Developer Experience in the Age of AI with Chris Westerhold

“What’s your AI strategy’ is the wrong question for engineering leaders. A better one would be: “What are you doing to improve engineering efficiency by 15–20%?”

You don’t have to chase AI just for AI’s sake. Instead, focus on the biggest pain point, on whatever is slowing your teams down. In most orgs, it has nothing to do with needing faster typers.”

In this episode of the HangarDX podcast, Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Aviator, talks to Chris Westerhold, Global Practice Director for Engineering Excellence at Thoughtworks, to discuss how AI is fundamentally transforming the developer experience (DevEx). 

Chris talks about how AI is changing the definition of developer, engineering orgs feeling FOMO of not adopting AI tools instead of focusing on workflow pain points, AI tools adding to cognitive overload, how to evaluate the productivity gains of AI tools, and what’s the right approach to AI strategy when it comes to developer experience. 

00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and AI
01:12 The Evolution of Developer Experience
04:30 Navigating Tool Proliferation in Software Development
09:35 Cognitive Load and Complexity in AI-Driven Development
18:04 Finding Focused Solutions Amidst AI Hype
20:58 Metrics and Measuring AI Impact
34:06 Developing an AI Strategy for Engineering Teams

About Chris Westerhold
Chris is a Global Practice Director for Engineering Excellence at Thoughtworks. He has over 15 years of technology experience across startups and large enterprises, with a significant focus on building scalable engineering teams, engineering metrics strategies, developer platforms, platform engineering, and technical product management. He is a vocal advocate for developer experience and is passionate about using data-driven approaches to improve it.

About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)

The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers.

We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies, or who are interested in developer productivity.