1 00:00:02,170 --> 00:00:02,410 Matt Trask: Cool. 2 00:00:02,410 --> 00:00:03,910 Welcome back to APS. 3 00:00:03,910 --> 00:00:05,980 You won't hate episode 17. 4 00:00:05,989 --> 00:00:08,763 I have Phil with me and we're joined by a very special guest today. 5 00:00:08,943 --> 00:00:16,563 Matthew Reinbold, fresh from postman, who is a director of API ecosystems and digital transformations here to talk 6 00:00:16,593 --> 00:00:22,123 about their report, the 2021 state of the API ecosystem. 7 00:00:22,123 --> 00:00:23,053 Matthew, how's it going? 8 00:00:23,623 --> 00:00:24,643 Matthew Reinbold: It is going. 9 00:00:24,643 --> 00:00:28,663 I am happy to be here first time, caller, long time listener. 10 00:00:28,723 --> 00:00:29,863 Is that how we say that? 11 00:00:30,918 --> 00:00:31,728 Matt Trask: I think that's yeah. 12 00:00:31,788 --> 00:00:32,418 It's how you say it. 13 00:00:32,418 --> 00:00:32,628 Yeah. 14 00:00:32,628 --> 00:00:40,698 So I mean, for those of you, like in the off chance that someone doesn't know who you are in the API ecosystem 15 00:00:40,698 --> 00:00:43,158 world can you give us a little bit kind of about yourself? 16 00:00:43,158 --> 00:00:49,438 Like you manage two different newsletters, at least as well as a pretty prolific Twitter presence as well. 17 00:00:49,438 --> 00:00:51,508 But if someone hasn't run into you, like. 18 00:00:52,713 --> 00:00:56,493 Matthew Reinbold: Well, yeah, well, first off, thanks for calling it prolific. 19 00:00:56,493 --> 00:01:07,343 Some people would call it annoying, but yeah, I I manage a fair number of tweets over at Twitter slash L I B E L underscore Vox, reliable Vox. 20 00:01:07,643 --> 00:01:11,933 That's where I talk about digital transformation and APIs and a lot of technology stuff. 21 00:01:11,963 --> 00:01:12,413 Occasionally. 22 00:01:13,443 --> 00:01:16,653 Fights with blockchain and NFT enthusiastic. 23 00:01:16,983 --> 00:01:28,263 But then I also manage, I also manage a newsletter called net API notes, where for almost 200 issues, going back to 2015, I've covered the landscape. 24 00:01:28,293 --> 00:01:30,123 I've shared essential bits of information. 25 00:01:30,123 --> 00:01:32,733 I've tried to boil down the, the. 26 00:01:34,593 --> 00:01:41,223 Current climate and get it right into just the most essential things that decision makers need to know and care about. 27 00:01:41,643 --> 00:01:44,913 And then I do a fair amount of blogging on a blog. 28 00:01:44,943 --> 00:01:48,213 That's very imaginatively named Matthew reinbold.com. 29 00:01:48,693 --> 00:01:56,263 In there, I talk about a fair number of things as well, but in, in, in short my passion is really about coaching people, helping 30 00:01:56,263 --> 00:02:00,103 people, teaching people to get better with their API ecosystem. 31 00:02:02,118 --> 00:02:02,808 Matt Trask: That's really cool. 32 00:02:02,808 --> 00:02:08,928 So one thing that kinda stuck out to me cause it's, so we're going to be talking about the 20, 21 Sidi APR report. 33 00:02:09,228 --> 00:02:13,908 However, I'm curious since you've been doing it now since 2015, you've been keeping notes on. 34 00:02:14,843 --> 00:02:15,863 The API world. 35 00:02:16,043 --> 00:02:26,153 How does your kind of, I hate to say this phrase, the 30,000 foot view of everything that, you know, from 2015, how does that kind 36 00:02:26,153 --> 00:02:30,863 of line up to what you saw with the 2021 state of the API report? 37 00:02:31,788 --> 00:02:32,868 Matthew Reinbold: Oh, that's interesting. 38 00:02:32,868 --> 00:02:34,298 So there's definitely. 39 00:02:35,448 --> 00:02:39,938 Maturing as a industry, we've gone through a number of phases. 40 00:02:39,968 --> 00:02:44,378 Those of us that have been around the block a few times, see trends come. 41 00:02:44,708 --> 00:02:47,918 And most often they, they tend to roll away. 42 00:02:48,088 --> 00:02:51,958 And over that time we have to develop models so that we can kind of. 43 00:02:52,693 --> 00:03:00,643 Pick the, the, the wheat from the chaff, you know, what, what are the properties of something new, some kind of buzzword, some kind of 44 00:03:00,643 --> 00:03:05,023 hyperbole that we can latch onto and say, yes, this is worth investing in. 45 00:03:05,023 --> 00:03:15,293 This is worth our interest in our effort versus, yeah, this is some marketing system, some spin as I'm looking at the 20, 21 postman report. 46 00:03:15,833 --> 00:03:16,943 I see. 47 00:03:17,693 --> 00:03:18,923 Where we've come. 48 00:03:19,113 --> 00:03:22,323 It's gone from being single point to point integrations. 49 00:03:22,323 --> 00:03:28,083 One-off bespoke API APIs to where we're now talking about things as ecosystems. 50 00:03:28,113 --> 00:03:32,283 We're now talking about collections of these things and how entire organizations. 51 00:03:33,123 --> 00:03:42,223 Manage these as, as something that's beneficial, something that's collaborative and, and managed as a separate entity 52 00:03:42,223 --> 00:03:45,563 rather than, than each individual unit I've got Phil here. 53 00:03:45,563 --> 00:03:51,863 So I have to use the forest for the trees analogy rather than just managing the individual API trees. 54 00:03:52,283 --> 00:03:59,543 There's now a greater awareness of what the forest, what the forest role is in the company and how to manage that. 55 00:04:00,203 --> 00:04:03,203 In a unique way, as opposed to the individual pieces. 56 00:04:03,623 --> 00:04:13,223 I will say for those that are listening, like I'm one of the things I want to highlight right up front here is that you don't have to enter an email address. 57 00:04:13,373 --> 00:04:14,453 It's not behind the page. 58 00:04:15,233 --> 00:04:24,203 We really felt strongly at postman that we had to get this information out to the most number of decision-makers so that they could make better decisions so 59 00:04:24,203 --> 00:04:29,333 that they could be informed as they're developing their strategies and roadmaps. 60 00:04:29,363 --> 00:04:37,043 So if you go to postman.com/state-of-api, you'll be able to download. 61 00:04:37,868 --> 00:04:44,918 With out any worry about having somebody from sales follow up with you later, or getting spam in your inbox, it's free for all. 62 00:04:44,918 --> 00:04:46,688 We want this information to be used. 63 00:04:46,688 --> 00:04:48,638 We want the dialogues to happen. 64 00:04:48,638 --> 00:04:52,748 We want the discourse to be rich and for me and frothy. 65 00:04:52,748 --> 00:04:57,788 And so please, you know, don't let past marketing spam. 66 00:04:57,908 --> 00:04:59,408 Stop you from checking this out. 67 00:04:59,408 --> 00:05:00,848 We want this in the hands of people. 68 00:05:01,758 --> 00:05:02,298 Phil Sturgeon: Fantastic. 69 00:05:02,298 --> 00:05:02,868 That's good to hear. 70 00:05:02,868 --> 00:05:05,338 I mean, that's I haven't got around to reading it as you might have seen from Twitter. 71 00:05:05,338 --> 00:05:11,638 Life has been a bit of a mess recently just spending far too much time in the field, as opposed to in the field doing APA stuff. 72 00:05:12,028 --> 00:05:20,158 But, yeah, that's definitely always been a concern of mine, of, you know, you hear about these white papers and reports and you just know so many 73 00:05:20,158 --> 00:05:27,128 of them like should have just be in the blog post, but instead that like a PDF that and you've got to enter information and then you just get 74 00:05:27,218 --> 00:05:30,788 like that fifth email, like, why didn't you reply to my previous four? 75 00:05:30,908 --> 00:05:32,408 I was like, I don't know who you are. 76 00:05:32,408 --> 00:05:33,638 I just want to read this thing. 77 00:05:33,918 --> 00:05:38,208 So yeah, I'm glad you folks are going in a different direction, but Maybe just taking a step back. 78 00:05:38,208 --> 00:05:44,338 Like, what is the state of API is report all about where are you getting your information from? 79 00:05:44,338 --> 00:05:45,918 What sort of research is being done? 80 00:05:46,168 --> 00:05:47,238 And what's the hospital. 81 00:05:47,948 --> 00:05:48,848 Matthew Reinbold: Great question. 