Why did a friend of mine decline the chance to join a so-called “digital transformation”? — Last year I had an interesting conversation with one of my best ex-colleagues that was worth sharing. Read the full post for free here: Throwing money at point A to get to D Why did a friend of mine decline the chance to join a so-called "digital transformation"?blog.alexewerlof.com

What is it? How does it work? When to use it and when not to use it? — Failover and fallback are sometimes confused with each other. This is a follow up article that digs into fallback, what it is, when to use it and what are some of the examples of fallback in the wild. Read the article here: Fallback What is it? How does it work? When to use it and when not to use it?blog.alexewerlof.com

What is it? How does it work? When to use it and when not to use it? — Published on my main site. I cross-post from my main site to my old Medium audience, but if you want to get the article as soon as it is out, please consider subscribing for free. Failover What is it? How does it work? When to use it and when not to use it? And what are some examples of failover?blog.alexewerlof.com

Back in 2006, Amazon CTO, Werner Vogels said: You build it, you run it It is easy to understand why a company that has built a strong empire around running software would focus on the “run” part. 💰 But allow me to elaborate why the real magic happens with full ownership: You build it, you own it. Read the full article for free here: You build it, you own it Why don't the high performing teams stop at the "run" level? This article suggests a successor to the "you build it you…blog.alexewerlof.com

Applying ideas from computer performance optimization and reliability engineering to improve organizational productivity — According to research from Fuze, unproductive meetings waste 15% of an organization’s collective paid time. For middle management, that figure increases to 35%. For upper management, that figure is 50%! Research shows that it takes 10–15 minutes for programmers to get back to work after an interruption. (Solingen, Parnin) Today’s knowledge workers…

Is there really any value in setting service level indicators and objectives? — Does your company get a panic attack every time there’s an incident? 💔 Is finger pointing and blaming seen as an insurance to see less incidents? 👉 Does the blast radius of incidents grow month after month and year after year? 💣 That’s probably because we fail to acknowledge a simple fact: complex systems fail all the time.

How did we get used to share information with the cloud — Giving up privacy in exchange for... It is amazing how fast we get used to giving away our privacy in exchange for convenience, safety, curiosity, etc. 😄😲…blog.alexewerlof.com

The lifecycle of technical committees and how they inevitably collapse — A while back I was asked to join a Technical Committee. 😲 I politely declined but my excuse became the core of this post. This post briefly defines what a Technical Committee is, its lifecycle, the reasons it’s a bad idea and when to actually use it. Technical Committee Lifecycle A while back I was asked to join a Technical Committee. 😲 I politely declined but my excuse became the core of this…blog.alexewerlof.com

A conversation about the role of technical program manager and how it completes the role of the staff engineer — When it comes to technical leadership roles, Staff+ Engineer and Technical Program Management have one thing in common: confusion! Outside big tech, these roles are still new and to be introduced. I wanted to reach out to a veteran TPM who has had the role at big tech and exchange notes.