Tech Lead Journal

“DevOps is about creating a collaborative environment between the development team and the operations team, and aligning goals and incentives between those two teams. Because so many of the problems that we encounter in life, not just even in technology, are due to misalignment of goals." Jeffery Smith is the author of “Operations Anti-Patterns, DevOps Solutions” and the Director of Production Operations at Centro. In this episode, Jeffery described DevOps essentials and emphasized what DevOps is not. He also explained about CAMS, a framework that outlines the core components required for successful DevOps transformation. We then discussed three anti-patterns taken from his book: paternalist syndrome, alert fatigue, and wasting perfectly good incident; and he explained how to recognize those anti-patterns in order to avoid them on our DevOps journey. Finally, Jeffery also talked about postmortem and shared tips on how to cultivate a good postmortem culture. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:47] DevOps - [00:09:13] CAMS - [00:12:42] Why DevOps Anti-Patterns - [00:16:48] Anti-Pattern 1: Paternalist Syndrome - [00:19:55] Anti-Pattern 2: Alert Fatigue - [00:27:20] Anti-Pattern 3: Wasting a Perfectly Good Incident - [00:34:33] Postmortem - [00:39:59] 4 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:57] _____ Jeffery Smith’s Bio Jeffery Smith has been in the technology industry for over 15 years, oscillating between management and individual contributor. Jeff currently serves as the Director of Production Operations for Centro, a media services and technology company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Before that he served as the Manager of Site Reliability Engineering at Grubhub. Jeff is passionate about DevOps transformations in organizations large and small, with a particular interest in the psychological aspects of problems in companies. He lives in Chicago with his wife Stephanie and their two kids Ella and Xander. Follow Jeffery: Website – https://attainabledevops.com/ Twitter – @DarkAndNerdy LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jeffery-smith-devops Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/59.

“The main goal of unit testing is to enable sustainable growth of your software project that enables you to move faster with a more quality code base." Vladimir Khorikov is the author of “Unit Testing: Principles, Practices, and Patterns” and the founder of Enterprise Craftsmanship blog. In this episode, we discussed in-depth about unit testing. Vladimir broke down the four pillars of unit testing and the anatomy of a good unit test, as well as mentioned a couple of common unit testing anti-patterns. We also discussed topics such as test-driven development, code coverage and other unit testing metrics, test mocks and how to use it properly, and how to be pragmatic when writing unit tests. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:32] Unit Testing - [00:08:20] The Goal of Unit Testing - [00:11:34] Test-Driven Development - [00:12:55] Code Coverage & Other Successful Metrics - [00:17:35] Pragmatic Unit Tests - [00:21:04] 4 Pillars of Unit Testing - [00:23:40] Anatomy of a Good Unit Test - [00:34:01] Test Mocks - [00:38:16] Unit Testing Anti-Patterns - [00:47:05] Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:49:56] _____ Vladimir Khorikov’s Bio Vladimir Khorikov is the author of the book “Unit Testing: Principles, Practices, and Patterns”. He has been professionally involved in software development for over 15 years, including mentoring teams on the ins and outs of unit testing. He’s also the founder of the Enterprise Craftsmanship blog, where he reaches 500 thousand software developers yearly. Follow Vladimir: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/vladimir-khorikov-bb482653 Twitter – https://twitter.com/vkhorikov Enterprise Craftsmanship – https://enterprisecraftsmanship.com/ Pluralsight – https://app.pluralsight.com/profile/author/vladimir-khorikov Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/58.

“Software telemetry is what you use to figure out what your production systems are doing. It’s all about shortening that feedback loop between the user experience and the engineers who are writing the user experience." Jamie Riedesel is a Staff Engineer at Dropbox working on the HelloSign product and also the author of “Software Telemetry”. In this episode, Jamie shared an overview of software telemetry and explained why it is important for us to understand how our production systems are behaving by using those telemetry data. She also explained different software telemetry types, concepts such as observability and cardinality, and shared some software telemetry best practices. In the second part of our conversation, Jamie opened up and shared her own personal experience dealing with toxic work environments. She emphasized the importance of self-awareness and psychological safety, as well as went through the five key dynamics to a successful team based on Google’s re:Work blog post. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:15] Software Telemetry - [00:07:22] Knowing Your Production System - [00:12:13] Types of Software Telemetry - [00:16:45] High Cardinality - [00:22:34] Observability & Buzzwords - [00:27:08] In-House vs. SaaS - [00:30:04] Some Telemetry Best Practices - [00:32:35] Toxic Workplace - [00:38:45] Identifying Your Toxicity - [00:44:18] Psychological Safety - [00:49:02] Identifying a Person’s Baggage - [00:53:52] Who is On The Team Matters Less - [00:58:09] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:01:49] _____ Jamie Riedesel’s Bio Jamie Riedesel has over twenty years of experience in the tech industry, and has spent her time as a System Administrator, Systems Engineer, DevOps Engineer, and Platform Engineer. She is currently a Staff Engineer at Dropbox, working on their HelloSign product. Jamie’s blog at sysadmin1138.net has been there since 2004 and survived the apocalypse of Google Reader shutting down. Jamie is the author of “Software Telemetry” through Manning Publications, and also has a deep interest in reforming team cultures to be less toxic. Follow Jamie: Blog – https://sysadmin1138.net/mt/blog/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/sysadm1138 LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-riedesel-983773b Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/57.