82 00:05:48,848 --> 00:06:00,038 So this is, as far as I know, the largest survey of its kind, we had more than 28,000 people respond to our latest in a series. 83 00:06:01,228 --> 00:06:05,068 What we tend to do is try and track where the industry is at. 84 00:06:05,158 --> 00:06:07,678 And typically that's been around certain areas. 85 00:06:07,678 --> 00:06:10,168 Like how much time do you spend developing API APIs? 86 00:06:10,168 --> 00:06:11,758 What kind of tools are you using? 87 00:06:12,248 --> 00:06:17,058 Really good stuff there tracking the growth of, of the industry and the maturation of the industry. 88 00:06:17,548 --> 00:06:19,768 What I brought to the table this year. 89 00:06:20,563 --> 00:06:28,783 Was an interest on finding the behaviors that lead to sustainable, healthy API ecosystems. 90 00:06:29,323 --> 00:06:34,783 Like so much of what we talk about when it comes to API ecosystems is still very anecdotal. 91 00:06:34,813 --> 00:06:43,603 We tell stories about the Bezos Amazon memo, where we talk about like Twilio or Stripe, but when it comes to 92 00:06:43,603 --> 00:06:46,543 decision makers in large organizations, they're still. 93 00:06:47,383 --> 00:06:54,703 Trying to pull at what are decent KPIs, what are the behaviors I should be grooming or promoting within my company to make sure that I 94 00:06:54,703 --> 00:06:58,483 can keep producing quality API experiences again and again and again. 95 00:06:58,933 --> 00:07:08,113 And so what we did with this report that I'm really proud of is dig deep and discover, like, what are the correlating behaviors 96 00:07:08,113 --> 00:07:12,973 in organizations that lead to good things happening for companies? 97 00:07:15,083 --> 00:07:15,353 Phil Sturgeon: Okay. 98 00:07:15,353 --> 00:07:16,013 That's interesting. 99 00:07:16,013 --> 00:07:16,313 Cause I think. 100 00:07:16,963 --> 00:07:20,233 There's always this question around, like, what's a good API and what's a bad API. 101 00:07:20,263 --> 00:07:20,533 Right. 102 00:07:20,533 --> 00:07:26,953 And that's just such a nebulous, almost pointless topic so often, because you're just going to end up with opinions about 103 00:07:27,433 --> 00:07:33,523 camel case versus kebab case and opinions about rest versus graph UI, and all the nonsense that we love to fight about. 104 00:07:33,523 --> 00:07:36,703 And there's going to be someone with a fever at HTTP status code. 105 00:07:36,703 --> 00:07:44,913 And none of that actually matters, but you're talking about more of the business level stuff or what, what sort of things have come up as like. 106 00:07:46,383 --> 00:07:52,743 Really interesting results from, from your survey about how to build a good API what's what's, what's new and what's interesting. 107 00:07:53,223 --> 00:07:53,643 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 108 00:07:54,033 --> 00:08:01,413 Well, one of the things I wanted to look at was some of the insights that popped out to me when I was reading accelerate. 109 00:08:01,523 --> 00:08:03,603 So accelerate is like from. 110 00:08:04,533 --> 00:08:15,243 The previous decade, but it was written by Nicole Forsgren, Jess humble, Jean Kim, they came together and tried to figure out like, what was it about dev ops? 111 00:08:15,483 --> 00:08:16,413 That was so powerful. 112 00:08:17,643 --> 00:08:22,503 And they wanted to do it in a, in a way that quantified things, not just like, Hey, this is awesome. 113 00:08:22,503 --> 00:08:29,583 You should be doing it, but like get to the meat and potatoes of why is this powerful and why should businesses adopt dev ops? 114 00:08:29,973 --> 00:08:38,083 And as they went through their research they ended up discovering that there was really four things, four metrics that showed how dev. 115 00:08:38,953 --> 00:08:41,413 Made for better organizational performance. 116 00:08:41,413 --> 00:08:49,543 And those things were lead time, deployment, frequency, meantime to restore, or how quickly you recover and the change fail percentage. 117 00:08:50,113 --> 00:08:53,713 And I thought, huh, that's really interesting. 118 00:08:53,803 --> 00:09:01,183 Now that's for dev ops, but if these things are so instrumental in having organizations outperform. 119 00:09:02,203 --> 00:09:03,013 Their peers. 120 00:09:03,373 --> 00:09:06,703 Can we find the same correlation with API APIs? 121 00:09:06,733 --> 00:09:15,793 If we have the same behaviors, can we therefore then draw a line and say, if you have these things, if you have positive aspects of these four 122 00:09:15,793 --> 00:09:22,153 attributes, can you then have a more sustainable, more powerful API program? 123 00:09:22,663 --> 00:09:25,833 And based on our survey results, the answer is yes. 124 00:09:28,423 --> 00:09:31,723 So I can, I can go in and how we, how we drew that correlation. 125 00:09:33,618 --> 00:09:35,478 Phil Sturgeon: I'm curious, what sort of metrics are We, looking at? 126 00:09:36,133 --> 00:09:36,433 Matthew Reinbold: yeah. 127 00:09:36,433 --> 00:09:40,723 So first off we asked people on a 10 point scale. 128 00:09:41,623 --> 00:09:47,413 What, how, how well do you think that you've become API first? 129 00:09:48,253 --> 00:09:55,873 So out of our 28,000 respondents, they looked at this 10 point scale and they, they put themselves, you know, how they felt 130 00:09:56,053 --> 00:10:04,783 approximately 8% of the people that responded said, yes, we are either a nine or a 10 on the scale for API first, we said fine. 131 00:10:05,083 --> 00:10:10,123 And then we went through and we said, okay, you know, how long does it take you to make an API? 132 00:10:10,513 --> 00:10:13,693 Are we talking hours, days, weeks, so on and so forth. 133 00:10:14,893 --> 00:10:23,413 And we also said, okay, you know, not just time to produce, but how frequently you deploy and how many times do you have a deployment failure? 134 00:10:23,413 --> 00:10:26,053 Meaning like you put something in production, but it didn't work. 135 00:10:26,053 --> 00:10:26,323 Right. 136 00:10:26,323 --> 00:10:29,803 So you have to roll back and then like, what was your time to recovery? 137 00:10:30,013 --> 00:10:32,413 Like when an outage does occur and let's be. 138 00:10:33,418 --> 00:10:35,098 And outage always occurs at some point. 139 00:10:35,488 --> 00:10:38,638 Like how, how quickly can you recover from those things? 140 00:10:39,088 --> 00:10:45,898 So we got these nice, you know, bell curves and everybody kind of clumped toward the center on these things. 141 00:10:45,898 --> 00:10:53,758 And then we said, okay, Now the magic is we go back to that first question, the people that say their API first that 142 00:10:53,818 --> 00:11:01,498 have some kind of strong belief that they're doing API first, let's see how they compare to their peers on these metrics. 143 00:11:02,008 --> 00:11:07,678 And again, and again, all for these items, API, first people perform better. 144 00:11:08,098 --> 00:11:12,028 So, you know, taking one example here. 145 00:11:12,883 --> 00:11:22,433 API first people were able to deploy 17% faster than their peers and you know, in a day or less. 146 00:11:23,123 --> 00:11:30,743 So if you are API first and granted, there, there might be some subtlety in how a company defines that. 147 00:11:30,773 --> 00:11:37,283 But bottom line, if you are API first, you perform better on these metrics than your counterparts. 148 00:11:39,623 --> 00:11:40,403 Phil Sturgeon: Interesting. 149 00:11:40,403 --> 00:11:41,093 And yeah. 150 00:11:41,153 --> 00:11:44,063 Seeing, seeing as you raised it, what is API first? 151 00:11:44,633 --> 00:11:46,643 There's, there's a lot of different definitions floating around. 152 00:11:46,643 --> 00:11:46,913 Right. 153 00:11:46,973 --> 00:11:51,863 And so just for listeners that might not have listened to everything we've ever talked about and read every blog 154 00:11:51,863 --> 00:11:54,893 post we've ever read ref ever wrote how do you define it? 155 00:11:55,103 --> 00:11:55,433 Matthew Reinbold: Sure. 156 00:11:55,463 --> 00:11:59,603 Well, first for people that haven't heard this and haven't listened to every episode, shame on you. 157 00:11:59,783 --> 00:12:05,003 Second, I define I defined API first and. 158 00:12:06,103 --> 00:12:14,473 Making the API experience or the interface, the primary means for the functionality exchange. 