Dana Kowalski
Engineering Manager, Substrate
Engineering Manager, Substrate
Runs the developer-experience org at Substrate; ex-CI lead at a fintech.
Sessions
Onboarding an Engineer in a Day
14 May 2026, 10:15 – 10:45 · Room 2A · Developer Experience · Talk (30 min)
Substrate measured the gap between a new hire's start date and their first merged change, then spent a quarter closing it. Most of the win was not tooling: it was deleting the… Show more
Substrate measured the gap between a new hire's start date and their first merged change, then spent a quarter closing it. Most of the win was not tooling: it was deleting the seventeen documents that disagreed with each other about how to run the app locally.
Dana Kowalski — Engineering Manager, Substrate