“Good code should be resilient to bugs. It should make it easier to do the changes that you want to the system. Some refactoring could make it harder to make changes. So, if you guess wrongly the direction of the software, then it can have a negative effect." Christian Clausen is a Technical Agile Coach specializing in teaching teams on how to refactor their code properly. He is also the author of “Five Lines of Code”. In this episode, Christian explained in-depth about refactoring, when and how we should do refactoring, the components, workflow, and pillars of refactoring. Christian also shared about a few important architectural refactoring, such as composition over inheritance and changing by addition instead of modification. Finally, Christian also shared a few tips for writing quality software, such as the five lines of code rule, the habit of deleting code, and avoiding optimization and generality. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:20] Refactoring & Good Code - [00:06:58] Refactoring & Testing - [00:10:07] Components of Refactoring - [00:14:36] Advice to Start Refactoring - [00:16:17] Refactoring Workflow - [00:18:21] Pillars of Refactoring - [00:22:07] Five Lines of Code - [00:25:51] Composition Over Inheritance - [00:30:00] Changing by Addition Instead of Modification - [00:34:12] Love Deleting Code - [00:37:01] Avoid Optimizations and Generality - [00:39:38] Favorite Refactoring Strategies - [00:43:28] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:17] _____ Christian Clausen’s Bio Christian Clausen works as a Technical Agile Coach teaching teams how to properly refactor their code. He has previously worked as a software engineer on the Coccinelle semantic patching project, an automated refactoring tool. He holds an MSc degree in Computer Science and has taught software quality at a university level for five years. Follow Christian: Twitter – https://twitter.com/thedrlambda GitHub – https://github.com/thedrlambda Medium – https://thedrlambda.medium.com/ Our Sponsor Are you looking for a new cool swag? Tech Lead Journal now offers you some swags that you can purchase online. These swags are printed on-demand based on your preference, and will be delivered safely to you all over the world where shipping is available. Check out all the cool swags by visiting https://techleadjournal.dev/shop. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/56.

“Decide where it is you’re going and what kind of career you need to live the life you want and aim for that really deliberately. Because if you don’t know where you’re going, then you never will get there." Don Jones is the author of “Own Your Tech Career” and the VP of Developer Skills at Pluralsight. In this episode, Don explained why it is important for us to understand the career we want and aim to build that career deliberately, instead of keep chasing promotion and more money continuously, and thus winding up in a rat race. He emphasized a few important things as part of owning our career, such as the importance of soft skills, showing yourself as a professional, building a personal brand, and being a better decision-maker. Do not miss a couple of showing up as professional tips that Don adopted from Disney! Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:52] Owning Our Tech Career - [00:07:11] On Money - [00:11:18] Importance of Soft Skills - [00:13:24] Showcasing Strong Profile - [00:16:28] Showing as Professional: Be Your Word - [00:20:14] Be Detailed and Precise - [00:23:15] Cut Your Losses When The Time is Right - [00:25:21] Let Blue Sky Mode Happen - [00:29:28] Draw a Yellow Line - [00:31:38] Building a Personal Brand - [00:34:45] What to Contribute and Finding Time - [00:40:24] RAPID Decision Making - [00:43:46] Deciding What’s Enough - [00:45:29] Deciding What to Believe - [00:47:55] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:51:23] _____ Don Jones’s Bio Don Jones has been in the IT industry since the mid-1990s, and has worked in roles ranging from software developer to network engineer. He’s most well-known for his work with Microsoft’s Windows PowerShell, and he’s written literally dozens of books on other IT topics. Today, much of Don’s focus is on helping technology professionals become owners of their careers, through books like How to Own Your Tech Career and projects like his Ampere.Club website. You can view Don’s full bibliography at DonJones.com. Follow Don: Website – https://donjones.com/ LinkedIn – https://linkedin.com/in/concentrateddon/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/concentrateddon Ampere Club – https://ampere.club Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/55.

