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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

Connect with Gilad and Amy on LinkedIn
Measuring developer productivity with the DX Core 4

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.

CTO buy-in, measuring sentiment, and customer focus