Slight Reliability

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In the world of SRE we constantly talk about defining SLOs, but what about evolving them over time? This week I chat with SRE Tech Lead Dom Finn about just that. We cover the relationship between reliability and user analytics, latency classes as a way to speak SLOs with business stakeholders, the role of NFRs and how the thresholds differ from SLOs, and much more.

Books mentioned in the episode:

The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World
By David Deutch
https://www.amazon.com.au/Beginning-Infinity-Explanations-Transform-World/dp/0143121359

Turn The Ship Around!
By David Marquette
https://davidmarquet.com/turn-the-ship-around-book/

You can find Dom on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/dom-finn/

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

This episode was sponsored by SquaredUp. SquaredUp combines all your data with awesome dashboards, analytics, health rollup, and notifications, into a unified observability portal. Using a data mesh architecture, SquaredUp is a beautifully simple way to get instant access to the insights that matter, whenever you need them. If you want to know more head over to https://squaredup.com/ to sign up for your free account.

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This week I talk about the impact of SaaS-first technology strategies on the work of an SRE. I pose questions about observability, ownership, on-call, and how much control we have over reliability.

You can find the Bleeding Tech blog on Medium: https://medium.com/@stownshend

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

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This week I chat with Dan Slimmon about applying the approach doctors use to treat patient symptoms during incident response.

You can find Dan's blog at https://blog.danslimmon.com/ or connect with him on LinkedIn here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/danslimmon/

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

This episode was sponsored by SquaredUp. SquaredUp combines all your data with awesome dashboards, analytics, health rollup, and notifications, into a unified observability portal. Using a data mesh architecture, SquaredUp is a beautifully simple way to get instant access to the insights that matter, whenever you need them. If you want to know more head over to https://squaredup.com/ to sign up for your free account.

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This week I hear about all things Kubernetes from Komodor CTO and co-founder Itiel Shwartz. We chat about the promise that was made when Kubernetes first entered the industry, the challenge of getting developers engaged and capable of working in Kubernetes, my hate/hate relationship with Helm but its important contribution to the Kubernetes project, Kubernetes observability, and so much more.

You can find the Kubernetes for Humans podcast here:
https://komodor.com/blog/the-kubernetes-for-humans-podcast/
Or find out more about Komodor here:
https://komodor.com/
Or find Itiel on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/itiel-shwartz-18542853/

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

This episode was sponsored by SquaredUp. SquaredUp combines all your data with awesome dashboards, analytics, health rollup, and notifications, into a unified observability portal. Using a data mesh architecture, SquaredUp is a beautifully simple way to get instant access to the insights that matter, whenever you need them. If you want to know more head over to https://squaredup.com/ to sign up for your free account.

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This week I sit down and have a discussion with Amin Astaneh (from Certo Modo) about CI/CD. We cover the power of the standard change as a way to navigate ITIL while still implementing DevOps practices, what to monitor to make your CI/CD observable, single piece flow, testing in production, and so much more.

You can find Amin on his company website https://certomodo.io, LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aminastaneh/ and Twitter: https://twitter.com/aastaneh

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

This episode was sponsored by SquaredUp. SquaredUp combines all your data with awesome dashboards, analytics, health rollup, and notifications, into a unified observability portal. Using a data mesh architecture, SquaredUp is a beautifully simple way to get instant access to the insights that matter, whenever you need them. If you want to know more head over to https://squaredup.com/ to sign up for your free account.

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"Environment issues are just incidents that happened to occur in a non-production environment"... so why do we treat them so differently?

In this first episode of the 2024 season I reflect on how we handle incidents in non-prod environments.

(Note: Had a few issues with noise suppression in OBS Studio cutting off the start of some words, will sort it for the next episode)

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/
TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

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This week I speak with co-author of the original SRE book + the SRE workbook, and renowned speaker Niall Murphy.

We chat about the state of SRE in the current macro-economic climate and how we're not yet doing a very good job at articulating the value of SRE to leaders, the relationship that velocity and reliability have, the value of new features versus reliability improvements, and *much* more.

You can find Niall at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/niallm/
X: https://twitter.com/niallm
Website: https://relyabilit.ie/

(and his company Stanza: https://www.stanza.systems/)

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
X: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/

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Paige Cruz (from Chronosphere) is back. This week we discuss sampling. What is sampling? Why do it? What kinds of sampling are there?

You can check out Chronosphere's cloud native observability platform here: https://chronosphere.io/

You can find Paige on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paigerduty/
X: https://twitter.com/paigerduty

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
X: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/

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This week Valeska Victoria returns to share some of her experiences working as an SRE at eBay.

We look at the cascading effect of production issues in complex integrated environments (how there's often no single root cause), developer literacy of how infrastructure works, the importance of ownership and accountability of reliability, and much more.

You can find Valeska on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/valeska-victoria/

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
X: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/

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This week I chat with Ankit Jain from aviator.co about developer experience.

We define developer experience and developer productivity, and how this applies to SRE. We discuss the growing expectation on developers and how this leads to frustration and burnout. We also explore how to measure developer experience and how to start working to make improvements.

You can check out Aviator's developer experience platform here: https://www.aviator.co/

You can find Ankit on:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ankitjaindce/

You can find the official Slight Reliability podcast website at: https://slightreliability.com/

You can find Stephen at:

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/
X: https://twitter.com/the_kiwi_sre
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/