00:00:12

Last year at this conference, we heard from Peter Moore who marveled at the performance of Microsoft pre and post such Andela. He observed that Microsoft had the same mark cap when Steve Balmer first became CEO. And when he left 14 years later. So in the eight years, since such a Nadella became CEO Microsoft's market cap has increased by more than six X becoming one of the world's most valuable companies. I have long wondered whether the first seeds of this new Microsoft came from the famous devil division home of all the developer tools, compilers and runtimes, that we're all likely so familiar with such as visual studio, visual studio code TypeScript, the CLR, and so much more. There are some fantastic glimpses of this in the book customer driven culture, which came out last year. And ever since reading that book, I've been wanting to interview someone who is featured so prominently, which is Amanda silver, who is now corporate vice president of product for developer tools on how they were able to create this amazing learning dynamic, uh, within the dev, uh, developer division, reaching out to her has been on my to-do list for what feels like years, especially since she came up so frequently in conversations I had with other people.

00:01:22

And then I heard her January interview that she did with Scott Hanselman, and she shared her perspectives on remote work and its impact on leadership values that she holds near. And dear, which blew me away. I think she has lessons that are relevant for every technology leader and I'm so delighted and honored that she was willing to share her thoughts with us today. Amanda, thank you so much for being here today. Thank

00:01:45

You so much for having me.

00:01:48

So, you know, I introduced you in my words, but can you introduce yourself in your own words and describe what you're working on these days?

00:01:54

Sure. I mean, I'm, I'm Amanda silver. I am the CVP that runs the PM design and user research teams for Microsoft's developer division. And as you described, the developer division basically works on all of the products that Microsoft and platforms that target developers is the primary audience. And so that's visual studio, family, uh, dot net runtime. Uh, most recently the Azure paths platform as well. Basically the application platform portion of Azure is also in the developer division and we work very closely with the get hub team, uh, product integration. So, you know, I've been at Microsoft since 2001. I've always been working for developers and you know, part of the reason for that is I just love having developers as my audience there. I think of them as my muse, um, in a way, you know, developers are tech enthusiasts, they are early adopters. Um, and so as a product person, I really live for fast feedback cycles and I love having developers, uh, be my audience because, you know, I can ship something in the morning and know by the end of the day, whether it was a hit or a dead.

00:03:04

Ah, that's so awesome. So Amanda and the book customer different culture, uh, you spoke so eloquently about how important it was for leaders to have awareness, curiosity, and courage. Uh, can you talk about, uh, what these attributes mean to you and why you think they're so important?

00:03:20

Oh, it's, uh, these are foundational. I mean, these are, these are, this is what our bootcamp inside of the developer division is really based on. And we bring everyone through a two week boot camp, um, and, and kind of bring them through awareness, curiosity, and courage. Um, you know, for me, I think, I think the awareness aspect is understanding that everyone is coming to everything that they do with a certain set of Bryant biases and preconceived notions. And so it's understanding basically what are the sets of, of, um, data points that you have, the lived experiences that you have that are informing your point of view, uh, and then recognizing that that might not be all of the information that you should be using to make a decision. And so that's, that's a dimension of awareness. I think another dimension of awareness is also understanding how you show up how, how your presence and the way that you're showing up influences other people in the room.

00:04:16

Curiosity is really just this dimension. It's kind of very related to growth mindset and the idea of lifelong learning. But, uh, curiosity is kind of this idea of, of that, that every opportunity is an opportunity to, to learn and to elevate your thinking. Um, and even your organization's thinking on a particular matter. Um, and so that's just a foundational element of everything that we do when we're working on a technical problem, or we're trying to make a data-driven decision. Uh, curiosity is an integral part of that. And then courage is, is being willing to have intellectual honesty and rigor and bring that to the conversations that you have, even when it might feel scary. And it might even put your own, uh, position at risk, or it might cause you to call out someone who maybe more senior than you, uh, and, and make sure that we're actually having a conversation based on facts as opposed to, you know, hierarchy. Um, and so one of the things that we talk about a lot in our team is that we don't want to have decisions made by the highest paid person in the room. We want to have decisions that are made, we call that the hippo highest paid person in the room. Uh, we, we want to drive decisions based on, on data based on intellectual honesty rigor. Um, and we want to be able to talk about that openly and, and share that with our team.

