The Mechanics of Software Evolution

May 09, 2022

#88 – May 09, 2022

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Have you ever heard engineers in your team complain about only building “business features” and never doing any “tech work”? There are some ways in which this complain is legitimate, but I feel that there is an underlying unity to both these things. I’d like to explain this by applying a evolutionary lens to changes in software.

Chatting with a friend recently, their company was running into a common developer productivity pitfall. The company had mandated a migration away from their monolithic architecture and mono repo, but the migration was stalling out. To speed up the transition, the responsible infrastructure team decided to stop supporting the monolith and instead focus on the new service environment.

More than 2 years ago, I decided to try to create a brief, digestible manual on the expectations of management for senior engineers at my company who are considering making the shift. At the time, I had about 3 years of management experience, including two prior companies. Enough to feel like I knew how to do the job, but not enough to feel like I should be some kind of authority on management. After letting this marinate for a couple years, I’m ready to share what I have learned.

Apart from Holocracy, the "Spotify model" and Liquid Organization, what other frameworks/models do you know for adaptable org structures?

Have you (or your company) tried repeatedly to hire for Role X? And failed? Do you have a revolving door situation at your company?

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