Gusto selects DX over Jellyfish for deeper developer intelligence
4x+ return on investment in DX
Gusto provides payroll, benefits, and HR software, relying on over 500 engineers to sustain innovation in a competitive software market. As developer headcount expanded, productivity became increasingly important and difficult to understand. Gusto formed a developer productivity group and initially used homegrown tools for engineering metrics and developer surveys. Realizing the resources and ongoing effort this required, they began evaluating vendor solutions.
“We were held back by a poor feedback cycle,” says Stephan Hagemann, Head of Product Infrastructure and Developer Productivity. “We needed a way to identify where to invest and to systematically listen to problems and address developers’ concerns.”
Gusto considered Jellyfish and DX. While Jellyfish offered a good way to consolidate Jira and Git data, they saw shortcomings with insights it provided. The metrics from Jellyfish seemed prone to misinterpretation and hard to align stakeholders around. Plus, without direct feedback from developers, it would be difficult to understand the root causes of issues affecting developer workflows and tooling.
During the pilot phase DX stood out by combining both qualitative and quantitative data into a single platform, offering a more complete and actionable approach to addressing developer challenges. Hagemann explains, “With Jellyfish we couldn’t dig into the specifics. The feedback we had was incomplete, which made it hard to show engineers we were addressing their concerns.”
The transparency and ease of use of DX led to overwhelmingly positive feedback from engineers too. With an impressive participation rate in developer surveys, Gusto saw value in DX that Jellyfish couldn’t deliver. “The self-reported data collection was phenomenal—we had never seen participation rates this high from our surveys,” says Hagemann.
Today, DX underpins Gusto’s Developer Productivity Program. DX helps the company validate priorities, measure the impact of productivity efforts, and uncover friction in workflows. “DX doesn’t just stop at ‘here are the metrics.’ It’s set up to continue a conversation. That’s something we didn’t have before and couldn’t find anywhere else,” Hagemann says.
DX will continue to play a key role as Gusto scales its engineering efforts. Looking ahead, Gusto plans to use DX to address team-specific bottlenecks, measure the impact of new tools, and streamline onboarding for new engineers.
