[denismerigoux]

Hi, OP here :) I've come to the same conclusion about programming language creation. However, for a very large organization, it makes sense to have a team in charge of language tooling (see Dropbox/Python, Facebook/Hack/Flow, Apple/Swift). Which is why I'm trying to convince the French state that they should have such a team of permanent people.

[ethbr0]

I worked in a similar kind of role recently, in a large public retail company.

The only advice I'd give would be to lean hard on finding, maturing, and then advertising end-user champions.

Cross-department / -traditional boundary products are frustratingly difficult to push top-down, as the leader of the space that "owns" the product (i.e. IT) doesn't directly see the value, because they're not the end user (business).

What mostly work for me was being as loud as possible with open-attendence educational events, continually taking meetings from interested areas, and then mentoring developing teams.

The goal is to help them create a killer product using your product, such that (highly-placed leader on their side) talks to (your leader) in glowing terms about your product. And that usually happens because your product helped them get a win that moved an important metric to them.

Hint: Ask them about things they've always wanted to do, but couldn't because it was technically impractical. There's probably at least one diamond in there that would be "easy" with your product.

Hint2: Think more broadly about the kind of thing you're trying to do, and get your team in that area. I've worked under CFOs as often as I've worked under CTOs, because "saving money" is near and dear to the former.

(Adapt as necessary to how French government works. Good luck!)

[vishnugupta]

Quite insightful! Being a part of product teams, I've noticed "platform" teams struggle and the reasons have mostly been not doing what you've pointed out above. As in, instead of working with their customers (i.e., other product teams) to identify their problems and fix them, they would push down their generic platforms down the throat. It invariably didn't end well.

I tend to think that platform/framework teams within a large orgs should be run as a B2B SAAS, at least with that mindset.

Also, if a platform team isn't run well, it ends up being the first one on the chopping block during layoffs. Uber laid off an entire developer-platform team earlier this year. One casualty was the Screenflow team, a promising product that didn't gain wider adoption due to terrible marketing/evangelism.

[ethbr0]

One can turn it into a flywheel too.

What features should you work on next? The things your users are asking for at your touchbases.

There's a time and place for top-down, but it works best when there are few edge cases. Platform work tends to be a normal distribution with the usual number of "Oh. We never thought anyone would want to do that" tails.

[denismerigoux]

Very insightful update, I'll remember it. Thanks!

[ethbr0]

Thank you for applying your skills to make the world a better place! If everyone did that, we'd all be better off.

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The issue you'll bump into is attracting the same caliber of talent.

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