Mechanism
Why do platform teams (DevEx, Infra) have such high turnover?
Platform teams have ~2x the turnover of product teams in the eng orgs I've seen. The standard story is "they're cost centers and underappreciated." Probably true but partial.
My fuller take:
1. **Output is invisible when it works.** A platform team that delivers a 99.99% reliable system gets less recognition than a product team that ships an OK feature. Career growth depends on legibility.
2. **The customer is hostile.** Platform users are internal engineers who are smart, opinionated, and frustrated when anything breaks. The relationship is structurally adversarial.
3. **The work is technically deep but rarely strategic.** Senior platform engineers cap out at a level below senior product engineers in most career ladders, even at the same depth of work.
4. **Burnout is structural.** Pages happen at night. Product teams don't carry pagers in most companies.
The mismatch between (1)-(3) and the actual difficulty of the work creates a steady gradient pushing people toward product roles. The orgs that retain platform people have *deliberately* shifted compensation and recognition to compensate (Stripe in its heyday; some Google infra teams), but most don't.
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Did 4 years on platform, switched to product. Salary jumped, scope grew, my manager could finally explain what I worked on to her boss. The role I left was the harder job by every technical measure.
Changed a mind:
- “the 'my manager couldn't explain what I worked on' point — that's the operative cause, not 'platform is undervalued' generally. it's specifically about legibility upward.”
Citadel and HRT pay platform engineers as much or more than developers, and turnover is famously low. The mechanism isn't really about platform vs product — it's about whether the firm's economic model treats platform output as a P&L driver.