Tradeoffs

TRADEOFFSMatthew Lehner @matthewpearse

Building Software Relies on Two Inputs:

!

Timeand

Money

Businesses Have Money

!

You have time

We have the best jobs on earth

!

We get paid to build things that help to the

world better

First Assumption: We’re here because

we love building software

Second Assumption: We wouldn’t mind higher salaries or a

greater level of autonomy over our

work

I want to propose an idea: The ability to make

better business decisions makes you a

better developer. I’m not talking about straight up engineers, but people with jobs building software with

practical applications

Better developers have more freedom

WHY?

• Our salaries have to come from somewhere

• If our work is not creating more value than it costs the people who sign our cheques then they’re going to run out of money, and we’ll be unemployed

WHY?

• Understanding the relationship between your work and the business value that it creates gives you a better ability to make decisions that will allow you to have more freedom over what you do (more money, or time off)

A STORY 4 years ago I sent my first pull request

The Problem

The Solution

I could build a webpage

Ruby has a low barrier to entry

We don’t pick languages because

they’re fast.

We pick languages because we can be

productive with them

Productivity happens when our brains are

free to solve problems

Second Problem: Focus

Managed Hosting vs.

Random Scripts + Docker Hacking

+VS

Bare Minimum Setup• Application Server

• SSL Encryption

• Database Server

• Server Monitoring

• Automated Backups

Should Also Have

• Load balancing

• Easy Horizontal Scalability

At Face Value

EC2 Micro:$0.013/hour

Heroku Dyno:$0.05/hour

A Deeper Dive

• Heroku set up time: 30 minutes

• EC2 set up time: ????

A Deeper Dive


• EC2 set up time: 1 day (optimistic)

How much does a developer cost?

MATH TIME!• Average HK Dev Salary: $30,000/month

• Equipment, office space, utilities, benefits, taxes: $20,000

• Total cost per month: $50,000

• Per year: $600,000

• Per week: $11,538

Developer Salary Math

Cost per hour:

$288

A Deeper Dive


• EC2 set up time: 1 day (optimistic)

A Deeper Dive

• Heroku set up cost: $144

• EC2 set up cost: $2,304

• $1

Heroku cost per month

$111.50USD

• $1

Heroku cost per month

:(

$18USD

AWS cost per month

:)

AWS cost per month

Practically Speaking

SETUP COSTS

Heroku: $144 AWS: $2,304

MONTHLY COSTS

Heroku: $868 AWS: $139

Monthly Breakdown

0

1500

3000

4500

6000

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb

Heroku AWS

MERRY CHRISTMASI got you some traffic for your site

Monthly Breakdown

0

1750

3500

5250

7000

Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb

Heroku AWS

If your primary responsibility isn’t managing servers,

this will to slow down forward progress.

Servers are cheap, their resources are

unlimited. You are not cheap,

you have finite resources.

Mythical Man-Month

Mythical Man-Month

Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later - Brooks’ law

We can’t add more people to projects

and finish them faster

Adding people to a team increases complexity and

increased complexity lowers productivity.

Developers are not horizontally scalable

However, we can work effectively on individual parts of a

complex system

To make the right choices we need to be aware of:

• The impact on the business’ bottom line

• The effect on our productivity

Framework for maximum awesome

1. Work on things you like, and solve problems with technologies you’re excited about

2. Work towards mastery of the technologies you use every day

3. Evaluate how your day-to-day work creates value for your employer and focus on increasing this

Tradeoffs

Technology

Transcript of Tradeoffs