> A platform engineer builds something for a customer, just that in this case the customer is a developer, usually within the same organisation. > Why create t

> A platform engineer builds something for a customer, just that in this case the customer is a developer, usually within the same organisation. > Why create this artificial divide and silo thinking? If your customers are not happy with your work you're doing a bad job and your product sucks. The problem is that most companies don't start out with a platform team. They grow and grow until there are a set of problems that are ignored because there is no direct owner until they can't be ignored any more. A team gets created devoted to these problems and ultimately becomes a platform team, because it's an easy way to allocate work. It's one thing to design a "product" from the ground up. It's entirely another to be trying to build a building that is simultaneously crumbling and growing around you at every moment. Platform teams generally don't get the headcount allocation to get ahead of their work either, this results in having to make prioritization choices. When a platform engineer makes a prioritization choice, that means a product engineer is hearing "no." The problem then becomes the product engineer might do something to circumvent you or any other number of failure modes, when platform is circumvented or battled, this creates animosity. If a product team is told no, that likely means platform has to explain it, which is yet another time investment/context switch that is not building a platform "product". I assure you most platform developers are also "product" developers and see the platform as a product. The fundamental organizational difference between a platform developer and a product developer is that a platform developer is a "cost" and a product developer is seen as "income." Which ignores that platform teams are a product multiplier. A correct measurement of platform teams is aggregate product creation. When viewed this way it's pretty easy to see that a 5% boost across all teams might be a better investment than a 30% boost to 1 team. Unfortunately this is something that is very hard if not impossible to measure, so its a matter of leaderships gut feeling/the platform teams ability to market work that could be seen as fruitful.