The Critical Channel

The Problem: A dropout, a CS graduate, and an MBA walk into a bar... While this sounds like a setup for a supremely cringe joke, it gives us three different perspectives on a big question: are Computer Science degrees important for success in the tech industry? What about degrees in general? Can not having one - or having the wrong flavour of degree - limit your opportunities?

The Problem: There are no silver bullets, but there is a cheat code. Today, let's talk about career progression, from the perspective of three engineering managers. What it means to advance when there are different tracks to explore, what it takes to get that next level, and what managers (i.e we) look for when recommending you for a promotion.Links:On the Proper Care and Feeding of MonkeysEpisode 16: It's a Spreadsheet, Bro — Our episode on authorityEpisode 7: Nothing Engineer — Our episode on job titles.Progression: Define and measure career growth for your teamUrban Sports Club's public career ladderJulia Evans | Get your work recognized: write a brag documentA Work Log Template for Software Engineers

The Problem: The pain of receiving a letter (in German). We often feel stressed, or hear others saying they feel stressed. But what is stress, really? And how could it ever possibly be a good thing? This episode we give some tips on dealing with stress, look at what factors may cause it, and talk about how to recognise it in your direct reports and help them deal with it too.Links:43 Folders Series: Inbox Zero | 43 FoldersGetting Things Done® - David Allen's GTD® MethodologyDrive | Daniel H. PinkThe Pomodoro Technique — Why It Works & How To Do ItFrontiers | What is intrinsic motivation? A typology of computational approachesProject management triangle - Wikipedia

The Problem: Forever wading through the thick, viscous soup of power differentials. Every company claims to want a strong feedback culture. But what does that even mean? What's so desirable about it, and what are you missing that's preventing you from getting there?Links:Radical CandorThe Culture MapDifficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most97 Things Every Engineering Manager Should Know: Collective Wisdom from the Experts

The Problem: What is this product thing, anyway? Some battles are old as time itself. Godzilla vs. Kong. Man vs. Food. Tabs vs. Spaces. And Product vs. Tech, it seems as well. But why do we so often find a rift there? Surely we're working towards the same goals. Surely we must be able to collaborate and get along. This ep, we explore some of the reasons tension can occur between these two disciplines - and why, actually, that's okay!Links:Inspired: How to create tech products customers love, by Marty CaganProduct shouldn't be left to product managersUbiquitous Language

The Problem: Your security is our highest priority. Well, one of them. After our next funding round, the next seven sprints' worth of features, the company summer party, and restocking the vending machine. You refresh the app for the hundredth time, but your bank balance still reads 0€. It has to be a bug, you think, reaching for your apartment keys, which... are no longer in your pocket. In fact, looking closer, the lock on the apartment appears to have changed since this morning. Odd. A horn startles you, and you turn to see a car that looks suspiciously like your own passing by. MacBooks emblazoned with your company's logo are piled high in the back seat, almost obscuring the view. You catch a glimpse of the driver, and gasp in recognition. And... is that your wife in the passenger seat? Oh dear. He'd seemed such a nice young man, too. Stepping into the elevator with a large bag and a disarming grin - how could you ever be suspicious of a smile like that? Sure, the false nose and poorly matching facial hair were a bit strange, but you do get all sorts in startups these days; it's best not to discriminate. If only you'd hashed your passwords.Links:Okta Hack - BBC NewsA Deep Dive into the Real Security Threats From the Twitch LeakGorillas LeakArtix Linux Migration Guide — To install the artix-keyring package, you need to temporarily lower pacman's security levels for the installation in your /etc/pacman.conf.Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster - O-Ring Concerns - WikipediaKevin Mitnick - WikipediaCatch Me If You Can - IMDbGitHub SecurityCould your printer be a security risk?"I don't care about cookies" browser extensionNeverSSL — This website is for when you try to open Facebook, Google, Amazon, etc on a wifi network, and nothing happens.Oxide.computer - Hardware for Running Infrastructure at Scale

The Problem: Warnar's Hacky One-Liners. They're always the problem. Technical Debt. Every company has it, some more than others. But why is that - are some companies better at tackling it, do they not create it at first, or a combination of the two? Is it simply inexperience, or was it taken out with intention but then never paid back? This episode, we talk about strategies for making tech debt manageable, the dangers of leaving it unchecked, and how to have that conversation with product owners and stakeholders. 💙🇺🇦💛Links:Distroless: Language focused docker images, minus the operating systemendoflife.dateTime to Market - WikipediaDependabotRector - Instant Upgrades and Automated RefactoringBeautiful Technical DebtThe Culture Map by Erin MeyerBuilding Microservices (2nd Edition) by Sam Newman

The Problem: The last 72% of your book may as well be blank pages. We're coming into 2022 swinging for the fences! This episode we talk about the paradox of authority. Does your job title of Big Fancy Bossman actually enable you to get your way? What are the trade-offs of a directive management style? When should you shut up and let things be, even if you can see someone is about to make a massive mistake? Plus, a heck of a lot of book recommendations this episode - when the covers are pretty, the titles make you sound smart, and your Kindle has some storage space left, what do you have to lose?Links:The First 90 Days - Michael Watkins — "Conventional wisdom says the higher you go the easier it is to get things done. Not necessarily, paradoxically. When you get promoted, positional authority often becomes less important for pushing agendas forwards. You may indeed gain increased scope to influence decisions that affect the business, but the way you need to engage can be quite different. Decision making becomes more political, less about authority and more about influence."/r/maliciouscomplianceThe SRE Book - Error BudgetsConsensus Protocol - WikipediaEmpowered - Marty CaganInspired - Marty Cagan

The problem: We broke Warnar. complexity /kəmˈplɛksət̮i/ noun the state of being formed of many parts; the state of being difficult to understand It seems to be commonly-held in some circles that tools like Kubernetes bring with them a lot of complexity. "We'll never need those - we're not Google-scale!" Well, how true is that? What complexity do orchestration tools bring to the table, and where are the trade-offs? Is there actually complexity there, or just the perception of complexity? Can you achieve the same stuff with a couple of VMs and a load balancer? And most importantly: after this episode, will Warnar ever be the same man again?Links:Hacker News comment by FlyingSnake — The more I look into k8s ecosystem, the more I'm convinced that it's one of those things that suits FAANG etc, but the regular Joe developer has caught on the fad and wants to add it to his repertoire, even though it's an overkill.Hashicorp NomadApache MesosHelm - The package manager for KubernetesThe Operator pattern - KubernetesDistroless - language focused Docker images, minus the operating systemAWS Fargate - Serverless for containersGoogle Cloud Run

The Problem: Tempo is really good, you guys. Links:What is observability? | Grafana LabsPingdom - Website Performance and Availability MonitoringOpenTelemetry - High-quality, ubiquitous, and portable telemetry to enable effective observabilityThe Istio Service MeshDomain Oriented Observability | Martin FowlerGrafana TempoGrafana LokiPrometheusPattern: Distributed Tracing | Microservices.ioJaeger TracingShift-left testing | Wikipedia