00:05:50

That's so wonderful. And in that interview, you also talked about your desire to make sure that everyone in the team or in the, um, in the collective hive mind that they have a voice. And I suppose one can hear this and think that you're just being nice, meaning you're being considerate, but I suspect that for you, uh, it has a lot more to something much bigger than just being nice. Can you talk to that?

00:06:14

Well, I think there's two dimensions of it. One is scale and kind of, you know, the idea of how does a leader actually scaled to something that they can't personally be the expert in, in every dimension. Um, and so you need to be able to empower your teams and then the next event, the next aspect of that is empowerment. You know, when we think about, uh, what, how do we actually build organizational capacity? We need to actually continue to invest in the next generation and trust them, uh, to make those decisions. And so I think part of the approach that we have is, is to empower our team so that they can actually become the experts in this particular portion of the market, the competition, you know, the, the technical challenges that we're faced with. And we can demonstrate that we actually trust them to make decisions.

00:07:07

Um, I think when you suck up all of the decision-making power to the most senior people in the room, or to just the leadership team, then you're really, you're not empowering your team. You're not building the next generation of leaders in your organization. You're going to have a retention challenge, uh, as people get more, more senior. Um, but also, I don't think you're making the decision based on the best information. And what I want to see happen in our organization is that each one of the people that we empower actually has the best context on that particular portion of the market that we're trying to compete in. Um, and that, that they have firsthand experience with the customers that we're trying to serve based on the motivations that they have. Um, and, and then we can help drive a collective decision with the full view of everything that we're trying to accomplish in the organization. So we can bring a senior leaders more context to this conversation in terms of the global atmosphere of everything that we're trying to achieve, but we really want to make sure that our individual teams are empowered to execute as independently and with as much information locally as they possibly can.

00:08:19

That was one of the flats. I heard the phrase that really, uh, uh, stuck with me was, uh, if we're not doing this, we're not getting the best out of our people. Uh, absolutely love that. Uh, so the other thing that really caught my attention in your interview with Scott Hanselman was how you talked about Microsoft moving from remote friendly to remote first and how you've been surprised at how effective remote meetings can be. And in some cases, maybe even more effective than in-person meetings. Uh, can you talk about what you've grown to like about remote meetings and, um, in particular you brought up, uh, some very surprising contexts, like the senior leadership team, uh, around OKR planning and even that famous two week in-person bootcamp. Uh, can you talk about those?

00:09:02

Yeah, for sure. So, I mean, you know, I think even before the COVID pandemic happened and we all transitioned to working from home, we already had a pretty geographically distributed team. I think we were about 40% geographically distributed non, you know, re Microsoft campus based. Um, and so we already had a team culture. That was what I would call remote friendly in those days. But looking back on it, it was really not very remote friendly, right. We wouldn't, we wouldn't start the zoom meeting or, you know, teams meeting, uh, at the same time. Uh, you know, we might forget to add the remote attendees until when you're into the, into maybe five, 10 minutes into the conversation, which happens way too often. We wouldn't have notes from the meeting or decisions from the meeting. Um, we wouldn't, we wouldn't, you know, pause to make sure that the remote attendees were actually included.

00:09:59

And so I think, you know, even in that era, I recognize that that if we actually made our team culture better for remote employees, that that would actually create a more inclusive environment for everyone on the team. Because when you think about how you actually run a remote meeting for you to include the remote attendees, you actually need to create pauses in the conversation and you need to pull the room to see if other people have contributions that they want to make. And I think it's too easy in a remote meeting for it to become basically a two way conversation, right? There's the most senior person in the room. And then there's everybody who has prepared the content who is prepared, who is delivering the content for that most senior person in the room. Why do you have everybody else in that meeting? You know, cause they're not contributing to the conversation.

