Arrested DevOps

We’ve all been there: burning out on volatile tech jobs, tangled in impossible systems, and wondering what our work actually means. On this episode of Arrested DevOps, Matty Stratton sits down with Kat Morgan for a heartfelt, funny, and sharply observant conversation about AI: what it helps with, what it hurts, and how we navigate all of that as humans in tech. They dive deep into how large language models (LLMs) both assist and frustrate us, the ethics of working with machines trained on the labor of others, and why staying kind—to the robots and to ourselves—might be one of the most important practices we have. “We actually have to respect our own presence enough to appreciate that what we put out in the world will also change ourselves.” – Kat Morgan Topics Why strong opinions about AI often miss the nuance Using LLMs to support neurodivergent workflows (executive function as a service!) Treating agents like colleagues and the surprising benefits of that mindset Code hygiene, documentation, and collaborating with AI in GitHub issues Building private, local dev environments to reduce risk and improve trust Ethical tensions: intellectual property, environmental impact, and the AI value chain Why we should be polite to our agents—and what that says about how we treat people Key Takeaways AI isn’t magic, but it can be a helpful colleague. Kat shares how she uses LLMs to stay on task, avoid executive dysfunction, and manage complex projects with greater ease. Good context design matters. When working with AI, things like encapsulated code, clean interfaces, and checklists aren’t just best practices. They’re vital for productive collaboration. Skepticism is healthy. Kat reminds us that while AI can be useful, it also messes up. A lot. And without guardrails and critical thinking, it can become more of a liability than a partner. Build humane systems. From privacy risks to climate concerns, this episode underscores that responsible AI use requires ethical intent, which starts with practitioners.

Openness plays a significant role in propelling DevOps and organizational processes forward. This is not to imply that everything must be open, but the default should be openness unless a valid reason indicates otherwise. Andrew Zigler, developer advocate at Mattermost, and Matty from Arrested DevOps recently shared insights on this subject. They discussed creating impactful developer advocates, managing community writing programs, and dealing with the challenges of open source communities. The Importance of Open Source in Communities Andrew emphasizes that the loudest and most contributory voices in open source projects are usually the paid internal staff. However, he champions setting up pathways in the community to validate the experience of all contributors and reward them with anything from thought leadership, platforms, or even swag. The key is to influence individuals at all levels of engagement and ensure that they feel they own part of what they are contributing. One of the challenges he identified is over-influencing which often stems from the fact that the paid staff are the ones driving the open source project vehicle. This imbalance usually drowns out the voices of other contributors, particularly those who may not have the luxury of dedicating as much time and energy to the project as the paid staff. Andrew suggests a solution: the company creating more developer advocates through the multiplier effect. This means ensuring that everyone across the board understands the importance of the open-source community and empowers them to contribute. The more developers contribute, the larger and more diversified the community becomes, leading to better outcomes and solutions. The Critical Role of Leadership in Open Source Communities Matty highlights how vital leadership is in these initiatives. By allocating resources, prioritizing open source community engagement, and maintaining a strategic focus, leaders can do much to foster a healthy open-source community. Successful leaders understand that engagement levels differ, so they create opportunities for different levels of contributors to partake and contribute to the community. To ensure the project remains harmonious and aligned with company goals, the leadership should give equal weight to both staff and contributors’ voices. In the end, everyone involved in the project is part of the community. Engineering Blogs: The Balance of Output The conversation took an interesting turn when they started discussing engineering blogs, a tricky subject for many organizations. Matty points out that these blogs have the tendency to publish sporadically, often dominated by lengthy droughts of content or a sudden overflow of posts. Such inconsistency happens when the contributors, mostly engineers, write when they can spare the time. Balancing this dynamic is crucial, and one suggested solution is to involve people whose primary job is creating content. They can collaborate with subject matter experts to create consistent, relevant content. Conclusion Operating under a default open environment for your projects does not mean that everything has to be open. Nevertheless, transparency and openness should be the norm unless necessary otherwise. By dealing with the occasional echo chamber and understanding that contributions will always ebb and flow, the community will thrive and keep moving forward. In line with the open source spirit, scaling advocacy is crucial in DevOps. It involves not only the individuals whose title is developer advocate but everyone within the company. By creating more advocates and amplifying community efforts, the DevOps movement continues seamlessly. Links Matty’s blog post about SharePoint (including broken images!) Community Pulse podcast

Chelsea Troy, a writer specialized in Machine Learning Ops from Mozilla, discusses transitioning to ML operations and challenges in deploying models. Topics include evaluating operationalization products, balancing metrics in decision making, and navigating complexities in ML operations.

Every ADO Cold Open Ever “Episode 0” of ADO “Old Geeks Yell At Cloud” video

The First 90 Days “It’s not a promotion - it’s a career change” (Lindsay Holmwood) “Not All Leaders Are Managers” - (Aaron Bassett)

John Willis’s talk at DevOpsDays Atlanta 2016 on Burnout https://platformengineering.org/talks-library/internal-platform-enterprise-courtney-kissler ADO - How to Eff Up Devops with Pete Cheslock, Nathen Harvey, and Randi Harper

OWASP Top 10 Stripe: The developer coefficient (quantifies the cost of bad code to companies to be $59B annually) Facebook: FAUSTA: Scaling Dynamic Analysis with Traffic Generation (how runtime analysis was used at WhatsApp to catch design flaws before they reached production) Dragan Stepanović - Async code reviews are choking your company’s throughput (from LAS 2022, a talk which highlights the systemic problems with developers trying to do manual code reviews of large PRs) AppMap, the runtime analysis company which Brian works for Cloud Native Security with Michael Isbitski ADO Episode

It's a complex world! Matty and Michael Stahnke wax philosophical about whether our systems need to be as complicated as we have made them

Arrested DevOps - The Database: The Elephant in the Room Arrested DevOps - Data! Data! Data! With Francesco Tisiot Arrested DevOps - The New DevOps With Adam Jacob History of databases talk from Matty and Kat Cosgrove

Arrested DevOps - DevOps With Better Marketing with Pete Cheslock Arrested DevOps - Platform Engineering with Daniel Bryant Arrested DevOps - Platforms with Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer Lean Enterprise The Future of Ops Is Platform Engineering Charity’s talk from devopsdays NYC Jess Kerr’s blog that Matt mentioned Cargo Cult Science