Misaligned Incentives

We discuss compensation, particularly how people in the IT department ("developers," etc.) are so disconnected from the actual business that compensating them based on business performance is near impossible. Not good if you're an IT person and like money. There's other types of comp. then money, obviously, and those are fine too. In particular, we discuss participation in open source and more recognition. But, still: money is the best.

People in large organizations avoid improving for improving's sake. They're very rarely proactive in transforming. Instead, it seems that management in most large organizations only act, and change, when they fear competition and failure. "Everyone" knows this is a bad strategy, and yet "everyone" does it. Perhaps we should embrace that behavior, or at least be empathetic, and figure out how to work with it. We discuss this problem and things to do in this episode. Also, we find out why Coté always has bad breath. Mood board: (6:30) - The daily, normal fears are going to drive what a business does more than large, one-off crises. If your inventory is on an AS/400, then you're in trouble. A chaos monkey for business, or, training for the unexpected. "When there's not a crisis, every penny is squeezed out of technology." Outsourcing, but the harmful type. Hold your customers close, know your evolving storefront. Now, software is the primary storefront. To improve, you must have an enemy. (20:51) "If you're trying to modernize, do this 'digital transformation,' it has to come from a place of an existential problem." (21:26) To prepare for a major disruption, you have to prepare for a bunch of minor, incremental disruptions. You have to sell [the return] on paying for change. (25:51) If you want to justify paying for continuous delivery, you have to find a problem to solve. (27:41) They're bean counters, so just count the beans for them - just give them some beans and they're happy. (28:58) As technologist, our views on revenue are not considered important or valid. (29:21) Fear and loss are often easier to quantify, e.g., "if the database goes down, the business halts, and we loose millions a minute." Growth potential is harder to quantify and pitch, so we often ask for money based on fear and loss. (29:36) "Even though I think about revenue streams, I've never been taken as seriously when I talk about them, as when I talk about fear." Finding people outside of IT that care about software, like, in "the business." (32:55) The only reason for technical agility, is business agility. (33:44) If you do live through a crisis, try to internalize your failure to prepare so you only learn once from crisis, not again and again. (35:33) The Business needs the fear, and then needs to ask IT to help with some optimistic technology action...cause no one's gonna believe IT.

The anti-racsim list: https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/1BRlF2_zhNe86SGgHa6-VlBO-QgirITwCTugSfKie5Fs/mobilebasic Donate: The NAACP: https://www.naacpldf.org/ How to Make Sure You’re Donating Effectively: https://www.thecut.com/2020/06/how-to-donate-effectively-to-fight-police-brutality.html Sign the petition for Breonna: https://justiceforbreonna.org/ How To Be An Antiracist — Ibram X. Kendi: https://www.ibramxkendi.com/how-to-be-an-antiracist-1 Learn more here https://www.thecut.com/article/george-floyd-protests-how-to-help-where-to-donate.html Camping Wordplay in the Jewish culture Goya Protests around the world Broberg in Minneapolis Paul in Austin JJ in Austin How can we help?

History of Tirefi.re Immutable OSs, is that really something that’s worth looking into for servers? Could you use ChromeOS’s philosophy on servers? Flatpak! Love or hate? CoreOS go boom boom Fedora coreos silverblue vs flatcar container linux Breakfast. How do you do it? Eggs or no eggs? “Balanced breakfast” - is that still a thing? Books vs ebooks vs audiobooks Has the boom boom times changed how you consume? When do you listen to podcasts now ? Special Guest: Shaun Mouton.

Paul’s dev.to homework - Broberg’s a Dev.to noob. Broberg buys a grill Matty’s wacky wheels devop gameshow (https://irreverentdevops.com) Favorite website from the late 1900’s Homestarrunner The one the the metallica napster video (Camp Chaos) Ytmnd E/N blogs … the original microblogging ? Ebaumsworld the original viral video copiers Todo-ist and other things that will fail to cure our procrastination top 30 origami blogs of 2020 (https://blog.feedspot.com/origami_blogs/). link to tabletop simulator matty’s github stars (https://github.com/mattstratton?tab=stars) (where projects go that he never looks at again) gmailctl (https://github.com/mbrt/gmailctl)

Salt stack bug, what is it, wait what is zeroMQ? https://www.zdnet.com/article/saltstack-salt-critical-bugs-allow-data-center-cloud-server-hijacking-as-root/ https://github.com/saltstack/salt/issues/57057 https://labs.f-secure.com/advisories/saltstack-authorization-bypass Didn’t they write their own secure transport library? Who got hacked? Ghost, LineageOS, https://saltexploit.com It’s also a simple index.html file with a gist. It’s actually really clever to deploy something so simple. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-work-with-the-zeromq-messaging-library Dev.to (https://dev.to) for life of tech nerds Daniel J Lewis (The Audacity to Podcast (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/)/SEO for Podcasters (https://theaudacitytopodcast.com/store/seo-for-podcasters/)) Podcasters Roundtable (https://podcastersroundtable.com/) podcast

Lists are cool, TweetDeck is pretty powerful, how to wrangle that crazy firehose of information. The fine art of shitposting.

