Developer Experience at Uber with Gautam Korlam

In today’s episode of The Pragmatic Engineer, I am joined by my former Uber colleague, Gautam Korlam. Gautam is the Co-Founder of Gitar, an agentic AI startup that automates code maintenance. Gautam was mobile engineer no. 9 at Uber and founding engineer for the mobile platform team – and so he learned a few things about scaling up engineering teams. We talk about: • How Gautam accidentally deleted Uber’s Java monorepo – really! • Uber's unique engineering stack and why custom solutions like SubmitQueue were built in-house • Monorepo: the benefits and downsides of this approach • From Engineer II to Principal Engineer at Uber: Gautam’s career trajectory • Practical strategies for building trust and gaining social capital • How the platform team at Uber operated with a product-focused mindset • Vibe coding: why it helps with quick prototyping • How AI tools are changing developer experience and productivity • Important skills for devs to pick up to remain valuable as AI tools spread • And more! — Brought to by: • Sentry — Error and performance monitoring for developers https://sentry.io/pragmatic/ • The Software Engineer’s Guidebook: Written by me (Gergely) – now out in audio form as well https://engguidebook.com/#buy — The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode: • The Platform and Program split at Uber https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/program-platform-split-uber?utm_source=publication-search • How Uber is measuring engineering productivity https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/uber-eng-productivity?utm_source=publication-search • Inside Uber’s move to the Cloud https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/uber-move-to-cloud?utm_source=publication-search • How Uber built its observability platform https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/how-uber-built-its-observability-platform?utm_source=publication-search • Software Architect Archetypes https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/software-architect-archetypes — Where to find Gautam Korlam: • X: https://x.com/kageiit • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gautamkorlam/ Where to find Gergely Orosz: • X: https://x.com/GergelyOrosz • LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gergelyorosz/ • Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gergely.pragmaticengineer.com • Newsletter and blog: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/ — In this episode, we cover: (00:00) Intro (02:11) How Gautam accidentally deleted Uber’s Java Monorepo (05:40) The impact of Gautam’s mistake (06:35) Uber’s unique engineering stack (10:15) Uber’s SubmitQueue (12:44) Why Uber moved to a monorepo (16:30) The downsides of a monorepo (18:35) Measurement products built in-house (20:20) Measuring developer productivity and happiness (22:52) How Devpods improved developer productivity (27:37) The challenges with cloud development environments (29:10) Gautam’s journey from Eng II to Principal Engineer (32:00) Building trust and gaining social capital (36:17) An explanation of Principal Engineer at Uber—and the archetypes at Uber (45:07) The platform and program split at Uber (48:15) How Gautam and his team supported their internal users (52:50) Gautam’s thoughts on developer productivity (59:10) How AI enhances productivity, its limitations, and the rise of agentic AI (1:04:00) An explanation of Vibe coding (1:07:34) An overview of Gitar and all it can help developers with (1:10:44) Top skills to cultivate to add value and stay relevant (1:17:00) Rapid fire round — See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/podcast — Production and marketing by https://penname.co/. For inquiries about sponsoring the podcast, email [email protected].