How We Improved the Development Experience for our Client Developers 

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How We Improved the Development Experience for our Client Developers 



October 27, 2022

Published by Anna Granhed (Product Manager) and Nandini Singh (Senior Data Scientist)

TL;DR The core motivation for Spotify’s Client Platform (CliP) workforce is empowering and unblocking consumer builders and giving groups the instruments they should guarantee a cheerful and satisfying developer expertise (DX). In line with this, we wished to enhance the coding expertise for our growth groups by means of infrastructure adjustments. We performed analysis amongst 318 engineers and discovered that:

  • Developer productiveness and satisfaction had been compromised on account of longer construct instances, as per our Engineering Satisfaction survey outcomes.
  • We got down to enhance construct instances by means of a number of adjustments, certainly one of which was testing out totally different {hardware} for our construct programs.
  • Our analyses discovered utilizing Apple® silicon machines to be empirically quicker and financially helpful.
  • Build instances on Apple silicon machines had been 43% quicker than Intel-based Mac® programs, total, and as much as 50% quicker for Android builds and 40% quicker for iOS builds.
  • We labored with Tech Procurement to make sure an early {hardware} improve for consumer builders, outdoors of the conventional improve cycle, for a greater consumer developer expertise.
  • We despatched out a suggestions survey to the builders who upgraded their laptops. Our survey confirmed that >90% of surveyed workforce members gave a ranking of 5 (out of 5) for productiveness notion and growth expertise.

What motivated us to carry out this analysis?

At Spotify, we conduct quarterly Engineering Satisfaction surveys to determine obstacles that diminish builders’ total satisfaction and productiveness. One such impediment was longer construct instances. During early testing carried out final yr, we ran the identical builds on totally different machines and located that switching to Apple silicon for growth may scale back iOS construct instances by 20% to 30% (and as much as 50% with the brand new M1 Pro and M1 Max chips). Therefore, in 2022, we prioritised creating an important developer expertise by means of enhancements to our builders’ machine structure. 

What is the issue we are attempting to resolve?

We had been motivated to determine methods to enhance developer satisfaction by means of architectural enhancements. A beautiful weblog put up by a Reddit employees engineer impressed us to not cease at simply system efficiency, but in addition to validate a monetary use case for this transfer. 

Our downside assertion may be summarised in two factors:

  • Do we now have machines ok* for use by Spotify builders?
  • Will the efficiency enhancements justify the financial funding required? 

*What is “good enough”? For the aim of our evaluation, we outline “good enough” as a statistically important efficiency enchancment in Android/iOS native construct instances.

When do we all know we succeeded?

Given the processing capabilities of M1s, we hypothesised that M1 machine native construct instances would enhance considerably.

AvgLocalBuildTime(M1) < AvgLocalBuildTime(non-M1)

Empirical findings

Overall: Apple silicon is about 43% quicker.

Android: Apple silicon is about 50% quicker.

iOS: Apple silicon is about 40% quicker.

Are there any monetary advantages in upgrading to M1s?

In our evaluation, we discovered the improve to be cost-effective as effectively — we break even in about three months, and we may probably save as much as 36% in engineering prices per workforce.

Our advice

We had two inquiries to reply to be utterly happy. Were the machines truly higher in construct time efficiency? And was the efficiency enchancment well worth the funding required to obtain the machines?

Based on the empirical findings and our monetary evaluation, upgrading to Apple silicon machines positively meets our standards and is a viable answer to scale back developer construct time woes.

How does one prioritise and scale in a distributed-first world?

To allow this improve, we wanted so as to add help for the brand new machines to our growth infrastructure. We arrange a workstream devoted to help our builders whereas within the technique of reaching full help. We then requested groups throughout the organisation to verify dependencies and related tooling had been precisely up to date.

Given that these machines had been confirmed to be higher by way of construct efficiency, we really helpful an expedited, out-of-the-normal-cycle machine improve for consumer builders. To do that, we wanted to reply two questions: how ought to we prioritise inside the consumer developer workforce? And how can we scale for a distributed-first workforce?

The prioritisation work was cut up into two streams: new (joiners) and present staff. For the primary group, we collaborated with our colleagues in Tech Procurement and up to date the obtainable {hardware} in our “normal” tech cycle, ensuring that new builders obtained one of the best setup from the beginning. For the second group, prioritisation was a bit extra difficult. We determined to take a look at present {hardware} specs, specializing in older fashions and people with decrease RAM, because it was decided that each of those elements have important affect on developer expertise. 

At Spotify, our distributed-first approach of working permits us to have builders situated world wide. And due to our dedication to scale back our carbon footprint, scaling this improve meant not solely distributing the brand new machines, but in addition gathering the previous ones to make sure they’d be correctly recycled. This was executed in shut collaboration with Tech Procurement and wouldn’t have been doable with out the help from our consumer developer workforce. 

This wasn’t a small enterprise. It concerned transport to tons of of Spotifiers in 11 nations, with 5 totally different suppliers. Accounting for keyboard preferences (i.e., languages) meant that we had 5 totally different SKUs that confronted varied provide chain constraints, relying on the place the machine was lastly going to be shipped. We solid relationships with resellers and OEM producers, who helped us to minimise delays getting M1s to our keen engineers. 

Developer suggestions, six months in

To measure the success of the improve, we surveyed 100 collaborating consumer builders inside the organisation and leveraged the providers of our inner person analysis consultants to formulate questions that might assist us seize the essence of the affect. The survey was structured round three pillars:

  1. Development expertise
  2. Productivity notion
  3. Task success

Developer expertise

Almost all of the surveyed builders (about 98.8%) rated their growth expertise to be 4 or 5, the place 5 was one of the best expertise rating.

Productivity notion

Most of the surveyed builders (about 91.6%) rated their productiveness notion to be 4 or 5, the place 5 was the very best productiveness ranking.

Task success

About 83% of surveyed builders skilled a optimistic change (4 or 5) in process completion, the place 5 was one of the best expertise rating.

Free-text responses

We additionally analysed their free-text responses. Our builders shared that the builds ran a lot quicker, required much less wait time, and different optimistic experiences!

What we discovered

We gave vital significance to an organised suggestions loop and focussed on supporting and guiding our builders. While exterior elements brought on lengthy lead instances from our distributors, leading to a number of adjustments in estimated supply instances, we had been capable of overcome these challenges by sustaining a gradual data stream, instantly updating our builders with new data, and rapidly answering questions. Our efforts to speak transparently and incorporate suggestions had been met with understanding and persistence from the consumer workforce. 

Sometimes we have to deviate from our customary greatest practices to verify we proceed to empower staff, enabling them to achieve their full potential. Creating a optimistic developer expertise stays our high precedence, and the suggestions we obtained from our survey exhibits that we’re heading in the right direction in the direction of reaching our developer satisfaction targets.

Mac® is a trademark of Apple Inc.

Tags: engineering management



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