Developer plantations Colonialism of XXI century

Wojciech Seliga

Kraków, 17-19 May 2017

@wseliga

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

A FEW QUESTIONS

➤ Who works in Poland or other CEE countries?

➤ Who works in a company with the headquarters in the US, Australia or Western Europe?

➤ Who frequently talks to the end users of the system you develop?

HISTORICAL RESOURCES OF POLAND

➤ woods

➤ crops

➤ coal

➤ iron

,

MODERN RESOURCES OF POLAND

➤ Educated, ambitious and hard-working people resources

➤ Default go-to country for building Shared Service and Outsourcing Centres:

➤ Accounting services

➤ Human Resources

➤ Payroll services

➤ IT services

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT OUTSOURCING /

SHARED SERVICES

Picture courtesy of Luc Galoppin - CC BY 2.0

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT

SERVICES BECOME A COMMODITY

A DEMAND FOR DEVELOPERS FOREVER?

MINERS

ENGLISH TEACHERS

LAWYERS

BANKERS

Picture courtesy of Willian Soares - CC BY 2.0

GFC

SEPTEMBER 11TH

DOTCOM BUBBLEPicture courtesy of Marco Bellucci - CC BY 2.0

2005

ABILITY TO WRITE COMPUTER PROGRAMS

BECOMES COMMODITY

(like literacy in XX century)

TECHNOLOGY EXCITEMENT & FOCUS

Java

Scala

Ruby

React

Angular2

Akka

Hibernate

Node.js

Ember.js

Vue.js

Django

Play

MesosKubernetes

Docker

Spring

C#

Hadoop

RDS

Nagios

Redis

MongoDB

S3

Python

Bootstrap

Bricks - by Egor Smile - CC BY-SA 4.0Cement mixer - by Ben Sutherland - CC BY 2.0

Trowel - by Obersachse - CC BY-SA 3.0Hammer - by Shakespeare at English Wikipedia - CC BY-SA 3.0

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

BRIC

KS G

OOD

FOR

EVER

YTHI

NG?

Ege University Sport Hall courtesy of Mach - CC BY SA 3.0 LOT Dreamliner courtesy of Tony Hisgett - CC BY 2.0

Brick house courtesy of Chris Light at English Wikipedia - CC BY SA 3.0 Brick bridge courtesy of Gillie Rhodes - CC BY NC 2.0

Race to the Bottom

WE NEED TO PROVIDE FAR MORE VALUE THAN JUST THE CODE

“TECHNOLOGY” BECOMES IMPLIED

TechnologyProduct

Real solution to a real problem

Why

How

What

Technology and software development processes here

Traditionally this is “Business”Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

Why

How

What

Technology and software development processes here

Traditionally this is “Business”

Developers should try to enter this circle

Simon Sinek’s Golden Circle

Tester

QA Engineer

Project Manager

Support Engineer

System Admin

Product Manager

Product Marketing Manager

Business Developer

Business Analyst

Growth Hacker

Customer Advocate

Account Manager

Designer

Release Manager

Globe by TUBS - CC BY-SA 3.0

Telemarketer

Data Scientist

Developer

SOFTWARE BUSINESS & PRODUCT SPECIALISTS ARE

UNICORNS IN POLAND

The Matrix, WarnerBros, 1999

ARE WE DOOMED?

Picture courtesy of Robert Hruzek - CC BY NC ND 2.0

PROGRAMMING

PROGRAMMING

SOFTWARE ENGINEERING

PROGRAMMING

PRODUCT ENGINEERINGSOFTWARE ENGINEERING

PRODUCT ENGINEERING

From Wikipedia:

…Product engineering usually entails activity dealing with issues of cost, producibility, quality, performance, reliability, serviceability, intended lifespan and user features. These product characteristics are generally all sought in the attempt to make the resulting product attractive to its intended market and a successful contributor to the business of the organization that intends to offer the product to that market….

