FinCrime

fincrime

A program that maintain its correctness in a multi-threaded environment is said to be a program. Thread-Safe Fundamentally, thread safety revolves around proper management of the shared state. In the absence of such proper management, the program could potentially spiral into an invalid state when executed in a multi-threaded environment. Defining Application’s State An application’s state is formed by the collective states of the individual objects that constitute it. An object’s state encompasses the data stored in its static or instance fields, which can influence its externally visible behavior. Furthermore, an object’s state may encompass fields from other dependent objects, creating a complex web of interconnected states within the application. Whether an object’s state need to be managed for concurrent access depends on its usage in your program. If an object is only ever accessed from a single thread, state management might not be needed! If multiple threads access the same mutable state of an object without proper synchronization, your application is technically broken. There are three ways to fix it — Don’t share the object across threads Make the object’s state immutable Implement proper synchronization for accessing the object’s shared state Using good Object Oriented Principles can help us in designing thread-safe classes. Thoughtful implementation of encapsulation, immutability, and precise specification of invariants can significantly reduce the effort required to create thread-safe classes, ultimately streamlining the development process. An important thing to note is that a program consisting of only thread-safe classes may not be thread-safe. Additionally, a program may be thread-safe even when some of its classes are not thread-safe. It all depends on how your objects interact with each other in your program! Defining Thread Safety A thread-safe class behaves correctly even when accessed from multiple threads, regardless of the scheduling or interleaving of the execution. The calling code needs no synchronization on its part when working with a thread-safe class. Thread-safe classes encapsulate the necessary synchronisation, relieving the client from the burden of providing their own. The need for synchronization arises when multiple threads access the same mutable state. However, stateless objects, by virtue of having no state to share, inherently possess thread safety. As a result, . stateless objects are always thread-safe Example of a thread-unsafe class Consider the following class that is used to find a certain number of primes, Java public class PrimeFinder {
    // Variable to count the number of invocations
    private int hitCount = 0;
    public int getHitCount() {
        return hitCount;
    }
    public List<Integer> findPrimes(int count) {
        hitCount++;
        // Find 'count' number of primes
        final List<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<>();
        for(int i = 2; i < Integer.MAX_VALUE; i++) {
            if(isPrime(i)) {
                primes.add(i);
                if(primes.size() == count) {
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return primes;
    }

    private boolean isPrime(int num) {
        for(int i = 2; i < num; i++) {
            if(num % i == 0) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }
} Note that the instance variable hitCount constitutes the state of any PrimeFinder object. Unfortunately, is not thread-safe, even though it would work fine in a single-threaded environment. This class is vulnerable to , as the operation to increase the , although seemingly atomic, is actually broken down into three distinct steps. Here is an example of an unlucky sequence of events causing to enter an invalid state. PrimeFinder lost updates hitCount hitCount Unlucky interleaving of execution causes hitCount to be 10 when it should be 11 Computation of incorrect results in case of some unlucky timings in a concurrent program is called a . The particular type of race condition that plagues our is called or . To eliminate this race condition, we must increment the hitCount in a single atomic operation. race condition PrimeFinder check-then-act read-modify-write There are several ways to fix the class. One such way is to use a thread-safe class inside . Here is the updated code, PrimeFinder PrimeFinder public class PrimeFinder {
    private final AtomicInteger hitCount = new AtomicInteger(0);
    public int getHitCount() {
        return hitCount.get();
    }
    public List<Integer> findPrimes(int count) {
        hitCount.getAndIncrement();
        // Find 'count' number of primes
        final List<Integer> primes = new ArrayList<>();
        for(int i = 2; i < Integer.MAX_VALUE; i++) {
            if(isPrime(i)) {
                primes.add(i);
                if(primes.size() == count) {
                    break;
                }
            }
        }
        return primes;
    }

    private boolean isPrime(int num) {
        for(int i = 2; i < num; i++) {
            if(num % i == 0) {
                return false;
            }
        }
        return true;
    }
} Using the atomic variable, we can ensure atomic operations on numbers and object references. Since the state of consists only of , which is thread-safe now, the class is thread-safe now! PrimeFinder hitCount PrimeFinder When a single element of state is added to a stateless class, the resulting class will be thread-safe if the state is entirely managed by a thread-safe object. Is it possible to add more state variables to PrimeFinder in a similar manner and still maintain its thread safety? Let us see… Consider the following (updated) class, PrimeFinder public class PrimeFinder {
    private final AtomicInteger numCache = new AtomicInteger(1);
    private final AtomicReference<List<Integer>> primeFactorCache = new AtomicReference<>(new ArrayList<>());
    
