Platform engineering promises to improve developer productivity, but many platforms fail due to poor developer experience. Our first platform had comprehensive features but near-zero adoption. Developers continued using manual processes despite our investments in automation.
This session shares our journey rebuilding the platform with developers as partners, not customers. We'll reveal the critical mistakes in our first attempt: assuming what developers needed without asking, building complex abstractions that leaked implementation details, and creating cognitive overhead that exceeded the value provided.
The talk demonstrates our second approach: conducting developer experience audits to identify friction points, implementing progressive disclosure so basic workflows remain simple while advanced capabilities stay accessible, and using contract testing to prevent platform changes from breaking developer workflows.