I don’t think anyone has platform teams fully figured out. We know they are especially important when scaling up fast-growing organizations, and they are key building blocks for all large tech companies. But how do you decide when to start your first platform team? How do you convince the C-level decision-makers to fund these? And what percentage of your engineers do you allocate to platform efforts?

I sat down with Ganesh Srinivasan, someone who has built several platform organizations, and has tackled all of these questions. We talked about:

• What are platform teams and when do they come into play?

• When is a good time to start a platform team, considering the growth stage of your company?

• Funding platform teams. How can you get support from the business?

• What % of platform investment is typical and why?

• Platform engineering leaders: recruit or promote? A common question for most people starting platform teams. It goes for engineers as well, not just managers.