Open Source 2022: The Year of Awareness

BY JAVIER PEREZ

The subject of predicting the future reminds me of a quote from the late comedian, George Burns: “I look to the future because that’ s where I’ m going to spend the rest of my life. ”

Open-source software is pervasive across all industry verticals, and today, more companies use and develop software than ever before, and we don ’t need a crystal ball to predict that in 2022, we ’ll see even more growth.

A common theme for next year is not only the growth of open-source technologies but also the incremental awareness that we will see across industries. Awareness will fuel open source use and expansion; therefore, 2022 will be the year of awareness and growth.

Here are my top open source software predictions for 2022:

Demand for open source skills is

going from hot to hotter. The demand for full stack developers will continue to grow because of an increase in popular open-source options, as well as the variety of stacks used in software development, operations, and data science. Experience in cloud environments and DevOps tooling will continue to be in high demand, just like demand for Kubernetes, Python, PyTorch, and open-source data technologies. Experienced professionals will have plenty of opportunities to change jobs and poaching of experts in open source will increase, just as expected compensation.

Greater awareness of open source security and prevention of

supply chain attacks. More CEOs and IT executives will realize how much open source is used in their organizations, and that realization will have a positive impact on security budgets. Greater awareness of the thousands of open- source libraries used in all software development will result in an increased use of tools to scan for vulnerabilities in open-source software. Organizations with more open-source security awareness will keep up with the latest software versions and patches, improving their overall security posture. Software supply chain attacks occur when threat actors infiltrate third-party software to gain access via an unpatched open source vulnerability or inject malicious software. Thanks to awareness and tooling, in 2022 we ’ll see an improvement in prevention and the growth of open-source tools, such as digital signing services to prevent supply chain attacks.

Widespread adoption of contain-

ers and Kubernetes. We ’ll see increased adoption of standards for container format and runtime. This adoption will allow for expanded use of compatible open-source container formats from the likes of Docker and Podman under the same standards as those described in the Open Container Initiative. A similar transition from bare metal to virtual machines (VMs), which took place over the last couple of decades, is now being repeated with the use of containers and Kubernetes as well as completing the stack with Kubernetes operators. Despite the learning curve and technical support required, the most successful open-source project in recent times, Kubernetes, is poised to reach new adoption highs in 2022.

Time for awareness and imple-

mentation of ethical AI. Opensource software for artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), deep learning (DL), and data technologies are reaching mass adoption. 2022 will see AI open-source tooling become increasingly available, including the intersection with containers in growing projects such as Kubeflow. The prediction for 2022 is a significant growth in terms of awareness and implementation of ethical AI. Open-source tools for ML/DL algorithms to keep them interpretable, explainable, and fair is the ultimate goal. The incremental use of these open-source tools will go a long way in improving and increasing trust in AI applications.

InnerSource will no longer be a

secret. More InnerSource projects wait on the horizon — and not only for technology companies. The prediction includes financial institutions, public sector, research centers, and many more. The use of open source software development best practices and the establishment of open source-like culture behind closed doors in non-open-source software will continue to expand. As a first step before open sourcing projects or just as the latest best practices, organizations will continue to see the benefits of open collaboration, contributions, and velocity. InnerSource will also increase the use of open-source software and with it, the need for expert advice and support across more open-source packages.

Positive advancement in diversity

and inclusion. Open-source software has always been at the forefront of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Being open with freedom has been part of the open source fabric for over 30 years. The open source communities and foundations have risen to the challenge of reflecting the social changes in our society into their projects. In 2022, we ’ll see the advancement of and direct results from large number of diversity and inclusion initiatives. A few examples of these initiatives from open source communities include GitHub Diversity, Open Source Diversity, Opensource.com, TODO group, The Linux Foundation SDDI, IBM’ s Call for Code, Apache Diversity, and many more.