    // ...

    public List<Integer> findPrimeFactors(int num) {
        if(numCache.get() == num) {
            return new ArrayList<>(primeFactorCache.get());
        }
        // Find prime factors of 'num'
        final List<Integer> primeFactors = new ArrayList<>();
        for(int i = 2; i < num; i++) {
            if(isPrime(i) && num % i == 0) {
                primeFactors.add(i);
            }
        }
        numCache.set(num);
        primeFactorCache.set(new ArrayList<>(primeFactors));
        return primeFactors;
    }

    // ...

} The method is supposed to return prime factors of a number. It also stores a cache of the last number factorized and its factors. We have used atomic classes to store both the and the . findPrimeFactors numCache primeFactorCache Still, our class is not thread-safe! Can you spot the race condition here? Hint: There is a check-then-act race condition here! One invariant of our class is that the list will hold all prime factors of . Since two different variables participate in a single variant, these variables are not independent! In such cases, all the dependent variables must be updated in the same atomic operation! PrimeFinder primeFactorCache numCache To maintain state consistency, ensure that dependent state variables are updated in a single atomic operation. Intrinsic Locking in Java Every Java object can implicitly act as a lock for the purpose of synchronization. These built-in locks are what we call or . intrinsic locks monitor locks There is a built-in mechanism in Java to provide synchronization called a synchronized block. A synchronized block is a set of statements guarded by an intrinsic lock (object reference). Here is its syntax — synchronized (lock) {
  // Statements working with shared mutable state
} The lock is automatically acquired by an executing thread when it enters a synchronized block and is released when the block is exited. Since these intrinsic locks can be held by at most one executing thread at once, they allow exclusive access to the guarded code. A synchronized method is a synchronized block with the entire method as body and object as its lock. this Let us fix our class using intrinsic locks. PrimeFinder public class PrimeFinder {
    private final AtomicInteger numCache = new AtomicInteger(1);
    private final AtomicReference<List<Integer>> primeFactorCache = new AtomicReference<>(new ArrayList<>());
    
    // ...

    public List<Integer> findPrimeFactors(int num) {
        synchronized (this) {
            if (numCache.get() == num) {
                return new ArrayList<>(primeFactorCache.get());
            }
        }
        // Find prime factors of 'num'
        final List<Integer> primeFactors = new ArrayList<>();
        for(int i = 2; i < num; i++) {
            if(isPrime(i) && num % i == 0) {
                primeFactors.add(i);
            }
        }
        synchronized (this) {
            numCache.set(num);
            primeFactorCache.set(new ArrayList<>(primeFactors));
        }
        return primeFactors;
    }

    // ...

} With this, our class is thread-safe again! PrimeFinder With this, we reach the end of this blog. We discussed the fundamentals of thread safety in terms of program state and explored some basic synchronization techniques in Java. If you enjoy reading this blog, consider throwing in a like and subscribe to not miss future articles on Java concurrency! Also published . here

Safeguarding Concurrent Programs in Java: Thread Safety from an Object Oriented Perspective