00:10:50

And so by building in these pauses so that we can listen to everybody and their thoughts on the matter, we actually create openings for diverse viewpoints. And if you don't do that, then you're really only basing it based on the information that's been previously prepared for the conversation and for the hippos, uh, opinion. Um, and so we've found this to be really essential. Um, but it's not just about the actual running of the, the meeting itself. Um, it's also about what do you do outside of meetings and how do you even approach meetings in this new remote first workplace? And the answer is to me, in some ways you have a lot less meetings, it feels like we have, you know, a video conference fatigue in some ways, uh, in this world. And I think that caused me to want to have fewer conversations that are done via video conferencing.

00:11:56

And so for you to do that, you need to have much, much more asynchronous communication, whether that's, um, and it needs to be snackable, you know, it can't be long 25 page strategy documents or, you know, super long recorded videos or anything like that. It needs to be bite-sized consumable, uh, bits of content that everyone can understand, and that has a big impact on them. And so I think that's been a big element of what we've done is we've transitioned to, um, to more asynchronous content to making it more personal, actually creating a lot more human connection in those that asynchronous content, um, to making it shorter and to be more intentional about when we actually bring people together for, for a meeting, uh, what do we actually expect to get out of it? You know, I think, I think in the, in the oral old world is, you know, the only way that I can refer to it now, um, there was a lot of, uh, of absorbing via osmosis.

00:13:01

You would S you would be in the room, you'd, you'd capture the, the, you know, gestalt, if the other people in the room and kind of create the collective hive mind by being in physical proximity with each other. And there might be many multiple conversations that are going on and whiteboards, and, and it's very exciting. Um, but it's really just impossible to actually replicate in, in this remote only world. And, and so we had, uh, examples like the, the bootcamp that we run, the second portion of the bootcamp that we run is a customer-driven workshop where basically we take four days and we divide into different teams of, you know, five to six people each, and we assign each group to a business problem and they interview a set of customers and they do the sense-making process, uh, to customers, real customers. Yeah. Protective about you'll give them to the rookies.

00:14:00

Me, you know, what I love about this is, is we actually give it to people who are straight out of college, as well as people who've joined our team who are coming from 20 years in the industry and have incredible experience. Um, but, but what's fascinating is when people have that raw exposure to an actual customer that we're trying to serve, I think of it like oxygen, right? It's like putting light on, uh, on, uh, or light, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's helping to infuse the conversation with reality, with the reality of the experience of the person that you're trying to serve. And so this kind of a meeting was really impossible to do. We thought initially remotely. And what we found is that it's actually better remotely. And the reason is it's way more inclusive of our geographically distributed team. Then the Puget sound only version of this boot camp that we had been running previously, but we've also transitioned to using software that facilitates brainstorming, which we weren't using previously, uh, in the world where, where we were doing the self physically, we would have little tables, little pods that we had set up for everybody to work and we'd have post-it notes and stickies and kind of everything that everybody thinks of as brainstorming tools.

00:15:23

And we would end up with different kind of charts that they would create with markers and, and dry erase boards and post-it notes and all of that. And, um, and it was great and they came up with some great ideas, but at the end of it, it was first of all, very hard to kind of reorganize into coherent thoughts. And so the presentation itself was a little bit jumbled when they finally came to the, the pitch that they were trying to make based on their explorations. Um, but also there was no way to actually capture the ideas and the insights that they had. And what we find is that in fact, just this past week, we had another one of these boot camps. Um, and I had two teams that were assigned to look at a business problem that we're actively doing product development on, and their insights were so good based on these four, eight interviews.

