Psychopaths at work • Michael Wood • PlatformCon 2022

Summary

In this insightful talk, Michael Wood, a Field CTO at HashiCorp, discusses the impact of organizational culture on individual behaviors, particularly focusing on psychopathy in the workplace. He explores how hierarchical, siloed environments can inadvertently foster psychopathic traits, and contrasts this with cultures that encourage empathy and collaboration. Wood suggests that by adopting developer platforms, automation, and open communication, organizations can reduce spaces for such behaviors to thrive. He emphasizes the importance of aligning organizational structures and incentives with desired cultural outcomes, advocating for a balance between empathy and the drive for excellence.

Takeaways

• 🌟 Culture plays a pivotal role in shaping an organization's productivity and behaviors, with a focus on reducing spaces for psychopathic behaviors to flourish.
• 📚 Reading books like 'Snakes and Suits' provides insights into psychopathy and its manifestations in siloed and hierarchical organizations.
• 🔍 The speaker emphasizes not to hunt for psychopaths but to understand the organizational incentives that may inadvertently support such behaviors.
• 🧐 Personality types like empathy and sociopathy are discussed, with the aim to leverage them appropriately within an organization.
• 🤝 Empathy is linked to positive behaviors, while sociopathy and psychopathy can be detrimental, with the latter treating others as prey for personal gain.
• 🛠 The importance of aligning organizational structure, incentives, and team collaboration with the desired culture and outcomes is highlighted.
• 🔑 Terms like 'anchor' are suggested to promote sharing and context passing within teams, rather than creating hierarchical power structures.
• 🔄 The shift to DevOps and test-driven design is presented as a way to reduce counter-incentives and promote balanced teams focused on value delivery.
• 🚀 The speaker advocates for innovation through empowered teams that can question decisions and experiment, contrasting with a focus on strict delivery timelines.
• 🛡 The use of platforms and automation to manage complexity and cognitive load, allowing developers to focus on value-adding tasks, is discussed.
• 🌐 The myth of the 'unicorn' developer is debunked, with a call for specialization, sharing, and systems of coordination to manage diverse technological demands.

Q & A

What is the main topic of Michael Wood's talk?

The main topic of Michael Wood's talk is the impact of organizational culture on the flourishing of psychopathic behaviors within a company and how to cultivate a culture that promotes productive and positive behaviors.

What does Michael Wood suggest can be learned from the book 'Snakes in Suits'?

Michael Wood suggests that 'Snakes in Suits' provides insights into psychopathy, how to identify it, and how it can manifest in organizational settings, particularly in siloed and hierarchical structures.

What are the key elements that Michael Wood believes allow psychopathic behaviors to flourish in enterprises?

The key elements that allow psychopathic behaviors to flourish in enterprises include siloed organizations, extreme hierarchy, opportunities to manipulate teams for personal gain, and environments where individuals can hide and not produce actual results.

What is the purpose of discussing psychopathy in the context of organizational culture?

The purpose of discussing psychopathy in the context of organizational culture is to examine the incentives created by organizational structures that may inadvertently support or reduce psychopathic behaviors, and to explore ways to cultivate a more positive and productive organizational culture.

What does Michael Wood define as the difference between empathy and sociopathy?

Empathy is the ability to feel deeply for other people and understand their emotions and experiences. Sociopathy, on the other hand, is characterized by a lack of connection to others' feelings, viewing individuals as abstract and detached, often leading to a lack of emotional investment in others' situations.

How does Michael Wood describe the behavior of a psychopath in a human environment?

Michael Wood describes a psychopath in a human environment as someone who treats others as prey, to be manipulated for personal gain, and who may engage in deceitful behaviors such as playing both sides against the middle to gain power or resources.

What is the role of an 'anchor' in a team according to Michael Wood?

The role of an 'anchor' in a team is to share the context and knowledge they have gained from being with the project or product the longest. The anchor is responsible for grooming a future anchor and is encouraged to move between teams, sharing ideas and contributing to the development of others.

What does Michael Wood suggest as an alternative to traditional team lead roles to encourage a more empathetic culture?

Michael Wood suggests using the term 'anchor' instead of 'team lead' to establish roles that are more focused on sharing knowledge and context rather than establishing authority or hierarchy within the team.

How does Michael Wood relate the concepts of empathy and sociopathy to incentives within an organization?

