Building Distributed Systems in Distributed Teams
A presentation at GDG DevFest Pisa in in Pisa, Province of Pisa, Italy by Philipp Krenn
Building DISTRIBUTED SYSTEMS in DISTRIBUTED TEAMS Philipp Krenn @xeraa
Who is working from HOME?
Who is working from a COWORKING SPACE?
Who is working from an OFFICE?
Who can work from home for 1 DAY / WEEK?
DEVELOPER
CLUSTER
UNSTRUCTURED, DISTRIBUTED, DIVERSE
1400 ELASTICIANS +
37 COUNTRIES + 30 LANGUAGES + +19 TIME ZONES 16 OFFICES
Distributed By Design
DISTRIBUTED NOT REMOTE
X-SCHOOL
ALWAYS ON
(CROSS) TEAM TIME BUGPOOL, FIXITFRIDAY, OFFICE HOURS,…
RELEASE PARTY
PROCESS PER TEAM
COMPANY ALL HANDS ENGINEERING ALL HANDS
Values
ELASTICSEARCH TEAM DEVELOPMENT CONSTITUTION https://github.com/elastic/engineering/blob/master/development_constitution.md
TECH PROGRESS OVER PERFECTION
TECH DESIGN FOR TODAY! USE ABSTRACTIONS WITH CARE
TECH REMOVE FIRST, FIX LATER
PEOPLE BE KIND
PEOPLE EMPATHY FOR PASSION
PEOPLE REPORT ABUSIVE COMMENTS
MY EXPERIENCE
DO THE RIGHT THING
YOU VOLUNTEER
SOMETIMES YOU ARE VOLUNTOLD
COMMUNICATION IS OPEN & PUBLIC
Downsides
SHARE THE PAIN OF TIMEZONES
COMMUNICATION CAN FAIL
CULTURES ARE DIFFERENT
DECISIONS CAN DRAG
Day
CRAZY
FLEXIBLE
TRADITIONAL
Tools
SYNC
ASYNC
Hiring
OH: It’s not “hard” skills vs “soft” skills - its “technical” vs “professional” skills. — https://twitter.com/freakboy3742/status/907032201497255942
AGE, GENDER, LOCATION, RACE,… IS JUST AN ATTRIBUTE
30,000 CV + PER QUARTER
500 TO 600: 5M 600 TO 700: 3M 700 TO 800: 2M
Numbers
INDICATOR ARRIVALS: 130 DEPARTURES: 9
Conclusion
Who wants to work from AN OFFICE?
Who wants to work from HOME?
NO GOING BACK
QUESTIONS? Philipp Krenn @xeraa
Building distributed systems is notoriously hard… building a distributed team, even more so. At Elastic — the company behind the open source tools Elasticsearch, Kibana, Beats, and Logstash — everything is distributed; the company and our products. This talk dives into the details of how Elastic is thriving on its distributed model:
- How Elastic started to be distributed by design.
- What our shared values are and what we have learned as we progressed and grew to our current size.
- What the day of an Elastician can look like.
- What we are using in terms of tooling.
- How we hire and onboard new employees.