159 00:12:14,983 --> 00:12:22,393 So not viewing, like I'm going to create this functionality and then subsequently go and some other team or, or some 160 00:12:22,393 --> 00:12:25,303 other project we'll be wrapping this thing in an API. 161 00:12:25,333 --> 00:12:34,153 It's thinking of creating an API experience as the primary exchange mechanism with dysfunctional. 162 00:12:34,888 --> 00:12:38,848 Not a library, not a module, not a class, the API. 163 00:12:39,418 --> 00:12:49,198 So this is slightly different than API design first, which is, I am going to subsequently talk to stakeholders, create a model, whether that's in an 164 00:12:49,198 --> 00:12:54,988 open API document or some other means, but I'm going to sketch that out. 165 00:12:55,048 --> 00:12:58,738 Test my assumptions, and then subsequently only begin code after. 166 00:12:59,863 --> 00:13:01,093 That's API design. 167 00:13:01,093 --> 00:13:03,313 First, I do draw a line between those two. 168 00:13:03,583 --> 00:13:05,113 They are very copacetic. 169 00:13:05,503 --> 00:13:10,423 They, they work together like peanut butter and chocolate, but there, there is a difference. 170 00:13:10,423 --> 00:13:17,293 You can, you can do API first without necessarily being API design first. 171 00:13:18,483 --> 00:13:19,023 Phil Sturgeon: For sure. 172 00:13:19,113 --> 00:13:20,523 Oh, well, we've got you on a roll. 173 00:13:20,523 --> 00:13:21,573 You're doing these really well. 174 00:13:21,573 --> 00:13:23,583 What is API as a product? 175 00:13:24,803 --> 00:13:27,563 Matthew Reinbold: Ooh, API API as a product. 176 00:13:27,563 --> 00:13:31,613 So that is creating an API with the. 177 00:13:32,968 --> 00:13:36,028 Awareness that it will have a roadmap. 178 00:13:36,058 --> 00:13:42,208 It will have ownership beyond just being put into a production environment that it will grow and change and subsequently 179 00:13:42,508 --> 00:13:51,598 necessitates the kind of modeling responsibilities and, and awareness that it will be growing and changing over time. 180 00:13:53,733 --> 00:13:54,003 Phil Sturgeon: Okay. 181 00:13:54,003 --> 00:13:58,653 So instead of, yeah, API first is your product should have an API. 182 00:13:59,233 --> 00:14:02,323 And that will be managed by the team who was making this product. 183 00:14:02,443 --> 00:14:07,303 And API as a product is a slight variant of API. 184 00:14:07,303 --> 00:14:13,813 First, that kind of takes that API out of that generic functionality team and says the API itself is the product. 185 00:14:14,113 --> 00:14:18,883 And another team potentially on the same team will be making a product using that 186 00:14:19,343 --> 00:14:19,583 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 187 00:14:20,003 --> 00:14:26,603 I, I would, I would, I would venture there's a lot of large enterprise environments for which API for. 188 00:14:27,853 --> 00:14:31,573 It's about a project that gets the thing into production. 189 00:14:31,573 --> 00:14:35,383 And then that thing is left to operate and run on its own. 190 00:14:35,443 --> 00:14:42,703 Perhaps there's some monitoring, perhaps some observability, but the actual team that made it is off doing the next thing 191 00:14:43,153 --> 00:14:46,203 and the next thing and the next thing there's not the idea that. 192 00:14:46,908 --> 00:14:53,588 This is a long lived item that, that produces some kind of business functionality value that is 193 00:14:53,588 --> 00:14:57,338 competing in a complex dynamic marketplace like that. 194 00:14:57,368 --> 00:14:59,918 That's the API product side of the house. 195 00:15:00,733 --> 00:15:01,153 Phil Sturgeon: Hm. 196 00:15:05,778 --> 00:15:14,538 Matt Trask: So the, I guess like the, the big question to bring up, I think right now is what did the pandemic do for the API ecosystem? 197 00:15:16,193 --> 00:15:23,003 Matthew Reinbold: Well, you know, first of all, I want to just stress that, that this thing that we kind of hand 198 00:15:23,003 --> 00:15:27,023 wave is the pandemic was actually like multiple congenital. 199 00:15:27,738 --> 00:15:29,208 Crises all at once. 200 00:15:29,328 --> 00:15:29,658 Right. 201 00:15:29,688 --> 00:15:38,268 You know, I, I want to, for the audience, like we're talking social unrest and political upheaval and supply chain disruption, and the, the 202 00:15:38,268 --> 00:15:44,308 pandemic was really a catch all for a tremendous amount of business stress. 203 00:15:44,908 --> 00:15:52,518 And what we've seen in the report is the usage of APIs, the number of API APIs the. 204 00:15:53,243 --> 00:15:55,323 Amount of focus and care on API. 205 00:15:55,323 --> 00:16:02,933 APIs has increased tremendously with that pandemic because business leaders, technology leaders are struggling 206 00:16:02,933 --> 00:16:06,083 with this amount of change, this amount of disruption. 207 00:16:06,563 --> 00:16:15,953 And so having architectures that are slow to change, difficult to change is just not cutting it in this. 208 00:16:16,863 --> 00:16:18,993 Set of multiple crises. 209 00:16:19,533 --> 00:16:28,003 So any kind of architectural advantage that allows them to change rapidly change quickly to do different things 210 00:16:28,003 --> 00:16:31,293 with how their development investment is deployed. 211 00:16:31,503 --> 00:16:37,803 So, you know, for example, taking that one dev team that was altogether in the office and being able to break it down into microservices 212 00:16:37,803 --> 00:16:41,823 to allow for greater asynchronous operation, greater flexibility. 213 00:16:42,618 --> 00:16:46,158 Those are the architectures that are being sought right now. 214 00:16:50,523 --> 00:16:51,243 Matt Trask: Yeah, that makes sense. 215 00:16:51,243 --> 00:16:55,673 I mean, it always here in America, I don't know if it feels sing, but you know, like there's. 216 00:16:56,613 --> 00:16:57,993 At the core level there. 217 00:16:57,993 --> 00:17:02,523 So like the whole, did we go back to the office and be Sandy the office upheaval as well. 218 00:17:02,523 --> 00:17:13,743 So it makes sense that there is kind of like a, a struggle on rapping, like getting non-technical CEOs, CTOs, CFOs their heads around the 219 00:17:13,743 --> 00:17:22,803 game-changing, this of APIs that doesn't surprise me at all to hear that they're still kind of, I don't want to say struggling, but unsure. 220 00:17:23,613 --> 00:17:24,483 Maybe like, 221 00:17:25,048 --> 00:17:32,278 Matthew Reinbold: Well, and, and, well, I, I think that's an interesting perspective because it assumes that leaders were in 222 00:17:32,278 --> 00:17:35,668 command and control positions of how the labor was divided anyway. 223 00:17:36,058 --> 00:17:41,338 And I would actually, I would actually posit that it's the opposite. 224 00:17:41,548 --> 00:17:49,498 It was everybody immediately going and running to their home offices and working in a remote work environment. 225 00:17:50,418 --> 00:17:58,698 The change in the communication paths changed the architectures that were subsequently produced by those teams. 226 00:17:58,698 --> 00:18:00,738 It's Conway's law in effect. 227 00:18:00,828 --> 00:18:11,328 And therefore, as we, as we look forward, as we look forward to what's going to happen, I would, I would venture that the organizations that pull people back 228 00:18:11,328 --> 00:18:18,708 to centralized locations, for whatever reason, I'm not going to debate whether that's good or bad, but the people that pull the development teams back to. 229 00:18:20,498 --> 00:18:30,698 see, like the Terminator two bad guy they'll reform remold because there will be more efficient communication patterns when everybody's face to face. 230 00:18:30,698 --> 00:18:38,118 Whereas those organizations that continue to have a distributed workforce will have more distributed architectural 231 00:18:38,118 --> 00:18:41,118 patterns because that's how communication is happening. 232 00:18:42,398 --> 00:18:43,568 Phil Sturgeon: That's really interesting. 233 00:18:43,628 --> 00:18:50,618 I haven't really thought about it before, but I, I, I bet there's been an uptick in kind of API design first, specifically due to this as well. 234 00:18:50,618 --> 00:18:50,828 Right? 