Michael Wood relates empathy to incentives that promote transparency, sharing, and collaboration, while sociopathy is linked to incentives that encourage individual excellence, competition, and a focus on personal achievement and recognition.

What is the significance of the 'build it, you build it, you run it' mantra in the context of DevOps according to Michael Wood?

The 'build it, you build it, you run it' mantra signifies the DevOps approach where development and operations teams are merged, and individuals are responsible for the full lifecycle of the application, from development to deployment and maintenance, promoting a more balanced and collaborative team dynamic.

What does Michael Wood propose to reduce the cognitive load on developers and encourage a culture of innovation?

Michael Wood proposes the use of a developer platform that abstracts developers from the complexity of downstream automation, allowing them to focus on value-adding tasks at the application tier, while other teams handle compliance, governance, and other complexities through systems of coordination.

Outlines

00:00

🧐 Cultivating Organizational Culture and Addressing Psychopathy

Michael Wood, a Field CTO at HashiCorp, introduces the topic of organizational culture and its cultivation. He discusses the impact of culture on behavior within an organization and the conditions that can foster psychopathic behavior, such as siloed and hierarchical structures. Drawing from literature like 'Snakes and Suits,' he examines the traits of psychopathy and how they can manifest in the workplace. Wood emphasizes that the goal is not to identify psychopaths but to understand the organizational incentives that may inadvertently support such behavior. He sets the stage for a deeper dive into how developer platforms, automation, and openness can mitigate the negative aspects of certain personality types.

05:00

🔍 Understanding Personality Types: Empathy, Sociopathy, and Psychopathy

The speaker delves into the definitions and distinctions between different personality types, focusing on empathy, sociopathy, and psychopathy. Empathy is characterized by a deep understanding and sharing of others' feelings, whereas sociopathy involves a detached, observer-like stance. Psychopathy is portrayed as predatory, with individuals viewing others as prey to be manipulated for personal gain. Wood provides examples from popular culture, such as the BBC's 'Sherlock,' to illustrate these traits. He also discusses the importance of balancing empathy and detachment in a work environment, suggesting that a balance is necessary for effective team dynamics and avoiding the negative impacts of extreme personality traits.

10:01

🛠️ Incentives and Organizational Structures that Shape Personality Expression

Wood explores how organizational structures and incentives can either encourage or discourage certain personality traits. He contrasts transparent, empathetic team environments with competitive, siloed ones that may foster sociopathic or psychopathic behaviors. The speaker advocates for a balance between empathy and the drive for excellence, using terms like 'anchor' instead of 'team lead' to promote sharing and context passing within teams. He also discusses the negative aspects of hero culture and the importance of reducing silos to promote a more balanced and cooperative team dynamic.

15:03

🤝 The Impact of Workflow and Incentives on Team Dynamics

This paragraph examines how traditional waterfall workflows can create counterproductive incentives, leading to a siloed and somewhat sociopathic approach among teams. Wood describes the conflict between development teams focused on rapid change and operations teams incentivized to maintain stability. He discusses the benefits of adopting DevOps practices, such as test-driven development, to align teams around value production and reduce the potential for personality traits that could be detrimental to the organization's goals.

20:03

🚀 Balancing Innovation and Delivery in Organizational Culture

The speaker addresses the challenge of balancing innovation with the need for timely delivery in an organization's culture. He emphasizes the importance of clear communication about the organization's priorities and the impact this has on hiring and team structure. Wood also touches on the dangers of overcomplicating roles by adding too many responsibilities, leading to cognitive overload and hindering innovation. The goal is to empower developers to focus on solving business problems without being overwhelmed by the complexity of the systems they interact with.

25:04

🛡️ Encouraging Empathy and Transparency through Intent-Driven Approaches

In this paragraph, Wood discusses the importance of intent-driven approaches and automation in reducing the opportunity for psychopathic behavior in organizations. He advocates for a system of coordination where changes are declared, vetted, and implemented transparently, allowing for immediate feedback and reducing the potential for hidden agendas or 'off-book' changes. The speaker also highlights the need for specialized labor and the importance of not expecting developers to be experts in every aspect of technology, promoting instead a culture of sharing and collaboration.

