I've recently taken the Product Owner role. Stop bringing me solutions. Bring me problems! My job isn't to enrich endpoints. It's to filter noise, expose real pain, and align effort with impact. No problem statement ➡️ No work.

Probation works both ways. The company assesses your performance, and you assess the company.

Agile Meets Architecture, Berlin 2025 TL;DR from my notes

Wisdom from the BODY WORLDS exhibition bodyworlds.com/city/munich/

If you have Cloud Run workloads, consider the pricing model too. For high req rate, and consistent load -> instance base pricing. For occasional workload -> request based pricing.

A common thinking pattern I see with more junior developers is focusing on the latest tools or standards to make an impact. A senior starts with the organization's needs and identifies real problems, evaluates tools, and chooses the right one for the job. Focus on problems, not solutions!

Every external system you integrate with, hardware/software, becomes a point of risk. One unreliable/problematic partner means worse customer experience and more internal workarounds, monitoring, and communication. This doesn’t scale linearly.

SLI = What you measure (e.g., % of 5XX errors) SLO = The target (e.g., <5% errors in 900s) SLA = The promise to others (e.g., 99% uptime) You set SLOs stricter than SLAs to stay safe. You set alerts to catch drift before you fail the target.

tldr; Google updated their API quota with an invalid config, the change was propagated in different locations and customers were getting 503s. status.cloud.google.com/incidents/ow...

Things I want to write about but currently lack the time: - GCP Log Explorer Optimization - Manual Blue/Green GKE Node Pool Update - Elevation of Privilege Game - Exercise: Build your own Product Owner - Balancing Documentation vs Code as Documentation

In Kubernetes, control plane's components make global decisions about the cluster (for example, scheduling), as well as detecting and responding to cluster events (for example, starting up a new pod when a Deployment's replicas field is unsatisfied).

Don’t ask people what they expect from a presentation. They don’t know. A story is more powerful than pictures alone.

The certificate chain must start with the sender's certificate (server/client cert). Each subsequent certificate must directly certify the one preceding it. Server/Client Certificate → Intermediate CA(s) → Root CA ( omitted if it's part of the trust store) datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc...

If I can recommend storytelling to you for any reason at all, it would be that storytelling helps you realize that the biggest, scariest, most painful or regretful things in your head get small and surmountable when you share them with two, or three, or twenty, or three thousand people.Matthew Dicks

The best engineers aren’t the ones who know everything but rather the ones that know how to learn anything.

“To hone your craft is to honor creation. It doesn’t matter if you become the best in your field. By practicing to improve, you are fulfilling your ultimate purpose on this planet.” — Rick Rubin, The Creative Act

The `compact()` function in Terraform is handy when iterating over potentially null resources — e.g., if you’ve removed a resource that another depends on. `compact()` removes any nulls from a list. developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/la...

Deleting secrets from a secret store is a common root cause of incidents. To ensure that secrets are not in use, enable audit logs and check whether they have been accessed recently. In Google Cloud, Data Access Audit Logs are disable by default due to the logging amount that they can produce.

show, don't tell

After a database migration, check that hardware utilization stay within reasonable limits. Watch for spikes or high average CPU — could mean you forgot an index. Assuming an SQL DB, and proper alerting for resource utilization!

When a Terraform-managed resource is modified outside of Terraform, it may try to replace it on the next run. The ignore_changes meta-argument tells Terraform to ignore specific attributes of the resource. developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/la...

If you need to rename a resource in Terraform, it will try to recreate it by default. But with the `terraform state mv` command, you can map the new name to the existing remote object in the state. developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/cl...

In tech teams, as in other constellations of collaboration, juniors bring new perspectives — untainted by the complacency of long-term expertise. They see problems in ways that experts might overlook.

@gerritbeine.bsky.social on Self-organisation at @amaconf.bsky.social ⏳ A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

Michael Mahlberg on Leadership at @amaconf.bsky.social 🌱 A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@boicy.bovon.org on Flow at @amaconf.bsky.social 🔪📦 A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@jurgenappelo.bsky.social on Human Robot Agent at @amaconf.bsky.social 👾 A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@tekiegirl.bsky.social on Effective Diagrams at @amaconf.bsky.social 🗺️ A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@woodyzuill.bsky.social on Estimates at @amaconf.bsky.social 1️⃣2️⃣3️⃣5️⃣8️⃣ A few takeaways 👇🏻

Cosima Laube on Mind Skills at @amaconf.bsky.social 🧠 The value of understanding yourself — introspecting, reflecting, and ultimately being of service to others. A talk applicable to both personal as well as work life! A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@nativewired.com and Jakob Wolman at @amaconf.bsky.social on Autonomous Teams 👏🏼 A few of takeaways 👇🏼

@ewolff.com at @amaconf.bsky.social on Architecture and Agility. A couple of takeaways 👇🏼

@eoinwoods.bsky.social at @amaconf.bsky.social on Continuous Architecture Couple of takeaways 👇🏼

In Terraform, `depends_on` might cause more replacements than necessary; use with care > You should use depends_on as a last resort because it can cause Terraform to create more conservative plans that replace more resources than necessary. developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/la...

RSA vs ECDSA size

Look again at that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives.

Write good documentation; clear, precise, and in simple language. You’ll thank yourself later, and so will anyone who reads it.

All Terraform resource names are nouns and they should be named with underscores and not hyphens! `resource "google_secret_manager_secret" "secret_name"` developer.hashicorp.com/terraform/pl...

In case a GCP incident is triggered, but there is no more data, the incident remains open by default. With auto_close you can address that. > If an alert policy that was active has no data for this long, any open incidents will close. registry.terraform.io/providers/ha...

Consistent language in your API is key. Define reusable components when possible and reference them to avoid duplication. v2.asyncapi.com/docs/referen...

Cleaning up merged branches `git fetch -p && git branch -vv | awk '/: gone]/{print $1}' | xargs git branch -d`

Some asked me: "What's the best advice you've received". My dear and departed coach, during my teens, told me: "Everything happens for a good reason." I took his advice to heart and learned to look for the positive side of things.

I keep the shared existential angst. > Within 5 minutes of my first hike, the trees smiled at me and whispered their simple wisdom. > What is the point of money if it not for freedom? > What is your most scarce resource if not time? vinay.sh/i-am-rich-an...

TIL Zinc-ion: > “Zinc-ion batteries with this new protective layer could replace lithium-ion batteries in large-scale energy storage applications, such as in combination with solar or wind power plants. They last longer, are safer, and zinc is both cheaper and more readily available than lithium.”

Filotimo—a Greek concept—is a complex constellation of values and describes an array of virtues, including ideas such as honor, justice, dignity, pride, self-sacrifice, respect, gratitude, and hospitality. One of the best description I've found: www.akademie-solitude.de/de/online-pu...

Feedback questions > Where do you see potential for X to grow and take the next step? Even small suggestions help a lot. > Can you describe a concrete situation or situations to help me, and X understand your point more clearly?

TIL that you can define maintenance windows for GKE cluster upgrades. > Automatic cluster upgrades, including control plane upgrades and node upgrades. cloud.google.com/kubernetes-e...

> Are there any barriers to mastery that you currently experience in your work?