How This Candidate Turned Ambiguity into Insightful Metrics to Uphold High Standards

My wife has that magical power as well. Absolutely

Sure, and, and so by operational tempo, are you referring to, um, like contractual SLAs, operational SLAs um or product, uh, you know, product projections or, or trends that you wanna see or both?

intentionally

you

Yeah, so So I'm, I'm asking a clarifying question. Yeah, and and

OK, so you're not gonna, you're not gonna clarify. OK. Um, yeah, OK, so, so I, I see kind of, uh, the, the, the two primary categories that I just pointed out, which are the, the product. Um, contractually, uh, obligated SLAs that, that we want to provide to our customers or that, that we are obligated to provide to our customers and those are things like up time, uh, reliability, um, And, and so for, for up time, you know, you, you, you, you know, we have the, the traditional number of nines, right? I think, uh, for, for operational stability, I'll be asking the team to, to begin measuring, um, uptime, right? So, uh, you know, shooting for, let's, let's start with 3 9s. Like I don't know where they are now or I don't know what the contracts say, but let's say 3 9s, uh, for now. Um. And, uh, and, and we'll be measuring, be measuring that. And then we'll, we'll also measure uh reliability and that would be the, uh, the number of hours that elapse while uh a product is up. Um, so we'll, we'll, we'll, we'll have some sense of, of, uh, you know, the gaps when the product is down, um, how reliable it is. Um, those, those are the, the two kind of primary operational metrics that I'll be looking for. And then on the product side, um, There are, there are a lot of different things that, that we would want to, uh, a lot of metrics we want to collect to present to the business, um, that, that show the, uh, the usage, uh, the adoption of our APIs. Um, so we wanna see, you know, per, per, per agency, uh, per unique user per agency, how many, um, how many hits our APIs are getting. Uh, we also are, are gonna, uh, kind of going back to the Uh, contractual side, we wanna make sure that customers aren't, um, abusing the license, um, agreement that we've, uh, created with them. I know that Axxon has a, uh, kind of a licensed user model, so we wanna make sure that, that we're counting the number. Appropriately and either, you know, overcharging charging them for overages or uh preventing, preventing them from going over. Um, but yeah, so, uh, but back to the uh business metric side, right? So we wanna, we wanna see adoption, we want to see consumption, um, or, or the lack of adoption, you know, the lack of use, um, that, that might indicate, um, either a, a misunderstanding with the product, um, or a product or an API that is, uh, you know, not performing, not doing the job that We're we're wanting it to do.

Yeah, so the The, the, the best way to, to kind of get, to get these things done um is to first of all, define, define what it is that, that we want to do, right? So, uh, if we want to build an operational um SLA monitoring, um, I'll, you know, I'm, I might write a spec about that, um, and get together and, and kind of present a high level, let's, let's not say a spec but a requirements document that that kind of gives the high level of what we're trying to achieve, um, and present that to the You know, the, the management team or the, uh, the people on the development team. Uh, for, for this team, you know, it would be the, let's say the evidence team, the evidence API team. Um, and, and, and if that's, if that's my, uh, sphere of influence, those are the guys that I'm gonna talk to them and say, look, we, we need to be producing these, um, these metrics. Um, I wanna get these into, uh, onto the roadmap, um, and, uh, and, and start implementing them. These are, these are super high, high value, they're super important. Um, not only, uh, for, for us to know the health of our service, but for us to meet contractual obligations. I, I think, um, you know, if, if the team doesn't realize the value that, that they're, that they're providing, um, you know, we need to have a talk, but those, those are kind of table stakes in my, in my opinion.

Yeah, so, so I've been, I've been a dev manager, uh, for a large chunk of my career. Um, and I've had to have those difficult conversations many times. Um, and, you know, I've done, I've done a lot of hiring and firing and correcting. Um, so I'll give you an example. I, I, I worked with, with a guy who I, he, it's kind of, kind of a, a weird situation where um I was about to go on a, on a trip to Europe for a couple of weeks and I just hired this um very senior developer, um, and he was coming in to work on a greenfield project with the team. Um, he was, I hadn't hired him, he's a contractor and he You know, we interviewed him. He was a super bright guy, and he had a lot of really fresh and cool ideas to contribute, you know, using cloud technologies and so forth. And so, I talked to him, um, a couple of days before I left, and I said, look, I know that you're brand new. Um, we have a lot of senior engineers on this team. Um, while I'm gone, I'd like you to, um, you know, bring your experience, talk to the team about, uh, about You know, the kind of the, the new cloud methods, uh, cloud technologies that you're familiar with. And when, when the developers are talking about architecture and design, you know, don't, don't be afraid to interject and, and don't, you know, don't feel like you have to accept the status quo. Um. And, and, you know, he said, OK. And then I, I left, I was on vacation, I came back. And when I got back, I learned that he, um, he, he had been kind of, uh, combative the entire time that I was gone. And, and he took my question, the status quo as, um, don't believe anything anybody says. Um, and You know, don't do it their way, do it your way. And, and, and, and he kind of got the wrong message. So, um, I had to, I had to, you know, level set it again with him. I had to reset expectations. And really, as a, as a manager, that is your number one job. It's my number one job is to set clear expectations for the team. Um, and, and then hold them accountable to those expectations. I will write them down, I might set them as goals, um, but, you know, being very clear about expectations is, is job one. Um, and then it's easy to follow up on those expectations, um, you know, at a daily stand-up meeting, for example. Um, I can tell if a, uh, if, if an employee is, is meeting expectations, if they're getting their work done, if, if they're hitting their, hitting their targets or not. OK.