THE MEMORABLE ASSASSINATION

In today’s episode of the Brains Byte Back podcast, we speak with , CEO of , an end-to-end platform that allows companies to achieve their expansion needs through finding, hiring, retaining, and paying talent. Pablo Miller Remoti To start the show Miller shares how Remoti is a total talent platform that connects companies with talent in Latin America, and advocates that the platform offers three main services: talent connection, talent employment, and people products. People products include retention plans, smooth onboarding and offboarding processes, and the upcoming launch of their recruitment app. He also shares the origin story of Remoti, explaining that the initial basis of the company was established in the UK seven years ago when Miller noticed the demand for salespeople in London’s fintech companies and started a small recruitment firm. He recognized the need for a different approach and aimed to build a business that understood and provided a unique service. While visiting Colombia, the country his mother is from, Miller witnessed the rise of second-generation Latin talent and the potential for innovation in the market and decided to set up operations in Colombia, serving clients from the US and UK. company culture The conversation then moves onto the topic of the future of and innovation. With this in mind, Remoti aims to connect Latin American professionals with global companies that can offer better opportunities and development. remote work Miller also shares how he believes remote work promotes and breaks down geographical barriers, providing opportunities for talented individuals who may not have access to the same resources locally. social mobility And finally, Miller shares insights on how to hire talent quickly and effectively for your business. He states that those looking to hire should consider international perspectives, local preferences, benefits, upskilling opportunities, and candidate output rather than focusing solely on universities. https://youtu.be/fM9YyO_so6I?embedable=true I’m the founder and CEO my main role and this business, it has been said, is to keep the lights on, turn off the fires and keep it all together. Remoti is a platform that allows companies to build technology hubs in Latin America. As I like to call it, we’re a total talent platform in the sense that we offer three services. Number one, we connect you to the talent. Number two, we employ the talent for you. And then number three, we call it people products. So we’re able to locally hire your talent and we have a number of retention products to ensure a smooth onboarding off-boarding and several retention plans. Alongside that will be launching our app in the next coming months, which allowed the whole recruitment process to be done for your template. Pablo Miller: Fantastic. thank you for joining us today, and thank you for taking a break from putting out those fires and making sure those lights are kept on. And I really want to kick off with how did Remoti first start? Samuel Brake Guia: So Remoti, which was formerly known as Fincrew, actually started in the UK seven years ago. So I was brought up in the UK. I was at Nottingham University, studying Politics and Sociology, and this was in 2008 when everyone hated the banks and the rise of Fintech started rising. So, I noticed that all these small, Fintechs in London, needed, graduate salespeople, and from Nottingham University, we set up a very small recruitment company. When I was doing that, I noticed that all the cool Fintech companies really didn’t like recruiters, they thought that we were transactional. They thought that we didn’t actually understand the company culture. Pablo Miller: So I wanted to build a business that was a bit different and the idea was actually set up the company in the US and then, my mother’s from Armenia, Quindío and I came on holiday to Colombia before I set up the business, and I saw something truly amazing happening in Latin America which was, first of all, the rise of, second-generation Latin talent, both locally and the ones that have gone abroad to study or work in other companies and have come back and secondly, and the markets here were just right for innovation and for disruption and so I had one investor at the time and I told him instead of, wiring the money to our Chase account in the US, can you wire it to our Bancolombia account here in Bogota and we set up the operation in Colombia, servicing US and UK clients. So we kind of trod along, working there, within their clients just operations here that everything was with outside markets and then the pandemic here and this is when everyone for okay, I don’t need to hire locally, Latin America is a market with a lot of potential. Let’s have a look at that time and that’s when Remoti was built in terms of being kind of the bridge between the West and LATAM. And that essentially has been now for the last three years. : Fantastic. I have to say, I do completely understand what you mean when you talk about the potential here in Latin America and I have to say as well that it’s great to speak with you being based in Bogota because I definitely do feel like there’s an energy within the startup ecosystem, especially in Medellin and Bogota that I really love and it’s so surprising to see. And most people might not think of that if they’ve not been down here of how much potential there is