And while we are on the topic of awareness in 2022, let’ s wish everyone more awareness in other important topics outside open-source software; more mental health awareness, more selfawareness and of course, more personal development. A toast for that, and for a healthy and successful 2022. z

Javier Perez is Chief OSS Evangelist at OpenLogic by Perforce.

BY JENNA SARGENT

Remote work was once considered a luxury to many, but in 2020, it became a necessity for a large portion of the workforce, as the scary and unknown COVID-19 virus sickened and even took the lives of so many people around the world.

Some workers were able to thrive in a remote setting, while others felt isolated and struggled to keep up a balance between their work and home lives.

Last year saw the availability of lifesaving vaccines, so companies were able to start having the conversation about what to do next. Should they keep everyone remote? Should they go back to working in the office full time? Or should they do something in between? Enter hybrid work, which offers a mix of the two.

A Fall 2021 study conducted by Google revealed that over 75% of survey respondents expect hybrid work to become a standard practice within their organization within the next three

years.

Thus, two years after the world abruptly shifted to widespread adoption of remote work, we are declaring 2022 "The Year of Hybrid Work, " as workers and companies attempt to regain some sense of normalcy, improve work/life balance, and reconnect with coworkers while still retaining some of the benefits of hybrid work.

Typically, hybrid work implies that employees spend some days of the week working from home and some days working in the office. For example, when Google ’ s CEO Sundar Pichai revealed the company ’ s hybrid work plan back in May 2021, it involved working in the office three days a week and working remotely the other two days.

The plan might look different for every company. Some companies took advantage of having their workforce remote by downsizing their office space to save money. For those companies, the hybrid working plan might involve

“hot desking, ” which is when a desk is shared by more than one person on different days.

“Hot desking is a term that’ s been around even pre-pandemic days for different sales type workers or people who would be more like a road warrior or weren ’t always based out of the same office, ” said Aaron Nush, technology services architect at SoftwareONE. “Some of those types of processes or theories that we saw pre-pandemic are starting to come back a little bit, where somebody can reserve one out of X number of workspaces, and they can sit down and have a keyboard, monitor, mouse, a desk, phone, or whatever they need; they just kind of plug in their laptop and start going. ”

Nush predicts that even when companies switch to a hybrid work model, there will still be a lot of demand from employees to stay remote where it’ s feasible. So it’ s important for companies to slowly make the transition back to the office, otherwise there might be more pushback from employees, Nush explained.

Employees who feel as though they ’ ve been able to do their job well remotely might question the company on what the benefit of going back or the rationale behind certain decisions around hybrid work.

However, Nush also added that a lot of the push for hybrid work is being driven by employees, not companies. Because of the current job market and the

“Great Resignation, ” employees have a lot of power right now.

“It’ s an interesting time to see organizations be receptive of that and try to work towards that common goal of let’ s navigate through this kind of uncharted area together and at the end of the day identify what’ s going to make this all successful and get where we need to go, ” said Nush.

The benefits of hybrid work

There are a lot of benefits to remote work — no commute, more flexibility in the day, fewer distractions and interruptions — but for many there are also a lot of downsides, like social isolation, lack of motivation, and difficulty maintaining a good balance between their work and personal lives. According to Lara Owen, senior director of Global Workplace Experience at GitHub, the main benefit of hybrid work is that it offers employees the flexibility to work in the style that suits them best. People that thrive in an office setting could go into the office everyday, people who really do well working at home can continue doing that, or people could opt for a mix of the two.

“I prefer the hybrid model of work because of this flexibility — it encourages and allows for employees to work in the way that works best for them, which can result in greater creativity and happier employees, ” said Owen.

Another benefit of this flexibility is that recruiting efforts can be opened up because geographical constraints can be removed and companies can appeal to people with different working needs, such as working parents or caregivers.

“This opens up your talent pool to a wider, more diverse group, ” Owen said.

Transitioning from full remote work to hybrid work

Even for workers who have spent their entire working career — perhaps even decades — in an office, after two years of working from home, the switch back could be difficult. Workers have gotten used to certain things while working remotely, and teams have started using different tools to communicate and organize their work.

