CTO buy-in, measuring sentiment, and customer focus

Engineering Enablement by Abi Noda

Click here to view the episode transcript.
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.