here. So it’s so great to hear of this success story coming out from essentially my own back garden, well where I live anyway, at least obviously not being from here myself, but I want to know on a separate note, Remoti, what’s the story behind that name? How did that come about? Samuel Brake Guia Yeah, great question. Just to kind of supplement what you’re saying, when people ask us, we’ve managed to scale a team, to 70 people. And we took very limited funding and our secret sauce has always been our people. There is great energy in this country. And people want to work for companies where they’re treated, where they’re respected and therefore this is why when foreign companies look at Latin America and Colombia and it’s a great place to start a business. Pablo Miller: So when we change the name from Fincrew which was meant to be like fintech recruitment to Remoti, we wanted to give a real remote work vibe and secondly, because we’re building a bunch of technology. If you are onboarding products of boarding products for our salary benchmark products, we want to obviously have the technology infrastructure, so really Remoti stands for remote technology infrastructure and we get good feedback from our clients because it says exactly what we do. Because ultimately you can’t just set up a remote team. Number one, it is very hard to hire local people if you’re based UK or China or whatever. And then to actually hire them properly to ensure that their payroll, legal taxes and all that are done accordingly and also to retain them. So that’s where the name remote technology infrastructure comes from that. If you want to just build a remote team, you just integrate pur platform into your business and off you go. That’s nice. Yeah, it does have that real startup vibe. I can see that in the name and I think it reflects what you do. We’ve obviously spoken a lot about the company here, but I would love to know some more insights. So can you share some insights on what companies have to do in order to secure top talent? Samuel Brake Guia: Yeah, so it’s also quite an interesting topic obviously, in the market that we’re in. Last year, our key markets, we work along with Fintech clients, we worked a lot with Web 3 clients, and obviously with the down market, we’ve had to find alternative markets, to find growth in these, tricky market conditions. So we look at one market that’s growing very fast for us is actually ERP Implementation Consultants. So these folks go into companies to implement in this SAP, Salesforce, Workday and traditionally you’d have to hire someone locally, and what these big institutions, found that actually make sense to have some folks based in Argentina, based in Cali, Bogota. And they design implementing, literally from here and it’s a remote role. Pablo Miller: So, for us, we’re very easy to work with in the sense that we find a client. They tell us what their needs are. We then tell them exactly where we believe in the region that can be a talent pool, we conduct salary benchmark reports, So we’re in contact with Finance to ensure that it’s in conjunction with them, We then assign a full team and that team, our slogan is “Quality at pace”, that team works full time for that assignment and then we’ll be able to deliver results very very quickly at the highest quality to our clients. : Fantastic. it sounds like you got it. Very nailed down. And I am so happy to see that there’s so much innovation in this space because I think remote work really does feel like it’s here to stay and as someone that feels the benefits of this. And I know so many other people have as well. It’s so exciting to see it flourish really. The benefits of this are just I think so profound that it’s great to see that you’re working on innovating in this space to make sure it prevails really. Samuel Brake Guia : Absolutely. And I think one of the key things, from my story. My mother was from Armenia, she traveled to the UK, my dad is English and we’re very fortunate that we went to, good schools, good universities, we learn how to communicate well. And that obviously gave us a lot of opportunities for me and my sister when it came to jobs. So really my vision with remote work is, I want to get that untouched talent of Latin America that has all that potential. We want to help them connect with companies that locally may not be able to pay them as well. May not be able to develop them as well, and may not be able to give them the opportunities. And so there’s a wonderful kind of social mobility angle to the rise of remote work. Pablo Miller : Yeah. Breaking down borders. That is a wonderful side effect of this, the remote work digital world that I can see here. And I also have to say I’ve seen on your blog that you have a post titled, how to recruit fast Six practical strategies to hire quickly. Now I would definitely recommend listeners, go and check that out. But while I have you here, I would love to cover a few insights that you can share based on this article, as well as your own knowledge and how our listeners can hire quickly and effectively. Samuel Brake Guia : Yeah, absolutely. I think one of the key things that, obviously supplements the title is that you’ve got to think internationally and at the same time, think realistic. So as you know being based in Medellin, someone from Medlelin is very different from someone in Bogota. So as a business you need to