“Going from development to management is not a promotion. It’s an entirely new career. And there is normally a lack of proper guidance for that." Alvaro Moya is the founder of Lidr, a community that prepares and transforms the tech leaders and CTOs of tomorrow through immersive, experiential, and community-driven programs. In this episode, Alvaro shared the story of Lidr and why he started it, learning from his own journey working in multiple startups and scaleups. Alvaro then shared his view on technical leadership, the challenges surrounding it, and why it is important for companies to prioritize on improving leadership. Alvaro also touched on how tech leaders can create and nurture high-performing teams, with an emphasis on cultivating ownership, as well as giving some advice on how we should plan and choose our career track and progression, including tips and practices on how we can become better tech leaders through practising leadership informally. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:29] Lidr.co - [00:10:21] Technical Leadership Challenges - [00:12:22] Upskilling Leadership - [00:15:23] Prioritizing Improving Leadership - [00:18:56] Career Progression Guide - [00:24:31] Nurturing High-Performance Team - [00:27:17] Cultivating Ownership - [00:31:36] Becoming a Better Tech Leader - [00:36:21] Advise for Choosing Career Track - [00:41:56] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:45:04] _____ Alvaro Moya’s Bio Alvaro Moya is the founder of Lidr, a community that prepares and transforms the tech leaders and CTOs of tomorrow through immersive, experiential, and community-driven programs. He is an experienced CTO and tech consultant, passionate about tech startups, a serial founder, investor & advisor. Follow Alvaro: Lidr – https://www.lidr.co LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/alvarormoya/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/AlvaroRMoya Email – alvaro@lidr.co Join #TECHLEADweek on 27-30 Sep 2021 – https://tech.lidr.co/tlw-techleadjournal Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/54.

“The whole point of microservices and adopting microservices is not to have microservices. The goal is to improve the software delivery key metrics, i.e. rapid, reliable, frequent, and sustainable delivery of software." Chris Richardson is a recognized thought leader in microservices and the author of “Microservices Patterns”. In this episode, we opened our conversation talking about the current state of microservices vs monolith architecture. Chris then explained why he thinks monolith is not actually an anti-pattern and when it’s a good time for us to consider adopting microservice architecture. He then shared about the success triangle for implementing microservices, important concepts such as design time coupling and some microservices patterns, such as the Saga pattern, and how his current work on Eventuate can help developers to implement these patterns easier. At the end, Chris briefly explained some of his important principles for decomposing a monolith successfully. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:52] State of Microservices vs Monolith - [00:11:56] Monolith is Not an Anti-Pattern - [00:15:43] When to Adopt Microservices - [00:18:46] Microservices Success Triangle - [00:23:04] Design Time Coupling - [00:26:40] Distributed Transaction and Saga Pattern - [00:33:21] Eventuate - [00:36:36] Tips for Implementing Saga Pattern - [00:39:00] Principles to Decompose Monolith - [00:43:49] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:50:12] _____ Chris Richardson’s Bio Chris Richardson is a software architect and serial entrepreneur. He is a Java Champion, a JavaOne rock star and the author of “POJOs in Action”, which describes how to build enterprise Java applications with frameworks such as Spring and Hibernate. Chris was also the founder of the original CloudFoundry.com, an early Java PaaS for Amazon EC2. Today, Chris is a recognized thought leader in microservices, having authored the book “Microservices Patterns”. He regularly speaks at international conferences and delivers consulting and training that helps organizations successfully adopt and use the microservice architecture. Follow Chris: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/pojos/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/crichardson Consulting, Training & Blog – https://chrisrichardson.net/ Microservices Patterns – http://adopt.microservices.io/ Eventuate – https://eventuate.io/ “Distributed Data Patterns for Microservices” online course – https://microservices.matrixlms.com/user_catalog_class/show/350821 Use XAAAUDNI coupon code for $120 discount Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/53.

“Seriously good software is not just software that works. It is not just software that satisfies its functional requirements, so it does the right thing, but it also does it in the right way." Marco Faella is an associate professor at the University of Naples Federico II and the author of “Seriously Good Software”. In this episode, Marco explained what he means by seriously good software, looking at software quality from multiple different perspectives. We then dived deep into several of those software qualities with some practical tips on how software engineers can improve their craft to produce high-quality software. Towards the end, we also touched on the concept of minimum viable code, why it is important to have an idea of what the ideal code looks like, while still being practical in finding the right compromise. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:05:00] Role of Education for Software Engineers - [00:07:18] Seriously Good Software - [00:12:02] Software Quality Quadrants - [00:17:15] Speed and Time Efficiency - [00:20:23] Space and Memory Efficiency - [00:24:10] Reliability Through Monitoring - [00:26:54] Invariants - [00:32:11] Reliability Through Testing - [00:33:43] Readability - [00:36:15] Reusability - [00:39:25] Thread-Safety - [00:41:17] Minimum Viable Code - [00:46:29] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:48:44] _____ Marco Faella’s Bio Marco Faella is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technologies at the University of Naples Federico II in Italy. Besides his research on theoretical computer science, Marco is a passionate teacher and programmer. For the last 13 years he has been teaching classes on advanced programming and has published a Java certification manual and a video course on Java streams. More recently, Marco has released his book titled “Seriously Good Software” that teaches techniques for writing high quality software. Follow Marco: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/marco-faella-8675574/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/m_faella Website – http://wpage.unina.it/m.faella Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/52.

