Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda Trailer Bonus Episode 68 Season 1

CTO buy-in, measuring sentiment, and customer focus

00:00
In this episode, Snowflake’s Gilad Turbahn, Head of Developer Productivity, and Amy Yuan, Director of Engineering, dive into how they elevated developer productivity to a top company priority. They discuss the pivotal role of Snowflake’s CTO, who personally invested over half his time to guide the initiative, and how leadership's hands-on involvement secured buy-in across teams. The conversation also explores the importance of collaboration between engineering and product management, and how measuring user sentiment helped them deliver meaningful, long-lasting improvements.

Mentions and links
Discussion Points
  • (0:48) The need for a shift at Snowflake
  • (3:59) Leadership involvement and prioritization of developer productivity
  • (8:56) The partnership between engineering and product managers
  • (20:01) From feature factory to customer outcome-focused development
  • (27:36) Shifting measurement focus to user sentiment and customer outcomes
  • (39:13) Gaining buy-in for sentiment metrics and tying them to business impact
  • (51:11) How Snowflake’s CTO and volunteers accelerated developer productivity improvements.

Creators & Guests

Host
Abi Noda
Abi is the founder and CEO of DX (getdx.com), which helps engineering leaders measure and improve developer experience. Abi formerly founded Pull Panda, which was acquired by GitHub.

What is Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda?

This is a weekly podcast focused on developer productivity and the teams and leaders dedicated to improving it. Topics include in-depth interviews with Platform and DevEx teams, as well as the latest research and approaches on measuring developer productivity. The EE podcast is hosted by Abi Noda, the founder and CEO of DX (getdx.com) and published researcher focused on developing measurement methods to help organizations improve developer experience and productivity.