understand the differences of particular people and, particular geographical candidates who would like, in terms of benefits the way they want to work, some people want to work, hybrid, and someone people want to work remotely. Number two, you need to be able to give them access to upscale courses locally as well. if we’re looking, hiring someone in Europe, maybe they’re not that interested in, having English courses, for example, as opposed to candidates in Latin America, and number three, you need to obviously be open-minded and not be kind of judgmental about universities. Always look at the output that these candidates achieve. So if a candidate has done incredible work at a local startup, they should not be discounted if they haven’t been to Harvard or something. It’s very important to have these sort of mindsets when looking at hiring and connection. Pablo Miller I think that’s some solid advice there and I think it can be surprising just how much of a difference there can be when it comes to even small distances, like you mentioned, Medellin to Bogota. And I think you can find that across many countries and I do want to know, are there other companies operating in this space? And if so, how do you differentiate yourself from the competition? Samuel Brake Guia: : Great question. So HR tech, it’s certainly a crowded space and number two, I mean there’s a lot of companies now saying, I can help you find talent in Latin America, it’s cheap, etc. You have got to be very cautious about this in the sense that certain companies are trying to just sell Latin America for the cheap economic sense. But really Latin America is a great example of the modern workforce, the folks that are developers here, they not the ones that have been building databases in a bank for about 30 years, it’s that kind of millennial developer the self-taught, worked at startups. And so where we differentiate ourselves is that we have access to the modern workforce that can build modern digital products. And secondly, we’ve been focusing more on corporate clients, they hate finding new supplies for everything. So given that we’re a total talent platform. Pablo Miller They have three essential services from finding to hiring to retaining talent. It means the clients can with one provider, solve the whole problem. So when I look at competitive Ontop, fabulous business, great founders, but they just offer the payroll solutions, they don’t offer retention products. They don’t offer talent scout. And then obviously deal who are one of the pioneers and this amazing, payroll business. When the pandemic hit they got great technology, they really just focus on the payments and payroll side and so really if you don’t retain the candidates, it’s hard to offer them payroll. So this Remoti fits in well and we can offer all three services. Most importantly we have access to the modern workforce and we have tools in order to retain them and also to attract them to your business. That makes a lot of sense. I can see that and I do like the idea that this modern world is more of a meritocracy, it matters less where you are and just more about your skills and your ability. And I think that that’s really important because I really dislike the fact that so much is dictated by where you’re born. And I think that when job opportunities are open to everyone in the world, that just feels like it’s more of a meritocracy, the way it should be. And really my last question to you is what’s next on the horizon? Samuel Brake Guia: Yeah. absolutely. So, at the moment, as I mentioned we’ll be launching our app and our app is super interesting because, like most problems in life, most problems are caused by, bad communication. So, our industry has a very bad reputation for candidates not being given proper feedback or candidates not being fully prepared or candidates not being rejected probably. So we’ve got a communication tool that candidates can download and they seamlessly go through the whole recruitment process and all the communication between the candidate, client, and recruiter is in one place. Number two, in terms of the payroll, the digital wallet will be in the app so they can track their payments. Pablo Miller: They can also track when they will be paid. And number three will be building a marketplace where there’s going to be upsell. So we’re going to be offering our community of developer language courses and also development courses. And so really in one place, you’d be able to find a job. You’ll be able to grow financially. Number three, you’ll be able to upskill. So essentially we’re digitalizing this community and helping them, regardless of where you are in Latin America to find a great job, be paid accordingly and also to be upskilling. And that is really our passion for the modern workforce. Fantastic. if people are listening and they want to keep up with the work that you folks are doing. Pablo, what’s the best way for them to do that?Pablo Miller: So obviously the main channels, we have LinkedIn. We also have Instagram with Facebook and also on our website. We also have two offices, one in Bogota and Medellin, so people are welcome to come in for a coffee, would be delighted to host them. And, from candidates to clients, we have an open-door policy and are always very happy to virtually meet. Samuel Brake Guia: This article was originally published by on Samuel Brake Guia The Sociable.