235 00:18:50,828 --> 00:19:01,118 Because my experience working we work was, was pretty awful as far as like API planning goes and as a result, APA architecture and API performance and 236 00:19:01,283 --> 00:19:03,473 Matthew Reinbold: You don't say you should blog about that. 237 00:19:03,473 --> 00:19:03,743 Fail. 238 00:19:04,548 --> 00:19:05,148 Matt Trask: Yeah. 239 00:19:05,158 --> 00:19:05,938 Phil Sturgeon: 25. 240 00:19:06,268 --> 00:19:07,528 I'm going to do a book about that shit. 241 00:19:08,118 --> 00:19:09,318 Matt Trask: Have you tweeted about this yet? 242 00:19:09,318 --> 00:19:09,618 Phil? 243 00:19:09,828 --> 00:19:12,108 I'm not sure if anyone knows your true 244 00:19:12,343 --> 00:19:13,213 Phil Sturgeon: I did a talk. 245 00:19:13,223 --> 00:19:14,533 I did a talk recently. 246 00:19:14,923 --> 00:19:21,943 But yeah, there was, there was such an element of like, we're real in an open plan office, playing ping pong together and shooting each 247 00:19:21,943 --> 00:19:30,423 other with nerves that there was never any effort on API contract being written down in any shape or form because you're all sitting about. 248 00:19:30,513 --> 00:19:32,403 And you're just like, what's that end point? 249 00:19:32,403 --> 00:19:32,853 Cool mate. 250 00:19:32,883 --> 00:19:34,683 Oh, if slash whatever. 251 00:19:34,773 --> 00:19:36,543 Oh, is that a, is that property of booty? 252 00:19:37,183 --> 00:19:44,553 It's a string called true with QuoteWerks and then you didn't have a need to write it down because you just show it over, over the top of Nerf fire. 253 00:19:45,003 --> 00:19:54,153 And I, I do wonder if remote work, well, not necessarily remote work, but quarantine remote work has helped push people more towards it because if 254 00:19:54,153 --> 00:19:58,473 you can all be sitting around asking each other, you're going to be typing. 255 00:19:59,418 --> 00:20:00,768 The contract over slack. 256 00:20:01,098 --> 00:20:06,228 And if you're going to be typing it out over slack, which is inherently ephemeral, then you might as well 257 00:20:06,348 --> 00:20:09,198 type it into a Yammel file and commit that in the repo. 258 00:20:09,198 --> 00:20:14,718 And then you can have design reviews around the board request or other tools that the offer, that sort of thing. 259 00:20:14,718 --> 00:20:22,998 So, yeah, that's, that's just completely a hypothetical and something I'm thinking the second night and check that, but I'm sure it's happening. 260 00:20:23,043 --> 00:20:23,913 Matthew Reinbold: I completely agree. 261 00:20:23,913 --> 00:20:29,793 And, and let me throw in something that's not in the report, but something that's got me totally geeked out and I'm watching for on 262 00:20:29,793 --> 00:20:40,083 my radar, we are going to see the greatest Renaissance of API design documentation that we've ever seen in the next couple of years. 263 00:20:40,173 --> 00:20:43,353 Now, granted, you know, as far as Renaissance goes, maybe Renaissance. 264 00:20:44,268 --> 00:20:46,098 Documentation are not that great. 265 00:20:46,368 --> 00:20:55,788 So, you know, let's put the party hats back in the closet, but what we're seeing with the great resignation right now is all of 266 00:20:55,788 --> 00:20:59,418 that knowledge that people acquired in their heads is leaving. 267 00:20:59,748 --> 00:21:08,988 It's headed out the door and I've read reports like up to 80% of how to do things with API APIs is in people's heads. 268 00:21:09,438 --> 00:21:10,308 Like at we work. 269 00:21:10,338 --> 00:21:12,138 If you needed to know how API has worked. 270 00:21:13,443 --> 00:21:16,683 You know, you knew Phil was the guy that could get you straightened and 271 00:21:17,108 --> 00:21:17,918 Phil Sturgeon: I didn't have a clue. 272 00:21:17,918 --> 00:21:18,728 That was the problem. 273 00:21:18,728 --> 00:21:20,348 I was trying to find out how to do it. 274 00:21:20,433 --> 00:21:20,703 Matthew Reinbold: Okay. 275 00:21:20,703 --> 00:21:26,463 So I wasn't, it was somebody, it was somebody on the other end of a, of a Nerf battle away 276 00:21:26,568 --> 00:21:29,028 Phil Sturgeon: Someone who quit already is the person that you. 277 00:21:29,693 --> 00:21:35,333 Matthew Reinbold: But right now in organizations like you have this phenomenon where a tremendous number of people are leaving 278 00:21:35,333 --> 00:21:42,533 organizations and they might've been the sole person who knew where the end points were or knew how that particular tricky function worked. 279 00:21:42,983 --> 00:21:51,413 And as organizations are trying to deal with this and recover and still be productive, there's going to be a greater emphasis 280 00:21:51,413 --> 00:21:56,363 on having that crap written down, having things documented. 281 00:21:57,438 --> 00:22:02,118 Organizations don't have aren't left on their back foot like they are right now. 282 00:22:02,478 --> 00:22:09,078 So whether that's heavy handed processes, whether that's just a greater appreciation for documentation among the staff, that's 283 00:22:09,078 --> 00:22:17,928 left, whatever that manifests as there's going to be an increasing amount of emphasis on documentation, because people have seen 284 00:22:18,558 --> 00:22:21,618 that too much was stuck in people's heads and it's not sustained. 285 00:22:23,758 --> 00:22:25,078 Phil Sturgeon: Yeah, that's a really good point. 286 00:22:25,108 --> 00:22:30,878 I mean, and not just kind of documentation, but the whole open API as a source of truth earlier on. 287 00:22:30,878 --> 00:22:36,088 And I figured it has to be, has to become more noticeably important when Yeah. 288 00:22:36,088 --> 00:22:37,428 They've, they've lost the whole team. 289 00:22:38,328 --> 00:22:41,598 How the API works and you know what it's like, code's always a bloody mess. 290 00:22:41,598 --> 00:22:44,868 Cause you just hacked up within about what over the place and patch things and fix things. 291 00:22:44,868 --> 00:22:51,928 And what about and yeah, when they find themselves rewrite in the API, cause no one can really take it over and no one 292 00:22:51,928 --> 00:22:54,538 remembers how it works and there's no documentation for it. 293 00:22:54,598 --> 00:22:57,508 And it's just too hard to figure out when they just make a brand new one. 294 00:22:57,928 --> 00:22:59,518 And they have a whole brand new team doing it. 295 00:22:59,518 --> 00:23:00,538 Cause they've already lost all that stuff. 296 00:23:01,718 --> 00:23:02,048 Matthew Reinbold: Yeah. 297 00:23:02,128 --> 00:23:08,098 Phil Sturgeon: That's a situation that a lot of managers and business people are going to say, how can we go about avoiding doing this? 298 00:23:08,308 --> 00:23:13,888 And I just hope there's someone in the room that says, well, APA designed first would really help avoid this problem because 299 00:23:13,888 --> 00:23:16,228 otherwise they'll just repeat all the same mistakes again. 300 00:23:16,768 --> 00:23:17,098 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 301 00:23:17,128 --> 00:23:17,758 Absolutely. 302 00:23:17,758 --> 00:23:27,958 Whether it's design first or tools that help analyze existing traffic and write the document afterwards, like whatever you got to do, get 303 00:23:27,958 --> 00:23:31,528 that written down and start taking some notes against it because. 304 00:23:32,833 --> 00:23:35,983 It's it, I believe right now with the great resignation. 305 00:23:35,983 --> 00:23:36,943 It's an Achilles heel. 306 00:23:36,993 --> 00:23:42,373 That's probably hampering a lot of organizational ecosystems right now. 307 00:23:44,518 --> 00:23:45,268 Matt Trask: Yeah, I would definitely agree. 308 00:23:45,268 --> 00:23:53,138 I mean, it shows in the report under open API three dot oh, 44% of people are aware of it, but they don't use it 28% say they use it. 309 00:23:53,168 --> 00:23:54,848 12% said they use it, the love it. 310 00:23:54,848 --> 00:23:58,898 So even just combining use it and use it in love. 311 00:23:58,898 --> 00:24:02,408 It still does not match aware of we're not using it. 312 00:24:02,408 --> 00:24:04,238 Which means that there is definitely a. 313 00:24:05,993 --> 00:24:08,063 A river to jump over. 314 00:24:08,093 --> 00:24:16,133 So to speak, to getting more people on, to open API, which is probably currently like the standard for API documentation 315 00:24:16,133 --> 00:24:23,063 right now which comes back to your point, which allows them to start writing things down and start documenting things. 