Jon Topper

Chris Evans

Chris Evans, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Incident.io joins us to talk about all things incident-related. Chris, previously the Director for Platform and Reliability at Monzo is a regular conference speaker and author of a number of articles about incident management and observability. In this episode, we discuss 1. The origins of Incident.io [https://incident.io/], including Monzo's open-source tool, Response [https://github.com/monzo/response] [00:01:50] 2. Building incident management tools as a way of expanding an incident management rota [00:02:38] 3. Why existing incident management tools haven't managed to solve the problem of painless incident management [00:08:07] 4. Chris's dream of building a tech company from the ground up [00:09:56] 5. What it was like to move from Monzo to Incident.io [00:12:47] 6. What does good incident management look like? [00:18:20] 7. At what point should a company be setting up on call rotas? [00:20:52] 8. Metrics and incidents - how to do it well [00:24:06] 9. How to make incident management a better dev experience [00:27:20] 10. On why we should all be speaking at conferences [00:39:48] You can see the doodle of Chris, plus find all the links and show notes over on https://humansplus.tech/podcast-chris-evans/ [https://humansplus.tech/podcast-chris-evans/]

Sarah Wells

We're joined by the incredible Sarah Wells. Sarah's most recently worked as Technical Director for Engineering Enablement at the Financial Times, where she spent the last 11 years leading tech teams as well as defining the tech strategy and product roadmap inside the FT. Sarah's also a frequent conference speaker presenting on topics ranging from microservices to engineering productivity. In this episode we discuss Sarah's experience of working at the Financial Times, learn the secrets behind successful Engineering Enablement, and learn how to create a Golden Path. Sarah also shares how the FT increased diversity in tech plus shares some great new book recommendations.

Kelsey Hightower

We're thrilled to be joined by the incredible Kelsey Hightower! Kelsey is a Principal Engineer at Google, an author, and a prolific speaker and tweeter of tech trends. Kelsey is a vocal Kubernetes advocate and has played a massive part in teaching the Tech industry about the power and intricacies of Kubernetes. Kelsey is also possibly the kindest and most helpful person in Tech today! In this episode we discuss: 1. How Kelsey became known as the nicest person in tech [00:01:57] 2. Kelsey's background and how he got to where he is today [00:05:59] 3. How to go from running your own company to joining the big enterprise world [00:08:53] 4. How Kelsey stays up-to-date on tech [00:12:33] 5. On how to give people advice [00:15:12] 6. Self-taught vs University education [00:19:01] 7. Dealing with frustration when learning [00:21:01] 8. Kelsey's experience of going from a data center to Principle engineer. How to move from step A to step B [00:27:57] 9. Responding when you feel like you're the token under-represented person [00:32:18] 10. The one thing Kelsey wishes everyone would take-away to help Tech become a better place [00:35:55] 11. Open Source as a model for collaboration and a framework for disagreements [00:39:08] 12. Kubernetes, and whether it has lived up to the hype [00:41:58] 13. How to influence [00:46:49] You can see the doodle of Kelsey plus find all the links and show notes over on https://humansplus.tech/podcast-kelsey-hightower/ [https://humansplus.tech/podcast-kelsey-hightower/]

Michael Lopp

We're excited to be talking to the one and only Michael Lopp, aka Rands from the incredible https://randsinrepose.com/ [https://randsinrepose.com/]. Rands is an engineering leader at Apple, having previously been VP of Engineering at Slack, head of engineering at Pinterest, as well as being the author of a number of amazing tech leadership books, including Managing Humans and The Art of Leadership, small things done well. Full show notes and the doodle are over at humansplus.tech/podcast-michael-lopp/ [https://humansplus.tech/podcast-michael-lopp/] In this episode we cover: 1. Surviving the fall as a new manager [00:01:30] 2. Rands's vision of feedback [00:09:51] 3. Working with people who have different communication styles and the post Rands wrote about it, Lost in Translation [https://randsinrepose.com/archives/lost-in-translation/] [00:14:20] 4. Why and how to Say the Hard Thing [https://randsinrepose.com/archives/say-the-hard-thing/] [00:21:37] 5. Hearing the hard thing and the three types of feedback [00:28:34] 6. How introverts can level the playing field [00:40:55] 7. How to manage your energy as an introverted manager [00:44:08] 8. The OODA loop [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OODA_loop] [00:48:57]

Jon Topper

Jon Topper, CEO and CTO of The Scale Factory [https://www.scalefactory.com/] joins us to chat about scaling, AWS, Kubernetes, and why we should all be thinking about boring tech. In this episode we cover * The Scale Factory [https://www.scalefactory.com/], how they help companies with the foundational tech. * Scaling, and why Kubernetes isn't the answer to all your scaling concerns. * Boring tech and why we should all probably we using it. * Innovation days at work. * Pioneers, Settlers, and Town Planners. * Jon's experience with therapy and why we should all be seeking to understand who we are. Visit humansplus.tech/podcast-jon-topper/ [https://humansplus.tech/podcast-jon-topper] to see Jon's doodle plus you'll find links to all the books, talks, and other great things Jon referenced in the show.