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!
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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
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The Pragmatic Engineer deepdives relevant for this episode:
• The Platform and Program split at Uber https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
• How Uber is measuring engineering productivity https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
• Inside Uber’s move to the Cloud https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
• How Uber built its observability platform https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
• Software Architect Archetypes https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
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Where to find Gautam Korlam:
• X: https://x.com/kageiit
• LinkedIn: / gautamkorlam
Where to find Gergely Orosz:
• X: https://x.com/GergelyOrosz
• LinkedIn: / gergelyorosz
• Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/gergely.prag...
• Newsletter and blog: https://www.pragmaticengineer.com/
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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
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See the transcript and other references from the episode at https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer....
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