GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech Platform Engineering: From Theory to Practice • Liz Fong-Jones & Lesley Cordero
Oct 21, 2025
In this discussion, Liz Fong-Jones, Field CTO at Honeycomb with expertise in observability and SRE, and Lesley Cordero, Staff Software Engineer at The New York Times, dive into the intricacies of platform engineering. They explore the evolution from DevOps roots, emphasizing the need for psychological safety and effective documentation. Topics include the balance between centralized platform teams and developer autonomy, the relevance of open source, and the pitfalls of conflating Kubernetes with developer platforms. Their insights are vital for fostering a healthy developer experience.
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Platform Engineering As A Unifying Domain
- Platform engineering unifies disciplines like SRE, security, and UX to reduce developer obstacles.
- Combining defaults and cross-discipline collaboration prevents fragmented “ambassador” models.
Why Platform Teams Emerged
- Platform teams rose because hiring more engineers isn't a sustainable productivity fix.
- Investing in shared platform work empowers engineers and reduces duplicated effort.
Experiment And Protect Psychological Safety
- Treat SRE and platform ideas as experiments and validate them in your context.
- Encourage psychological safety so teams can take risks and learn from failures.
