button this button is a
00:17:25.799
water cooler it's a thing that people
00:17:27.439
gather around it's a
00:17:29.400
something that they talk around it's
00:17:30.720
like the The Keg in the backyard at a
00:17:33.440
summer party um it's a focal point we
00:17:37.520
gather around it about 25 times a
00:17:39.960
day um we use IRC heavily I'm sure like
00:17:43.679
how many of you are using IRC in your
00:17:45.559
company's startups many so IRC is really
00:17:48.799
unremarkable it's been around
00:17:50.640
forever um but I think what we're doing
00:17:53.480
with IRC at Etsy is really remarkable
00:17:55.799
given the size of the
00:17:57.840
team we have something we call the push
00:17:59.919
Trin so you may be thinking if you have
00:18:02.159
20 you have 70 Engineers you're always
00:18:04.120
committing to trunk and you're you're
00:18:05.760
pushing 25 times a day like how do you
00:18:08.320
how do you do that so Ross Snyder one of
00:18:11.360
our Engineers came up with the idea of
00:18:12.960
the push train and it's really very
00:18:16.280
simply um one of the mechanisms that
00:18:18.640
makes it work is the changing of an IRC
00:18:21.400
topic
00:18:22.919
so when you want to get in line to push
00:18:26.520
you basically change the IRC topic and
00:18:28.520
put your name at the end of it and then
00:18:30.919
you are sanctioned to push um so that's
00:18:33.760
not incredibly remarkable but I think
00:18:35.720
how it
00:18:36.640
works is more remarkable so the way the
00:18:39.559
push train works is like an air it's an
00:18:41.720
airport without an air traffic
00:18:44.120
controller where the planes line up on
00:18:46.280
the runway and the pilots communicate
00:18:48.039
amongst themselves so Steve in this line
00:18:50.799
was the first to take off as soon as he
00:18:52.640
gets to a comfortable cruising altitude
00:18:55.120
he radios back to Mike who's number two
00:18:57.480
and says mike you're clear to take off
00:19:00.760
then Mike gets in position Rachel and
00:19:03.440
says Rachel I'm about to take off
00:19:04.880
Rachel's behind him then Rachel waits
00:19:06.559
for Mike to get to cruising altitude uh
00:19:09.360
Mike says I'm I'm clear and then Rachel
00:19:11.799
takes off this repeats itself 25 times a
00:19:14.760
day at Etsy several hundred times a
00:19:17.600
month and there's no centralized release
00:19:20.280
manager um this is the way it works all
00:19:22.400
the
00:19:24.159
time so I read a quote recently that I
00:19:27.159
thought really described the beauty of
00:19:29.080
how this
00:19:29.960
works and the quote that described was
00:19:32.919
describing something else an intricate
00:19:35.159
ballet in which the individual dancers
00:19:36.799
and ensembles all have distinctive Parts
00:19:39.559
which miraculously reinforce each other
00:19:42.320
and compose an orderly
00:19:44.000
whole the person who wrote this was
00:19:46.200
actually Jane Jacobs who um wrote The
00:19:49.880
Definitive book about urban planning one
00:19:52.960
of the definitive books in a classic
00:19:54.440
called the death and life of Great
00:19:55.720
American cities and what she was writing
00:19:58.320
about
00:19:59.159
when she wrote about the intricate
00:20:00.400
ballet and the ensembles and how this
00:20:02.400
chaos comes to an orderly holes she was
00:20:04.080
writing about cities she was largely
00:20:05.720
writing about New York City um it's a
00:20:08.120
fascinating fascinating book she's
00:20:10.640
really writing about Community um and
00:20:13.679
and how this this this ballet makes
00:20:17.159
communities work um decentralized
00:20:20.120
communities so Justin Donado uh a new
00:20:23.520
software engineer who started a month
00:20:24.760
ago actually talked to me about wrote to
00:20:26.640
me about our IRC and communication
00:20:28.360
Channel he refer to them as
00:20:30.520
entertaining um as well as useful and
00:20:33.799
that it made newcomers like Justin feel
00:20:35.760