🌐 Creating a Culture of Inclusivity and Reducing Cognitive Load

The final paragraph wraps up the discussion by emphasizing the importance of building a culture of inclusivity where ideas are challenged and different perspectives are welcomed. Wood stresses the need to reduce cognitive load by specializing and sharing knowledge across teams, rather than expecting individuals to be experts in every area. He envisions a workflow where developers are abstracted from much of the downstream automation, allowing them to focus on value-adding tasks at the application tier, while compliance and governance are handled by other specialized teams.

Keywords

💡Culture

Culture, in the context of the video, refers to the shared values, norms, and behaviors within an organization that influence its functioning and the interactions among its members. The speaker emphasizes the importance of cultivating a positive culture to encourage productive behaviors and align with the organization's mission. For example, the video discusses how certain organizational structures might inadvertently promote psychopathic behaviors, highlighting the need for a culture that fosters empathy and collaboration.

💡Psychopathy

Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by persistent antisocial behavior, impaired empathy and remorse, and bold, disinhibited, and egotistical traits. In the video, the speaker explores how certain organizational environments can enable psychopathic behaviors to flourish, such as in siloed and hierarchical structures where manipulation and lack of accountability are possible. The script mentions the need to understand psychopathy to create organizational incentives that mitigate its negative impact.

💡Empathy

Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of others. It is presented as a positive trait in the video, where it is contrasted with psychopathy. The speaker suggests that fostering empathy within an organization can help counteract the negative effects of psychopathic behaviors. For instance, the script discusses 'dark empathy,' where empathy is used negatively, and the importance of leveraging personality types appropriately.

💡Sociopathy

Sociopathy, similar to psychopathy, refers to a personality disorder with antisocial tendencies. However, in the video, sociopathy is described as a less severe form, where individuals are detached and do not feel the emotions of others, as exemplified by the character Sherlock Holmes in the BBC show. The speaker uses this concept to discuss the balance between empathy and detachment needed for effective teamwork and productivity.

💡Organizational Structure

Organizational structure refers to the arrangement of tasks and reporting relationships within an organization. The video script discusses how different structures can either promote or inhibit certain behaviors. For example, siloed and hierarchical structures may allow psychopathic behaviors to thrive, while more open and collaborative structures can encourage empathy and teamwork.

💡Incentives

Incentives in the video are the rewards or motivations that drive behavior within an organization. The speaker talks about how the incentives created by an organization can either support or hinder the flourishing of certain personality traits. For instance, the script mentions that incentives can be aligned with empathetic behaviors, such as sharing and collaboration, or with more sociopathic behaviors, such as competition and individual excellence.

💡DevOps

DevOps is a set of practices that combines software development (Dev) and IT operations (Ops) to shorten the systems development life cycle and provide continuous delivery of value to end users. The video discusses how adopting a DevOps culture can help reduce counterproductive incentives and promote a more balanced, collaborative approach to software development and operations.

💡Intent-Driven Approaches

Intent-driven approaches are methods where the desired outcome or intent is declared, and systems or processes are used to achieve that outcome. In the context of the video, the speaker suggests using intent-driven approaches to encapsulate work and automate processes around developers, allowing them to focus on value-adding tasks without being overwhelmed by complexity.

💡Cognitive Load

Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort required to process information or perform tasks. The video script mentions the high cognitive load that can result from trying to manage all aspects of complex systems, such as cloud infrastructure. The speaker advocates for reducing cognitive load by abstracting complexity and focusing on value-adding activities.

💡Governance

Governance in the video refers to the structures, policies, and processes put in place to ensure that an organization's activities are conducted in an effective, efficient, and responsible manner. The speaker discusses the importance of governance in providing checks and balances, ensuring that changes made within an organization are auditable and aligned with strategic goals.

💡Systems of Coordination

Systems of coordination are mechanisms that facilitate collaboration and communication within an organization. The video script talks about the need for such systems to ensure that all team members are aware of and can provide input on changes being made, promoting transparency and reducing the potential for siloed or hidden activities that could be detrimental to the organization.

Highlights

Michael Wood discusses the cultivation of organizational culture and its impact on productivity.

The influence of psychopathy in siloed and hierarchical organizations where manipulation can thrive.

The importance of understanding personality types such as empathy, sociopathy, and psychopathy in the workplace.

Strategies to minimize psychopathic behavior in organizations through structural and incentive changes.

The role of developer platforms, automation, and openness in reducing spaces for psychopathic behavior to flourish.

