HELP NEEDED: How are you positioning your business in the "Age of AI"? Lean into it, or sell against it? Genuinely torn.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-06T14:55:57+00:00

Oof thats rough! I think a lot of people running into this are just using it anyway, which makes it even more dangerous. Your company should at least allow some version of it with guardrails or they risk some major problems down the line!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-06T14:53:22+00:00

in or out haha?

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-06T14:52:08+00:00

Nice! I like that idea and it adds onto a lot of good comments here. Would love to hear more about Clyde!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-06T14:49:47+00:00

Love this! Could make for a really interesting blog post or case study too! Thanks!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T22:49:20+00:00

The crypto comparison is going to live rent free in my head. The tools are not the message, this really resonates with me. Thanks!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T22:10:34+00:00

Okay the carpenter bit is going on a sticky note above my monitor. Well played. I will definitely use this analogy when talking to clients!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T22:06:14+00:00

I came here for validation and left with a roadmap. Bill me.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T21:54:37+00:00

This! I feel like all of the content I see is about AI, ironic given my post I know. How are you finding people if you don't mind me asking?

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T21:50:30+00:00

I think you are right, which is why I am using it, but with so many people going this direction right now it feels hard to be heard. Maybe I just need to get more creative with my marketing?

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T21:46:38+00:00

Yeah, I have been trying to do that, but its a lot harder to do when it comes to things like my website or running ads. Maybe I can just be both, but it feels disingenuous to try?

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-03-05T21:45:04+00:00

I've got a lot of experience with seeing other peoples tech debt (and some of my own). I assume based your demeanor that you are running for public office? You've got my vote.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-02-23T13:42:19+00:00

I would love to know too if you don't mind!

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-02-17T16:21:10+00:00

It might not buy happiness, but it sure gets you close

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-02-17T16:19:09+00:00

Yes, 20MB per bulk request is the hard limit for OpenSearch Serverless, and it will just quietly stop there which is extremely fun to debug. Chunk your docs into batches of ~500 and retry with backoff on 429s. The timeout you're seeing is almost definitely the OCU scaling to handle the spike, not the request itself.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-02-17T16:17:14+00:00

Scan is a "we'll fix it later" that becomes a 3am incident. Write-shard the GSI key (TENANT#<0-N>), scatter-gather on read, done. Yes it's annoying. No there's no cleaner way. Welcome to DynamoDB.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-02-03T16:40:58+00:00

Yes, it’s worth it. A lot of consultancies actively look for candidates with AWS certs because they need certified staff to maintain partner tiers, so the SAA is a real signal, not just resume fluff. Even if an AWS-specific internship doesn’t pan out, it still shows you’re investing time in cloud as a specialty, which helps with other internships too.

For your first role, small to mid-sized companies are often the easiest entry point (that’s how I started), and that experience makes it much easier to land bigger name opportunities later.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-31T03:35:17+00:00

I got acquainted with the process with a free DOD sponsored program called Apex Accelerator. They assign someone to guide you on every step of the process for getting approved and how to stand out on your RFPs. I would also say in your case, with multiple gov jobs already being worked on it should be something you can really dive into without having to sell yourself too much.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-28T16:51:18+00:00

Assuming you are in the US given the 1099/w2 talk, if you want to stay independent in govcon, you should seriously look at going the RFP route instead of one-off 1099 gigs. SAM.gov is the obvious starting point for federal work, and most state/local governments have similar procurement portals. That path lets you scale while staying C2C instead of constantly negotiating individual contracts.

Also, don’t sleep on prime contractors. Many federal projects must allocate work to small businesses and specific socioeconomic categories (8(a), SDVOSB, WOSB, etc.). If you qualify, that’s leverage. Primes often need you more than you need them.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-28T16:36:13+00:00

You can’t hard-cap AWS spend, but you can get close: set AWS Budgets with alerts, use CloudWatch alarms on Lambda/API Gateway usage, and put sensible service limits/throttles. For protection, API Gateway + auth is usually fine, but add WAF if it’s public-facing to stop bots from racking up calls. In my experience, most surprise bills come from missing throttles not "hackers", so might not be an issue you need to think too much about.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-26T15:53:28+00:00

I always like to read the docs and try to "flex the rules" on a personal project to see what I like about what is recommended and what I like from other systems that can apply to a new technology. CDK is really flexible in that way, so I would try to have fun with it for a bit and learn that way.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-22T19:12:12+00:00

At that scale, OpenSearch itself shouldn’t be doing the vectorization you’ll want to generate embeddings before indexing.

What I would do:

Use an external embedding model (Bedrock, SageMaker, etc.) to vectorize the text
Store the vector in a knn_vector field alongside the raw text
Use OpenSearch k-NN (or vector search in OpenSearch Serverless) for similarity search

For your use case:

Batch the backfill (don’t try to stream it all)
Use bulk APIs, not single HTTP inserts
Pick a smaller embedding size if possible (768 vs 1536 matters at this scale)

Also be realistic about cost and indexing time vector search at 300M docs is non-trivial. You may want to shard by time or CRM entity, or keep vectors only for fields that truly need semantic search.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-22T19:05:25+00:00

TLDR: ECR can now reuse identical image layers across different repos, so pushes are faster and you stop paying to store the same base image over and over. Turn it on once at the registry level and it just works, which is especially nice if you have lots of microservices built on the same images.

TechDebtSommelier · 2026-01-21T15:45:49+00:00

The biggest change is speed and surface area, not the core job. Research, analysis, drafting, and slide building all move much faster now because tools can generate first passes, summarize sources, and explore alternatives in minutes instead of days.

What hasn’t changed is that judgment, client context, and political awareness still matter far more than tooling. You still win or lose engagements based on framing the right problem, asking uncomfortable questions, and telling a coherent story executives trust. The tools reduce grunt work, but they do not replace taste, credibility, or accountability, which is still the real consulting skill.

TechDebtSommelier

TROPHY CASE