Many engineering teams embrace the you build it, you own it mantra. But what happens when this leads to operational friction instead of empowerment, especially as you scale? This talk discusses Grammarly's five-year journey transforming our engineering platform, supporting 500+ engineers, from a complex necessity into a strategic asset that genuinely boosts developer productivity. I'll share the steps we took to overcome common hurdles, reducing onboarding from weeks to days and project setup from hours to minutes. We didn't tinker around the edges; we rethought our core philosophy. This involved establishing a unified developer experience, creating Golden Paths for core processes, building effective self-service systems, and ensuring technical compliance without stifling autonomy. This inside look shares not only our wins but also the pitfalls we encountered along the way. My aim is to offer you a candid look at how we made our platform work for our developers so you can apply these insights to your engineering environment. Attendee takeaways: A practical blueprint for evolving the ownership: what to automate, what to leave free. Tactics that win executive support for bold platform bets. An example of implementation for Platform as a product.