Managing Developer Feedback Effectively | Atlassian’s Andrew Boyagi
Are surveys enough?
Is your company relying on surveys to bridge the gap between developers and managers?
In this episode of Dev Interrupted, Conor Bronsdon (in his final episode as host) sits down with Andrew Boyagi, Atlassian's head of DevOps Evangelism. Andrew is a DevOps juggernaut with a wealth of knowledge. Today we’re tapping into four core insights:
fostering developer experience
emphasizing the need for transparency
the nuances of measuring productivity
the crucial role of company culture in aligning development teams with business goals
The conversation emphasizes the importance of data-driven insights (quant) over relying solely on surveys (qual), highlighting how metrics can illuminate issues like technical debt and build times.
You don’t want to miss this one.
In addition, hosts Ben Lloyd Pearson and Dan Lines dive into the perceived misalignment between engineers and their leaders on improving developer experience.
Setting clear, company-wide goals to boost developer experience and productivity is a powerful formula for success.
"You gotta use data. That's the thing. So you're going to have these feedback loops from developers, each team, each manager, each business unit, each organization. And the only way I believe that you can get a clear picture of that is to be able to see that data." — Dan Lines
The Download
The Download is like a pull request for your brain that’s easy to review. 💻
1. How to climb the ladder fast at companies like Meta 🪜
You don’t want to miss this read from
@ about how fast career climbers get more done. What’s the secret? Find shortcuts that don’t compromise value. It’s the epitome of “work smarter, not harder” and there’s something in here for everyone. Check it out.
2. The real villain developers face every day is inefficiency 🦹
Dan Lines reflects on the recent discussion with Stack Overflow’s Erin Yepis. In this blog post, he provides some strategies for speaking in a common language with non-technical stakeholders. Use these tactics to unmask technical debt (or keeping the lights on) as a business problem, not just an engineering one.
Read: Why Developers Are Disengaged (And How to Bring Them Back)
3. Stop cramming all your changes into one PR 🔸
Josh Goldberg makes a compelling case for treating your pull requests with respect. The gist? Stop bundling unrelated changes into a single PR. It doesn’t just confuse reviewers; it delays feedback, risks merge conflicts, and ruins everyone’s day. Instead, split your changes, and be the hero your team deserves. Save future you from Git blame therapy.
Read: Split Out Unrelated Changes
Upcoming virtual events 🎪💻
Beyond the DORA Frameworks
In this 35-minute workshop, we'll be exploring how 300+ CTOs, VPEs and Managers have moved from academic frameworks to impact-based data practices in their engineering organizations.
This event was made possible by the survey responses of the Refactoring and Dev Interrupted communities. Thank you for participating to make this event possible! Now it’s time to soak up the insights.
RSVP today learn actionable steps that align metrics with team goals and drive real impact.
Sessions
11am ET on January 29, 2025
11am GMT on January 30, 2025
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