Episode #30 Materials: Developer Productivity for Humans (Series #Management)

I’ve collected the materials from my solo Research Insights Made Simple episode of September 21, 2026. I explored Google’s developer productivity research series and connected it to the practical work of leading engineering teams.

An engineer finds an existing library and saves a week of work, while writing very little code. How can our measurement system recognize the value of that choice? And where should we look when AI produces more code, but the same people still have to review it?

In the episode, I covered: - Goals and metrics. Connecting logs, surveys, and interviews to a specific decision we are willing to change in light of the evidence. - Build speed and onboarding. Why predictable waits, developer independence, and mentoring time matter. - Quality and teamwork. How a faster platform team can create more work for the teams using its libraries. - AI tensions. Shifting effort to reviewers, accumulating technical debt, taking prototypes into production, and losing an understanding of generated solutions.

I closed with a proposed month-long plan: choose one painful goal, establish a baseline, try a change, and discuss the results with the team. Be willing to stop if the idea does not help.

Episode materials: 📌 Episode page with timestamps 📊 Slides, Longread 🎬 YouTube, VK Video 🎧 Podster, Yandex Music, Apple Podcasts 📝 Written recap

Which useful contributions does your team make that your metrics miss? Share an example in the comments.

#Management #Engineering #Metrics #DevEx #AI #Research