A better developer experience

Recently, Jason Valentino, Senior Director of Developer Experience and Member Identity at Peloton, had the chance to sit down with our Senior Vice President of Cloud Transformation at A Cloud Guru, a Pluralsight company, for an interview to discuss the developer experience that powers the home exercise and media company.

Jason believes that setting the right tone at your firm has several benefits for the developer experience, one of which is raising developer happiness, which then results in better code and, ultimately, a better customer experience.

Jason gave us four crucial suggestions for improving the developer experience at your organization in answer to our inquiry about the operational principles he thinks are the core fundamentals for the team’s developer experience. Each of these elements continues to have an impact on how Peloton’s developer experience is structured.

Align your team to the company at large

If the rest of the organization avoids talking to you because of your role managing Jenkins, you will know that you have failed as an SRE managing Jenkins. Failure provides the necessary experience to attain this wisdom. To prevent something similar from happening, you must ensure that the technology and development methods you employ are compatible with those used by the rest of the company. In your role as a leader, it is your duty to make sure that the developers are happy with the results of their labor. You must set up your team in the same way that the other developers have set up their teams.

Have a clear understanding of your measurements that matter 

I’m referring to the policy that states the DevEx group is not allowed access to weapons when I say this. You are misfocusing and diverting your attention if you let DevEx turn into a tool for completing compliance tasks left, right, and center, which it occasionally has to do. The leaders of the information technology sector should closely monitor how quickly developers are creating tools and looking into areas where improvements may be made. For instance, every every encounter with a human-reviewed procedure, like submitting a help ticket, provides proof of a prior failure. This includes both individuals who were successful and those who weren’t. It is crucial for us to identify, quantify, and keep track of these failures in order to have a better understanding of them before we can figure out how to steer clear of making the same mistakes in the future. This will enable us to steer clear of repeating the same errors in the future.

Develop prescripted onboarding processes. 

We have a saying at Peloton that says we shouldn’t let the desire for perfection get in the way of doing the right thing. Don’t let the desire for perfection get in the way of doing good. For [our organization], setting up the ideal onboarding procedure is a piece of cake. We haven’t yet succeeded in creating “the perfect onboarding,” though. What specific measures do you take to address that? You decide to plan an orientation session for new hires. You will need to gather the required resources if you want to succeed in resolving some of these onboarding issues.

For instance, after our new workers have had a chance to settle in, they must attend two orientation sessions on “Life at Peloton.” Additionally, they have a global Peloton program called The Warm-Up that was created by the L&D team. After that, they start working at Peloton in the Engineering division. Children then get knowledge of the bike’s overall operational design and operation after that. Following the completion of these lectures, individual leaders enter the space to begin working on a solution to a problem that has arisen inside the group. The group member who brought up this issue is one of the group. The international information technology team is also present in this room to make sure that all the engineers have access to the resources they need. As a result, even if it is not a brilliantly automated production of Swan Lake, the developers have already submitted their first PR by day three. which beyond our wildest expectations.

Friction = opportunity  

Drew Firment joined the discussion to share his perspective on why friction “sucks” in the short term but can ultimately provide participants with worthwhile learning opportunities. He said that while friction is painful, it can also have some advantageous consequences.

“Embrace the suck,” advises Julian Simon in his most recent blog post for his website, which is titled “Technical Evangelism from the Trenches.” He claims that this is because of

We all know that life will have its share of challenges, which is why this is such a great proverb. On the other side, you shouldn’t attempt to cover up or downplay the issue. Take use of the chance this friction gives for you and the developers to learn something new. And ultimately, that “suck” might be what keeps the business from giving its clients the finest experience possible.

And it’s accepting that amount of discomfort, such as when a developer claims that this certain step in the process is the hardest to complete. As a leader, you can see this as a chance to improve the overall experience that developers have.