“The most important thing is to make it easy for people to contribute. And the second thing is to have as many people as possible. For that, you build a community, and decide what people you want in your community." Julien Dubois is the creator of JHipster and manages the Java Developer Advocacy team at Microsoft. In this episode, Julien shared about the state of Java for cloud native applications, as well as Java adoption within Microsoft and Azure. Julien also shared his story on founding JHipster, his developer advocacy work at Microsoft, as well as some tips on how to run a successful open source project. Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:04:30] Java at Microsoft - [00:07:38] State of Java for Cloud Native App - [00:10:39] Java Adoption in Azure - [00:16:58] JHipster Story - [00:21:29] Open Source Tips - [00:29:43] Independent Developer Advocacy - [00:35:42] Microsoft and Open Source - [00:40:28] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [00:43:08] _____ Julien Dubois’s Bio Julien manages the Java Developer Advocacy team at Microsoft. Julien is a Java Champion, and is mostly known in the Java community as the creator and lead developer of JHipster, a popular open source development platform. He is also the co-author of “Spring par la pratique” and a speaker in numerous conferences including Devoxx, SpringOne, and Paris Java User Group amongst others. Follow Julien: Twitter – https://twitter.com/juliendubois LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliendubois/ Github – https://github.com/jdubois Website – https://www.julien-dubois.com/ Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Subscribe on your favorite podcast app and submit your feedback. Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/51.

“The cloud is a change in operating model. It isn’t IT procurement. If you don’t change the way your organization works, the cloud is going to look much more like another data center.“ Gregor Hohpe is the author of “Software Architect Elevator” and “Cloud Strategy”. In this episode, Gregor started our conversation by explaining the role of a software architect, the reason for the latest resurgence of the role, and his software architect elevator concept. He then described what a good architecture should look like and how to deal with trade-offs by using the analogy of financial options. We then discussed in-depth about the cloud and why adopting cloud requires a lifestyle change in order to benefit from it the most. Gregor also described why organizations need a good viable cloud strategy and debunked the concern of many organizations on cloud vendor lock-in. He also gave his tips on how organizations should approach building an in-house cloud platform and how to change the organization structure to embrace the cloud better. Towards the end, do not miss our insightful discussion on Gregor’s law of excessive complexity! Listen out for: Career Journey - [00:06:48] Software Architect Role - [00:07:48] Software Architect Elevator - [00:12:07] An Architect Stands on 3 Legs - [00:14:37] Good Architecture - [00:18:08] Trade-offs - [00:21:09] Definition of Cloud - [00:25:55] Cloud is a Lifestyle Change - [00:28:56] Motivation for Moving to the Cloud - [00:32:18] Cloud Strategy - [00:36:43] Building up Cloud Strategy - [00:39:36] Patterns & Antipatterns - [00:43:57] Cloud is Not an Infrastructure Topic - [00:49:29] In-house Cloud Platform - [00:52:38] Gregor’s Law of Excessive Complexity - [00:57:39] Organization Structure - [01:01:37] 3 Tech Lead Wisdom - [01:05:16] _____ Gregor Hohpe’s Bio As an Enterprise Strategist at AWS, Gregor advises CTOs and tech leaders in their organizational and technology platform transformation. Prior to joining AWS, Gregor served as a Smart Nation Fellow to the Singapore government, as technical director in Google Cloud’s Office of the CTO, and as Chief Architect at Allianz SE, where he oversaw the architecture of a global data center consolidation and deployed the first private cloud software delivery platform. He is an active member of the IEEE Software advisory board. Follow Gregor: LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/ghohpe/ Twitter – https://twitter.com/ghohpe The Architect Elevator – https://architectelevator.com/ Cloud Strategy – https://cloudstrategybook.com Our Sponsor This episode is proudly sponsored by Emergence, the journal of business agility. This quarterly publication brings you inspiring stories from the most innovative companies and explores themes of new ways of working, reclaiming management, and humanizing business. Each issue is hand illustrated and 100% content. Use the promo code “techlead” to get a 10% discount on your annual subscription. Visit businessagility.institute/emergence to get your edition and support the publication supporting your podcast. Like this episode? Follow @techleadjournal on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Pledge your support by becoming a patron. For more info about the episode (including quotes and transcript), visit techleadjournal.dev/episodes/50.