JJ, Matt Broberg, and Paul go deep into hot sauces and wonder why pipelines do what they do. * Live streaming - pros and cons and why? Ribs Names Sriracha, is it the best or is there better? 3 batches and even played with the recipe, with these end times, everyone should make this at least once: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uL8UJPQ_zoU Matt is obsessing over Hot Ones hot sauces https://heathotsauce.com/collections/hot-ones Happy to talk more on general fermentation! Matt is happy to learn What’s a supply chain? Is that another tekton thing? Speaking of, what’s tekton? Is that a supply chain thing? Fancy new word for CI/CD or something different? See https://twitter.com/ibuildthecloud/status/1252268240492834816

Managing configuration, watching people eat, app launcher, animal crossing, and vim jokes.

We're learning more about doing conferences and events online, instead of in-person. Basically, how do you make webinars better and re-create the "hallway track." Also, we talk about the mess in the US and ICQ. ICQ? Wait, what it’s back (https://icq.com/desktop/en#mac)? Lessons learned about ATX DevOps has a virtual meetup. Lessons learned: - Compresses 90 minutes back to back. - Hunting and hiring. Frequent travel status furloughed (https://twitter.com/AmericanAir/status/1249765252943826946?s=20).

If there was ever an appropriate drunk and retired topic, it’s surely the need for Cobol programmers to come out of retirement. - Barry Hobbs Conferences - Useless or Useful? Turning on your camera is the new open floor plans. How are you making up for the lack - Podcasting? Streaming? Crying? How do you get your news?

Trolling google docs for fun and profit Are you for or against “suggestion mode” ? Can we talk about how ironic it is that Google Drive is impossible to find information in? Zoom … good or bad? Paul’s hottake - "if you think devops is telling developers to understand operations then you're a bad operator" Reducing cognitive load. Not increasing it. https://lobste.rs/ vs https://news.ycombinator.com/ https://github.com/lobsters/lobsters

Big issue confronted this week: how many screens is too many screens? Also: JJ doesn't know his USB cables and green screen redecorating.

Strong focus on bread. Stretch and fold. Bread life style. Sweet and cakey. Pulling on Paul. Something you'd like to stop or start doing. Dog walking.

This podcast is starting back up.

We discuss outsourcing IT, part 02 of the Misaligned Incentives series.

Journey Through the Business Bottleneck, part 1. Join Rick and I as we try to find this elusive thing called "The Business." We lay out a theory we've been talking about: while IT has been improving or, at least, can improve, the business side of the house isn't showing up to do anything with CLOUD and AGILE and THE DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION. Why's this the case? Do toothpaste people have this problem? Outsourcing - that's a treat! And so forth. Hopefully next episode we'll discuss tactics to get people outside of IT interested. Subscribe at https://misaligned.business And, check out Coté's work in progress book on this topic: https://cote.io/bottleneck/

Large organization are desperate to become “tech companies.” They drool at these tech companies ability to grow and change quickly. Despite mastering agile over the past 20 years, IT as a whole is too slow and unreliable. “It’s the culture,” everyone says. Changing culture for a team of 10 people is easy - changing a department of 20,000 developers is another challenge entirely. Based on case studies and interviews over the past five years, this talk describes how large organizations are getting over that challenge. First, the talk covers moving from a project to a product mindset and the associated practices. Second, it covers how DevOps and cloud platforms enable that product mindset. Third, it goes over how leadership and management change to support this new approach. Finally, the talk catalogs tactics, patterns, and organizational structures that large organizations are using to improve how they do software which leads to improving their business. This talk is based on my book Monolithic Transformation (O’Reilly, Feb 2019). You can download the slides if you like, and they pop-up as chapter art if your podcast app supports that.

Extensive discussion of egg salad and mustard with carrots, with @cote, @EpicNerd, and @rseroter. Cover (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Egg_Salad.jpg).

A recording of one of my standard talks, this time in Istanbul. Check out the slides used (https://www.slideshare.net/cote/better-software-is-better-than-worse-software-istanbul).

