Navigating Challenges in the Developer Platform Team

In this episode, Airbnb Developer Productivity leader Anna Sulkina shares the story of how her team transformed itself and became more impactful within the organization. She starts by describing how the team previously operated, where teams were delivering but felt they needed more clarity and alignment across teams. Then, the conversation digs into the key changes they made, including reorganizing the team, clarifying team roles, defining strategy, and improving their measurement systems. 

Mentions and links

• Follow Anna on LinkedIn
• For A deeper look into how our Engineers and Data Scientists build a world of belonging, check out The Airbnb Tech Blog

Discussion points:

• (0:00) Intro
• (1:40) Skills that make a great developer productivity leader
• (4:36) Challenges in how the team operated previously
• (10:49) Changing the platform org’s focus and structure
• (16:04) Clarifying roles for EM’s, PM’s, and tech leads
• (20:22) How Airbnb defined its infrastructure org’s strategy
• (28:23) Improvements they’ve seen to developer experience satisfaction
• (32:13) The evolution of Airbnb’s developer experience survey