Breaking Barriers: Remote Work's Impact on Social Mobility in Latin America

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Engineering Survey Results 2019 from Stack Overflow Stack Overflow’s annual Engineering Survey is the largest and most comprehensive survey of people who code around the world. Each year, they field a survey covering everything from engineers’ favourite technologies. This year marks the ninth year they published the annual Engineers Survey results, and nearly 90,000 engineers took the 20-minute survey. Compared with last year survey, where they had more questions regarding the and confirmed what we’ve seen at Waydev, like what version control is most used and the dynamics of the teams, this year was more simplified with direct questions like: productivity of the engineers How Structured Is the Work of Engineers? Greatest Challenges to Productivity Weighting Productivity Challenges in the US Code Review Unit Tests Music for Focus While Coding But, let’s do a show summary with last year survey engineering survey results. What version control do you use? Git is the dominant choice for version control for engineers today, with almost 90% of engineers checking in their code via Git. How Often Do Engineers Check In Code? The majority of engineers check in code multiple times per day. Professional engineers are less likely to check in code rarely or never. Which Methodologies Do Engineers Use? Agile and Scrum are popular methodologies for engineers to keep their projects on track. But, let’s look at the data from 2019, here are a few of the top takeaways from this year’s results. Python, the fastest-growing major programming language, has risen in the ranks of programming languages in our survey yet again, edging out Java this year and standing as the second most loved language (behind Rust). Over half of respondents had written their first line of code by the time they were sixteen, although this experience varies by country and by gender. DevOps specialists and site reliability engineers are among the highest paid, most experienced engineers most satisfied with their jobs, and are looking for new jobs at the lowest levels. Of the top countries in our survey, China has engineers that are the most optimistic, believing that people born today will have a better life than their parents. Engineers in Western European countries like France and Germany are among the least optimistic about the future. When thinking about blockers to productivity, different kinds of engineers report different challenges. Men are more likely to say that being tasked with non-development work is a problem for them, while gender minority respondents are more likely to say that toxic work environments are a problem. We asked respondents to think about the last time they solved coding problems with and without our site. The data indicate that Stack Overflow saves a developer 30 to 90 minutes of time per week! Developer Type About 50% of respondents identify as full-stack engineers, and about 17% consider themselves mobile engineers. The median number of developer type identifications per respondent this year is 3, and the most common pairs are combinations of back-end, front-end, and full-stack developer. Pairs that are highly correlated include database administrator and system administrator, DevOps specialist and site reliability engineer, academic researcher and scientist, and designer and front-end developer. Survey weighting is an approach used to analyze survey data when the survey sample doesn’t match the underlying population well. For example, in our survey this year, 11% of US respondents identify as women, but data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that women’s participation in the software developer workforce is about twice that, more like 20%. We can use survey weighting to adjust for the mismatch between our survey sample and the population of engineers. We know that there is a difference in developer type representation by gender, so let’s compare the overall proportions in our raw results for the United States with weighted proportions, assuming that we undersampled gender minorities at the rate indicated by the BLS report. When we use weighting, we see small increases in the representation of developer roles that have the most representation from women, like designers, and decreases in others with low representation from women, like DevOps. We know there are more ways in which our survey sample doesn’t match the underlying population of engineers than the only gender (including frequency of use of Stack Overflow), and the United States is not the only country for which we expect such a mismatch. The reason we’re using this specific example of weighting here is that it is one where we know we have systemic sampling issues and we have an estimate about the expected population proportion. We can demonstrate the effect of our survey sample on our results, both in direction and magnitude. Gender We asked our respondents about their gender identity and found that about globally 90% of our respondents are men. In regions including the United States, India, and the UK, women are represented at higher levels among students than among professional engineers. This year 11% of US survey respondents are women, up from 9% on last year’s survey. This represents an incremental improvement in this area, but the continued low proportion points to problems with inclusion in the tech industry in general and on Stack Overflow in particular. This year, 1.2% of respondents identified as transgender, about double from last year. The gender identification question allowed respondents to select all that apply, and the question about transgender identity was separate from the question about gender identity. Social Media Use We asked our respondents this year what social media site they use the most, and Reddit and YouTube were the most common answers. Engineers’ preferences aren’t reflective of the most popular social media platforms in the world where Facebook ranks first and Reddit doesn’t even crack the top 10. (Reddit has about 330 million active users compared to Facebook’s 2.32 billion monthly users.) When we look in the United States, the situation is a little different. Twitter and Facebook are ranked higher. Notice that the United States result weighted by gender exhibits some interesting differences from the unweighted result; Instagram even gains a full rank. What Individual Person Will Have the Most Influence In Tech This Year? We asked respondents what person they thought would be most influential in 2019 in a free-text field. Besides CEOs of companies including Tesla, Amazon, Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and Apple, respondents mentioned engineers building and maintaining React.js and Vue.js (the most loved web frameworks this year), along with leaders from the Linux world and other tech domains. A few world leaders received mentions from respondents, along with a fair number of humble respondents nominating…themselves! Some individuals mentioned here are likely not viewed favourably by those who listed them, such as the . Only one woman made it to the top 25 of this list: Lisa Su, the CEO of AMD. current chairman of the United States Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Most Popular Engineers Environments Visual Studio Code is a dominant player among developer environment tools this year. There are differences in tool choices by developer type and role, but Visual Studio Code was a top choice across the board. Engineers who write code for mobile apps are more likely to choose Android Studio and Xcode. A popular choice for DevOps and SREs is Vim, and data scientists are more likely to work in IPython/Jupyter, PyCharm, and RStudio. Engineers’ Primary Operating Systems We asked our respondents what operating systems they use for work. About half said they mainly use Windows, and the remainder were about evenly split between MacOS and Linux. How Confident Are ENGINEERS in Their Managers? Engineering management is a technical discipline that impacts engineers and the work that they do every day. Fortunately, over 80% of respondents are somewhat or very confident that their manager knows what they’re doing. Do Engineers Want To Become Managers in the Future? Respondents are evenly divided about their own plans for such a career change, with no single response dominating. Those who say they do not want to be a manager have years of experience than those who do, with twice as many years of professional coding experience. Engineers who are interested today in entering a management path likely have such a career path ahead of them, or perhaps some will change their mind! more Where Do engineers Want to Work? Almost 60% of developers say they prefer to work in an office, while over 30% (close to 40% in the United States) would prefer to work at their own homes. Greatest Challenges to Productivity When asked what their greatest challenges to productivity are, engineers’ most common responses include a distracting work environment and meetings. Gender minority respondents are less likely to say that being tasked with non-development work is a problem for them, and more likely to say that toxic work environments are. *The survey was fielded from January 23 to February 14. *The median time spent on the survey for qualified responses was 23.3 minutes. source: https://insights.stackoverflow.com/survey/2019