In order to ensure a smooth transition back, Nush recommends taking advantage of those tools that had been used for remote communication, especially if not all members of a team will be in the office at the same time.

JJ Yu, product designer at digital transformation firm Rise8, believes that UX design — and more specifically human-centered design — is the key to successfully implementing a hybrid work model. One mistake she sees a lot of companies making is that they are looking to the Big Five companies and applying the same practices, but it’ s important for employers to actually empathize with their employees. “I think that in itself is quite the biggest hurdle to make out of that entire process is: are these employers willing to empathize with their employees?” Yu said.

She also pointed out that there isn ’t a silver bullet to this. “There is no right answer, ” said Yu. “I think there ’ s just a better or worse decision to be made. ”

Yu believes the first step a company can take to solve the challenges of returning to the office is to actually take

< continued from page 11 the time and listen to its employees and their needs.

Communication from leadership is key

According to a McKinsey study from April 2021, a lot of workers are feeling like their company ’ s plans for returning to the office aren ’t being communicated well. 40% of respondents said they have not heard any communication regarding the company ’ s plans, 32% have received vague communications about a plan, and only 32% feel that a plan has been well-communicated to them.

Not knowing what the plans are is causing a lot of workers unnecessary concern and stress. 47% of respondents said they were feeling anxious as a result, and loss of productivity from poor mental health can be as high as $1 trillion per year, according to McKinsey, which highlights the need for clear return-to-work plans.

This also contributes to burnout, which results from long-term stress. While McKinsey feels these numbers might be an underestimate, 49% said they were at least somewhat burned out, with 10% of U.S. developers feeling burned out to a “ very-high degree. ”

“Burnout is especially pronounced for people feeling anxious due to a lack of organizational communication. These employees were almost three times more likely to report feeling burned out. The obvious recommendation for organizational leaders: share more with employees, even if you ’ re uncertain about the future, to help improve employee well-being now, ” McKinsey wrote in the report.

Challenges of working in a hybrid setting

Even though Owen believes the main benefit of hybrid work is flexibility, that should not be misconstrued as it being easy.

“The success of hybrid teams hinges on a leader ’ s ability to make strategic investments and decisions to support dispersed teams, foster a positive company culture across geographies, and empower employees regardless of whether they are in the office or at home, ” said Owen.

One challenge Owen has faced at GitHub is getting the right tone with their communication. Setting clear guidelines and expectations is important, but sometimes tone can get lost in written communication. Because of this, it’ s important to find the right balance between asynchronous and synchronous engagement, she said.

Another challenge for companies is not losing sight of their employees ’ experiences. Even when some workers are in the office, don ’t forget about your dispersed workers. According to Owen, companies that don ’t accommodate dispersed workers could lose out on their talent, and managers without training on managing dispersed teams are likely not maximizing productivity.

On the flip side, it’ s important to support those who are in the office. This means investing in tools and technologies that can help on-site workers collaborate with their remote coworkers, such as well-lit, camera-ready “ phone booths. ”

Another challenge, according to Sagi Gidali, co-founder and CPO at cybersecurity company Perimeter 81, is that there can be a limited timeframe for communicating with coworkers across different time zones. For example, if everyone is working from 9-5 in their local time zones, that gives people from Los Angeles and New York City a five-hour window of synchronous communication every day instead of eight. This might not seem like a big deal, but if the West Coast employee runs into an issue at 3 PM, the East Coast employee would have already ended their day by that point.

“We try to have as much overlap in our schedules as reasonably possible

Best places to work remotely in the U.S.