316 00:24:23,063 --> 00:24:24,833 And Phil gets it by bus tomorrow. 317 00:24:25,553 --> 00:24:27,353 We work is still going to be okay. 318 00:24:27,383 --> 00:24:28,733 It very well could happen. 319 00:24:28,783 --> 00:24:30,853 Which is exactly why I use that example. 320 00:24:31,333 --> 00:24:38,633 And it, it, yeah, it it'll give the organization a little bit more or a little less reliance on what's in people's heads a little bit more 321 00:24:39,203 --> 00:24:43,673 stability in case great races, nation three Datto happens in three years. 322 00:24:43,703 --> 00:24:44,933 You know, you don't know what's gonna happen. 323 00:24:45,913 --> 00:24:48,673 Phil Sturgeon: Is that when everyone resigns from web three point now, 324 00:24:49,593 --> 00:24:50,073 Matt Trask: please. 325 00:24:50,103 --> 00:24:51,993 Don't don't threaten me with a good time. 326 00:24:55,188 --> 00:25:00,768 Like I've already, I've already muted those web three and NFD on my Twitter and it cleaned it up so 327 00:25:01,153 --> 00:25:02,383 Phil Sturgeon: Why do you hate progress, man? 328 00:25:03,628 --> 00:25:04,378 Matt Trask: A lot of reasons. 329 00:25:05,668 --> 00:25:06,898 I'm a combustion at heart? 330 00:25:07,408 --> 00:25:07,798 No. 331 00:25:08,028 --> 00:25:08,778 Matthew Reinbold: Hey, if you don't, 332 00:25:08,873 --> 00:25:11,243 Phil Sturgeon: particular messages of this progress that are the problem. 333 00:25:11,418 --> 00:25:13,968 Matthew Reinbold: if you, don't stand for something, you'll fall for anything. 334 00:25:13,968 --> 00:25:14,808 Good for you, Matt. 335 00:25:16,058 --> 00:25:20,408 Matt Trask: yes, I've always wanted my life to be attributed to a, a Hamilton quote. 336 00:25:20,418 --> 00:25:21,368 So I am glad I did. 337 00:25:22,373 --> 00:25:29,073 I can check that one off to get back onto the actual topic and not just bashing NFTs for an hour and a half, which sounds like a lot of fun. 338 00:25:29,493 --> 00:25:32,703 What you the most about this report? 339 00:25:32,943 --> 00:25:37,983 Like what was something that you read that just you weren't expecting? 340 00:25:39,063 --> 00:25:46,613 Matthew Reinbold: I, I think there was two things that when you combine them together it made me tilt my head and go, huh? 341 00:25:47,093 --> 00:25:51,593 The, the first is that more than anything else? 342 00:25:51,593 --> 00:25:53,573 Including speed to production. 343 00:25:53,963 --> 00:25:55,883 People want quality API APIs. 344 00:25:56,523 --> 00:25:57,683 They want stability. 345 00:25:57,683 --> 00:25:59,573 They want some other things reliability. 346 00:25:59,573 --> 00:26:03,863 But the primary thing that people want out of their, their API APIs is quality. 347 00:26:04,133 --> 00:26:08,603 And yet when it came to whether or not people had time to test. 348 00:26:10,718 --> 00:26:12,578 Everybody acknowledged that testing was good. 349 00:26:12,608 --> 00:26:17,828 Tested was valid, but nobody had enough time for testing and it's like, huh? 350 00:26:18,308 --> 00:26:20,468 These two things kind of seem like. 351 00:26:21,488 --> 00:26:23,738 The, the two sides of a coin, right. 352 00:26:23,768 --> 00:26:29,978 You know, people aren't getting the quality that they want, but everybody acknowledges that they don't have enough time to do testing, even 353 00:26:29,978 --> 00:26:33,398 though they recognize the testing is an extremely valuable type thing. 354 00:26:33,998 --> 00:26:40,958 So I think when it comes to socializing this report and talking to decision-makers and doing the kind of coaching 355 00:26:40,958 --> 00:26:48,848 that I so often do, I, this is one of those things too, to bring up, like how in your program are you supporting. 356 00:26:49,698 --> 00:26:57,708 Testing and ensuring that enough is being done there so that your developers feel like you're, you're reaching the kind of quality 357 00:26:57,708 --> 00:27:01,008 goals that, that you're, you're promising to the rest of the world. 358 00:27:02,308 --> 00:27:06,568 Phil Sturgeon: Hm, do you, is the survey broken down by role? 359 00:27:06,988 --> 00:27:10,558 So can you, can you look to see if. 360 00:27:11,493 --> 00:27:15,453 Managers and engineers have a rule, very interested in, in high quality. 361 00:27:15,563 --> 00:27:19,913 And engineers are going, but we don't have enough time, but the manager's like, oh, they definitely have enough time. 362 00:27:20,728 --> 00:27:21,178 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 363 00:27:21,628 --> 00:27:28,848 So we do have a breakdown by role and job title, but I don't have the numbers in front of me that, that combined, 364 00:27:28,898 --> 00:27:31,758 and show me how to break down the quality question. 365 00:27:33,053 --> 00:27:34,313 Phil Sturgeon: Yeah, that'd be an interesting one. 366 00:27:34,313 --> 00:27:43,393 Cause yeah, so many roles, so many organizations, I just take it as like a universal truth is that companies are just, you know, business and product 367 00:27:43,393 --> 00:27:50,893 are demanding feature, feature, feature, feature, feature, and engineers are just like screaming, just keyboards on fire, trying to try to hit them goals. 368 00:27:51,133 --> 00:27:53,833 And everything's just wonky as hell. 369 00:27:53,893 --> 00:27:55,843 And it seems to be everywhere I go. 370 00:27:56,023 --> 00:27:56,773 There's not enough to have. 371 00:27:57,558 --> 00:27:59,718 There's not enough time for QA. 372 00:27:59,958 --> 00:28:04,698 They might've got rid of the QA team because it's slowed down product and slowed down delivery of features. 373 00:28:05,118 --> 00:28:12,108 Yeah, everyone wants high-quality API has, but no one wants to put the time in to testing because testing is inherently hard and slow. 374 00:28:12,363 --> 00:28:12,663 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 375 00:28:12,693 --> 00:28:24,363 And kind of along those same lines, another stat that jumped out at me was that 76% of the people building API APIs have less than five years experience doing. 376 00:28:25,548 --> 00:28:31,188 I mean, you know, as far as restful APIs now, we're, we're more than a decade into that journey. 377 00:28:31,188 --> 00:28:43,428 So that stat leaps out at me, like what is it about API development, where we're getting people with zero to five years experience like what's happening. 378 00:28:43,428 --> 00:28:47,178 There are the successful API builders, aging out and becoming management. 379 00:28:48,633 --> 00:28:52,563 it, are they moving on to web three O and NFTs? 380 00:28:52,563 --> 00:29:02,703 Like, like what is, where are our experienced API builders and why are these critical pieces of business infrastructure? 381 00:29:04,643 --> 00:29:09,833 In the hands of relatively younger people. 382 00:29:10,163 --> 00:29:18,333 That's not to say that they can't be doing a good job, that, that it's impossible to build a great web experience at your first time at bat. 383 00:29:18,453 --> 00:29:23,903 But it's also something where I think everybody on this call would probably agree. 384 00:29:25,078 --> 00:29:27,598 Experience counts, experience matters. 385 00:29:28,168 --> 00:29:37,588 Ha being around the block once or twice, you pick up a feel for what's beneficial, what's maybe a little wonky 386 00:29:38,008 --> 00:29:42,448 and you can imbue that into a better design at launch. 387 00:29:42,658 --> 00:29:45,088 So, you know, where are the. 388 00:29:46,033 --> 00:29:49,123 10 year, the 12 year, the 15 year veterans. 389 00:29:49,123 --> 00:29:55,663 And why are they not the primary source of API infrastructure development? 390 00:29:57,163 --> 00:29:57,733 Phil Sturgeon: Yeah. 391 00:29:59,218 --> 00:30:02,638 Some that I've seen so much, again, just, I love complaining about we work. 392 00:30:02,878 --> 00:30:05,518 Pretty much everyone that was a junior developer, Right. 