Hangar DX Podcast

• How Block Deployed AI Agents Company-Wide in 2 Months

  What happens when a single engineer’s side project turns into a company-wide AI platform used by every department—engineering, product, marketing, finance, customer support, and sales?In this episode of the Hangar DX Podcast, Block’s VP of Engineering Angie Jones shares the inside story of how Block deployed AI agents across the entire organization in just eight weeks.She reveals how an internal tool called Goose—originally built by one engineer—became one of the first-ever MCP clients, exploded as an open-source project, and evolved into a general-purpose agent powering workflows across the company.We also dig into security and governance, adoption strategies, and practical lessons that every platform team can learn from.00:00 Introduction to AI Transformation at Block04:18 Building Goose: The AI Agent08:50 Adoption Across Departments11:59 Scaling MCP Servers13:17 Technical Challenges with MCPs16:33 Governance and Security of MCPs17:35 Tool Overload and Centralization Strategies20:09 Overcoming Cold Start Problems23:34 Evolving Goose for Different Departments25:58 Open-Source and Internal Development28:05 Measuring Success in AI Initiatives30:02 Recommendations for AI Adoption33:19 Future Predictions and InitiativesAbout Angie JonesAngie Jones is the Vice President of Engineering, AI Tools & Enablement at Block, Inc.She is an award-winning teacher and international keynote speaker and holds more than 25 patents for inventions in the areas of virtual worlds, collaboration software, social networking, smarter planet, and software development processes.About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers

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• Measuring Developer Productivity at Meta

  "Measuring developer productivity is fundamental now that we're observing the largest change in software engineering in a decade. I'm happy we have our traditional productivity metrics in a good place so we can better observe the effect of AI." Moritz Beller is a software engineering researcher at Meta, and in this episode of the Hangar DX podcast, he talks to Ankit Jain, CEO and co-founder of Aviator, about how Meta came up with their foundational metric DAT - Diff Authoring Time, why time is one of the least gameable metrics, how AI-assisted development changes the meaning of “productivity,” and why investments in tooling drive far more value than surface-level optimizations.00:00 Introduction 01:04 Understanding Developer Insights at Meta04:42 Defining Diff Authoring Time (DAT)07:48 Evolution of DAT: From Version 1 to 611:17 Telemetry and Data Collection for Productivity14:01 Challenges in Measuring Software Engineering Productivity15:56 Impact of AI on Software Development Metrics17:48 Case Studies: Productivity Gains from Metrics22:26 Counterintuitive Findings in Productivity Metrics24:43 The Challenges of Measuring Productivity30:04 Qualitative Feedback and Developer Insights33:28 Advice for Engineering Leaders on Data-Driven Practices35:14 Future of Productivity Measurement in Software EngineeringAbout Moritz Beller Moritz is a software engineering researcher at Meta. In 2024, she began a part-time Master’s of Engineering in Software Engineering at the University of Auckland, researching the impact of AI on the profession itself. His interest lies in creating and empirically evaluating tools that help developers be more productive.About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers.We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies or who are interested in developer productivity.

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• Software Engineering Identity Crisis with Annie Vella

  “Many of us became software engineers because we found our identity in building things. Not managing things. Not overseeing things. Building things. With our own hands, our own minds, our own code.But that identity is being challenged.”In this episode of the HangarDX podcast, Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Aviator, talks to Annie Vella about the software engineer’s identity crisis, why engineers are so attached to writing code, and how they can prepare for a rapidly evolving future.00:00 The Identity Crisis in Software Engineering04:52 Transitioning from Engineering to Management09:55 The Engineer-Manager Pendulum14:56 The Evolution of Software Engineering Roles19:54 AI's Impact on Software Engineering24:46 Building Trust in AI and Human Collaboration29:34 Skills for the Future of Software Engineering34:39 The Future of Software EngineeringAbout Annie VellaAnnie is a lifelong computer enthusiast with two decades of hands-on engineering and technical leadership experience. Currently a Distinguished Engineer at Westpac New Zealand, she focuses on resilient systems, cross-org opportunities, and quality-first engineering processes. In 2024, she began a part-time Master’s of Engineering in Software Engineering at the University of Auckland, researching the impact of AI on the profession itself.About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers.We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies or who are interested in developer productivity.

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• Agent Experience and the Future of Web Development with Matt Biilmann, CEO of Netlify

  “We're seeing the rise of a new persona that uses our products, the autonomous agent. That means we need to design for them, too. Agent Experience (AX) is about creating products that agents can navigate, integrate with, and orchestrate effectively.”In this episode, Matt Biilmann, CEO and co-founder of Netlify, joins Ankit Jain, founder of Aviator, to unpack the next evolution in software: agent experience.Matt, known for coining the term Jamstack, shares how AI is transforming the way we build for the web, making almost everyone a web developer. From Agent Experience (AX) to open vs. closed agent ecosystems, he explains how autonomous agents will reshape software development and why he thinks we are just entering the decade of agents. 00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and AI03:00 The Evolution of Coding and Development06:07 The Impact of AI on Software Development09:59 Understanding Agent Experience (AX)13:40 The Future of Human and Agent Collaboration17:50 Open vs. Closed Systems in Development21:50 Simplicity in Development Frameworks25:31 The Role of Agents in Web Development29:34 Predictions for the Future of DevelopmentAbout Matt Billmann Matt Billmann is CEO of Netlify, a company he co-founded in 2014. He has been building developer tools, content management systems, and web infrastructure for more than 30 years and is recognized for coining the term “Jamstack.” About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps and senior software engineers focused on developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and ultimately help each other in their projects and careers.We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies or who are interested in developer productivity.

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• DevEx Is About Making the Car Faster, Not the Driver

  "Let’s not worry about how fast somebody can run. Let’s assume that they will be fast if they’re in a rocket."In this episode of The Hangar DX podcast, Shahab Malik, DevEx UX Researcher at JP Morgan Chase, discusses researching developers' needs and pain points in a 70,000-engineer organization and advocates for an enablement approach to developer productivity metrics. Chapters00:00 Introduction to Developer Experience and UX Research01:59 The Role of UX Research in Developer Experience05:21 Methodologies in UX Research10:08 Understanding Developer Needs and Pain Points13:59 Metrics and Measuring Developer Productivity20:52 The Importance of System Metrics vs. Individual Metrics27:40 Communicating Developer Experience to Leadership32:43 The Impact of AI on Developer ExperienceAbout Shahab MalikShahab Malik is a UX Researcher at JPMorgan Chase, where he focuses on Developer Experience (DevEx) within the firm’s Internal Developer Platform (IDP). With a PhD in cultural anthropology, Shahab brings both qualitative and quantitative methods to studying human behavior in complex technical environments. About Hangar DX (https://dx.community/)The Hangar is a community of senior DevOps engineers and senior software engineers focused on enhancing the developer experience. This is a space where vetted, experienced professionals can exchange ideas, share hard-earned wisdom, troubleshoot issues, and help each other in their projects and careers.We invite developers who work in DX and platform teams at their respective companies or who are interested in developer productivity to join us!

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