The McKinsey Developer Productivity Debate | Ori Keren & Kelly Vaughn

**Ori Keren** (0:00)
I feel lucky that I have the opportunity to be here in this crossroad where this is being implemented. You can see this space crossing the chasm now. A lot of big companies are coming in.
So to be-

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:10)
I mean, McKinsey's writing about it.

**Ori Keren** (0:12)
McKinsey's writing about it.
Big enterprises are coming in. To be the ones that kind of say, hey, this is the right way to roll out. I love it. I love this responsibility and kind of help educate the market.

**Kelly Vaughn** (0:23)
I think that you nailed it at that last point there. If there's anything I learned from working in video intelligence, it's that if you give people the tools to do something, there are always gonna be people who abuse those tools. From a business ownership standpoint or as an engineering leader, when you're having an impact on what it is that your company is gonna be building, think about how it should be used, but think about how else it could be used in not so great ways.
You can't prevent everyone from doing any one particular thing, but at least you can help kind of steer the ship in the direction.

**Conor Bronsdon** (0:51)
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Hey everyone, welcome to Dev Interrupted. This is your co-host, Conor Bronsdon. And today I'm delighted to be joined by two of my favorite guests, LinearB co-founder and CEO Ori Keren and Kelly Vaughn, Director of Engineering at Spot AI. Ori, Kelly, welcome back to the show.

**Kelly Vaughn** (2:08)
Thanks for having us. I'm particularly excited to be doing this with Ori because we were talking a little bit earlier that we've listened to each other on this podcast multiple times, but this is the first time we've ever actually been able to do this together.

**Ori Keren** (2:20)
Same goes here, excited to be here and to be part of this panel.

**Conor Bronsdon** (2:25)
It was the same thought I had coming into this where I've talked to each of you separately about a lot of these topics that I know you're passionate about. I've talked to you each about, in fact, shows that you've both been on and Ori's been like, oh yeah, Kelly said this thing. And I was like, oh yeah, yeah, she recommended a book to me. And Kelly, you've been said, oh, this thing on developer productivity around entering metrics, like I heard Ori say this, that was really interesting. So it is really great to have you both actually on the same episode. We need to do more of these.
And the impetus behind this episode is kind of a controversial one, actually.
There was an article that was released titled, Yes, You Can Measure Software Developer Productivity by McKinsey.
And it immediately ignited debates within the software development community with Kent Beck, software engineer and creator of extreme programming, calling the report so absurd and naive that it makes no sense to critique it in detail. That said, he did, to some extent, go on to critique it in detail when Gergely Orosz, the mind behind the Pragmatic Engineer, catalogued what was happening and reached out to Kent to join forces. Together, the two of them wrote a two-part series as a response to the McKinsey piece, definitely worthwhile reading as well. We'll link all these articles in the show notes.
And as I alluded to at the top of the show, you're both very passionate about this topic. Ori, you've obviously dedicated much of your life, including founding LinearB, to many of the principles discussed in this debate. And Kelly, you are one of the most vocal and outspoken engineering leaders I know. We've talked about this topic multiple times. If there's a cause to stand behind what's best for engineers, the two of you stand there 10 out of 10 times. We truly have what's best for the community in mind. You're both authorities on the subject. And we want to start by asking you both, and Ori will kick off with you. What were your first impressions as you were reading that McKinsey article?