Mike Fisher, the former CTO at Etsy, spearheaded a multi-year developer experience initiative aimed at improving developer happiness and efficiency during his time at Etsy. Here, he shares the story of that initiative, including the pillars of the program and the investment that went into it. Towards the end of the conversation, Mike also shares his perspective on measuring developer productivity.

Discussion points:

(1:31) What was happening at Etsy when Mike joined
(4:08) The scaling challenges Etsy faced
(6:08) Deciding on the term “developer experience”
(9:35) Whether developer experience is a new approach
(11:24) The pillars of Etsy’s DevEx initiative
(15:49) Converting the length of time required for this initiative
(18:11) The investment allocated to the initiative
(20:04) Talking about the ROI of devex initiatives
(22:50) Who was actually leading this work
(24:37) Etsy’s experience with platform teams
(30:42) Advice for leaders championing DevEx initiatives
(34:45) Framing the conversation about getting budget for a DevEx initiative
(37:45) How leaders can address the efficiency conversation
(42:00) Measuring productivity
(45:49) The “experiment velocity” metric

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Inside Etsy’s multi-year DevEx initiative | Mike Fisher (Etsy, PayPal)

Engineering Enablement by DX

Inside Etsy’s multi-year DevEx initiative | Mike Fisher (Etsy, PayPal)