Defining empathy and sociopathy, and their implications in team dynamics and organizational outcomes.

The potential dark side of empathy, referred to as 'dark empathy', and its consequences.

Balancing empathy and sociopathy to drive desired behaviors in a team setting.

The impact of organizational structure on the flourishing of certain personality traits.

Incentives that drive meritocracy and the potential for a blend of empathy and sociopathy in team environments.

The concept of 'hero culture' and its relation to sociopathic incentives in organizations.

The shift to DevOps and test-driven design to align teams with value production and reduce counter-incentives.

The importance of aligning team incentives with the desired culture and outcomes of the organization.

The challenges of cognitive load in organizations and the need for intent-driven approaches to reduce it.

The myth of the 'unicorn developer' and the need for specialized labor and systems of coordination.

Encouraging innovation by empowering teams to question decisions and take ownership of outcomes.

The role of governance and automation in creating a transparent and collaborative development environment.

Wood's final thoughts on building a culture of inclusivity and challenge to combat psychopathic tendencies in organizations.

Transcripts

[Music]

hello everyone my name is michael wood i

am a field cto here with hashicorp and

i'm here to talk to you today about some

interesting and hopefully very

provocative things

namely culture and how we cultivate it

how we build it up how we

uh ensure that we're seeing

wonderful behaviors across

our organization at least the things

that are going to prove to be productive

in our overall mission

uh a lot of what i'm going to talk about

today is driven out of a little bit of

information that i learned

in reading through books like snakes and

suits where we take a look at

what is psychopathy how hard is it to

determine and where we see it manifest

a lot of what the research

that comes out and emerges in this

theater starts to look like is

anytime that i'm dealing with very

siloed organizations extremely

hierarchical

where it's very easy to hide and not

actually produce

if i can

manipulate teams to work against each

other account of purposes

these are all elements that exist within

enterprises

that allow things like psychopaths to

flourish or at least to

find a place and and work their magic a

little bit i'll give a little bit more

detail on the psychological side before

we jump into organization

how developer platforms abstractions and

automation and openness can help us

reduce the number of spaces for

psychopaths to flourish

but i want to lay out a few ground rules

before we get started first

i'm not on a manhunt i'm not on a hunt

for

psychopaths uh this is not about helping

you to identify which ones of your

friends are psychopathic this is not

about

creating fear that you might be working

in an environment that has this type of

an individual in it

i'm simply looking at the research in

and around these types of

personality types

and the incentives that we create from

an organizational standpoint

to either help them to flourish

or to

reduce the number of ways that they can

actually

use that negative aspect of their

personality to our detriment or the

detriment of our customers so i am

considering things like organizational

structure i'm looking at

the incentives that exist the way that

our teams collaborate

and i also want to take into account

what type of outcome we're looking to

drive

because that goes to the types of

personalities that we want to hire and

how we want to make get them to team

with each other

so first let me set a couple of

definitions i think we're all pretty

good here but it always

makes a lot of sense for us to establish

a little bit of common ground on the

terminology before we dig in deeper

first uh there's a personality type

which focuses more on empathy

empathy is where i feel very very deeply

for other people if someone hurts i hurt

i can i can empathize i can understand

what they're going through

like all of these types

there are positive and negative aspects

to any of these we typically think of

things like a very empathetic person as

being a good person and a sociopath

being sort of a bad person

that's too broad of a brush to paint

with

the reason i can say that isn't is

someone who is very very empathetic

could be like

a mother bear with her cubs she's very

very empathetic to her cubs

but if those cubs are ever threatened

she's very psychopathic

to

the ones that she is not

empathetic about around i should say

this is something that we might refer to

as like a dark empath somebody who takes

empathy and turns it into a weapon or a

negative outcome

so just as we go through this just

understand i'm not saying any of these

are wildly awesome or wildly terrible

they're personality types and we want to

make sure that we leverage them

appropriately to get the most out of

their skills and abilities now granted

psychopathy is a little bit harder for

us to work with but i'll i'll get into a

little bit of why we're looking to sort

of minimize this

but empathy at a high level is i can

identify with someone else's pain

emotions uh

what they're going through

a sociopathy is really a

an ab

sort of a

oh

you're abstracted from individuals you

don't feel what they feel you're sort of

an observer um

in the uh wonderful bbc show sherlock

starring benedict cumberbatch

as uh sherlock holmes he describes

himself as a highly functioning

sociopath when he sees pain and he goes

out to solve murders he's detached he