Software Development

Quality Assurance

Maintenance

Deployment

APIs

Support

Performance Engineering

Software Engineering

UI Design

Vision Data Analysis

Design Extensibility

Documentation

Market Awareness

Advocacy

Strategy

Pricing Strategy

User Experience

Customer Engagement

Competitive Analysis

Market Research

Inspiring Customers

User Research

Adoption

Software Development

Quality Assurance

Maintenance

Deployment

APIs

Support

Performance Engineering

Product Engineering

UI Design

Vision Data Analysis

Design Extensibility

Documentation

Market Awareness

Advocacy

Strategy

Pricing Strategy

User Experience

Customer Engagement

Competitive Analysis

Market Research

Inspiring Customers

User Research

Adoption

buy/acquire/integrate over build

kill over let it rot

measure over hope

de-scope over half-bake

research over guess

challenge over believe

ask & validate over assume

PRODUCT ENGINEERS ARE

NOT ARTISTS

FEEDBACK LOOP WITH THE MARKET/CUSTOMER/USER

IS THE ULTIMATE FEEDBACK LOOP PRODUCT ENGINEER IS INTERESTED IN

Photo by wackystuff - CC BY-NC 2.0

Even God himself created the world in 6 iterations!Iterative Execution

PLAYING AS A TEAM

Product Engineering is a multi-discipline game

ENGINEERS JUMP TO

SOLUTIONS TOO QUICKLY

(including yours truly)

PRODUCT ENGINEERING IS ABOUT LEAVING YOUR COMFORT ZONE➤ enter uncharted territories

➤ make connections with people not from your tribe

➤ go dangerously fast

➤ make constant tradeoffs between time, cost, technical quality and scope

Picture courtesy of oklanica - CC BY-NC 2.0

“If everything seems under control, you're not going fast enough

-Mario AndrettiPhoto by Legends of Motorsports - CC BY-SA 2.0

ENGINEERS SEEK ORDER

➤ By default engineers want to see or establish an Order around them

➤ Software engineers want it even more, as the software is infinitely flexible - refactoring, renaming, code style, process improvement & automation, “Clean Code”, …

➤ The balance between The Chaos and The Order is the key - otherwise risk-takers win or you collapse

Photo by Rich Renomeron - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

PRODUCT ENGINEERING IS HARD

Photo by jochenWolters - CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

RELATIVELY POOR ECONOMY DOES NOT HELP - CEE VS SILICON VALLEY

Plenty of investors?

Great networking options?

Rich parents?

Greater courage?

Bigger market?

More persistence?

Better companies?

Photo by Artur Andrzej CC BY-SA 4.0

RELATIVELY POOR ECONOMY DOES NOT HELP - CEE VS SILICON VALLEY

Plenty of investors?

Great networking options?

Rich parents?

Greater courage?

Bigger market?

More persistence?

Better companies?

Photo by Jeremy Segrott - CC BY 2.0

The Matrix, WarnerBros, 1999

REALITY - THOSE WHO KNOW “WHY” - TAKE IT ALL

Subcontractors / Craftsmen

Construction Companies

Investment Group

Resource Engagement

Business - Why & How

Technology

Outsourcing Companies

REALITY - THOSE WHO KNOW “WHY” - TAKE IT ALL

Subcontractors / Craftsmen

Construction Companies

Investment Group

Resource Engagement

Subcontractors Craftsmen

Construction Companies

Investment Group

Profits

TECHNOLOGY IS A MEAN, NOT A GOAL FOCUSING JUST ON IT PUTS YOU

IN DANGER

KNOW-HOWKNOW-WHY

THE QUEST FOR THE PLACE TO GROW

➤ Direct exposure to customers and the market

➤ Direct exposure to “Business People”

➤ No single centre of gravity abroad

➤ Career paths in “Business”, ideally without the need to relocate

➤ No people pigeonholing (aka. devs can do only coding), a place for generalists

➤ Headquarters in Poland/CEE…?

➤ No slave-driver culture amongst local management (think: Stephen for Django Unchained…)

➤ Local capital involved

PEOPLE WHO STAY IN THEIR COMFORT ZONE DO NOT EVOLVE AND … BECOME IRRELEVANT

IT’S GOOD TIME TO TAKE RISKS WHILE THERE IS STILL A DEMAND FOR

DEVELOPERS AND … YOU CAN DEMAND

THANK YOUTwitter: @wseliga

We are hiring

in Gdańsk!

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