00:16:16

I think that they had had total total that now on the way to doing the pitch for our senior management, we're actually going to run it by this team. That's full of people who are just just college hires and new hires into Microsoft, because they had such good insights from these interviews that we think that they're actually first great first readers of this pitch that we're trying to make. So I think it's empowering, you know, it actually allows the team to recognize from the get-go that they are empowered to kind of make decisions, to have these kinds of insights. Um, but it's also empowering to these geographically distributed teammates. And so I think what we're finding is that this, this new world feels more inclusive to many of our teammates.

00:17:00

I love it. And, uh, by the way, when I read about this in the book, I found it mind expanding. I just did this, the idea that, uh, uh, you know, the, uh, customers are not viewed as a scarce resource to be, uh, you know, shown with high degrees of ceremony and protectiveness that any of this actually integrated into the onboarding process. And I love how remote means as it, it was just a mind expanding, uh, uh, story. So that's sort of work at the edge. Now, you had another example of how remote meetings have changed for, uh, you know, some of the highest levels of leadership as terms of defining goals and cascading or rolling out the OKR is throughout the organization. Can you talk about how you've been tackling those?

00:17:38

Yeah, I mean, you know, I spoke a little bit about how everyone has it's video conferencing, fatigue. I think that managers, in some ways are the most, um, stretched in this new world, because let's be honest. The last year has been extraordinarily challenging, uh, for everyone. And, and I think that, you know, for anyone to be a great manager, they have to actually demonstrate that they care about their employees and they have to be there for their employees and they have to coach them, you know, like I spoke about earlier. I think it's, I think the management job is easier when you're all in physical proximity of one another, because of that osmosis nature, right? You can have a lot of training that happens. That's unintentional just by people being in the office and observing, uh, what happens with other people. And I think in this remote only world, a lot of the training onboarding, um, and coaching, uh, and a lot of the human support, the emotional support that a lot of people have needed over this past year, a year or two years, almost of, of, um, of, you know, this really turbulent situation.

00:18:55

Um, it's taken a toll on a lot of managers. And so I was very concerned about that when it came time to our next planning cycle and you're laughing,

00:19:10

Um, I'm assuming that the, uh, you didn't want to inflict this endless 17 hour planning sessions, uh, to your team.

00:19:17

I mean, the last, you know, the way that we had done this previously when we were all physically co located, was that we would, we would, you know, book a two day offsite and we'd expect everyone to fly out and we prepare a bunch of different, you know, documents and reading material for them to consume as a part of it. And then we'd discuss it and we'd have these brainstorming meetings. And, you know, it was, it was, again, it was just kind of using the power of osmosis for everyone to come to an agreed, uh, perspective on what we needed to do. Um, but we really couldn't afford to do that a 17 hour meeting or a, you know, 16 hour meeting, uh, with everybody attending remotely. And, and I think I just, it just doesn't work. You can actually see people drop off after, you know, 90 minutes or something like that, even when they're really, it's something that really matters to them and is important to them.

00:20:16

It's just hard for people to sustain the energy and video conferencing. And so what we did is we actually asked ourselves, what is the minimum amount of structure that we need to provide to the team, uh, in terms of, of, uh, both the planning exercise itself, but also in terms of the output of the plan, and rather than coming with, you know, many, many strategy documents and, and, um, hours, many hours of meetings, we came to the conclusion that the thing that we needed to focus on most was just aligning on our OKR. And I will say like, my team is still in a learning process of, of okay, ours and understanding how best to use them in our organization. And, you know, even now I'm kind of starting to close Q1 and looking at Q2, and there are some shifts that we'll be making in the team based on what we've learned over this last quarter. But zeroing in on the OKR is, is the main thing that we need to agree upon across the organization has actually been clarifying. Um, and it's allowed us to get more focused on, on what do we absolutely need to accomplish during this next semester? Uh, you know, rather than kind of speaking in platitudes of what we'd like to see happen, we actually have to get down to brass tacks about what is, what are the outcomes that we actually need to see, uh, happen over this next period.