BY RANK

1. North Dakota 2. Nebraska 3. Minnesota 4. Colorado 5. Kansas 6. Idaho 7. Iowa 8. Tennessee 9. Washington 10. Illinois

Remote workers can do their jobs wherever they have internet access. That said, some states are more conducive to working online than others. Earlier this year, CNBC used the following factors to rank the ten best states for remote workers: • Broadband connectivity • Electrical grid reliability • Health and health care • Sustainability in the face of climate change • Environmental quality • Inclusiveness • The housing market • Cost of living • The tax burden Source: ziplyfiber .com

and many team members also make an effort to stay online a bit later to do so, ” said Gidali.

Asynchronous tooling is key to connecting employees

Companies that have already been working remotely already know the power of technology in facilitating collaboration.

As an example, at GitHub, they have an intranet site called The Hub, which pulls information from Slack, email, and GitHub, and acts as a central source for that information. GitHub itself also has a number of features that the company uses internally, such as GitHub Issues, which are a way to converse with contributors and manage projects. One benefit they ’ ve found from using Issues is that it allows work to progress throughout the day without teams needing to constantly connect, Owen explained.

“These records serve as a resource for historical decision-making, knowledge preservation, and snapshots of progress. The ability to capture and share important discussions asynchronously leads to a culture where everyone can do their work in the way that works best for them — driving higher quality, increased productivity, and happier employees, ” said Owen.

Turn the clock back on bad habits

According to Nush, there are some lessons to be learned from the initial push to remote work back in 2020, which was hastily done at many companies.

“When people quickly had to pivot overnight from working in an office to working from home, a lot of them didn ’t have laptops, " said Nush. “They were working on a desktop or something that was still sitting at that office. So a lot of organizations were instructing their workers to use a home computer, sometimes go out to their local electronics store and buy one off the shelf and use that to connect to the environment. And they were really just trying to scrounge and do whatever they needed to do to get back to work. ”

As you might imagine, a lot of bad habits came from this. According to Nush, now a lot of organizations are looking back and realizing that they should be working to undo some of those.

Many firms require workers to get vaccine to return to office

One of the main reasons that hybrid work is even an option is that vaccines for COVID-19 are now available. But even though they are available, not everyone has chosen to get one.

According to the New York Times ’ interactive COVID-19 dashboard, only 61% of Americans were fully vaccinated as of Dec. 15, 2021. This varies by state; 70.5% of all New Yorkers are fully vaccinated, only 64.9% of Californians are fully vaccinated, and in Georgia, 50.1% of the total population is fully vaccinated.

Most of the big tech companies — Google, Meta (previously Facebook), Microsoft, Netflix, and Twitter — all require that employees be vaccinated before returning to the office.

Google recently made headlines when CNBC reported that it has obtained an internal Google memo that notified employees to upload their vaccine documentation by Dec. 3 and that those who didn ’t comply with the vaccine guidelines would be placed on paid administrative leave for 30 days starting on Jan. 18. If they still haven ’t complied at the end, they would be placed on unpaid personal leave for up to six months, and then terminated.

While many companies may be making internal decisions to require vaccines to keep their employees safe, the Biden administration has also been a driving force behind some requirements. In November, it announced new OSHA rules that would require companies with 100 or more employees to either be fully vaccinated or be tested weekly. Under this rule, employers also need to provide paid time for workers to get vaccinated and require unvaccinated employees to wear a face mask.

How will the omicron variant impact hybrid work plans?

For many companies, hybrid work has remained a fantasy throughout much of 2021. Back-to-office dates kept being announced, then pushed back, and pushed back again, and so on. And with the emergence of the omicron COVID19 variant and stricter regulations, we might see those dates continue to be pushed back.

Google had been planning to return workers to the office in January 2022, but it pushed that date back in early December. Ford Motors also announced a delay in returning workers to the office as a result of the omicron variant.

According to Perimeter 81’ s Gidali, hybrid work is an ideal model for handling these unexpected issues, such as COVID-19 variants, or even a bad flu season. When one of these issues arises, it’ s easy for employees to switch back to working remotely since they are already set up for that.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was common for employees to feel like they had to still come into the office even when they were sick, but the events of the last couple of years and a flexible hybrid working model can help reduce or eliminate that pressure.

