Optimizing for developer happiness

Posted by Chad Dickerson on June 6, 2011

A few weeks ago, I gave a talk at Railsconf in Baltimore about how we optimize for developer happiness at Etsy. In the talk, I go into the philosophical reasons why continuous deployment makes engineers happy, how radically decentralizing authority and thinking of your team as a community optimize for happiness, and the how our approach to tooling makes everything work.

Here’s the video:

. . .and here are the slides.

A big thanks to Ben Scofield and Chad Fowler for inviting me! It was loads of fun putting the talk together and chatting with folks at the conference afterwards.

A big tip of the hat to Charlie Chaplin, Peter Drucker, and Jane Jacobs for the inspiration of their work.