00:21:51

That's awesome. And by the way, it's bringing back memories of, uh, uh, over a decade ago, these lifeless three day meetings was just, uh, the, uh, people bloviating away about like what we should do need to do right. Then, uh, all the decisions having actually already been made already. Right. It's just a phenomenal waste of time.

00:22:09

Yeah. I mean, I mean, you know, I, as a, as a writer, I'm sure you recognize that like some of the hardest parts of writing is editing, right. It's sometimes easy to actually write, write what you think, but the hard part is, you know, if I had more time, I would've made it a shorter letter. Right. Um, and so that, I think that is an essential part of the OKR setting process is, is eliminating the additional extraneous, uh, superficial metrics that are not the things that you need to focus on and getting down to really, what are the most essential things that you need to accomplish.

00:22:47

That is so wonderful. So I have some other questions about, uh, the leadership context of culture change at, uh, Microsoft, um, as mentioned in the book. But before we do that, uh, you had mentioned, uh, in that interview, some specific tools and techniques that you use to, uh, make better use of people's time. You mentioned things like writing strategy documents, allocating reading time during meetings, uh, you know, specific things that you have found effective in, uh, uh, that for not just for you, but in your leaders. Can you talk a little bit about that?

00:23:16

Yeah. I mean, I, you know, definitely during this period, writing has become way more essential, uh, effective writing, compelling writing data, data, informed writing. Um, and so that's definitely something that we've been working on a lot over the last couple of years, um, and it's become so essential. I think the other dimensions of it are the humanity, right? The, I think part of the thing that happens in a physical proximity is you get to know one another humans and you're able to connect on a personal level. And in some ways I think one of the things that I'm most worried about in this new world is that people feel less connection to the organization, to their colleagues. Um, and so what I I've also been trying to do is to make sure that we're helping one another learn about one another as humans and in the context of, of the strategy that we're trying to execute on and in their career trajectory.

00:24:16

And so an, an example of the kinds of things that we've been doing is, um, regular podcasts internally, and they're designed so that, you know, you can take them on the walk. You don't always have to be physically, you know, attached to your monitor to be able to consume this kind of content. Um, but the goal with it is to talk about yes, the strategy so that everybody understands the strategy that we're trying to execute, but also the human behind the strategy, because they might not bump into them in the hallway. Um, and so how do you get to know the other people on your team, uh, and what they're working on, and then also their career trajectory and story. And so, you know, we will talk about this person is working on this element of the strategy at this point, this is what we want to accomplish.

00:25:06

They will then talk about, you know, their, their background, what led them to, uh, make this contribution to the team at the time and why are they so passionate about it? Um, and I think I'm, I'm finding that this is helping our team, you know, think about how they can grow their career inside the organization or what they think their next steps are and make connections in ways that they might not otherwise be able to make. Um, another good example of the kinds of things that we've we've had to do in this new environment is, um, uh, introducing people kind of in haphazard random, you know, uh, introductory calls. I kind of think about it as like a, an onboarding mentoring ring where I'll take, you know, the cohort of people who've started in the team, um, for the last month. And I'll just bring them all on a call. And I say, look, you guys are now your peer mentors in terms of, you know, supporting one another coming into the team, you need to make this, this, uh, connection and create this network that will support you.

00:26:16

I have loved so many of these things that you've talked about with such conviction and passion, uh, in our conversation, you talked about how important it is to you, that leaders model, coach, and care. So in the book, does it find as a model set the tone for culture ship for culture and leadership, uh, act with integrity, be accountable coaching, uh, was defined as defined team objectives and outcomes, help success across boundaries, uh, help the team adapt and learn and was defined as know everyone's capabilities and aspirations attract and retain great people and invest in the growth of others. So yeah, this management model looks so very different, I think, than what many people are familiar with and maybe grew up with maybe even alien, uh, it might appear to be more about being nice, uh, than about delivering results. So how have you had to explain it to people who were maybe initially skeptical or resistant?

