Developer experience matters a lot

In order for develovers to be succ.. 🚧🚨 Developers needs a.. 🚧🚨

Ugh! It’s no fun to be interrupted when you are just getting started.

Why does it feel like an obstacle course?

This is what the developer experience (DevEx) feels like in many larger, long-established organizations with significant technical debt. Add to that the constant pinging of chat windows and overflowing inboxes, and you’ve got a recipe for sluggish deliveries and frustrated developers!

Scenario - code silos

Imagine this: you’ve just been hired as a developer at Acme Big Tech Inc. Your task is to create a new application to manage the company’s quotes. “No problem, I’ll have a first version ready by next week!” you say as you reach for the keyboard… After some intense typing, you get to the part where you need to save information to a database. “Surely one of my 500 developer colleagues has solved this 100 times before. I’ll check Git and see how they did it” you think as you open a new tab with GitLab in your browser.

Empty.

What? Where’re all the repositories?

Turns out all code repositories are set to “private” by default. And apparently, there isn’t just one instance of GitLab—there are at least three, though you don’t know about the others yet. On top of that, you have no idea which team to ask for access because, as it turns out, GitLab groups are also set to “private” by default.

The solution?

This is an example of an unnecessary hurdle that shouldn’t exist. The solution? Start by changing the default setting to “internal”, making all code visible to all developers. And maybe consider consolidating those other GitLab instances while you’re at it?

Even better:

What if Acme Big Tech Inc. had an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) like Backstage from Spotify ? It would make things so much easier by showing which services are running and which team is responsible for them.

What if the processes were designed for speed and trust, without forcing pull request reviews on everything? Instead of waiting for a review, sit down and work together! Everyone learns more, and maybe it even becomes fun to tackle technical debt.

What would happen to developers motivation and productivity then?