Topics, discussed and not: What's it called when people talk before being on the record? (Senate cloak room.) Domain mapping UK Parliament. Workshopping. PRINCE2 Baselining - mapping what you have Managers what do they do even? The Lean Thread James G. The role of "what are we doing here?" Why this, why anything? Event Storming Thriving in a goaless organization. Constrained by the system you're in, the technology you use. Starting with capabilities, not desires and goals. You've done goofed. How to audio book. The mental library of safety. Eating little at buffets. Touring thru connivance stores. Body wash soap vs. bar soap. Taking less tooth brushes. See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#). Materials: Knight, Death and the Devil (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight,_Death_and_the_Devil), "I just wanna ride." (https://genius.com/Yeek-i-just-wanna-ride-lyrics)

There are so many languages to learn, and such an inablity to do so. Plus, packing for a week of business travel. See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#).

All CMSs suck, some suck less than others “Tumblr! What was I thinking?” (Meanwhile, Coté’s (http://drunkandretired.com/).) Coté can’t get micro.blog to bend to his will (http://cote.coffee/). (It doesn’t have titles, WTF?) Robert’ (https://robertbrook.micro.blog/)s https://notes.pinboard.in (https://notes.pinboard.in) - Useful (https://notes.pinboard.in/u:cote/notes/4d279b75b227546faca5). Coté’s Commonplace Book, weekly newsletter (https://www.getrevue.co/profile/cote). Delightful things: Bruce Sterling: http://brucesterling.tumblr.com (http://tumblr), Beyond the Beyond (https://www.wired.com/category/beyond_the_beyond/), flickr (https://www.flickr.com/photos/brucesterling/). How does Robert pick things to take pictures of? Warren Ellis’ newsletter (http://orbitaloperations.com/). Sir Mortimer and Magnus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GzjgVClXenQ) - delight in history and retelling. Related: most mornings Coté wakes up and thinks “I should just delete myself from the Internet. Oh, right. My job.” Coté bought a Chemex (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemex_Coffeemaker) (it involves figuring out how the Quooker (http://www.quooker.co.uk/enuk) works, finally) - how to do it? Music (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVemPN4majg). See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#heading=h.jqo7bgo65n3).

Topic Blast: - How to scramble eggs. - Robert’s cloud questions. - “The Chimney Story”...? - The terror of lead-gening yourself. Waiting to invoke the 10 minute rule on a call I (supposedly) wanted to have! - Notability vs Noteshelf vs GoodNotes. Bonus: Evernote vs. Ulysses vs. Bear vs. &co. Recommendations: - Leading Change (https://amzn.to/2zJZkdq). - Filtered water: Brita, the 9.99 pounds one on Amazon. See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#).

A rare episode with Charles Lowell, back to reprise some DrunkAndRetired.com style rambling. We discuss, oddly, actual retirement, GI Joe vs. transformers, and talking about just one thing. Oh, and "a dry heat." Robert will be back next time. Special Guest: Charles Lowell.

How do you even explain things to people? (E.g., picking public vs. private cloud.) Cloth napkins: single use, or use until you throw them in a random wash them? Magazines in airport lounges, dentists Robert’s dumb cloud questions The Chimney Story What’s “hot” and “cold”? Can you teach business people to do modelling? Sleep. How great is it? Robert should step up and do the show notes. See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#).

Moving, to Amsterdam mostly. Also: Traveling Food & Drink in The Netherlands. Frequent flyer forlornness Rail in UK & Europe See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#).

What exactly does “lockin” mean? We go through a historic view of what people mean and are afraid of when they use that term. And, then, the usual nonsense. “I’ve traveled extensively through my hotel window.” “You’re the last person using Evernote.” de Bono (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_de_Bono). de Botton (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alain_de_Botton). More: Being in a “man place,” aka, The Grand barber shop. (Robert: old barber places, are there any ‘good’ gendered spaces?) Robert: from FTP to AWS etc., Isn’t this lock-in, rather than commoditization? Related: it’s mostly impossible to get your (all) photos your of flickr. TC Currie: “There’s no such thing as a static environment.” Accounting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BurningofParliament Robert: Rotterdam! Men used to wear yoga pants, in Shakespeare's time. How to keep a journalist’s daily notebook…? (r: diaries, to do lists) “The number-one piece of advice seniors would give to their younger selves is they wished they’d been less hard on themselves,” Scott Galloway, “Happiness & the Gorilla.” (https://www.l2inc.com/daily-insights/no-mercy-no-malice/happiness-the-gorilla) Writers who write writers into their written work: “very lazy”. I’m told that thinking life-disaster is just around the corner is stressful, not motivating. “But polar bears are also lonely and endangered. I was floating on my own little iceberg, and it was melting, fast,” Chasing Hillary (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36544590-chasing-hillary), Chapter 11. Shaving. Robert: flying to Dublin from London City. Film directors control the whole movie, they can tweak it to perfection (if there’s enough time and money). Like the Vangelis keyed opening of Bladerunner. You can’t comment on “truth” with etymology. (History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps.) Coté should “write” a book (https://docs.google.com/document/d/17LRusbjLD8_cyEBNDcD7jC2o_7fEsEM0slptUrp8bmg/edit?usp=sharing): Register columns. RedMonk content. 451 on developer relations? “Filler” about me, e.g., most every political journalist book I’ve ever read (e.g., Chasing Hillary (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36544590-chasing-hillary).) Looking at old photos gets very mixed results. (But it’s still calming.) Or, old pictures, back when Robert Tweeted. (“Missed opportunity I had to be happy.”) See full shows elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#heading=h.4v9hwmigni2s).