Low code helps facilitate productivity, morale

Last year, we declared that 2021 would be the year of low-code solutions. Low-code helps increase innovation, reduce development costs, and improve productivity, all of which were a necessity in early 2020 when companies moved from the office to remote work.

Now low-code is helping with the move to hybrid working models too. According to Deb Gildersleeve, CIO at low-code platform Quickbase, low-code can also help improve employee morale and thus avoid some turnover from The Great Resignation.

“Low-code and no-code allow the people who are able to think up what processes should be to then build it out for themselves, and that is really empowering, ” said Gildersleeve. Rather than needing to wait on others to complete a workflow or process, workers can be empowered to complete their portion of the process, and others can

< continued from page 13 do the same. “It’ s not a matter of, oh, I can ’t do my thing until they email me this. It puts the power of fixing that problem and improving their day in their own hands. ”

Employee experience is a huge part of whether employees decide to stay at a company or leave it. Anything a company can do to make sure the employee experience is positive will work towards better retention of talent.

“If you ’ re sitting there and you ’ ve got issues, and you ’ re just waiting on somebody else ’ s to-do list to get them solved, that’ s frustrating, ” Gildersleeve “And that might be a frustration that could build over time, and it might be the tipping point for you to take that phone call from the next company … There ’ s no perfect job, but when you have the ability to improve your day to day, I think that’ s what really makes people want to stay with a company. ” z

Best jobs for remote work (Degree required)

It is no surprise that computer and mathematical jobs occupy six spots in our ranking (1. Software Developer, 5. Computer Systems Analyst, 6. Data Scientist, 8. Informational Security Analyst, 9. Statistician and 12. Web Developer). According to BLS 2020-2030 Employment Projections, “Computer and mathematical occupations are expected to see fast employment growth as strong demand is expected for IT security and software development, in part due to increased prevalence of telework spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. ” These roles continue to be offered as remote positions, seeing that they only require access to a computer.

To maximize productivity and deliver value to more quickly, organizations are creating a new

BY KATIE DEE

Dev Manager

SERIES

As development teams continue to grow, the industry has seen a need for a new role: the developer experience engineer. The purpose of this role is to be sure developers have the necessary tools, environment, and processes to foster the best end result. While the concept of developer experience is not new, in recent years this position, and others like it, have emerged organically and are rapidly gaining traction.

According to Tim Kadlec, performance engineering fellow for WebPageTest with Catchpoint, the role of the DevEx engineer stemmed from recognizing developers as customers. “I think it goes back to the realization that any tool or any product that is aimed at a developer audience, that is your customer, ” he said.

customers role:

Developer Experience Engineer

ed about the project and trying to make sure that they enjoy using it, it is going to have to come through the entire experience from their first contact with the company all the way to when they ’ re actually using it. ” Examining every aspect of the developer ’ s experience with a certain product or process can lead to less friction throughout the development life cycle.

As this new role gains popularity, its importance within different organizations is becoming more apparent. “I think the Dev Experience role is important because it’ s not traditional marketing, it’ s not traditional sales, it’ s not a traditional funnel in any way, ” Kadlec said, “It’ s about how we make sure there is as little friction as possible when developers want to use and engage with different tools and products. ” When organizations focus on a developer's experience with certain tools early in the development process, it can end up saving time later, as a positive developer experience will undoubtedly lead to a more efficient outcome.

According to Jeena James, GM at WebPageTest and leader of its developer team, what makes the DevEx engineer role effective in her organization is the feedback from the end user.

< continued from page 17 users themselves, the developers, also get to see certain areas that they can actually help improve for themselves and have this ability to kind of contribute back, ” James said. Having a specific role in place focusing on developer experience gives the developers a place to go with constructive feedback as they work through issues.