ENGINEERING SURVEY RESULTS 2019 FROM STACK OVERFLOW

“People make most decisions in under 90 seconds, then spend several hours proving themselves right.” I’m remembering this quote as I add the final touches to the Waydev launch e-mail. It’s actually a quote I’ve been remembering a lot this past decade, usually while trying to coax some meaning out of various graphs and spreadsheets allegedly showing me how my project is going. I also remember telling myself: “There has to be a better way to know if development is on track” I started Waydev because I believe keeping development on track does not need to involve a careful studying of charts and spreadsheets. As a non-techie trying to lead development projects over the past 15 years, I became deeply unsatisfied with the options available to me as a business owner, so I eventually decided to build a tool I could actually enjoy using. I’m not a fan of micro-management; I actually find the whole exercise of looking over a developer’s shoulder or constantly asking for status updates to be paradoxical. Whenever there is some abstract uncertainty about the state of a project, the reflex is to start investigating, thereby placing additional strain on the development team, which now has to churn out weekly or daily reports in addition to their already taxing task of pushing product increments. No wonder there’s a communication gap between Management and Development. It’s nobody’s fault, of course. There is always pressure from stakeholders, customers or competitors to be ahead of the game, so a manager is in a position where they constantly need to ask the question: “Is development on-track?” There are of course ways to monitor development, but they are far from ideal, usually because they involve developers interrupting their work to update some issue status, mark an item on a checklist or move some Post-it note to a different column. There are a few problems with this approach: It’s a system that needs constant maintenance — someone usually has to be the bad guy and remind everyone to move the Post-it notes, otherwise progress won’t be clear It moves focus away from coding — no matter what is said, the perception will be that the team’s success is measured according to the number of tasks completed; this in itself can generate all sorts of anti-patterns ranging from task inflation to gaming the system to squeeze out the +5% of tasks needed to meet some arbitrary quota In a quest to provide the definitive status update, most dashboards try to squeeze as much information as possible onto the screen, to the point that the details become overwhelming By contrast, what Waydev is trying to do is provide the minimal amount of information that is required in order to know if development is on track. To do this, it grabs some advanced metrics from source control (not the actual source code, of course), and compiles them into an easy-to-read number we call the Wayrank. This simple number can tell you, at a glance, if your project is on track or if it’s time to start asking questions. We believe that less reporting helps create better code Then there’s also the matter of context, which a lot of times is overlooked in the favor of more details. For example, looking at the number of lines of code committed is hardly a way to judge progress. On the other hand, in context, it can reveal a lot of things: One can gain insights into the relative size and complexity of two different projects by looking at how much actual code is in the repository and how long it took to write it. If the number of lines of code committed dramatically increases or decreases, that’s usually a sign that there might be an issue — either there is some obstacle that is requiring more thinking than coding (or more so than usual), or there is some obscure issue that can only be found through trial and error. The size and frequency of the commits or version updates can show the team’s rhythm and whether good practices are being observed. Finally, a combination of the above can help create realistic expectations regarding how quickly changes in product reliability will occur. Current tracking solutions overlook such aspects, further widening the gap between expectation and delivery and frustrating both developers and managers. By providing only high-level information, we want to encourage project leaders to pay more attention to context and less attention to arbitrary KPIs. We also believe that Software Development Management should be accessible regardless of how tech-savvy one is We hope Waydev will improve development processes everywhere, we certainly believe it has the potential to do that. What we also hope is that it will eliminate an obstacle holding non-technical people back from pushing their ideas into the real world. I feel that, by offering a way for people at all levels of tech-savviness to develop software products, we are opening up the industry to new perspectives. We’d love to know your thoughts! Try Waydev and tell us what you think. Check us out on Product Hunt http://producthunt.com/waydev

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