393 00:30:05,578 --> 00:30:12,818 Like the vast majority, what, what you need developers and their role responsible for creating you know, there's like a hundred API 394 00:30:12,818 --> 00:30:21,218 APIs and, you know more than a hundred junior developers with just a sprinkling of seniors who were more on the cowboy coder end of things. 395 00:30:21,218 --> 00:30:25,478 Not, not to be rude, you know, like startup, you need to be super agile, super fast, not, not a perfectionist. 396 00:30:27,038 --> 00:30:38,378 And so, so many of the problems where this is, this person's first rails app, like they know how to accept incoming Jason parameters 397 00:30:38,378 --> 00:30:42,068 and they know how to spit something back from the database. 398 00:30:42,158 --> 00:30:42,408 And. 399 00:30:43,208 --> 00:30:45,908 That's that, and they know how to make a web request. 400 00:30:45,908 --> 00:30:52,628 So he talks to . He talks to F talks to G in the thread, and then no, one's got a timer anyway. 401 00:30:52,628 --> 00:30:54,368 So everything falls over, like, things like that. 402 00:30:54,788 --> 00:31:03,128 The sort of thing you realize, if you've been doing APIs for five years, or for 10 years, you've been doing it for 10 years, you wouldn't do that. 403 00:31:03,368 --> 00:31:04,748 You just wouldn't do that. 404 00:31:04,748 --> 00:31:09,458 You'd put something in a sidekick job and then implement a web socket or a web hook, or literally anything else. 405 00:31:09,458 --> 00:31:09,728 But. 406 00:31:11,198 --> 00:31:20,078 That's the sort of thing you do when you consider like HTP failures or server downtime, to be an edge case that 407 00:31:20,338 --> 00:31:22,718 is like some weird scenario that probably won't happen. 408 00:31:23,078 --> 00:31:29,498 And when you've been doing it for a longer time, you're like you, you change your mindset to this web requests probably won't work. 409 00:31:30,878 --> 00:31:31,898 And on the off chance that it. 410 00:31:32,753 --> 00:31:33,803 This is what should happen. 411 00:31:34,103 --> 00:31:41,033 And you just get really defensive and paranoid and have like 25 different guard statements and, you know, 25 different types 412 00:31:41,033 --> 00:31:47,303 of ex exception catching and, and every single circuit breaker and trigger warning that you can possibly put on this thing. 413 00:31:47,593 --> 00:31:49,933 And there is, yeah, there is a change in mind. 414 00:31:50,893 --> 00:31:59,113 Around around that kind of it doesn't, I'm not being a gatekeeper or at least they're saying you've got to be doing EPS for 10 years until you're good. 415 00:31:59,113 --> 00:32:02,143 But when you start out, you you're such, you're more of an optimist. 416 00:32:02,143 --> 00:32:04,033 You haven't seen it go wrong in as many ways. 417 00:32:04,253 --> 00:32:08,183 You haven't had cascading failures and you haven't had all these terrifying things that happen. 418 00:32:08,213 --> 00:32:13,163 So that, that is definitely a concern for me is that I think, yeah. 419 00:32:13,163 --> 00:32:14,753 Happy, happy path development. 420 00:32:15,203 --> 00:32:16,583 When you go from having one AP. 421 00:32:17,378 --> 00:32:24,828 To having 20 or a hundred, the, the the chance of straying off the happy path gets exponentially worse. 422 00:32:24,888 --> 00:32:25,218 Right. 423 00:32:25,518 --> 00:32:28,998 And, and that's just something, I think a lot of these younger developers on experience with. 424 00:32:29,908 --> 00:32:30,178 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 425 00:32:30,628 --> 00:32:39,568 Even, even when it comes to design, having used API APIs, having to incorporate the API APIs, you better understand what makes a good 426 00:32:39,568 --> 00:32:43,558 description and what is just a reiteration of the, the name itself. 427 00:32:43,618 --> 00:32:43,808 Yeah. 428 00:32:43,808 --> 00:32:44,068 Yeah. 429 00:32:44,458 --> 00:32:53,548 If I have a field called date of birth and the description is just the birth, that, the date that the person was born on, like, well, what was the. 430 00:32:55,488 --> 00:32:56,748 do I need to refresh it? 431 00:32:56,748 --> 00:32:57,798 Or is it cashed? 432 00:32:57,828 --> 00:33:03,198 You know, like, can I store it or is it part of some kind of regulatory PII? 433 00:33:03,198 --> 00:33:10,818 And I shouldn't, you know, I can use it, but I shouldn't store, like, there's so many issues that once you've been down that road, and 434 00:33:10,818 --> 00:33:19,388 then you're asked to produce an API, you bring that experience with you and you put it into the description that adds so much that yeah. 435 00:33:19,418 --> 00:33:21,308 I, I, I, I don't know. 436 00:33:22,928 --> 00:33:29,238 How we continue to get that, that experience circulating and get that in front of people. 437 00:33:29,658 --> 00:33:30,918 But I think it's really important. 438 00:33:33,793 --> 00:33:41,503 Matt Trask: Well, I must wonder too, like how many of those, like experienced API builders are getting swallowed up into Stripe? 439 00:33:41,533 --> 00:33:42,883 Twilio, Google. 440 00:33:43,863 --> 00:33:53,103 And kind of almost locked away working on their API APIs and not able to share their experiences down the road to junior developers in their own 441 00:33:53,103 --> 00:34:03,453 companies or interim networks, things like that too, because it feels like you do your five, seven years as developer, you get pulled into the 442 00:34:03,453 --> 00:34:12,123 management game and then all of your knowledge is still there, but you're having to balance both managing a development team, hitting your goals. 443 00:34:13,728 --> 00:34:17,238 Pushing out products because you've got to make money for the business. 444 00:34:17,268 --> 00:34:27,258 And all of your knowledge that you've worked so hard to gain is kind of sidelined in the name of profits or KPIs or whatever it might be. 445 00:34:27,658 --> 00:34:31,118 Matthew Reinbold: Possibly there's, there's certainly exceptions that spring to mind. 446 00:34:31,118 --> 00:34:36,758 One of which is Tim Burks and the team over at Google and with the number of resources that they put out there. 447 00:34:38,593 --> 00:34:39,703 For their APIs. 448 00:34:40,243 --> 00:34:48,073 It's, it's kind of a mouthful, but if you do a Google search for that, they've produced a tremendous amount of documentation about how they 449 00:34:48,073 --> 00:34:57,193 support API APIs at scale, how they do their design reviews, how they think about consistency and cohesion across their entire footprint. 450 00:34:57,223 --> 00:35:01,263 So that certainly what you described could be the case in some places. 451 00:35:01,788 --> 00:35:10,158 You know, I, I, I do think that it's not necessarily the default that's people go off to these big organizations and then just disappear because 452 00:35:10,158 --> 00:35:14,928 the folks at Google around Tim and his crew they're doing some great work. 453 00:35:17,488 --> 00:35:23,098 Phil Sturgeon: So I've been sat in the room with you having these sort of conversations your last job, Right, Like a center of excellence type stuff. 454 00:35:23,098 --> 00:35:30,338 You, you get a bunch of smart people and me together and start talking about what, what would help with these various different problems? 455 00:35:30,358 --> 00:35:32,878 Like how do we do APA design reviews? 456 00:35:32,878 --> 00:35:34,468 How do we do governance? 457 00:35:34,678 --> 00:35:36,898 What standards should we be interested in? 458 00:35:36,898 --> 00:35:40,288 So I think sometimes yeah. 459 00:35:41,743 --> 00:35:49,513 Experienced developers can get sucked up into these companies and kind of finish and end up having that scale was used for something else. 460 00:35:49,733 --> 00:35:57,053 But I, I think companies that have those governance processes, like they're sharing their experience back by creating style 461 00:35:57,053 --> 00:36:04,163 guides, by creating programs that they explain how these, how these like API designed life cycles or API life cycle should work. 462 00:36:04,503 --> 00:36:07,133 And that's a way that they can essentially. 