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**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, start with the people, start with talking to them. And this is another thing that you get out of pairing - when you pair with someone, please chit-chat for at least the first five minutes. Like y'all do with this podcast; break the ice. We are humans pairing together first... Because that's how ... |
One thing I've started realizing is that every interaction with a person is about the relationship more than the content. And that lets me chill out and not get impatient in meetings or in chit-chat and stuff, because the content will be easy to transfer when the relationship is healthy. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** That's like process versus outcome, right? The process is the relationship, and the outcome is whatever is formed because of the relationship. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, and the outcome that you see in the course of an hour is whatever code you made. But you've also built a foundation for every future pairing sessions... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Sure. |
**Jessica Kerr:** And pretty soon you work smoothly together, and with the other people on the team, and that's when it gets good. When we try to resist that human connection, it gets hard. It's expensive. |
**Jerod Santo:** One trend that I've seen in our industry, which low-key disturbs me, and it actually -- you're bringing it to mind when you talk about the knowledge transfer, which takes time, and the relationships, which take time, is that so many software developers are moving between organizations at rapid paces. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah... |
**Jerod Santo:** I was speaking with a young man the other day who had had -- he's like "I can't even make it a year", just speaking experientially. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Oh, man... |
**Jerod Santo:** He's like "I've been 11 months at Company A, and I was 9 months at Company B..." |
**Jessica Kerr:** Ouch. |
**Jerod Santo:** And whether it's a better opportunity, or layoffs, or a merger, or a startup that fails... Our industry has - we call it churn - worst moving organizations. This is one of the reasons why when Adam and I meet people... |
**Jessica Kerr:** We have no idea how much that costs. |
**Jerod Santo:** Oh, man. It has to be so inefficient. Because if you're learning a brand new system every 12 months, and you're working with somebody who's been there three months before you have... |
**Jessica Kerr:** Oh, my gosh. |
**Jerod Santo:** They don't have that context. They're still getting it. So this seems like something that we would wanna fix, but it's counter-cultural at this point to stay somewhere for very long. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, and... I mean, I can't say anything, because -- well, I've had two jobs where I worked there like four years... Oh, maybe three now. Almost three. But now I need to be a consultant, because it gets too easy. \[laughter\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** It gets too easy... Which part? |
**Jerod Santo:** What gets too easy, your job does? I know this place too well. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Exactly. When you do know this system really well, when you are that person that people can just come to with questions, and when you do something you know exactly where to push it and what buttons to twiddle... I can do 15 minutes of work a day, answer questions for a good chunk of the rest, and be m... |
**Adam Stacoviak:** \[20:06\] Yeah, exactly. |
**Jerod Santo:** And why would you wanna give that up? |
**Jessica Kerr:** Because I'm bored! |
**Jerod Santo:** \[laughs\] |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Sure... Okay, well what about the flipside of that, of being extremely useful? |
**Jessica Kerr:** So I do value that. The trick there is that most organizations do have ways of continuing to challenge yourself, and this is where a lot of people get into DevOps, and infrastructure, and architecture... You broaden the scope of your influence and you can continue to have challenges. And this is where... |
I read somewhere today on Twitter that senior developers probably commit a lot less feature code than junior developers, because they're influencing at a higher level. |
**Jerod Santo:** Right. |
**Jessica Kerr:** And also, I'm only gonna get bored like that if I've been on the same team, working on the same piece of the system. So if you move to another team - or as Charity points out, you can move back and forth between manager and developer; that's another thing you can do. But when you move to another piece... |
Also, we don't pay people for their experience at a particular company... And this is one of those -- you used to have the thing where people would get paid for longevity. |
**Adam Stacoviak:** Yeah, seniority. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, yeah. Now, if you replace seniority with a deep understanding of the business and the software as it exists, that is incredibly valuable. |
**Jerod Santo:** Oh, yeah. |
**Jessica Kerr:** But then you've got golden handcuffs, because you can't leave, and then you stay, even though you don't like it anymore, and then you've just defeated the purpose of having someone productive. So that's a mess. |
**Jerod Santo:** It's a hard problem. I have a close friend who works at one of the largest credit card processing companies in the world, and there are people there... There are a few of them, but you could probably count them on one hand - these people have been there for 30-40 years, and they are literally the only ... |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yes, they are... |
**Jerod Santo:** It doesn't matter if they know COBOL or not. When you teach people COBOL, it's like "Well, you're not gonna teach them this mainframe, and the intricacies of millions and millions of lines of code, written over decades..." |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yes, it's not about COBOL, it's about the system, right? |
**Jerod Santo:** Exactly. And it's like, when those people retire or die off, there's gonna be serious problems. |
**Jessica Kerr:** So that to me - my definition of legacy code is code that's not alive in someone's head. So as soon as that person leaves, those millions of lines of code become complete legacy. They're just barely not, at the moment. They're hanging on by a tiny thread... But one reason to replace code regularly is ... |
**Break:** \[23:34\] |
**Jerod Santo:** So you mentioned VS Code and Docker, observability, and some of the stuff you've been tinkering with... Tell us about it. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Okay, so VS Code is the IDE of the future and the present... And I'm sorry, but Microsoft is now the winner in the development space, and they are now going to have a monopoly on development, because they are the ones doing it right, and making it free. That's my opinion. \[laughs\] |
**Jerod Santo:** It's well-founded. Does that make you happy, sad or indifferent? |
**Jessica Kerr:** Oh, they're doing a good job... |
**Jerod Santo:** I agree. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah, I'm happy about it. I'm happy that they bought GitHub and npm. That's sweet. But VS Code... |
**Jerod Santo:** You're happy they're doing VS Code, yeah. |
**Jessica Kerr:** Yeah. So what they've got - one of the major things that they have got really right in VS Code is the separation between project space and human space. So you've got the developer, and you like to type with your themes, and your keyboard layout, and your Vim or Emacs, or ParEdit... I wish they had Par... |
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