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[339.70 --> 344.26] And we were in this stage where Tom had just joined the company. |
[344.42 --> 346.42] We announced it on stage, the acquisition of Causal. |
[346.60 --> 348.00] The entire company fit on stage. |
[348.08 --> 348.92] It was 25 people. |
[349.34 --> 352.56] Like when we said kind of goodbye at the end, there's still this photo that circulates here, |
[352.64 --> 354.56] where everyone is just kind of shoulder to shoulder. |
[354.94 --> 357.30] And the stage is the whole company. |
[357.78 --> 362.66] But I do remember, you stand out to me, us being up there kind of in that breakout room, |
[362.90 --> 365.14] talking about what you were trying to do at the Financial Times. |
[365.14 --> 370.72] And it does, it feels like you kind of continue in this natural progression, in this natural journey. |
[371.42 --> 374.82] And like when you think back to you then, how did you see the world? |
[375.64 --> 382.42] At that point, we were investigating, like we had quite a lot of monitoring tools at the Financial Times. |
[382.68 --> 387.86] And I was like, and I was working in the team that provided monitoring as a service to other teams. |
[387.86 --> 400.58] And my head was going mad thinking, okay, how do I as a team with like four or five engineers be able to support like these 20, 30 odd engineering teams who all want monitoring? |
[401.36 --> 412.40] And they're using from Nagios to Zabig, some Graphite, some started, I think there were very few installations of Permitius at that point. |
[412.40 --> 416.06] And I was like, how do we get all of these different use cases together? |
[416.06 --> 419.44] And how do we get them on a platform which could work together? |
[419.60 --> 422.64] And it made me, like I was worried at that point. |
[422.64 --> 426.62] And like three years later or four years later, looking at it, it's like- |
[426.62 --> 427.48] You're still worried. |
[427.64 --> 427.74] No. |
[428.06 --> 430.60] I mean, I have moved on from the Financial Times. |
[430.70 --> 434.58] So I'm less worried about the Financial Times monitoring systems. |
[434.58 --> 436.86] But I still worry about like the same use case. |
[436.86 --> 442.74] I see it here as well in the Lego group where there's different monitoring tools that we've got across the organization. |
[442.74 --> 444.62] And it's how do we get them all together? |
[444.62 --> 451.86] And like, how do we say a single story that everyone could understand rather than every single team trying to solve the same problem? |
[451.98 --> 458.92] So it's still very similar, but probably we have better tools and like processes in place that can help us. |
[459.00 --> 459.78] So that's how I see it. |
[460.12 --> 460.60] Yeah. |
[460.78 --> 465.80] Something you said earlier stood out, this idea that you're like, why did you build it like this? |
[465.80 --> 469.98] If only you'd built it differently, we'd be in a much better position now. |
[470.26 --> 471.84] So it kind of like- |
[471.84 --> 473.64] If you only did it right, is that what you're saying? |
[474.90 --> 475.34] Yeah. |
[475.38 --> 476.34] But that's the question. |
[476.34 --> 479.50] Like, when should we start caring about this stuff? |
[479.64 --> 482.98] When should we start worrying about how are we going to operate this? |
[484.02 --> 489.82] I think this kind of relates to like how I've moved in the journey in my career and stuff. |
[489.82 --> 500.64] So I started off as a test engineer, just doing some manual testing, then moved on to doing more QA, like more quality related things rather than just testing. |
[500.64 --> 517.02] And over the years, I've seen the transition in a lot of organization as well, where they've moved to this shift left and test early, like release as small as possible and continuous iterations and stuff. |
[517.02 --> 523.44] So all of this, I think, kind of leads to that point of like, how do you make your future better? |
[523.84 --> 528.42] And one of the quotes I have often used is being kind to your future self. |
[528.56 --> 531.96] Like, how can you make your life easy in the future? |
[532.08 --> 535.32] So think about that today when you're building whatever you're building. |
[535.32 --> 546.22] And that comes with if you're building a new product, think about do you even have to build it or like can you just look at what's in the market and reuse it? |
[546.30 --> 549.82] If it's a non-differentiating thing, then why build it? |
[549.94 --> 553.14] If it is a differentiating thing, yes, put your heart and soul into it. |
[553.14 --> 562.68] But then when you're doing it, make sure you think about the sustainability aspects of your product and not just today what the customer would get. |
[562.68 --> 575.80] Yeah. And it's like I've often used this carrot and stick kind of approach in teams to show the benefits of what you could get out of thinking about monitoring observability from the front. |
[575.80 --> 579.46] And usually the carrots are like you build it in the right way. |
[579.56 --> 584.30] Then you don't have you can actually forget about your systems because they will take care of themselves. |
[584.30 --> 598.96] And the stick approach is often if you didn't do it, then you have to go into the rotors or like all of those other things that comes with like making your systems more observable and keeping it sustained once it's up and running and stuff. |