463 00:36:07,963 --> 00:36:09,463 Distribute their experience. 464 00:36:09,523 --> 00:36:15,493 So instead of like, I know what to look for when I'm reviewing a poor request, they can create a style guide. 465 00:36:15,493 --> 00:36:16,963 That means that everyone will do that. 466 00:36:17,213 --> 00:36:24,903 I think the danger there is that when style goes focus on what, instead of why then, then you kind of lose some of that experience because 467 00:36:24,903 --> 00:36:28,113 it just seems like arbitrary decisions delivered from upon high. 468 00:36:28,413 --> 00:36:28,713 Right. 469 00:36:28,863 --> 00:36:29,223 You just get. 470 00:36:29,958 --> 00:36:34,338 Do it this way, but, but Y I've read loads of style guides recently. 471 00:36:34,438 --> 00:36:36,718 And, and some of them, I should probably show the examples. 472 00:36:36,758 --> 00:36:38,338 It's just like, do this. 473 00:36:38,408 --> 00:36:40,168 Like, why you don't tell me what to do? 474 00:36:40,168 --> 00:36:44,668 You don't my dad, like, it just, I couldn't figure out what they possibly could have meant by it. 475 00:36:44,668 --> 00:36:45,828 Cause usually I can look at something. 476 00:36:46,498 --> 00:36:47,788 Why might they mean that? 477 00:36:47,888 --> 00:36:50,198 Oh, that reminds me of a thing that happened along these lines. 478 00:36:50,198 --> 00:36:55,298 They probably got burned by that before, and they want to avoid it, but if you don't see why it just sounds arbitrary and you're 479 00:36:55,298 --> 00:36:58,088 not actually teaching anyone on anything, but if you do it right. 480 00:36:58,118 --> 00:36:59,498 that that can be really helpful. 481 00:36:59,713 --> 00:36:59,953 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 482 00:36:59,983 --> 00:37:10,483 And it's also essential that if you're designing these systems like a governance or like a center of excellence that you have the feedback process that you 483 00:37:10,483 --> 00:37:14,533 have, the, the communication cycles so that when people do have that kind of. 484 00:37:15,713 --> 00:37:17,303 That they have a recourse. 485 00:37:17,483 --> 00:37:18,563 It's not a dead end. 486 00:37:18,563 --> 00:37:25,223 It's not either you do this or you're punished for it, but oh, if this doesn't make sense, here's who you talk to. 487 00:37:25,223 --> 00:37:30,023 Here's how you can escalate your concern here is how you elevate your edge case. 488 00:37:30,413 --> 00:37:38,633 And we can have a discussion about it and you can help co-evolve this thing, because you own this as much as somebody else, 489 00:37:38,693 --> 00:37:42,983 the, the phenomenon that you described, where it's a dead end. 490 00:37:43,913 --> 00:37:45,233 It's thrust upon you. 491 00:37:45,743 --> 00:37:47,273 You don't have ownership of that. 492 00:37:47,663 --> 00:37:56,043 And as a developer, that does not feel good, that does not invest you in seeing the long-term growth of, of that system. 493 00:37:56,073 --> 00:37:57,483 You want to burn that system. 494 00:37:57,483 --> 00:38:00,003 You want to be the rebels flying through the death star trench. 495 00:38:00,003 --> 00:38:01,473 You want to take that thing down? 496 00:38:02,013 --> 00:38:05,333 So what's essential is to realize. 497 00:38:06,343 --> 00:38:13,693 You provide the avenues for people to, to voice their concerns, voice their questions, and make them feel heard 498 00:38:13,693 --> 00:38:17,113 in such a way that their process, the process is theirs. 499 00:38:17,203 --> 00:38:18,763 It's not something done to them. 500 00:38:18,763 --> 00:38:19,783 It's it's their process. 501 00:38:29,473 --> 00:38:32,863 Phil Sturgeon: I'm just laughing about the death star rebel situation. 502 00:38:32,983 --> 00:38:34,603 Now I'm completely distracted. 503 00:38:34,603 --> 00:38:36,013 I need to go rewatch some star wars. 504 00:38:36,083 --> 00:38:36,463 I don't know. 505 00:38:37,588 --> 00:38:44,188 Matt Trask: I mean, your, your thought on the ownership thing is also interesting cause And we like watching the junior Twitter, 506 00:38:44,218 --> 00:38:50,398 the junior developer Twitter circles, which is not the end all be all of it all, but there is a large emphasis on if you want to 507 00:38:50,398 --> 00:38:55,348 make more money, you need to jump ship every two years on average. 508 00:38:55,738 --> 00:39:04,648 And that kind of removes the does or not the desire, but like the, the ownership of any sort of product from a junior developer, 509 00:39:04,648 --> 00:39:08,128 because in two years, they're going to be onto another thing. 510 00:39:08,128 --> 00:39:09,328 They're going to be onto another system. 511 00:39:10,258 --> 00:39:21,028 Codebase, maybe another language and it, it does kind of bring back, like, how do you entice people to have ownership, even if 512 00:39:21,028 --> 00:39:24,598 they only are going to plan to say somewhere for a short period? 513 00:39:25,108 --> 00:39:31,108 Because we all know that like having, like you said, having that ownership is going to kind of make you more invested, more caring, more 514 00:39:31,108 --> 00:39:34,918 thoughtful, more empathetic towards whatever it is that you're building. 515 00:39:35,168 --> 00:39:35,558 Matthew Reinbold: Right. 516 00:39:36,128 --> 00:39:40,308 I mean, we're veering into management territory, which I'm happy to talk about. 517 00:39:40,538 --> 00:39:41,048 I, I know. 518 00:39:41,103 --> 00:39:42,723 Matt Trask: very allergic to management. 519 00:39:42,723 --> 00:39:43,203 So. 520 00:39:43,973 --> 00:39:47,323 Matthew Reinbold: But I, I was just reading Harvard business review. 521 00:39:47,443 --> 00:39:48,823 Hey, I'm fun at parties too. 522 00:39:48,923 --> 00:39:55,483 So I was reading Harvard business review talking about COVID and the great resignation and the, the management 523 00:39:55,483 --> 00:40:02,083 challenges that, that come with that and what we need more. 524 00:40:02,808 --> 00:40:14,788 In all companies is a feeling of belonging, a feeling like we have a career progression feeling like our, our, our work has impact and all 525 00:40:14,788 --> 00:40:19,798 too often management, just as about making sure people don't do dumpster. 526 00:40:20,878 --> 00:40:21,208 Right. 527 00:40:21,298 --> 00:40:25,648 You know, I'm, I'm here to police you because the organization doesn't trust you. 528 00:40:26,278 --> 00:40:29,578 And it leads to all kinds of weird effects. 529 00:40:29,578 --> 00:40:33,688 Like, Hey, if you actually want to grow your career, you need to leave. 530 00:40:33,808 --> 00:40:42,748 You need to hop companies every two years and let's be clear that may work, but it's still very disruptive, not just for the company, but for the individual. 531 00:40:43,603 --> 00:40:48,943 'cause they're having to rebuild all of those social structures, their relationships, their patterns, 532 00:40:48,943 --> 00:40:52,273 the routines it, it's not, it doesn't come for free. 533 00:40:53,173 --> 00:41:02,983 And so from a management standpoint, if you can show people how to have that fulfilling career, how to fulfill those needs. 534 00:41:03,823 --> 00:41:07,003 They don't have to jump ship every two years. 535 00:41:07,033 --> 00:41:09,943 There's no reason that that has to be the default blueprint. 536 00:41:09,973 --> 00:41:16,783 And from a company standpoint, you actually benefit from that accrued experience rather than having a developer. 537 00:41:16,783 --> 00:41:18,253 That's done the same thing. 538 00:41:18,493 --> 00:41:21,943 Five times you get five years of experience. 539 00:41:23,848 --> 00:41:26,008 That's really powerful, really tremendous. 540 00:41:26,008 --> 00:41:31,078 And that, that ultimately not only leads to better APIs, but leads to a better employee. 541 00:41:31,108 --> 00:41:35,668 So there is a disconnect we need to work with our management layers. 542 00:41:36,058 --> 00:41:41,698 It shouldn't just be the technician that has some headcount is by default manager. 