I'm very skeptical that in a lot of cases by the time you reach into that journey that the product organization is actually iterating faster and more effectively than it did before. In gross terms, there's an opportunity cost to doing productivity work. When is that going to pay off? Do you have a model for understanding that? I sort of went into my own perspective that not only do these types of investments not always pay off, but a lot of these investments into things like microservices are often new things, almost new fads in the industry. Companies pursue them haphazardly. That contributes to the problem of them not really paying off in terms of business impact and value.
Brian Guthrie, co-founder and CTO at Orgspace and former VP of Engineering at Meetup, has the unique experience of having previously decommissioned his Platform team. In this episode, Brian talks about that story openly, and shares advice for Platform teams to make sure they’re well positioned within their organizations.
Discussion points:
- Brian’s background and story at Meetup - [00:02:20]
- Brian’s perspective on Platform work, generally - [00:06:40]
- The conversation around dissolving the Platform group - [00:12:05]
- Advice for Platform groups positioning their teams - [00:16:55]
- Making sure Platform groups are focused on the right problems [00:21:21]
- How Platform groups can think about communicating with the business [00:23:50]
- Bringing engineering teams into the planning process - [00:25:43]
- Deciding to build vs buy in a down market - [00:28:40]
- How developer happiness is part of positioning platform work [00:32:30]
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