projects

Open Source

You can find my open source projects on GitHub.

Talks

Metrics, Metrics Everywhere

If you don’t measure it, you can’t optimize it. At GitHub’s CodeConf in 2011, I spoke about Yammer’s service-level performance metrics, how we used them to guide our development strategy, and how you can improve the transparency of your own software.

Sadly, that talk wasn’t recorded, but you can find the slides here. I ended up giving the talk again at Pivotal Labs a few months later, which was recorded.

The Programming Ape

Humans, you may have noticed, are not exactly rational. And yet here we are, trying to get them to build software. It’s a bit of a mess. But there is some good news: by drawing on modern theories of human cognition we can begin to optimize our tools for how people think, not how computers work. At PhillyETE 2012, I spoke about my experience at Yammer building human-centric tools for engineers, layed out the sociotechnical challenges facing organizations trying to build transparent architectures, and mentioned in passing how all of that relates to making money.

This talk was recorded and you can find the slides here.

The Other Side Of Software Architecture

Obviously, you care about the craft of programming. You spend time honing your skills, refactoring your code, learning new techniques, and experimenting with different libraries. But did you know where you sit, who you talk to, and how you report to your manager all affect the way your software is structured? In 2012, I was invited to Etsy’s Code As Craft series and spoke about how organizational structures influence software and the implications for designing scalable, resilient software systems and companies.

You can watch this talk here or see the slides.