doesn't feel anything for the victims

he's kind of fascinated by the

perpetrator and he's interested in the

puzzle but he's not emotionally invested

in the scenario which which is more of a

sociopathic response

psychopathic is really where you look at

the other as if they are prey they're

somebody you may toy with

uh but they are sort of beneath you

they're they're something that you can

manipulate for your own gain and so one

of the examples that's typically used

there is a cat with a mouse there's not

a lot of empathy between

uh

from the cat to the mouse

and so a psychopath in a human

environment is going to be someone who

treats someone else as prey or something

to be used and thrown away

the

there are several other characteristics

that come into this a psychopath can

hide they pretend to be something that's

very important to you they'll pretend to

they're your best friend while they talk

trash about someone else and then

they'll meet with that other person and

tell them their they will convince them

that they're their best friend and talk

trash about you

and they play the two sides against the

middle in order to gain maybe political

power

maybe funding for project work all of

these types of things but this is a

psychopathic

behavior and we're looking to

minimize that bring about a bit more

empathy

so for this session it's not who's who

but what are we calling for out of the

organization as we build the cultures

that we that we're trying to take

forward as we move into devops as we're

trying to drive

innovative more you know smaller agile

teams will say

what are the type of personality traits

that we want to call for do i need some

empathy with a little bit of sociopathy

meaning

i need you to care about patient

outcomes but i don't need to do to get

so wrapped up that you can't move

because you're so emotionally invested

right i need to be able to move so i'm

going to be empathy but with a little

bit of detachment so that i can actually

treat patients that would be an example

of trying to find a good balance between

empathy and sociopathy

so some example incentives if we're

calling for something like empathy we

want to be completely transparent we

want our incentives to be geared around

sharing

as an example if

i'm really driving an empathetic team i

may not use terms like

technical lead

because i'm not trying to establish

stratification i'm not saying that

because you are

uh the most senior uh developer that you

have authority over the other developers

that that is sort of a will to power

sort of thing it leads us more into

a little bit more sociopathic um

incentive which i'll get into around

like hero culture like i want to be the

lead i want to have the widest

scope of responsibility i want to have

the widest purview i want to have the

most influence

those are incentives that are a bit

sociopathic it's you're trying to set

yourself above others you're not

necessarily trying to hurt anybody but

you want to excel and that that leads us

more into sociopathy so

what i'm looking here is i may instead

of using terms like

team lead i may use terms like anchor

and the goal of an anchor is because

you're an anchor because you've been

here the longest you have the widest

amount of

context for the project the product

itself the code base

the architectural approaches that we're

taking to solve these problems you have

a lot of context and the job of an

anchor is to share that context it is to

drive that down into the rest of the dev

team and to groom

a coming anchor because your goal is to

be able to move between teams and bring

your ideas to other groups so you're

constantly

helping others

achieve that anchor status so that you

can move on and do other other bits of

work which increases your skill set

increases your purview more visibility

but the point is is i've structured in

effect that particular job set

to be more empathetic to me more sharing

and the incentives align to that so i

want to reduce silos this is more

balanced team style work everybody is

there working on the backlog they

understand the pluses and minuses of all

the features they understand the user

stories these are all discussed together

uh with the pm and maybe the designer

but the idea is that i have a real open

format for sharing

understanding maybe i'm even bringing

engineers into user interviews because i

want them to hear firsthand

what the users are saying etc so think

of it that way this is a more empathetic

setup

if i start looking at a more of a

sociopathic or a more competitive this

is where we get into sort of market

forces

in a law firm as an example and you're

competing for a partner

it's not it really

stratifies against individual excellence

or in in a developable developer circle

it might be more technical excellence

you're going to publish more patents

than somebody else you're looking for

awards you're looking for scope of

responsibility

um it's it's more of what i would call

hero ball to a certain extent

now often we want to drive and this is

why i say that there's no real cut and

drive between these different outcomes

that we're shooting for

because in some cases i want to have

strong empathy but i still want you to

strive for excellence in your skill set

so that maybe you stand a little bit

apart from you're always looking to

differentiate you're always looking to

become better at what you do that's the

meritocracy i i don't necessarily want

to do away with meritocracy because it

helps in terms of the competence of the

whole team it gives people things to

sort of strive for