00:27:11

Um, I mean, you know, I actually had a conversation with Satya a couple of years ago about this culture shift. Um, and he said to me in that conversation that he had, he felt he had two abilities as CEO. One is he could put the troops in different locations. He could kind of decide to invest in this project or that project. Then he had the power of, you know, helping to decide which teams he was going to fund, but then he could also be a cultural ambassador. He could recognize that the tone that he sets, uh, actually sets the tone for the entire company and the way that we operate. And so I think that really stuck with me, um, that, that, you know, when I think about what I'm doing, I'm, I'm trying to bring more people into the industry and to empower them, to create with technology.

00:28:12

And when I think about why do people reach out to Microsoft to understand what, how we might be able to help? What I see is that a lot of times they're reaching out to us because not because they're looking for this particular product or that particular tool, but actually they reach out to us because they have a culture that they're aspiring to achieve. And they think that Microsoft can help them achieve that culture. And so when I think about the way that our own team runs, um, I want to make sure that we are customer obsessed, that we're, we're talking to customers all the time. As I said, I think of them like oxygen or sunlight, you know, it's the way that we actually ensure that we have great products that are serving the needs of the people that we're building them for. Um, I want to make sure that we're intellectually honest and rigorous and that we're, we're all, uh, really grappling with the information that we have so that we can make the smartest decisions and that we're making decisions based on data as opposed to hierarchy.

00:29:23

Um, and I think we also have to recognize that no one can accomplish anything without fantastic team members that are committed to what we're trying to accomplish. And, you know, when, when I think about what it takes for myself to show up, um, with, with the being fully invested in what I'm trying to do, uh, I need to make sure that, that my values are aligned with the mission of my organization. I have to make sure that I feel that I'm empowered and capable given the tools and the resources that the organization has given me to be able to get that job done. Um, and I need to make sure that I'm learning that I have coaches, I have mentors. I have other people that I'm working with, that I can, I can learn from, and that I'm growing, that I'm making progress. And so when I think about what a role of a manager is, it's to do all of these things is as a model to actually show other people how they can, um, how they can show up how they can be their authentic selves and, and, you know, what are the values that our team has and how do we live our values every day, um, that we recognize that especially this next generation, but I think it's true for everyone wants to be lifelong learners.

00:30:47

They want to continue to grow and to progress. And so if you're not as a leader, coaching your people on how they can become better. And, and you're not, if you don't think about every one of your employees, as someone who is on a learning journey, who's growing in capability, um, then I think you're missing out on one of their aspirations. And then I think the other thing that we have to recognize, and it's so true over the last couple of years, as we've gone through this incredibly challenging period is everyone is dealing with a lot of stuff, um, in their personal lives. And, and, uh, and I think we need to acknowledge that and not pretend like there are completely separate compartments. I mean, I think the, the, the previous generation, it was very compartmentalized, right. There was, you were not talking about your personal life in any dimension at work.

00:31:49

And I think the reality of today is that's just impossible and it's impossible for a cup for many reasons. First, we're dealing with a lot of stuff, uh, at home, but also it for a lot of people, you know, for myself included, I wake up, I see my family. And then I come into this office, my home office, and I interact with people through video conferencing and email and, you know, textual, inner interactions. And so there is this need for human connection outside of your family as well. But I think a lot of people get through work and, and, um, and when we're in a physical environment, you can have your work friends and you're going to have lunch and you can go out for dinner or beers or whatever it is after work. Um, but in this world where we're all, you know, sequestered into our own home offices, it's hard to make that human connection. And so I think, you know, to, to really connect with people and to make sure that they feel like their aspirations can be achieved in, in the organization, we have to recognize the whole person that they are and respect that and value that and, um, and kind of help them understand, um, how they can grow in the team.

