What I'm Reading: July 1

Tech

• On why choosing boring but pragmatic technology can help reduce operational toil, as opposed to using a new tool just for a new tool's sake

• The XY problem: when solving problem X, people come up with solution Y, and ask for help with Y... when they should've asked for help with the original problem, X

  • For example, when you ask a doctor, "What medication should I take to stop my stomach pain?," a good doctor will think about the original problem, X: "I have stomach pain, and I want to stop feeling stomach pain"

  • The way out of the XY problem: provide context when communicating and asking for help, and think in terms of goals, not solutions

  • Similarly, why your first idea can blind you to a better one if you give up your ability to consider alternative solutions

• From a Twitter Site Reliability Engineer (SRE) on why Twitter continued to run after losing thousands of engineers

  • Tools, monitoring, automation, plenty of excess computing capacity, an architecture that minimizes the blast radius of problems, guardrails preventing bad things from happening in the first place, and general good SRE work (there's probably a lot of overlap there...)

• Improper monitoring can be confusing and expensive - here are some ways to rethink it

  • Most logs are never accessed, so sample where possible (and store audit-required logs in as cold storage as you can)

  • Think holistically about logs, metrics, and tracing, rather than jus trelying on logs

• Investors learn the hard way that just because a company uses AI, doesn't make it a tech company - AI-powered farming is still a farming business

• Bruce Schneier on his firsthand experience breaking the Snowden NSA story, 10 years later

• McKinsey finds that Generative AI could add $2.6 - $4.4 trillion in productivity to the global economy

  • Especially impactful in customer service, software engineering, marketing / sales, and R&D

  • Half of today's work could be automated between 2030 and 2060

  • Will accelerate the pace of labor force change, and will require investments to support workers shifting jobs and learning new skills

• An open-source backup tool (haven't tried it yet, but looks interesting)

• Make space to do whatever at work, and how to prioritize and plan for it

  • Make time to work on things that energize you, allow you to learn, or pique your curiosity

  • Encourage engineers to take ownership, make priorities clear, plan for regular time to work on whatever

• Effective onboardings by looking at ineffective onboardings

• Great piece on the SolarWinds hack from Wired

Etc

• Stealing catalytic converters is big business

• A handbook for incorporating a startup

• A tracker for state consumer privacy bills

• Lots of things contain plastic!