Kadlec explained that a role that exclusively focuses on developer experience is no longer a luxury for organizations, but a necessity. “The developer experience engineer, ” he said, “they ’ re the stand-in for the developers who are actually going to be either writing the code internally or using whatever tool… it’ s their job to sort of take a lot of that feedback that we ’ re getting from the community and constantly keep that in mind as we ’ re looking at things like what features we should build or what gets prioritized and what doesn ’t. This is where the developer experience engineer role becomes really important. ” Kadlec explained that the DevEx engineer is also oftentimes the one who helps to keep the team on track with where priorities should and should not lie because they are speaking on behalf of the developer community. “Not even just features and stuff like that but the entire structure of a product and the commercial offering as well, making sure that all of that is fine-tuned in a way that is going to be appealing and convenient for developers, ” Kadlec said.

Different approaches to DevEx

There are several different ways in which an organization can utilize the DevEx engineer role. Kadlec and James explained that, in their experience, the most effective method is to take a dual approach, “The way we do it here is by treating the role as a split, so maybe half of their time is spent doing traditional engineering. In the case of WebPageTest, that means that half the time our developer experience engineers are building features, fixing bugs, maintaining the actual code base and then the other half of the time is spent on more traditional developer relations activities. That can be things like content production in the form of videos or blog posts or documentation or going out there and giving talks or writing sample code, things like that, ” Kadlec said. He went on to explain that this split method is important because it ensures that DevEx engineers have a deep understanding of the product itself as well as the needs of the developers working with it.

Another aspect of the role that makes these engineers essential is the relationship they can build with the end user. James said, “When you ’ re speaking to that audience, to your user who is a developer who can actually fix some of the things that are being asked.. It’ s good to have a developer talking to another developer to say ‘I get what you are trying to solve and here's how I would fix it’ . ” Having a developer on your team as the DevEx engineer serves to make the developers feel seen and heard within the organization.

One role with a dual purpose

Laura Thomson, VP of engineering at cloud computing services provider Fastly, said that she believes there are two aspects that make developer experience as important as it is. “One is that developer experience is an accelerant for the people that you have in your team already. We all know that it is hard to hire engineers, but developer experience is something you can use to make the engineers you already have more productive. The second part of it is that people who have worked somewhere that has a really good developer experience, will always rave about it… People who work there will say ‘I have all of these great tools at work, I have a great build system, I have great continuous integration tooling, I have great tools to help me do my job better’ and it makes people loyal, ” she explained.

In terms of the role of the DevEx engineer, Thomson believes that the need increases with company growth. “As you get to be a certain size as a company, you really do need a team in this area… and sometimes it’s got a different name, sometimes someone who works in this area isn't going to be called ‘developer experience’ or ‘developer productivity’ , they might be called a ‘release engineer’ or a ‘build engineer’ but all of those are sort of parts of the same thing, ” she said. z

Laura Thomson, Fastly

DevEx is a team sport

While having a role central to developer experience in place is crucial, Kadlec also stressed the importance of the rest of the team in ensuring a positive experience for developers. “It’ s important to note that the developer experience role does not operate well as an island. If you have a couple of people in the developer experience engineer role but they

’ re kind of working detached from these other components of the business and/or they ’ re not receiving support from the rest of the team, it’ s going to fall flat on its face, ” he said. Kadlec went on to say that if the whole organization is not working with the DevEx engineer and offering their support and services where needed, the role is essentially useless. Typically, roles within a business are not meant to exist in a vacuum, but rather as an integral part of the organization at large, and the DevEx engineer role is no different.

According to Lei Zhang, head of developer experience at Bloomberg Engineering, while it is important to have the whole organization working with the DevEx engineer, having too much input can sometimes become a hindrance. “I think it’ s a fine balance, sometimes you have a very specific problem and we go deep into that problem, but at the same time we always need to have a global view of what the developer needs to do to get a job done and have a really good experience, ” he said. Zhang explained that he sees the recipe for a successful team as having the right balance of people focusing on the specific, in-depth problems and people focusing more on the big picture and having that “ global view. ”

Zhang believes that the DevEx engi-

neer role, and other positions with the same goal, have become more important in recent years due to the large amount of growth the technology industry is seeing.