but i don't want too much sociopathy

because then i end up stepping on other

other folks in order to get what i want

out of the out of the deal

and so i'm i may be looking at a bit of

a blend and we'll talk about some of the

trade-offs as we go forward

but typically this is going to breed

more toughness in individuals a lot of

times you'll see this in sales orgs

will have more individual excellence

increased toughness it's really about

winners and losers

if you see somebody that that doesn't

make the cut you're you're not

necessarily super concerned with it in

in this type of a structure and so this

these are incentives that i would sort

of categorize a little bit more into the

sociopathy sort of realm

and then finally in the psychopathy

realm

very siloed uh information is need to

know basis

and so in these types of scenarios

people who are looking to manipulate

flex that psychopathy sort of bent that

they have where they're looking to play

the game it's a dog eat dog world i'm

gonna play the game it's highly

political

highly charged conversations

people are talking behind people's backs

very matrixed organization a lot of

strong top down command and control when

there's very strong top down command and

control

this leads lends itself to

some of those psychopathic personality

traits folks that really want to try to

climb that ladder and manipulate and

cajole and maneuver in order to achieve

those higher and higher uh positions and

so a lot of times we're talking about

like a hardened hierarchy

it gets very politicized

a lot of backstabby type stuff a lot of

high pressure meetings

so these are kind of the different

environments that we're talking about

and kind of the incentives that begin to

drive

those types of personality traits to

excel so when i talk about as we look at

our overarching cultures and what we're

trying to call forth

we want to structure the teams we want

to structure information sharing the

tools that we use to collaborate we want

those to align to the the style of

culture that we want to that we want to

call forth

i think a lot of organizations actually

err on the side of going overly

empathetic

and and we don't end up with quite as

much competence out of the organization

maybe as we want so we need to think in

terms of like yes i want to have very

very strong empathy

lots of wide open balance teams lots of

information sharing i'm not looking for

that necessarily a whole lot of that

psychopathic

uh incentive

but i also want to have some things in

place

you know career progressions etc that

call for people to say look if you want

more here's here's how you can go to get

more

uh but a lot of the measures that we

want to put in place are going to be

those sharing empathetic measures uh to

look towards success

now the the way that we organize the

teams and the way that we work will also

introduce some of those incentives and

so just as a quick example

one of the reasons why we moved to

devops and things like test driven

design

was actually to bring people like

operations and the testing group

more in line with production of value

so if i look at a typical waterfall sort

of workflow

the uh operations team is incented to

prevent change and the reason they're

incented to prevent change is they're

measured by up time

mean time to resolution so they don't

want they do not want to you know

create

or deal with a lot of bugs and the best

way to reduce

the possibility of failure is to

maintain a static

uh operational environment if they can

and so they're at complete odds with the

dev team who is trying and they are

they're incented and paid and bonused

and et cetera on delivering code as fast

as possible or we could call it

introducing change as quickly as

possible so one team is introducing

change as quickly as possible another

team is there to prevent change

change from taking place another team

might be

quality assurance if i'm not finding

bugs if i'm not sending you back to the

lab to keep working on your code i'm not

sure what value i'm bringing so i'm sort

of incented to stop the role into

production by finding bugs and proving

my value to the organization

these incentives in a typical waterfall

sort of

layout

drive us to be at cross purposes with

each other it causes us to at least be

somewhat sociopathic to the other team i

don't really care what this does to the

developers bonuses because it's my job

to catch the bug and send you back to

back to formula

you know go back and rework this go

rework it again until until it looks

clean that's my job that's what i'm

supposed to do and so those would be

more in that kind of sociopathic

incentives now we try to drive a lot of

that out through ticketing systems and

automation and things like that which

we'll get into a little bit further to

reduce the sting if you will of the

counter incentives that we've introduced

into the

development plans

and this is why devops becomes very

interesting

build it you build it you run it kind of

mantra that we would hear out of

somebody like netflix and then moving

testing into the development

organization to where when i bring down

a story off the backlog maybe i write my

test harness first and then i write my

code to meet the test harness

this way

automated testing quality controls are

baked into what i'm doing from a devops

standpoint and these teams become more

balanced teams where that testing skill

set is present on the core bonus team

that operational talent is also embedded

in that in that team and we'll talk a

little bit about how that can become

overwhelming at scale and so we have to

