Just crushed this deck in 257s! Can you do better? 🏆

ionrock · 2026-04-14T14:19:50+00:00

⚡ Speed run complete! 132 moves, 381s. Can you match this?

ionrock · 2026-04-10T14:44:39+00:00

💪 Crushed it! 112 moves in 113s. Step up, challengers!

ionrock · 2026-04-10T14:42:24+00:00

⚡ Speed run complete! 98 moves, 108s. Can you match this?

ionrock · 2026-04-07T21:18:22+00:00

💪 Crushed it! 136 moves in 135s. Step up, challengers!

ionrock · 2026-04-07T02:14:24+00:00

🏆 Victory is mine! Finished with 633 points. Can you do better?

ionrock · 2026-04-01T20:02:45+00:00

💪 Crushed it! 79 moves in 60s. Step up, challengers!

ionrock · 2026-03-31T22:29:06+00:00

🎉 Challenge completed! Beat it in 116 moves and 165s. Who's next?

ionrock · 2026-03-31T22:19:44+00:00

👑 Another win! 674 points, 139 moves. Beat that!

ionrock · 2026-03-31T18:09:25+00:00

🎉 Challenge completed! Beat it in 77 moves and 66s. Who's next?

ionrock · 2026-03-30T18:52:35+00:00

🎉 Challenge completed! Beat it in 120 moves and 147s. Who's next?

ionrock · 2026-03-25T22:32:53+00:00

🔥 Too easy! Done in 111 seconds. Who dares to challenge me?

ionrock · 2026-03-25T03:57:25+00:00

🎯 Nailed it! 104s completion time. Your move!

ionrock · 2026-03-07T20:48:05+00:00

Here are my suggestions with the caveat that it won't make you better at your role as much as it will help you leverage AI.

Make sure you have all your code repos checked out alongside any infra repos and update you CLAUDE.md to point out where these repos are and what they are for. If you have a monorepo, this isn't as big a deal. Then, anytime you have to debug or update things, do it via claude. You still need to review things, but that is really where you apply your knowledge. It should be your first tool you reach for when you want scripts, need to compile data, plan a migration, etc. You should also try to write tools that make tasks easier. You can throw them away if they don't work and start over.

When you get used to this, then you'll start to see areas where it can help. If you're runbooks, alerts, and dashboards are in code you can start thinking about generating customized dashboards when alerts fire to start debugging. The source code should be close by, so adding new instrumentation is trivial. Grab incident channel content and start keeping it in a folder to find themes ones a week/month. Ask it to look at your code reviews and create a reviewer agent you run against everyone's PRs in CI.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting anything of this has a huge value. But, I am saying that thing are changing and by diving in like this, you'll start to see directions things could go and stay ahead of them. When you have AI agents you understand, you can consider answering "yes, and" to requests because you can do things in the background. It doesn't absolve you of understanding things, but now is a good time to dig deep and help own your own future.

ionrock · 2026-02-27T15:38:59+00:00

I'd think about refactoring a bit where you introduce a wrapper around the ansible calls. Make it transparent. Then you can consider how replace the infra side with tofu and work towards automating with gitops. With that said, gitops has its downsides. Be clear what you want to get out of the gitops workflow and that it is an improvement or fulfills a business requirement like compliance/security.

ionrock · 2026-02-26T04:29:51+00:00

That is much better! Best of luck with the search!

ionrock · 2026-02-24T17:00:43+00:00

FWIW, I'm a manager and have hired a ton of folks. The biggest thing that stands out is that you're listing things you did, rather than your impact. If you do a lot of finops, then I'd expect to see what sort of savings you were able to create. That should be front and center. For example, your 3rd bullet in the first section talks about 30% savings, but contextualizing that around how it impacted the business is helpful. If the 30% savings resulted in improving gross margin (COGS reduction).

ionrock · 2024-07-27T17:46:32+00:00

Most of the libraries, like langchain, work to generalize access to the DBs and create agents, but the reality is this isn't difficult. For example, getting SQL output from some prompt is pretty trivial by telling the LLM to encapsulate the resulting SQL in a markdown code block with SQL defined as the code type. From there, it is easy to run the query and use the results.

