Abstract

Through a review of some key moments in Sky Technology history, we analyse the factors that contribute to a strong Software Engineering culture. We identify three behaviours that seem to be the pillars of such culture: sense of ownership, spirit of collaboration, relentless focus on data. We also establish an approach for such behaviours to permeate the entire organisation. It relies on tooling, more precisely on tooling as a unified ecosystem. We do it through the prism of Sky’s usage of the open source technology Apache Kafka. On one hand, the focus on Kafka is because this work was initiated to deliver Kafka Summit London 2019 Keynote. On the other hand, as we discover it, Kafka concentrates the essence of those four pillars and as such, beyond its technical ability, reveals a cultural “power” that can positively influence the organisation that uses it.

Hiring Process Design

After having reviewed the risks of not hiring, the risks of hiring and its pitfalls, it’s time to look at what that means for the hiring process, and the stages to put the candidate through to deliver great team benefits. What are they?

• minimise the time spent or worse wasted
• minimise the risks posed by team lifethreats
• maximise for team fit assessment
• make great hiring decisions that minimise the risk of not growing

The Three Fallacies of Software Engineering Recruitment

Conflating Elegance and Quality

Let’s ponder this: no use of dependency injection framework implies untestable code. I am sure you already see the issue. Well, issues. But do you see where the team’s reasoning went wrong? They don’t assess the technical proficiency of their candidates, they assess the elegance of their solution. It’s totally subjective.

Growing is a Risk: the Fox and the Henhouse

The Problem with Quality

The ratio of time spent building / fixing is arguably the only useful measurement of quality in a team. An ideal value for this quality metrics would be much closer to 80% than 100%.

Not Growing is a Risk

Death by Inflexibility

People resign, and that should be okay. That requires having a margin in the headcount and a decently shared knowledge.

Growth Models

Our department is undergoing a period of rapid growth and I don’t see it slowing down. We observe 3 types of growth. The first one, our favourite kind, is organic. This is what has happened with Search. We hire constantly, we rearchitecture our stuff to split concerns which in turn allows us to split ownership. When we reach this stage, it’s a big win, we can reorg into smaller teams, each within a neat bounded context. We increase our focus. We get better at what we do. Collaboration is on the rise. And we move faster.

I hope you have heard about it by now: our first Sky Tech Conference will take place on 30th September in Sky Central. For this day we have lined up 24 speakers, from all areas at Sky. They will give 14 talks split in 2 tracks: Empowering Builders and A Culture of Sharing. And you don’t even have to be on site as it will all be live-streamed to different offices across Europe showing it live.

I run a survey last week to get a steer on what we should focus on in the Scala Community. Here is what I learnt. 50% of us can get things done in Scala. Overall as you can see, a nice bell curve from beginner to seasoned scala developer. But nobody claims the title of expert, something we need to fix! 55% actually code in Scala at Sky.

The above is what all prospect customers see when they visit Sky.com. Codenamed Polaris, it’s about creating a premium, uniquely Sky, brand engagement in order to convert a prospect into a customer. Perceived speed is a key part of creating a premium experience and maximising KPIs such as click through. The site has to feel fast to load and buttery smooth while in use. There is a huge amount to say about performance on our www.

In recent years I’ve been quite involved in alternative thinking and new ways of understanding our world, and many times I had to change my worldview because some underlying core belief I had was challenged. And this is not easy, because once you take the red pill, you’re on your own. When you no longer follow the mainstream point of view, you run the risk of being pointed at and rejected as being too different.