Adventures in DevOps The IT Dictionary: Post-Mortems, Cargo Cults, and Dropped Databases
Oct 2, 2025
29:34
Episode Sponsor: Attribute - https://dev0ps.fyi/attribute
We're joined by 20 year industry veteran and DevOps advocate, Adam Korga, celebrating the release of his book IT Dictionary. In this episode we quickly get down to the inspiration behind postmortems as we review some cornerstone cases both in software and in general technology.
Adam shares how he started in the industry, long before DevOps was a coined term, focused on making systems safer and avoiding mistakes like accidentally dropping a production database. we review the infamous incidents of accidental database deletion, by LLMs and human's alike.
And of course we touch on the quintessential postmortems in civil engineering, flight, and survivorship bias from World War II through analyzing bullet holes on returning planes.
Notable Facts
We're joined by 20 year industry veteran and DevOps advocate, Adam Korga, celebrating the release of his book IT Dictionary. In this episode we quickly get down to the inspiration behind postmortems as we review some cornerstone cases both in software and in general technology.
Adam shares how he started in the industry, long before DevOps was a coined term, focused on making systems safer and avoiding mistakes like accidentally dropping a production database. we review the infamous incidents of accidental database deletion, by LLMs and human's alike.
And of course we touch on the quintessential postmortems in civil engineering, flight, and survivorship bias from World War II through analyzing bullet holes on returning planes.
Notable Facts
- Adam's book: IT Dictionary
- Knight Capital: the 45 minute nightmare
- Work Chronicles Comic: Will my architecture work for 1 Million users?
- Warren - Cuitisan CANDL storage containers
- Adam - FUBAR