think about ways to mitigate that

so what does this have to do with

platforms well we have to determine what

it is that we want as an organization do

we want innovation

if we want innovation we're going to

have much more open dynamic teams and

power down to the dev teams now not a

lot of companies will say they want

innovation and then they get a little

bit i had a really good friend of mine i

was talking to who said i'm building a

team of leaders and i'm frustrated

because on conference calls they're

pushing back on the strategy and i said

well then you don't want leaders right

you you want followers you want people

who will deliver against the timeline

so am i looking for innovation or am i

looking for delivery against a timeline

because sometimes those are going to be

opposed to each other and i'm going to

build or i'm going to optimize for one

or the other

if i'm looking for innovation i'm going

to empower them to question my decisions

if i'm the executive leader

and i want them to question my decisions

because if you really value what we're

doing as a business you're going to tell

me when my ideas are terrible

and as an executive leader i'm removed

enough from the details that i have to

trust that they're closer to the problem

often than i am

where i would issue a correction if i'm

the executive leader

is strategically that's not the

direction the product is going right

you're out of sync with where

we're running to the white space these

are the areas that we need to be playing

in these clouds at this scale and so on

so as long as you're within these

parameters right of the strategic vision

then be creative right build something

new

if if the the feature set that we

suggested in the last conference call

doesn't meet muster with customers we

have to make a determination of whether

it's more important to err on the side

of the strategic outcome versus the the

near-term results for an individual user

but these are things that we get into as

we're trying to drive innovation i

expect people to push back against me

uh if i am the leader and i'm taking

this from a leadership perspective if

i'm the leader and i

really have a committed set of outcomes

that we've already told the street that

we're going to go deliver

i'm not looking for as many leaders

right i'm not looking for as many people

to kick back against the feature set i'm

looking for delivery and i'm just the

reason i'm i want us to be clear up

front is it's going to make us happier

with what gets delivered it's going to

make us happier and the role that we're

driving and we'll hire the right people

for the right outcomes

i'm going to get real solid pro project

management teams

and

maybe i'll outsource some of the

development but i'm saying here here's

the features and these are the dates and

times in which i need them to be

delivered

now i i think a lot of us really favor

the innovation piece if we're really

going to respond in this digital age

we're going to need to be able to turn

experiments over very very quickly

some of what i've seen emerge from the

clouds is is very interesting and very

heavy weight in terms of what i would

consider cognitive load

uh there was one blog

that you know i want

one of the clouds published that was

saying you know devops isn't enough it

needs to be devsecops and and even

that's not enough it needs to be devsec

finn ops and devsec biz ops and

and we just keep adding acronyms to that

because we're forcing all of the

company's problems on individual

balanced teams to deal with all of that

well you basically built a company from

the ground up and that's a ton of

cognitive load and this networking

diagram

you know it's just basically

illustrative of the fact that your hum

the human mind can't you can't fathom

all of the various complexity and so

what i'm looking to do is empower

developers to focus in on the business

problem that they need to solve and not

necessarily every conceivable problem

that the problem that they're solving

could cause in any other system right i

i want to find a way to encapsulate

their work and automate as much as i can

around them so they can focus on the

things that are truly differentiating

and so

i'm really looking to and this is kind

of one of those things that we can talk

about as it comes to

the type of culture that we're building

if we have people who are hands on

keyboard making discrete changes to

discrete systems

there's a significant opportunity for a

lot of these things to go uh without

being in without introspection

right somebody can go and get on a cloud

ui make a few changes to the

infrastructure when it comes to things

like audit or understanding what changes

were introduced or even understanding

that the additional complexity or risk

that was introduced

very very difficult for me to handle and

so if we're in more if we're trying to

encourage more of a an empathetic open

sharing we're all trying to hit all of

our best practices kind of environment i

may want to move more towards

intent-driven approaches where i declare

what i want to see happen

i pass it through governance checks i'm

collaborating with security and testing

and so on i want to pass it through all

of that in a very clean and audible

auditable fashion because we're all on

the same team you need to see all the

changes that i'm introducing i need to

see the changes that your policies are

having on the code that i'm looking to

roll out

so how do i get to where i'm

collaborative i'm declarative there's no

hiding and again if i'm if i'm combating

that psychopathy sort of mindset they

there needs to be no opportunity to hide

