I see a lot of leaders who are in similar positions as you are really struggle with carving out the resources to actually devote to this type of work. All too often it seems like the product management organization, like the customer features still went out in terms of what teams ultimately end up spending their time on. And so I definitely think as much as possible, make sure you're spending time with your product partner, helping them understand this just like you're trying to understand their world and all of the complexities. You should always have that ability to rethink whether centralizing is the best option.
Mike Fisher, the former CTO at Etsy, spearheaded a multi-year developer experience initiative aimed at improving developer happiness and efficiency during his time at Etsy. Here, he shares the story of that initiative, including the pillars of the program and the investment that went into it. Towards the end of the conversation, Mike also shares his perspective on measuring developer productivity.
Discussion points:
- (1:31) What was happening at Etsy when Mike joined
- (4:08) The scaling challenges Etsy faced
- (6:08) Deciding on the term “developer experience”
- (9:35) Whether developer experience is a new approach
- (11:24) The pillars of Etsy’s DevEx initiative
- (15:49) Converting the length of time required for this initiative
- (18:11) The investment allocated to the initiative
- (20:04) Talking about the ROI of devex initiatives
- (22:50) Who was actually leading this work
- (24:37) Etsy’s experience with platform teams
- (30:42) Advice for leaders championing DevEx initiatives
- (34:45) Framing the conversation about getting budget for a DevEx initiative
- (37:45) How leaders can address the efficiency conversation
- (42:00) Measuring productivity
- (45:49) The “experiment velocity” metric
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