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Hero banner: Spotify secret to developer effectiveness
Hero banner: Spotify secret to developer effectiveness

Backstage: Spotify's secret to developer effectiveness

Podcast host Kimberly Boyd | Podcast guest Austin Lamon, Spotify
June 13, 2022 | 25 min 11 sec

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Brief summary

Software professionals and their skills are in high demand and organizations are constantly thinking about how to invest in capability development. In this podcast, we speak with Austin Lamon, about how Spotify created the Backstage platform to empower happy developers. Listen to learn more about creating an environment where development teams can thrive.

Episode Highlights

 

This episode is presented to you from our executive conference ParadigmShift – learn more.

 

  • Developers are spending 30%-40% of their time actually writing code. The rest of their time is troubleshooting incidents, sitting in meetings, interviewing, dealing with security issues, and other areas that may be seen as a burden. What developers want to be doing is building products. 

     

  • Backstage was born out of the need to onboard effectively as Spotify was quickly growing. Fast forward, the tool is enabling engineers to do their job day in and day out, but also creating these reusable patterns and these sets of tools and really almost codified culture that allows teams to build products. 

     

  • The technologies developers depend on are constantly changing and evolving, so if we look at one lagging metric, it's all about satisfaction. It's all about, "Are developers happy" and broadly, "What's helpful?" That's where satisfaction comes in.

     

  • Focusing on developer satisfaction enabled Spotify as an organization to retain top people.

     

  • Start by just asking people how they're doing, and then, two, start putting metrics on those things that are the biggest problems. Once you're measuring them, it makes it a lot easier for organizations or teams, or individuals to feel empowered to test ways to move them.

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