People, Practices & CareerConference50min
Emergent DevEx: The Good, the Bad, and the Legacy
This talk explores how developer experience deteriorates as organizations scale, creating bureaucratic friction and outdated internal tools. It argues that copying DevEx models from companies like Google or Netflix is misguided, and offers strategies for engineers to shape and resist tool-driven bureaucracy.
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Makan SepehrifarProductboard
Soroosh KhodamiRabobank
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Wednesday, October 7, 12:00-12:50
TBA 6
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What happens when an organization grows from a few co-founders into 10,000 people?
In a big organization, the developer experience isn't something you sit down and design. It's the sum of countless small changes, layered year after year. It emerges slowly, pulled in different directions by three forces:
In a big organization, the developer experience isn't something you sit down and design. It's the sum of countless small changes, layered year after year. It emerges slowly, pulled in different directions by three forces:
- the dead weight of history, baked into bureaucratic processes and controls;
- the endless transformation projects that promise heaven but just swap one mess for another;
- and the developers stuck in the middle, bearing the pressure.
Through real-life scenarios, we'll show how small changes to implementation, not grand top-down strategy, are often what make a developer's life easier.
Key Takeaways:
- How developer experience grows alongside an organization, from a team of 5 to 10,000+.
- How history, transformation efforts, and developers themselves each leave their mark.
- What internal developer communities can do to shift things and how, even as one developer, you can change the details for the greater good.
Makan Sepehrifar
Makan Sepehrifar is a software architect who is interested in how people think and behave in organizations. He sees software architecture as a craft and believes that every challenge has both a technical side and a social side, and both need attention at the same time. Coming from a strong developer background, he has led many teams across different domains and organizations, always working to connect technology with human needs and team dynamics.
He is passionate about the future of Developer Experience and how Generative AI and Agentic AI are reshaping the way developers work. Makan focuses on how these technologies can improve developer satisfaction and help teams become more adaptive and effective. He is a public speaker on Developer Experience practices and AI in this space, and he has been part of several Generative AI adoption teams in different companies, helping them use AI in a practical and effective way.
He is passionate about the future of Developer Experience and how Generative AI and Agentic AI are reshaping the way developers work. Makan focuses on how these technologies can improve developer satisfaction and help teams become more adaptive and effective. He is a public speaker on Developer Experience practices and AI in this space, and he has been part of several Generative AI adoption teams in different companies, helping them use AI in a practical and effective way.
Soroosh Khodami
Soroosh is a software engineer and software architecture enthusiast, passionate about building simple but impactful solutions. With over 15 years of experience in diverse domains, including Telecom, Media & Entertainment, and E-Commerce. He has worked with small startups and large enterprises serving 80 million active subscribers. Currently working as a Solution Architect at Rabobank. Soroosh strongly believes in the power of collaborative learning and enjoys sharing his experiences and insights with other developers.