Presentation: Full Cycle Developers @Netflix

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.