Local dev setups worked fine when teams were small. But when you’re dealing with hundreds or thousands of developers, things start to break - slow onboarding, dependency hell, inconsistent environments, and wasted compute cycles.

Cloud Developer Environments (CDEs) promise instant, reproducible workspaces, but shifting from local machines to cloud-first workflows is easier said than done. Latency, security, adoption hurdles, and cost can turn a promising initiative into an operational headache.

This talk will go deep into:

* Why local dev is unsustainable—from wasted CPU cycles to lost engineering hours.
* How cloud environments reduce friction—ephemeral, pre-configured workspaces that just work.
* Optimizing for speed—pre-warmed environments, AI-assisted debugging, and workload-aware compute allocation.
* Measuring impact—tracking developer velocity, infra costs, and sustainability improvements.
* Lessons from real-world rollouts—what works, what breaks, and how to get buy-in.