charity.wtf

Your Data is Made Powerful By Context (so stop destroying it already) (xpost)

My (hypothetical) SRECon26 keynote (xpost)

First I wrote the wrong book, then I wrote the right book (xpost)

“Observability Engineering”: a book so nice, we wrote it twice (xpost)

Bring Back Ops Pride (xpost)

On Friday Deploys: Sometimes that Puppy Needs Murdering (xpost)

2025 was for AI what 2010 was for cloud (xpost)

Hello World (xpost from substack)

Moving from WordPress to Substack

From Cloudwashing to O11ywashing

The Pillar Is A Lie

Got opinions on observability? I could use your help (once more, with feeling)

Are you an experienced software buyer? I could use some help.

How We Migrated the Parse API From Ruby to Golang (Resurrected)

Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career

In Praise of “Normal” Engineers

On How Long it Takes to Know if a Job is Right for You or Not

On Pronouns, Policies and Mandates

On Dropouts and Bootstraps

On Writing, Social Media, and Finding the Line of Embarrassment

Another observability 3.0 appears on the horizon

Corporate “DEI” is an imperfect vehicle for deeply meaningful ideals

On Versioning Observabilities (1.0, 2.0, 3.0…10.0?!?)

“Founder Mode” and the Art of Mythmaking

There Is Only One Key Difference Between Observability 1.0 and 2.0

How Hard Should Your Employer Work To Retain You?

Is It Time To Version Observability? (Signs Point To Yes)

Pragmatism, Neutrality and Leadership

Generative AI is not going to build your engineering team for you

The Cost Crisis in Observability Tooling

Questionable Advice: “My boss says we don’t need any engineering managers. Is he right?”

Becoming An Engineering Manager Can Make You Better At Life And Relationships

LLMs Demand Observability-Driven Development

How to Communicate When Trust Is Low (Without Digging Yourself Into A Deeper Hole)

Helicopter Management and Other Mistakes

Questionable Advice: “How can I drive change and influence teams…without power?”

Ritual Brilliance: How a pair of Shrek ears shaped Linden Lab culture by making failure funny — and safe

Choose Boring Technology Culture

Questionable Advice: “People Used To Take Me Seriously. Then I Became A Software Vendor”

Architects, Anti-Patterns, and Organizational Fuckery

Deploys Are The ✨WRONG✨ Way To Change User Experience

How to Throw A Company Offsite In A “Post-COVID” World

Every Achievement Has A Denominator

The Future of Ops is Platform Engineering

The Hierarchy Is Bullshit (And Bad For Business)

Rituals for Engineering Teams

Live Your Best Life With Structured Events

Giving Good Feedback: Consider the Ratio

Questionable Advice: Is there a path back from CTO to engineer?

Why On-Call Pain Is A Sociotechnical Problem

Advice for Engineering Managers Who Want to Climb the Ladder

The Truth About “MEH-TRICS”

Twin Anxieties of the Engineer/Manager Pendulum

How can you tell if the company you’re interviewing with is rotten on the inside?

How “Engineering-Driven” Leads to “Engineering-Supremacy”

Why I hate the phrase “breaking down silos”

Software deploys and cognitive biases

Why every software engineering interview should include ops questions

How Much Should My Observability Stack Cost?

Notes on the Perfidy of Dashboards

Engineering Manager Archetypes and Career Paths

Career Development For Engineering Managers

How To Hire An Engineering Manager

Questionable Advice: “What Should I Say In My Exit Interview?”

Know your “One Job”, continued

Know your “One Job” and do it first

How much is your fear of continuous deployment costing you?

Questionable Advice: “How can I sniff out bad managers while interviewing for a job?”

Questionable Advice: Premature Senior Followup Q’s

Should Engineering Managers Be Technical?

Questionable Advice: “How do I feel worthwhile as a manager when my people are doing all the implementing?”

“Why are my tests so slow?” A list of likely suspects, anti-patterns, and unresolved personal trauma.

Questionable Advice: The Trap of The Premature Senior

On Call Shouldn’t Suck: A Guide For Managers

Things to know about engineering levels

If Management Isn’t A Promotion, Then Engineering Isn’t A Demotion

Questionable Advice: War Rooms? Really?!?

The Official, Authorized List Of Legitimate Reasons For Deciding to Become a Manager

Questionable Advice: “What’s the critical path?”

How to make boba at home…without ruining any pans, making yourself ill, or ending up with a soggy, blobby mess

Questionable Advice: Can Engineering Productivity Be Measured?

Trolley Problems as a Service

Good Days, Bad Days, Impossible Days

Quarantine Reading Queue on the “Tiger King” Phenomenon

Observability is a Many-Splendored Definition

Questionable Advice #2: How Do I Get My Team Into Observability?

Questionable Advice: “After Being A Manager, Can I Be Happy As A Cog?”

A Manager’s Bill of Responsibilities (and Rights)

Deploys: It’s Not Actually About Fridays

SLOs Are The API For Your Engineering Team

The (Real) 11 Reasons I Don’t Hire You

Love (and Alerting) in the Time of Cholera (and Observability)

17 Reasons NOT To Be A Manager

Friday Deploy Freezes Are Exactly Like Murdering Puppies

On pain, careers, and doing things the hard way.

Outsource Your O11y: Now Roll It Out And Keep Them Happy (part 3/3)

Outsource Your O11y: Get Aligned With Security (part 2/3)

Outsource Your O11y: How To Be A Champion (part 1/3)

Logs vs Structured Events

Engineering Management: The Pendulum Or The Ladder

Software Sprawl, The Golden Path, and Scaling Teams With Agency

Ten Platform Commandments

How to Run a Tech Leadership Skill Share

Shipping Software Should Not Be Scary

On Engineers and Influence

An Engineer’s Bill of Rights (and Responsibilities)

Post-mortem: feminist advice meltdown (March 2nd)

Money, power and credibility

Company Values: A Resentful Odyssey

The Engineer/Manager Pendulum

The Accidental DBA

DevOps vs SRE: delayed coverage of the dumbest war

Operational Best Practices #serverless

WTF is operations? #serverless

Scrapbag of useful Terraform tips

Nail polish: the superior paint

Terraform, VPC, and why you want a tfstate file per env

AWS Networking, Environments and You

Two weeks with Terraform

How to survive an acquisition

2015 in recaps and life changes

Hello world