Will Larson's Blog, page 5

Wardley mapping the LLM ecosystem.

In How should you adopt LLMs?, we explore how a theoretical ride sharing company,Theoretical Ride Sharing, should adopt Large Language Models (LLMs).Part of that strategy’s diagnosis depends on understanding the expected evolution ofthe LLM ecosystem, which we’ve build a Wardley map to better explore.

This map of the LLM space is interested in how product companies should address theproliferation of model providers such as Anthropic, Google and OpenAI,as well as the proliferation of LLM pro...

Wardley mapping of Gitlab Strategy.

Gitlab is an integrated developer productivity, infrastructure operations, and security platform.This Wardley map explores the evolution of Gitlab’s users’ needs,as one component in understanding the company’s strategy.In particular, we look at how Gitlab’s strategy of a bundled, all-in-one platformanchors on the belief that build and security tooling is moving from customizationto commodity.

This is an exploratory, draft chapter for a book on engineering strategy that I’m brainstorming in...

2024 in review.

A lot happened for me this year.I continued learning the details of fund accounting at Carta,which is likely the most complex product domain I’ve worked in.My third book was published, and I did a small speaking tour to support it.We started the unironically daunting San Francisco kindergarten application process.I was diagnosed with skin cancer and had successful surgery to remove it.All things considered, it was a much messier year than I intended,but with many good pockets mixed in wit...

Measuring developer experience, benchmarks, and providing a theory of improvement.

Back in 2020, I wrote a piece calledMy skepticism towards current developer meta-productivity tools,which laid out my three core problems with developer productivity measurement tools of the time:

Using productivity measures to evaluate rather than learnInstrumenting metrics required tweaks across too any different toolsGenerally I found tools forced an arbitrary, questionable model onto the problem

Two and a half years later, I made an angel investment in DX,which at the time I largely v...

Rough notes on learning Wardley Mapping.

In my ongoing efforts to draft a book on engineering strategy,I’ve finally reached the point where I need to transition “Wardley Mapping” from a topic toconsider including into a topic that I either do or do not include.The first step on that line is getting much deeper at understanding how it works.This is rather different than systems modeling,which is a technique I’ve been using off-and-on at work for 15-plus years,but I will make a solid go at it.

My starting point is having readThe V...

Video of practice run of QCon SF 2024 talk on Principal Engineers.

Yesterday at QCon, I got to give a talk with my colleague Dan Fikeabout the Principal Engineer role.You can also watch the video on YouTube.

The content itself is largely based on the High-Context Triadof blog posts I wrote in late 2023:

Layers of contextNavigating ambiguityUseful tradeoffs are multi-dimensional

I hope you enjoy the talk! (Unfortunately I don’t have a recording of Dan Fike’s portion,but QCon will post their official video at some point, which will have both parts.)

How to get more headcount.

One of the recurring challenges that teams face is getting headcount to support their initiatives.A similar problem is the idea that a team can’t get a favored project into their roadmap.In both cases, teams often create a story about how clueless executives don’t understand whytheir work is important.

I understand why dumb executives are such an appealing explanation to problems: it fits perfectly into theKarpman drama triangle bymaking executives the villian and the team the victim, but I...

Navigating Private Equity ownership.

In 2020, you could credibly argue that ZIRP explains the world,but that’s an impossible argument to make in 2024 when zero-interest rate policy is only a fond memory.Instead, we’re seeing a number of companies designed for rapid expansion learning to adaptto a world that expects immediate free cash flow rather than accepting the sweet promise of discounted future cash flow.

This chapter wants to tackle that problem head-on, taking the role of an engineering organization attempting to navigate...

Using systems modeling to refine strategy.

While I was probably late to learn the conceptof strategy testing,I might have learned about systems modeling too early in my career,stumbling on Donella Meadows’ Thinking in Systems: A Primerbefore I began my career in software.Over the years, I’ve discovered a number of ways to miuse systems modeling,but it remains the most effective, flexible tool I’ve found to debugging complex problems.

In this chapter, we’ll work through:

when systems model is a useful technique, and when it’s bette...

Eng org seniority-mix model.

One of the trademarks of private equity ownership is the expectation that either the company maintains their current marginand grows revenue at 25-30%, or they instead grow slower and increase their free cash flow year over year.In many organizations, engineering costs have a major impact on their free cash flow.There are many costs to reduce, cloud hosting and such, but inevitably part of the discussion isaddressing engineering headcount costs directly.

One of the largest contributors to en...