“Management is not a promotion, it’s a career change” - Lindsay Holmwood You know those moments when advice hits you years after someone gave it? That quote from my first engineering manager has been living rent-free in my head during my first year of management. And boy, was Lindsay right - this isn’t just climbing another rung on the ladder, it’s more like jumping onto an entirely different ladder… while the first one’s still moving....
In the fast-paced, dynamic world of software engineering, where I have spent countless hours fine-tuning, debugging, and fortifying systems, one thing has become vividly clear: the landscape is ever-evolving. The traditional notions of job roles and team structures are continually being challenged and reshaped. As we chart these new territories, I find myself transitioning from engineering to product management within my site reliability engineering (SRE) team. This shift, admittedly, may seem unconventional to some....
In my previous post, I delved into the concept of alert fatigue and how it can hinder the performance of systems and the productivity of teams, suggesting that less is indeed more when it comes to system alerts. Now it’s time to translate that understanding into a tangible strategy to combat alert fatigue while improving overall user experience. This brings us to the emerging paradigm of Service Level Objective (SLO)-based alerting....
Introduction Picture this: your phone buzzes incessantly, Slack notifications ping non-stop, and your email inbox transforms into a seemingly bottomless vortex of doom. Sound familiar? This stress-inducing phenomenon is known as alert fatigue, and it’s a persistent challenge that engineers and organisations face. With modern software systems growing increasingly complex, staying on top of alerts has become a daunting task that can leave even the most seasoned engineers feeling overwhelmed....
In the fast-paced digital age of today, the engineering landscape and expectations for engineers have undergone significant changes. The approach a company adopts towards engineering can greatly influence both the work experience of engineers and the value they create. After reading the insightful analysis of “How Big Tech Runs Tech Projects and the Curious Absence of Scrum” by Gergely Orosz on his Substack, The Pragmatic Engineer, I felt inspired to elaborate on a few points he highlighted about problem-solvers and factory workers....