543 00:41:41,698 --> 00:41:46,238 There needs to be an appreciation for how those are unique skill sets. 544 00:41:46,268 --> 00:41:49,208 Those are unique muscles that need to be exercised, but. 545 00:41:50,053 --> 00:41:58,573 If we can create that fulfilling sense of duty then, and that the career path for these individuals, we can get 546 00:41:58,573 --> 00:42:02,953 them off of this kind of binge and purge career treadmill. 547 00:42:05,483 --> 00:42:10,013 Matt Trask: So that's a really, yeah, that's a really good way to put the whole two year turn. 548 00:42:10,013 --> 00:42:16,263 And I mean, it comes back full circle to what you just said earlier, which is, you know, 75% of API has been developed 549 00:42:16,293 --> 00:42:19,843 now or done by people with less than five years experience. 550 00:42:20,293 --> 00:42:23,953 And that's probably because of the same, people are jumping, jumping, jumping. 551 00:42:23,953 --> 00:42:28,273 Whereas if you can keep them around, make them happy, make them feel like they belong. 552 00:42:28,813 --> 00:42:30,903 We might actually start seeing that number. 553 00:42:31,873 --> 00:42:42,973 Dropped significantly to more experienced API developers building more thoughtful API design with, with years of knowledge built up. 554 00:42:42,973 --> 00:42:50,273 So I think it'll be really interesting to see kind of what happens with this great resignation how that all shapes up. 555 00:42:50,273 --> 00:42:56,423 And then it'll be interesting to see to kind of the 2022 say the API report. 556 00:42:56,423 --> 00:42:57,053 How does that. 557 00:42:57,788 --> 00:43:03,208 How, how will things change from a year in a year going forward? 558 00:43:03,598 --> 00:43:11,548 And what can we expect possibly looking at these two years, the next five years after that, the next 10 years growing on 559 00:43:11,918 --> 00:43:15,878 different trends, you know, we might see NFTs ruling the world. 560 00:43:15,998 --> 00:43:17,678 We might see graph QL. 561 00:43:17,738 --> 00:43:18,098 Rolling. 562 00:43:20,948 --> 00:43:21,578 Phil Sturgeon: No comment. 563 00:43:22,113 --> 00:43:23,973 Matt Trask: Matthew is kind of shrugging 564 00:43:24,053 --> 00:43:24,843 Phil Sturgeon: we're all sad. 565 00:43:24,843 --> 00:43:29,373 Now, rural sat now, NFTs powered by graft UL, problem solved. 566 00:43:29,733 --> 00:43:31,143 Can you, can you still right click that? 567 00:43:31,173 --> 00:43:31,623 No, you can't. 568 00:43:31,623 --> 00:43:32,283 It's like a post. 569 00:43:32,463 --> 00:43:33,093 So. 570 00:43:35,948 --> 00:43:36,488 Matt Trask: Well, there goes 571 00:43:36,598 --> 00:43:39,298 Matthew Reinbold: Each unique query is published as an innovator. 572 00:43:41,893 --> 00:43:48,643 And you can put the ownership of that query in a blockchain so that you don't have the centralized point of failure. 573 00:43:50,183 --> 00:43:55,633 Phil Sturgeon: I was going to thank you for being for, for making this podcast sound intelligent for once. 574 00:43:55,723 --> 00:43:56,293 And, 575 00:43:56,583 --> 00:43:57,513 Matthew Reinbold: And then I ruined it. 576 00:43:57,543 --> 00:43:58,053 Sorry. 577 00:43:58,133 --> 00:43:58,453 Phil Sturgeon: and then you. 578 00:44:00,178 --> 00:44:01,798 Matt Trask: no, no, no, you didn't ruin it. 579 00:44:01,798 --> 00:44:05,588 You just brought it back down to its normal level of ridiculousness. 580 00:44:05,808 --> 00:44:06,468 Phil Sturgeon: Fantastic. 581 00:44:06,648 --> 00:44:06,978 No. 582 00:44:07,018 --> 00:44:13,408 Do you have any predictions for what we're going to see in the, in next year's state of this report? 583 00:44:13,678 --> 00:44:18,538 Because then we can play that clip back and laugh at how wrong you were. 584 00:44:18,838 --> 00:44:19,768 Matthew Reinbold: Oh, lovely. 585 00:44:19,798 --> 00:44:23,248 All right, well, let me have a few minutes to sandbag my answer. 586 00:44:23,818 --> 00:44:32,968 No, I think there's a tremendous amount of, of areas where we can take this correlation that I talked about before behaviors. 587 00:44:33,478 --> 00:44:36,268 You know how the question immediately becomes well, okay. 588 00:44:36,268 --> 00:44:42,838 If these four behaviors are so good and are present in high-performing API companies, how do we get there? 589 00:44:43,348 --> 00:44:48,508 And this year we had a little bit around leadership and what leaders do. 590 00:44:49,288 --> 00:44:51,148 To get an API first company. 591 00:44:51,358 --> 00:44:58,338 I think there is a lot of exploration we can do there to really dial in and say, okay, we know these things are good. 592 00:44:58,338 --> 00:44:59,208 How do you get there? 593 00:44:59,328 --> 00:45:00,648 How do you promote these things? 594 00:45:00,648 --> 00:45:07,758 How do you, how do you get it so that you are able to deploy in a minimal amount of time or recover faster? 595 00:45:08,178 --> 00:45:10,788 What are leaders in those organizations doing? 596 00:45:11,028 --> 00:45:13,858 That's one of the things I'd love to dig into obviously. 597 00:45:14,573 --> 00:45:17,393 A lot of post pandemic aftermath. 598 00:45:17,663 --> 00:45:24,263 There's been a tremendous amount of published about how this digital transformation and, you know, we're so much more flexible and 599 00:45:24,263 --> 00:45:28,883 adaptable because we, we are now doing all our conversations over zoom. 600 00:45:29,183 --> 00:45:32,533 And I look at that and I, I scratch my head because. 601 00:45:33,483 --> 00:45:41,043 Digital transformation, at least in the non buzzword compliant way is a whole lot more difficult than just moving everything 602 00:45:41,043 --> 00:45:44,523 to a slack conversation or a, or a zoom conversation. 603 00:45:44,523 --> 00:45:54,243 Like it means fundamentally dismantling your policies and procedures and reinventing them in a way that digital technology lends itself to. 604 00:45:54,243 --> 00:46:01,113 So figuring out what that post pandemic landscape looks like and how we're still feeling the knock on effect. 605 00:46:01,938 --> 00:46:05,178 Is going to be something that's also going to be very interesting to explore. 606 00:46:08,028 --> 00:46:09,138 Matt Trask: Yeah, that's definitely true. 607 00:46:09,168 --> 00:46:17,238 I mean, I think one thing I would like to see is, is that number of people who know open API, but don't use it start 608 00:46:17,238 --> 00:46:19,398 to gradually shift down and people who are using open. 609 00:46:20,403 --> 00:46:30,963 Start to shift up, which, you know, from a silver right back to having documentation and some sort of notes about their API. 610 00:46:31,023 --> 00:46:37,533 So when the, the knowledge people do eventually leave because everyone leaves the company at some point, the knowledge isn't necessarily leaving. 611 00:46:37,683 --> 00:46:42,153 And instead we're, we're kind of leaving a better legacy to the people following us. 612 00:46:42,253 --> 00:46:43,093 Yeah, definitely. 613 00:46:43,723 --> 00:46:44,143 Matthew Reinbold: Here here. 614 00:46:45,583 --> 00:46:46,003 Matt Trask: Cool. 615 00:46:46,033 --> 00:46:50,643 Matthew, thank you so much for taking some time out of your, your, your day to talk to us. 616 00:46:50,643 --> 00:46:51,543 We really appreciate it. 617 00:46:51,653 --> 00:46:58,013 Look forward to having you back in roughly a year's time to talk 20, 22. 618 00:46:58,013 --> 00:46:59,003 Say the API report 619 00:46:59,888 --> 00:47:00,398 Matthew Reinbold: I love it. 620 00:47:00,458 --> 00:47:01,058 Let's do it. 621 00:47:01,598 --> 00:47:02,618 Pencil it in right now. 622 00:47:03,353 --> 00:47:03,743 Matt Trask: Yep. 623 00:47:03,833 --> 00:47:04,973 It's it's on my calendar. 624 00:47:04,973 --> 00:47:09,053 I don't know what I'll be doing in a year from today, but I know for a fact we'll be talking again. 625 00:47:09,083 --> 00:47:09,713 If you want to get. 626 00:47:10,538 --> 00:47:11,528 Matthew on Twitter. 627 00:47:11,528 --> 00:47:18,038 He is at libel Vox, L I B E L underscore V O X M. 628 00:47:18,728 --> 00:47:24,548 And we'll throw the link to your blog and Twitter in the show notes as well as everything else. 629 00:47:24,628 --> 00:47:24,958 Awesome. 630 00:47:24,958 --> 00:47:25,168 Cool. 631 00:47:25,198 --> 00:47:25,648 Thank you so much. 632 00:47:25,648 --> 00:47:26,188 We appreciate it. 633 00:47:26,833 --> 00:47:27,073 Phil Sturgeon: Yeah.