The Platform PM role at Spotify | Nils Loodin (Spotify)
Nov 15, 2023
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Nils Loodin, Platform PM at Spotify, discusses unique challenges and recent changes in Spotify's platform organization. Topics include developer experience, team structure, focus of the Platform PM role, attracting PMs into Platform roles, and measuring onboarding.
Shifting platform teams from tech-centric to journey-centric at Spotify aimed to improve developer experiences and reduce redundancy.
Being a platform product manager requires a balance between technical knowledge and product management skills, with a focus on delayed gratification.
Improving the onboarding experience for new developers at Spotify involved creating a standardized golden path and measuring progress through metrics.
Deep dives
The shift to journey-centric platform teams
The podcast episode discusses a recent reorganization at Spotify's developer experience organization, where platform teams were shifted from being tech-centric to journey-centric, focused on jobs to be done. This change aimed to reduce redundancy and duplication of efforts across different platforms and standardize development processes. The shift involved creating a golden path, a step-by-step guide from onboarding to the first pull request, to help streamline and standardize the onboarding experience for new mobile engineers. The reorganization and focus on journey-centric teams aimed to improve developer experiences at Spotify.
Challenges of being a platform PM
The episode explores the unique challenges of being a platform product manager (PM) and the murkiness of defining the role's responsibilities. The speaker discusses the need to strike a balance between technical knowledge and product management skills. They emphasize the importance of being genuinely interested in the domain and being comfortable with delayed gratification, as the impact of platform PM work may not always be immediately visible. The episode also touches on the tension between team autonomy and the need for standardization and shared resources in a company like Spotify.
Creating a golden path for onboarding
The podcast highlights a project at Spotify aimed at improving the onboarding experience for new developers. The project involved creating a golden path, a step-by-step guide covering everything from IT setup to the first pull request. The guide standardized the onboarding process and reduced the time and complexity of onboarding new engineers. The episode acknowledges the challenges in measuring onboarding, as it is difficult to gauge where individuals feel fully onboarded. Metrics such as time to a meaningful pull request were explored to assess the complexity of onboarding and integration into the team.
Balancing autonomy and project objectives
The episode delves into the tension between team autonomy and company-wide project objectives at Spotify. While Spotify is known for its emphasis on highly autonomous teams, there is recognition that certain projects require coordination and standardization across teams. The speaker explains how goals and key results (OKRs) are used to strike a balance. Centralized objectives are set to align with the company strategy, while individual teams have autonomy in determining how to achieve those objectives.
Measuring complexity and progress
The podcast discusses the challenges of measuring onboarding progress and productivity. The speaker shares different approaches to measuring onboarding, including time to a meaningful pull request and pull requests per day. The goal is to reduce complexity and ensure that new engineers can effectively contribute to the team. The episode acknowledges the difficulty in capturing qualitative factors such as how new engineers feel onboarded. Overall, the focus is on simplifying the onboarding process and providing meaningful metrics to track progress.
This week we spoke with Nils Loodin, Platform Product Manager at Spotify. Nils describes how his role in platform product management works, including unique challenges, approaches, and career considerations. Nils also discusses some of the recent changes within Spotify's platform organization, including shifting teams from tech-centric to journey-centric.
Discussion points:
(1:30) How Nils came into his role
(3:59) How “developer experience” came into the picture at Spotify
(5:30) How the Platform team is structured
(8:52) Unique challenges of the Platform PM role
(12:51) Defining the Platform PM’s focus
(16:39) Staying close to their customers
(21:09) Optimal background for someone in this role
(24:43) Attracting PMs into Platform roles
(29:40) How it is that Spotify’s leadership invests in developer experience
(31:19) How a recent reorg shifted Platform’s focus