“I think the tech industry has been growing so massively and there is a specialization in skills and I think developer experience is at the core for developer productivity. Oftentimes, at an organizational level, it is almost the most important thing in order for an organization to have long term sustainable success. ”

Zhang said that although developer productivity has always been widely talked about, the shift to developer experience is due largely in part to an increase of this specialization of skills. With this shift to developer experience, organizations find themselves faced with new challenges to overcome. Zhang divides these challenges into two common themes, “The first one is the balance between individual or team creativity, and efficiency and sustainability at the organizational level… The second one is when and how we should do tech renovation. I think that successful organizations are likely to have solutions that are highly optimized with the technologies when they were built, ” he said.

Tools and technologies

Both of these challenges play a large role in developer experience because they affect the kind of tools and technologies that developers will be interacting with on a daily basis. Zhang believes that devising a plan to tackle these challenges is incredibly important when it comes to maintaining a positive experience for developers as well as sustaining the overall growth of the company.

With this, Zhang also mentioned the issue of inherent bias that may come up as a DevEx engineer. “As a developer we tend to always like the tools we use, we think that our tools are the best and that everyone should be using our tools, " he said, "but the reality is that developers have different preferences. ” This bias among the developer community can lead to issues with supporting the team while also maintaining organizational consistency. It is the job of the DevEx engineer to mitigate this issue while keeping their own biases in check. Once challenges like these are resolved, the DevEx engineer role will provide organizations with several benefits.

Rob Zuber, CTO at CircleCI, said that one of the key functions of the DevEx engineer is that they enable the developer to focus all of their effort on the task at hand. This keeps developers happy and will, in turn, create and sustain developer loyalty within an organization. “If I come to a job and find that I’ m spending 5% of my time on that thing that I’ m really excited about and 95% navigating the organization, dealing with coordination and project status, meetings, and change management… I’ m not going to stick around that long, ” he said. Zuber explained that as a developer, an environment like that would not be fulfilling. He said, “[in that environment] I’ m not growing in the area that I want to grow in… you want to be working on the thing that

you ’ re excited about… and so, when my company makes those investments, that gives me the signal that they care about what it is that I’ m trying to do and where I’ m trying to grow. ”

Zuber went on to explain what the life cycle of work might look like for a DevEx engineer, “It would start with understanding where folks are being taken away from the most valuable things they can do, and then looking for those patterns across the organization, ” he said. Looking for these patterns helps to tackle the problems that affect the majority of the organization, rather than focusing on only a small percentage of developers. “If only one team has a particular problem, then having a second team build a solution to that problem isn team, whereas all of your teams quite likely have the issue of building and deploying software, for example, so

you ’ re going to focus more energy there… it’ s not just about identifying problems, but identifying problems that are most pervasive across the organization, and then helping to solve those, ” he explained.

According to Zuber, another benefit of a role like the DevEx engineer is creating an easier process for onboarding new developers. “Developer environment setup is probably a pretty classic problem… If I am a new engineer in this organization, how do I get up and running and understand what I need to understand and have the tools on my laptop to start contributing effectively, ” he said. Zuber went on to explain that in a smaller organization this issue would become something of a “labor of love ” that would be solved by each indi-

vidual new developer, but in a larger company, this would be something that would fall to the developer experience team, making solving this issue much easier. “How do I just show up and my laptop is ready to go and day one I’ m coding instead of day one I’ m trying to figure out the 57 pieces that I need to install to start building, ” he said.

While it is not impossible for an organization to get by without a role like the DevEx engineer, it has certainly become incredibly advantageous to invest in this position. Zuber said, “I mean, you can totally get by without it… but then you would sort of be burning some goodwill by having engineers who are excited about building products and solving customer problems, invest a bunch of time in just trying to get things to work. ” z