00:33:11

Uh, I, uh, love so much of what you said and I mean, I think it's so obvious that, that this is right in terms of, if we really want to, you know, uh, you know, be able to fully enable the unleashing of everyone's creative problem solving potential. Uh, so maybe if we can just very connect the dots. So you've been at Microsoft for 20 years. Uh, can you connect the dots in terms of how these changes in culture management philosophies, what gets modeled, uh, uh, by leaders, how do you attribute that with how teams have been better able to innovate and create things of value to your customers? Uh, how would you convey that to maybe someone who is all about the bottom line? Yeah,

00:33:50

I mean, I, you know, the way that I think about it is we are all in in fact, the entire industry is operating with fire finite capacity, right? We, in my world, I focus on developers as my customers and, and the entire industry is limited by the availability of developer talent. We have a massive developer shortage in the world. And so when I think about what we need to do in my organization, and really every organization needs to do, they need to figure out how do we do more with less, that's what we're always being asked to do. And, and so to me, there are three different ways that we can help make that happen. One is we can bring more people into the industry and to do that, we need to recognize that we need to invest in new people coming into the, into the organization, into the industry overall, uh, to mentor them, to sponsor them, to, you know, to support them in their learning.

00:34:47

Um, we need to improve developer velocity. So in other words, we need to actually make sure that individual developers and their teams are, are capable and more focused on what is the valuable thing to the customer, to the organization and delivering that eliminate in business busy work, and making sure that we're actually focused on delivering that customer value. And then we need to make sure that we can actually scale as an industry. And we do this by collaborating with other indices, with other disciplines, with, um, developers outside of the team, uh, and so on. And so when I think about kind of what we're trying to do, we're really trying to achieve more business performance, um, by empowering the software development teams, right? Because it's the software development teams that are the center of innovation. They're the ones who are, who are actually transforming all of these businesses to be digital first companies. Um, and so it's through empowering the development team and making sure that they can be as, as effective as possible at meeting the demands of their customers and the organization that, that, you know, we, I, my hope and my expectation is that that that will actually lead to better business performance.

00:36:12

That is so great. Um, I mean, I have a, again, if, uh, people, uh, uh, after we last talk, I had a smile on my face for a little, my cheeks for, for the remainder of the day. Uh, thank you so much. I can't, it's impossible for me to overstate just how delight delight I am that you were able to do this interview. Uh, so could you tell everyone how, uh, people could best reach you and what, in particular you would want people to reach to you about? Uh, is there any particular help that you are looking for these days?

00:36:40

Hmm, great question. Um, you know, first of all, you can reach me at Amanda K silver on Twitter. Um, probably easiest to access, but you can also find me on LinkedIn or, or any other place. Um, and I think in terms of, you know, what I'm trying to do is to basically empower development teams, right? And, and I think that, like, you know, for a lot of people, they might think about that. That means like productivity in terms of, you know, the widgets, the output, right? It's the number of lines of code or the number of, of check-ins that are actually merged or whatever it is, number of releases that go out. And that's not really what developer productivity means to me. It's, it's really more about those, those other metrics that actually, uh, indicate that, that the organization is empowered. Um, and that people that you actually support the team in growing their organizational capacity and the impact that they can have.

00:37:35

So it's things like time to first contribution or feature, or how long does it take to actually test a code change or, um, to see the code change actually show up in, in production or, you know, to understand the time that it takes you to remediate, uh, an issue that has come up. And so, you know, it's those kinds of metrics that, that I think are the ones that really matter to empower development teams. And so that's, that's what I would love to hear stories of people, how they've improved those, those kinds of metrics in their organization. What are the culture changes that they had to enact inside of their team to get that to happen? What challenges are they saying inside their organization, um, to be able to enable that. Um, and so that's what I'd love to help others with as well. Um, and then also just anything that we can do to make sure that the next generation of people who are creating software is more diverse and more representative of the humanity that we're trying to

00:38:34

Create for.

00:38:36

Wonderful. Thank you so much, Amanda.

00:38:39

Thank you so much, Jane. It's been great.