Camping, salad dressing classism, “fun” as she is spoken. Colorado Bend State Park (https://tpwd.texas.gov/state-parks/colorado-bend). Camping as character building. Robert walks around a lot. Fungus among us. Delicious mushrooms. How trees communicate. Librivox (https://librivox.org/). More: Salad dressing you can sip. British vs. English - don’t go there. The social world of buying vs. making your dressing. Cream dressing. Heinz Salad Cream. Mother’s Salad Dressing (https://thefrugaldrinker.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/the-best-salad-dressing-i-have-ever-had/) from Mother’s Cafe (https://motherscafeaustin.com/). See a possible recipe (https://web.archive.org/web/20171127204329/http://eatcraftlive.typepad.com/eat_craft_live/2012/01/cashew-tamari-dressing-1.html). “Do you know how to have fun?” (Fun?) Therpysplaining - you should tell people what you want. Speaking PowerPoint (https://amzn.to/2qBc5Qd), excellent book on making corporate presentations. Fun, amusing, relaxing. Shallots vs. onions vs. green onions. “Please do not overcook.” / Serving suggestions. Camping couple kerfuffle: “I’m not a teacher!” / “You’re a lawyer, Jeremy, do something!” Getting over the sunk cost of setting up all that camping gear just to take it down. Talking slow to think and choose words, versus talking fast to brainstorm. (!!) Threads. That song “we’re only making plans for Nigel.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Plans_for_Nigel) XTC! Why does Spotify try to educate me? Books are way too long. (How great is Audible.) 165 degrees is way too hot for chicken. See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#heading=h.uvfmo4pbimfa).

Coffee, books, booze, and Buddhists Marginalia and GoodReads (Coté’s list of books there (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/254939-michael-cot)). Huffduffer: Coté (https://huffduffer.com/cote) & Robert (https://huffduffer.com/robertbrook). Simon Wardley (http://blog.gardeviance.org/). SpringOne Tour (http://springonetour.io/). Open Spaces, the mechanics (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Space_Technology). Usesthis (https://usesthis.com/) - Leonard Lin (https://usesthis.com/interviews/leonard.lin/). Federico Viticci (https://twitter.com/viticci), the Apple Italian guy (https://www.macstories.net/). Coté’s cover model days (https://www.instagram.com/p/BhVKwtWgk_A/?taken-by=bushwald). “I have traveled a good deal in Concord.” (https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/893348-i-have-traveled-a-good-deal-in-concord-and-everywhere) See more detailed show notes elsewhere (https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rGnVlXfLDhgrKq9DJX2EOvAvcOBieBBewN5TXjnfHxs/edit#heading=h.8d7s0um36ny6).

Also, Coté is forbidden from buying and wearing red pants. Forever eating after France. Motivation & overcast skies. Identifying genuinely innovative, new, helpful technology (versus incremental improvements). History of what computers are used for: artillery targeting; NHS payroll; ePaper; spreadsheets; supply chain; games; email & IM; websites; e-commerce; music/MP3s; search; advertising; “social”; iPhones; “AI” & ML; Robert: railways; industrial, sensors, “IoT.” The basic activities humans work towards, the “terminal” points of all activities: governance; war; selling a product; educating/raising kids; healthcare (staying alive & functioning); buildings/shelter; eating/food production & distribution; entertainment & “hanging out”; sleeping; wealth management. Coté is forbidden from wearing red pants.

We discuss living in London.

Frying eggs, photo management, claps, and Tinderbox, whatever that is. REGULAR PODCAST SHOW.

"I thought I knew so much."

A podcast about regular, mostly real life. Maybe some computers from time to time.