Platform Engineering: From Theory to Practice • Liz Fong-Jones & Lesley Cordero

GOTO - The Brightest Minds in Tech

This interview was recorded for GOTO Unscripted.
http://gotopia.tech

Read the full transcription of this interview here:
https://gotopia.tech/articles/384

Liz Fong-Jones - Field CTO at Honeycomb.io
Lesley Cordero - Staff Software Engineer, Tech Lead at The New York Times
RESOURCES
Liz
https://bsky.app/profile/lizthegrey.com
https://github.com/lizthegrey
https://linkedin.com/in/efong
https://www.lizthegrey.com

Lesley
https://www.lesleycordero.com
https://twitter.com/clesleycode
https://github.com/clesleycode
https://www.linkedin.com/in/lesleycordero

Videos
https://www.alex-hidalgo.com
https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/most-important-developer-productivity-metric-build-times
DESCRIPTION
Liz and Lesley explore the evolution of platform engineering from its DevOps and SRE roots. They discuss the challenges of building effective developer platforms, the importance of psychological safety and evidence-based prioritization, the complexities of open source sustainability, and the delicate balance between centralized platform teams and developer autonomy.
The conversation covers practical insights on documentation automation, onboarding strategies, the manager-engineer career pendulum, and why treating platform work as a service rather than a mandate is crucial for organizational success.
RECOMMENDED BOOKS
Adkins, Beyer, Blankinship, Lewandowski, Oprea & Stubblefield • Building Secure and Reliable Systems • https://amzn.to/4n0bjae
Charity Majors, Liz Fong-Jones & George Miranda • Observability Engineering • https://amzn.to/38scbma
Beyer, Murphy, Rensin, Kawahara & Thorne • The Site Reliability Workbook • https://amzn.to/3IwsiOl
Kelly Shortridge & Aaron Rinehart • Security Chaos Engineering • https://www.verica.io/sce-book
Nora Jones & Casey Rosenthal • Chaos Engineering • https://amzn.to/3hUmuAH
Russ Miles • Learning Chaos Engineering • https://amzn.to/3hCiUe8

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Chapter

1. Intro (00:00:00)

2. Engineering the platform (00:02:16)

3. Platform engineering in practice (00:12:24)

4. From Kubernetes to Observability & onboarding (00:18:10)

5. From shadow IT to shared trust (00:25:41)

6. Outro (00:38:07)