observability, tech advice, honeycomb.io, etc
Years ago I predicted that columnar storage would remake observability. What I didn't see coming: vendors would build it, nerf it, and sell a worse version back to you as "Datadog, but cheaper"
When you need to execute a coordinated change on a tight timeline, a mandate is the best and most honest way to fund it.
On externalities and engagement, the problem with purity politics, and why we need to make AI boring again
If you lived through the shift from handcrafted server pets to immutable infrastructure, you should sense something oddly familiar about what's happening now.
Both sides are grappling with a real existential threat, and both sides feel like they are screaming into the void. Here's how to close the gap and get everyone pulling in the same direction.
In logs as in life, the relationships are the most important part. AI doesn't fix this. It makes it worse.
One year ago, Fred Hebert and I delivered the closing keynote at SRECon25. Looking back on it now, I can hardly connect with how I felt then. Here's what I'd say one year later.
I'm not sure whether to say "thank you" or "HOW COULD YOU DO THIS TO ME", but this one goes out to all the people who sent me advice on buying software last fall.
90% new material, a clearer mission, and a rogues gallery of contributors. The second edition of Observability Engineering is almost done.
"Operations" is not a dirty word, a synonym for toil, or a title for people who can't write code. May those who shit on ops get the operational outcomes they deserve.
It's the most wonderful time of the year: the pie, the eggnog, the eternal debates over whether deploy freezes cause more harm than good.
The satellite, experimental technology has become the mainstream, foundational tech. (At least in developer tools.)
On platform choices, professional responsibilities, and picking your battles
After a decade on WordPress, it's time to try something new.
I just watched a panel where tech execs nodded along as someone described the original definition of observability as an "unsolved problem" they had to build custom tooling for. My head exploded.
The "three pillars" are a lie that keep good engineers trapped inside a mental model from the 1980s, paying outrageous sums of money for tooling that can't keep up with the complexity of modern systems.
No, I haven't finished writing the book yet. Yes, I have more questions. Please?
Writing the second edition of "Observability Engineering" and I'm a bit out of my depth. Send me your stories?
I wrote a lot of blog posts over my time at Parse, but they all evaporated after Facebook killed the product. Most of them I didn t care about, but I was mad about losing one of them: a retrospective of the grueling, murderous two-year rewrite of our entire API from Ruby on Rails to Golang..
The struggle is what brings your ideals to life, and other thoughts on what turns a rebellious little shit into a committed institutionalist.