the where where changes are happening

off book or one team is changing

something off in the corner and

everybody else in the organization is

having to respond to it which you see a

lot with sort of the hero ball kind of

approach where

a glorified architect or a tech lead has

the ability to break all of the

processes and then everybody else is

subsequently less performant because

they have to respond to the changes that

are happening

out of the normal orchestration so if

everybody can follow this the the

pattern of declaring what they want to

see happen

vetting that declaration and then

hitting system

then i'm able to move closer to a system

of coordination

right everything is very open the

policies that get published from grc are

available for me to see as i'm passing

my work through i'm getting immediate

feedback rather than six months later

after a after an audit i get a i get a

dump of all the libraries that are out

of out of step or whatever that i have

to address and i'm doing support on

something that maybe isn't even into

production yet

so these types of things i don't want to

i don't want to hate another team

because they're throwing bricks at my

work what i want to have is i want to

have this centralized system

that i can pass my work through and i

can get immediate feedback from the

teams that i'm tasked with collaborating

with and all of it is above board we can

see what everybody needs

and and part of this is there's really

this kind of myth that we're going to

have these unicorn style developer

operators that know everything about

everything

it's just not possible you know i was

out i was on

i think it was the aws

marketplace and there were some 170

pages of networking controls that the

very idea that i would even know what to

do with 170 networking controls alone

and that's not getting into

the container topologies and ingresses

on you know on the kubernetes clusters

and so on if i had to understand all of

it end to end and apply exactly the best

pieces i i'm just

there's not enough time in the day week

year month lifetime to learn everything

that's happening in the cloud so we sort

of have to put away this idea of the

unicorn and get into and understand that

yes we are going to have specialized

labor i don't want to go all the way

back to itsm and waterfall where i'm

passing tickets between all these teams

i may be doing that for a while but my

goal is to

re-skill them towards

automation and service and openness and

sharing with the other teams through

systems of coordination

and the way that this might look and

i'll and i'll wrap

uh wrap right here is i i would have the

developers perhaps abstracted

from a lot of the downstream automation

via you know a developer platform and so

i give them

a bit of a working environment which is

acting a bit as a facade for a lot of

the complexity that's happening

downstream

but all of that other complexity while

it's still going to exist is being

handled by multiple teams so i'm not

having this huge cognitive load where

the core balance team has to know

everything about everything at all times

it's good that they have a wider purview

and context because they're going to

write better code by doing so so i don't

want to take all of that pressure off

them but i do want to take things like

compliance and governance and you know

maybe i'm a pci shop or i'm dealing with

a nist cyber security framework i would

prefer that you inherit a lot of these

things so that you don't have to become

a world breaking expert in every

conceivable

you know security standard that we might

have to meet for federal audit i'd like

those to be inherited and so this gives

you a little bit of a sense of a

workflow of provisioning of

infrastructure

behind the scenes here we could be doing

things like assigning identity managing

credentials

role role-based authentication so that i

know what developers can do what they

can ask for they're not going to be able

to touch the networking controls but

they can create or size their their you

know development environments

maybe manage some aspects of the

kubernetes clusters and so on

the idea though is i want to make sure

that they're focused on things that are

value adding at the application tier so

that they're building business logic and

releasing on a consistent basis

especially around features that are

making a difference for our end users

they're spending all their time wrapped

up in

mutual tls

uh and and trying to work it across a

heterogeneous environment where they're

using kind of some istio and then

bridging over into other technologies

uh where their workloads go a little bit

heterogeneous

i'm not sure i i feel like that may end

up being wasted effort or

or too much spinning on something that

is not necessarily differentiating

having said that i'll just leave it

there i

thank you so much for the time

uh the the whole point that i was

getting at here is is psychopathy

thrives where i have teams that are at

odds with each other and if i'm really

looking to build a culture

of inclusivity where where different

ideas are welcome and we're not afraid

of having our ideas challenged

it's going to be an environment that's

going to be much more open

collaborative but not so cognitively

overloaded

that nobody can move because we're

trying to understand every bit and piece

of technology everywhere specialize

share

build your incentives out so that we're

making sure that people are incented

to enable others and make others

successful with that i thank you very

much for your time and i hope you have a

great rest of the conference