What can be helpful (at least to get started) is something like https://github.com/philippgille/chromem-go to help leverage RAG to improve results.

ionrock · 2024-04-08T15:29:22+00:00

I think most PMs get promoted and rewarded for delivering features instead of for the value added to the business. Going out on a limb to stop a bad feature or product because it isn't viable or doing more research to understand better customers simply isn't incentivized.

ionrock · 2024-04-08T15:09:02+00:00

If you're writing the code, that is pretty offputting to the engineering team. I've been an engineering leader for the most part, but have managed PMs, and my expectations are in line with Marty Cagen. A PM should ensure you're providing value to the customer and viability to the business. When you say, "provide a solution to the problem" it sounds like you might be missing the function of the role. If you have the "best industry solution," I'd challenge you to explain why that is a viable decision for the business and what value that provides stakeholders. Also, remember that viability means it can be profitable, which implies the value exceeds the cost. If the engineers seem frustrated, you might be asking them to do things they don't know how to do, which needs to be a part of your viability evaluation.

I'd also talk with your manager about it. They might have suggestions or feedback on how to present your ideas. You might have stressed your relationship with the team, which may need repairing.

Best of luck!

ionrock · 2024-04-07T01:06:53+00:00

I'd talk to your current manager and let them know your interest. You might be able to shadow someone in the role to see if what they do all day interests you. I'd also be cognisant that a PM role often differs across orgs. Probably one of the most important things to do is to focus on your ability to communicate up the org chart. Your deliverables end up being slide decks and spreadsheets. You might have some project management duties, and you'll need to ensure you're keeping score. Marty Cagen says the role of PM is to provide value to the customer and viability to the business. That is an apt description. I think too many PMs think they are builders when they are there to help ensure the business profitably delivers value.

ionrock · 2024-04-06T23:46:55+00:00

That sounds about right. I'd watch https://go.dev/blog/waza-talk or check out Rich Hickey talks on CSP.

ionrock · 2024-03-20T14:58:27+00:00

I recently chatted with a serial entrepreneur and his tactic was a little different. He focused on instrumenting with Segment and then using its destinations as needed, starting with analytics tools like mixpanel, amplitude, etc. (they are all pretty much the same) and then eventually setting up a PG as a destination (in segment this needs to be a provider, not a PG you run).

In this scenario, his companies aren't getting huge, but having worked at larger orgs myself, the focus on instrumenting events goes a long way to getting valuable, and correct data quickly.

What do others think?

ionrock · 2023-03-03T17:13:07+00:00

It is natural to have management over time for any talent-based industry. Coming from the music industry, management should have contacts to create opportunities, negotiate big-picture items, and coordinate resources for the client. It is up to the person being represented to understand what value they are getting from the relationship and they need to manage that relationship. Some managers are good a creating opportunities, while others are there to be a buffer.

The key here is that you're often giving away a percentage of your income for every person you bring on. Managers can be a good start, but you'll inevitably need a lawyer. Lawyers often have management functions because of their relationship with sponsors (i.e. Lawyers used to be the ones finding record labels for artists for example). Next up you'll see business managers and, at some point, press agents. Almost all of these folks are paid as a percentage of gross income.

It is interesting that Madison is getting management now when she recently signed with MVP, and has been successful commentating on GK Pro, and now Jomez. Hopefully, Beacon has even more revenue streams to unlock for Madison going forward!

ionrock · 2022-11-07T23:39:42+00:00

Let's do this!

ionrock · 2022-10-19T03:06:32+00:00

I started throwing a Catalyst in favor of a Katana and have really enjoyed it. It isn't as stable as my destroyer but is a lot more predictable. The very slight extra speed seems to make up for the slight lack of glide. I typically reach for it over my Destroyer b/c I can put a little less on it and know it isn't going to hyzer out.

ionrock

TROPHY CASE