33: The War on Developer Productivity

Derrick recounts his last day at Drip - from being locked out, the elevator breaking, turning in parking passes, wearing a shirt saying “Quit Your Day Job,” to happy hour.

Although he has a feeling of being free now, he is bummed about not seeing his co-workers every day. However, he is excited to share his plans and personal mission for the near future - a project called, Level, based on balance, not chaos.

Today’s Topics Include:

Derrick’s Manifesto: What he is now doing and thinking
Building a prototype to get rid of Slack in the workplace
Wants to develop ways to improve team communication
Parts of Slack are awesome, while others are not
Chat is not an effective communication mode for teams
Important conversations can get lost in the chatter
Snoozing is stressful; can be taken negatively and feel like being ignored
Inbox should be included and organized by threads
Anything that is important and needs to be addressed should be in a thread
Slack is not meant for actionable items, but people use it for that
Derrick’s tool will have both sync and async, which can be married; will be difficult to misuse it
Some tools become addictive and disruptive to human nature
Pushing through notification barriers and specifying priority; a list that prioritizes items and deadlines
Step 1 to creating such a tool: Do your homework by talking to teams of developers
Ben’s March will consist of meditating, squats, and handstands - while working on goals; Derrick wants to achieve reading and personal fitness goals every day, as well as shipping something open source

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Links and resources:

The War on Developer Productivity (And How I Intend to Win It)
Drip
Slack
Thoughtbot
Rob Walling
The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your S**t Together by Sherry Walling
Zero to One book
Ben Orenstein Website