[598.96 --> 604.82] So, yeah, I think that's what I've used in the past to actually help teams nudge in that direction and stuff. |
[605.00 --> 605.24] So, yeah. |
[605.24 --> 613.16] Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you know, I would be kind to my future self, but I'm too busy dealing with all the stuff that my past self left me to do. |
[613.68 --> 617.50] So I don't know. But yeah, I think so that's the thing. |
[617.58 --> 626.54] If you think about how it's going to be, where it's going to be running, like the realities of that, if you think about that, the earlier, the better almost, isn't it? |
[626.54 --> 639.68] So, yeah, it is that. And it's also that, yes, you are fixing things from yesterday, but if you don't fix it and leave some goodies along with it, then you're fixing tomorrow. |
[639.68 --> 642.90] You're fixing today's problem. So you're still in that vicious cycle. |
[643.34 --> 649.90] So to get away from that vicious cycle, I think you need to actually step back sometimes and put that extra effort. |
[649.90 --> 657.90] I remember one of the tech principles we had in the Financial Times for FD.com was... |
[657.90 --> 659.98] I've forgotten this. |
[661.04 --> 662.32] It's okay. No, it's okay. |
[662.70 --> 670.10] As we're talking about, you know, like the past self and future self, is it okay that I've completely forgotten about observability and now I'm just on a personal journey? |
[671.46 --> 677.86] I'm thinking about all the decisions made and yet to make and how to provide goodies for everyone. |
[677.86 --> 681.44] So, Naina, or for me, I don't know. I forget that part. |
[681.66 --> 690.86] But, Naina, the carrot and stick, can I ask you, right, is there been a stick that you've seen people try to use that just didn't work, right? |
[690.92 --> 700.10] Or not didn't work, but either was too harsh or like just kind of like ill, you know, not ill-intentioned, but ill-executed? |
[700.10 --> 706.48] I think it's about the motivations and the motivation factor behind doing something. |
[707.10 --> 708.84] And that's how I saw the carrot and stick. |
[709.22 --> 717.90] So, the carrots were the motivation factors that we were providing to teams saying, if you did something right and if you thought about like how do you monitor something, |
[717.90 --> 726.70] how do you add alerts in place and how do you make sure it's auto-recoverable where possible and stuff, then you don't have to worry about it, right? |
[726.80 --> 734.80] So, that is more of the motivation for the team to be like, I don't, like I can be really proud about what I build and I don't have to think about it again. |
[735.08 --> 744.92] But at the same time, we know that every team has these deadlines to meet and like there are product owners who would have their own feature sets to build. |
[744.92 --> 756.50] So, it's that kind of scenarios where you actually still need the stick to help the teams be like, look, I mean, yes, we understand your pressures, but this is more important as well. |
[756.88 --> 763.76] And I did remember the quote and it was slow down to speed up, which actually like that was one of the tech principles we worked with. |
[763.76 --> 776.74] So, basically, yes, you can go at 100 miles per hour today, but then if you don't build it in such a way that you have put those measures in place, then tomorrow you have to break and stop. |
[776.92 --> 783.46] But if you slow down and went at, say, 60 miles per hour, you're there for the long run and you would go on longer. |
[783.58 --> 786.60] So, that's how I would see some of this now. |
[786.60 --> 788.32] Yeah, that is so true. |
[788.58 --> 790.90] We actually built a little project before Grafana. |
[791.04 --> 803.74] We built a project management tool called Pace and it was trying to get across that exact thing, which is that you feel great going at a thousand miles an hour, but you do have, you know, there's important things to do along the way. |
[803.90 --> 806.42] And it's hard to retrofit a lot of this stuff. |
[806.72 --> 809.52] So, it's, you know, thinking about it up front sometimes can save you. |
[809.52 --> 812.98] It's a bit like how you design for failure as well. |
[813.28 --> 819.20] Like, you know, in the perfect world, your system, all the messages flow perfectly and there's no problems. |
[819.38 --> 821.94] But in reality, it's way more messy. |
[822.10 --> 822.86] Things fail. |
[823.32 --> 829.78] And so, that idempotency and things come into play where you may design expecting this is going to fail. |
[830.88 --> 836.70] I write Go code and Go has error handling as a kind of explicit feature. |
[836.70 --> 840.54] They're values that are just returned as the second argument to functions and things like this. |
[841.14 --> 845.96] And that frustrates a lot of people because, you know, they're used to exceptions or something that's just sort of automatic. |
[846.40 --> 851.24] But it forces you to think about what's going to happen if this thing fails. |
[851.70 --> 853.98] And that's great discipline to get into. |
[854.68 --> 858.10] And I think it's a myth to think that your system won't fail. |
[858.54 --> 858.76] Yeah. |
[858.92 --> 862.42] Like, always build your system in such a way that it will fail. |
[862.72 --> 864.66] If it doesn't, then you have a problem. |
[864.66 --> 865.30] Yeah. |
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