Hangar DX Podcast

“How much productivity is AI actually giving your engineering teams?” is the wrong question.
In this episode of the HangarDX podcast, Ankit Jain, co-founder and CEO of Aviator, talks with Yegor Denisov-Blanch, researcher at Stanford University, about how engineering productivity is actually measured—and what the data says about AI’s impact on software teams.
Yegor shares insights from large-scale studies on developer output, why early AI productivity claims were overstated, how high-performing teams compound their gains, why some teams see no benefit at all, and what engineering leaders should (and shouldn’t) measure when rolling out AI across the software development lifecycle.
00:00 Introduction to Developer Productivity Research
06:12 Research Methodology and Expert Evaluations
10:35 Impact of AI on Developer Productivity
18:56 Invisible Contributions and Team Dynamics
24:59 Navigating Speed in Startups vs. Enterprises
26:34 The Role of AI in Productivity Gains
28:24 Measuring AI Usage and Results
30:14 Experimentation and Adaptation in AI
33:40 Understanding Ghost Engineers
38:07 Remote Work and Performance Dynamics
About Yegor Denisov-Blanch
Yegor helps software engineering teams make better decisions with data.
Currently he is a researcher at Stanford University. Previously, Yegor led digital transformation at DHL, and was a national champion Olympic weightlifter. 
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.

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 Block
04:18 Building Goose: The AI Agent
08:50 Adoption Across Departments
11:59 Scaling MCP Servers
13:17 Technical Challenges with MCPs
16:33 Governance and Security of MCPs
17:35 Tool Overload and Centralization Strategies
20:09 Overcoming Cold Start Problems
23:34 Evolving Goose for Different Departments
25:58 Open-Source and Internal Development
28:05 Measuring Success in AI Initiatives
30:02 Recommendations for AI Adoption
33:19 Future Predictions and Initiatives

About Angie Jones
Angie 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

"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 Meta
04:42 Defining Diff Authoring Time (DAT)
07:48 Evolution of DAT: From Version 1 to 6
11:17 Telemetry and Data Collection for Productivity
14:01 Challenges in Measuring Software Engineering Productivity
15:56 Impact of AI on Software Development Metrics
17:48 Case Studies: Productivity Gains from Metrics
22:26 Counterintuitive Findings in Productivity Metrics
24:43 The Challenges of Measuring Productivity
30:04 Qualitative Feedback and Developer Insights
33:28 Advice for Engineering Leaders on Data-Driven Practices
35:14 Future of Productivity Measurement in Software Engineering
About 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.

“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 Engineering
04:52 Transitioning from Engineering to Management
09:55 The Engineer-Manager Pendulum
14:56 The Evolution of Software Engineering Roles
19:54 AI's Impact on Software Engineering
24:46 Building Trust in AI and Human Collaboration
29:34 Skills for the Future of Software Engineering
34:39 The Future of Software Engineering
About Annie Vella
Annie 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.

“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 AI
03:00 The Evolution of Coding and Development
06:07 The Impact of AI on Software Development
09:59 Understanding Agent Experience (AX)
13:40 The Future of Human and Agent Collaboration
17:50 Open vs. Closed Systems in Development
21:50 Simplicity in Development Frameworks
25:31 The Role of Agents in Web Development
29:34 Predictions for the Future of Development
About 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.