comfortable and supported this is the
00:20:37.240
language of communities and
00:20:38.720
neighborhoods not the language of code
00:20:40.400
pushes and
00:20:42.880
IRC so really we use tools to build
00:20:46.159
happy communities at Etsy the the Etsy
00:20:48.840
community and the community of Engineers
00:20:51.240
inside
00:20:53.080
Etsy one thing that Jan Jacob said about
00:20:56.520
successful communities um and
00:20:58.600
neighborhoods is that there's an
00:20:59.720
unconscious Assumption of general street
00:21:01.799
support when the chips are down and
00:21:04.880
anyone who runs a website here knows
00:21:06.559
that sometimes the chips are down uh
00:21:09.360
sometimes the site is down um it
00:21:13.360
happens something that Mike Brittain uh
00:21:15.880
one of our software engineers said to me
00:21:18.080
and and as far as I know Mike hasn't
00:21:19.640
read Jane Jacobs but what he said echoed
00:21:21.960
Jane Jacobs to me he said the thing that
00:21:24.240
he loved about Etsy the thing that made
00:21:25.760
him happy at Etsy was that there's so
00:21:27.279
many Engineers watching each other
00:21:28.600
other's back so again Engineers are
00:21:31.799
happy it's like Jane Jacob's successful
00:21:33.640
neighborhoods and successful
00:21:35.799
communities so really a lot of what we
00:21:39.440
talk about when we talk about management
00:21:41.159
and software and managing a team and
00:21:43.720
leading a team and directing a team the
00:21:46.679
word executive about execution we're
00:21:49.799
talking about um we're using a certain
00:21:51.520
kind of language but the way I think
00:21:53.440
about my team is that the team itself is
00:21:55.799
a
00:21:56.559
community much like Ducker said that
00:21:58.760
corporations are communities my team is
00:22:00.279
a
00:22:02.880
community the best thing I can do is to
00:22:05.640
create an environment where where we
00:22:07.159
help them finish things where we help
00:22:09.559
them see the airplanes they're building
00:22:11.159
not just the widgets where we give
00:22:12.840
people the tools to be able to ship in
00:22:15.400
20 minutes and actually interact with
00:22:18.320
the community on the
00:22:20.640
site it's important to give them a voice
00:22:23.559
um the thing that excites me about the
00:22:25.600
push train and that decentralized way of
00:22:27.520
working is that that's evidence of of
00:22:31.159
the team speaking to each other and
00:22:32.799
working out a system that actually
00:22:36.200
works so Jane Jacobs wrote something
00:22:38.720
about another uh something about Order
00:22:41.080
and Chaos in the book the death and life
00:22:42.760
of Great American
00:22:44.000
cities she said there is a quality even
00:22:46.600
meaner than outright ugliness or
00:22:48.400
disorder and this meaner quality is the
00:22:50.880
dishonest mask of pretended order
00:22:53.760
achieved by ignoring or suppressing the
00:22:55.840
real order that is struggling to exist
00:22:57.880
and be served
00:22:59.520
I'm sure many of the companies you work
00:23:01.039
for have this sort of pretended order
00:23:03.559
pretended order is we do releases like
00:23:06.039
this but all the engineers know that
00:23:07.440
it's going to break and you're going to
00:23:08.520
have to push a million times that day
00:23:10.159
anyway um that that kind of thing I
00:23:13.480
think demotivates people the real order
00:23:15.400
is the way people actually do their
00:23:18.200
work so in closing I would say in your
00:23:21.480
companies in your teams and open source
00:23:23.679
communities build a community where you
00:23:26.480
allow the real human order to get get
00:23:28.760
things done completion being important
00:23:32.320
and great things will happen the team
00:23:34.520
will gel you'll build a great
00:23:36.679
product so in closing
00:23:39.880
um optimize your teams for the happiness
00:23:42.440
of
00:23:43.320
people and thank
00:23:51.480
you