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Positioning platform work in a down market | Brian Guthrie (Orgspace, Meetup)

Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

Platform Leaders - Focusing on the Right Problems?

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How can you provide all of the benefits of here is a thing that does what you needed to do only much better than you would probably do it yourself? You need people to feel and understand the impact of that. And then make sure that people feel rilled when they use it, right? Not downstream of the change that they have no control over but active participants in a product that's evolving that they get really excited about.

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]

Follow Brian:

Brian's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bguthrie/

Mentions and links:

Brian's talk, Is the optimal size of a platform team... zero?
The Future of Ops is Platform Engineering by Charity Majors
Former Shopify CTO's take on the optimal spend on platform work
Research on how developer happiness impacts productivity

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