Presentation: Full Cycle Developers @Netflix

Track: Practices of DevOps & Lean Thinking

Location: Ballroom A

Duration: 2:55pm - 3:45pm

Day of week: Monday

Level: Intermediate

Persona: CTO/CIO/Leadership, Developer, Technical Engineering Manager

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Abstract

The year was 2012 and operating a critical service at Netflix was laborious. Deployments were like walking through wet sand. Testing devolved into verifying endurance rather than correct functionality. Researching issues felt like bouncing a rubber ball between teams, hard to catch the root cause and harder yet to stop from bouncing between one another. All of these were signs that changes were needed.   

Fast forward to 2018. Netflix has grown to over 130M global members enjoying stories from all over the world. Deployments happen daily rather than monthly. The reliability of our service continues to improve and middle-of-the-night pages are much less common. Our mission critical services are owned and operated by small teams of developers with no dedicated test teams and no dedicated operations teams. How did we make this transition?   

This talk presents our journey from siloed teams to our Full Cycle Developer model for building and operating our services at Netflix.  I will discuss the various approaches we’ve tried, the motivations that pushed us to keep evolving, and the lessons learned along the way.  The audience will leave with an understanding of the Full Cycle Developer model, its pros and cons, and what’s required to make it work.  I hope that sharing our experiences inspires others to debate the alternatives and learn from our journey.

Speaker: Greg Burrell

Sr SRE @Netflix, member of the Edge Developer Productivity Team

Greg Burrell is a Senior Reliability Engineer at Netflix working in the Edge Developer Productivity team. In 2005 Greg was hired by Netflix to be part of a skunkworks team experimenting with the crazy idea of sending movies over the Internet.  Greg has spent his time at Netflix in the Edge Engineering group working in the areas of testing, build and release, operations, and developer tools.  Underlying all those roles has been a passion for improving availability, velocity, and productivity.   The question always on Greg's mind is "How can we make it easier to develop, operate, and support our services?"  Prior to Netflix, Greg worked for America OnLine.  No, he wasn't the "You've got mail" guy.

Find Greg Burrell at

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