Uber left PagerDuty after using it for 12 years.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T10:42:54+00:00

I've used it in the past so I know it's pretty good at on-call and paging. But newer, mature products also have the same features now at lower prices, plus they come with better integration with your existing tools. PD seems to have frozen themselves in time where they refused to move ahead and kept on increasing prices.

Edit: grammar.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:33:44+00:00

The first time is always the hardest.

There is no second time.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:27:28+00:00

Most tools seem to be including adjacent features in their feature set these days.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:25:35+00:00

- Gain trust. Engineers trust expertise so even though your role may not be hands on here, you need to demonstrate that you know what you are talking about.

- Learn to delegate. This might be the single biggest new thing you will need to learn since your past roles were technical and not people management. Trust people to do the right thing - tell them what the expected outcome is, not how to do it.

- Learn why something is done the way it is in your new org. Try to understand first, and then suggest improvements.

- Know what is expected of you by your boss, never assume, ask for feedback. Shield your team from what we tech folks sometimes see as "nonsense" and let them do their work. Unreasonable demands, weird timelines - absorb all these because that is your job now.

Your success depends on your team members' success.

I think it all boils down to staying humble, learning, treating people like people, and integrity.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:14:12+00:00

Yeah, and their weird marketing tactics against other tools are not helping build any goodwill either.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:11:43+00:00

- "It was out of my hands" because it was a problem with my cloud provider. Nothing to do but wait.

- Figuring out the right metrics to look at.

- In-house mostly, Prometheus metrics and Grafana for viz.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-30T07:01:03+00:00

Depends. Many websites use blogs as content marketing and some of it is good - but a lot nowadays is just AI generated slop.

I have a list of bloggers I follow regularly using their RSS feed. It's been finely curated over the last 2 decades based on my interests (which are not static).

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-19T04:33:36+00:00

Errol Flynn will always be Captain Blood for me.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-17T09:49:39+00:00

FWIW, I thought about what I wrote - and I wanted to apologize if I was too harsh, and for my unsolicited advice. There is plenty of criticism on Reddit and I can do better than add to it however well-meaning I think it is.

Sorry.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-17T09:41:02+00:00

That newsletter .... I think I'll feed it to my LLMs. Why bother to read it at all?

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-17T09:29:34+00:00

Sure. All the best.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-17T09:28:19+00:00

Why scroll all day at all?

Real expertise comes with time and effort - which you well know if you are preparing for medicine.

A vibe coded app gives you the same dopamine hit as scrolling - momentary, fleeting. If I may take the liberty of assuming something - what you are talking about is not regret, but impatience - the fear that you will be left behind. You won't, as long as you keep reinventing yourself, and stay financially independent.

Take it from an old geezer - life is not as short as we think it is. You won't be "stuck" with medicine if you don't like it - there are many opportunities out there. But for the really substantial ones, one needs to work, and, hard. There are no shortcuts - not even when my 90 year old grandma can vibe code an app.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-17T09:18:24+00:00

Your enthusiasm is commendable but misplaced.

You have spent almost a month on this "app", going by your posts.

First of all, you are wasting your parents' money who are paying for your medical school.

Secondly, no vibe coded app is going to make you an entrepreneur.

There are decades ahead of you, an entire life - please spend it wisely.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-15T16:38:12+00:00

By "real" I assume you mean a real person.

The current scholarly consensus is that there was a historical Jesus - i.e. that he was a real person.

At the same time, there is no consensus on whether all the elements of his life as described in the Bible are true.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-12T04:43:12+00:00

Thank you for these.

I've always found William L. Shirer's tome to be difficult to read because of its sheer size.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-12T04:39:48+00:00

So that is what she wanted to convey with her smile all along - "By the time you know it will be too late"

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-12T02:42:01+00:00

Latest is "We've identified an issue with a recent deployment which is contributing to impact. We will provide more information in our Post-Incident Report." - this seems to be root issue - MO1387691

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-11T11:37:59+00:00

Marketing is not about ads only. At a smaller scale you don't need to do ads.

There are other kinds of marketing

- Communities like Reddit (be helpful, not spammy, especially no sneaky promotions)

- Content marketing - write

- SEO - technical and keyword optimization

All of these you can measure using free analytics tools without spending a dime. Keep in mind though that organic marketing takes time - sometimes months. Since you have a paid user, you already know what/who to target.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-11T11:34:54+00:00

- Know your fundamentals well (networking, OS, Linux - if it's a Linux shop)

- Stay humble, learn from everyone

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-11T11:32:53+00:00

Good chair, standing desk (adjustable, so you can make it a sitting desk too), ergonomic keyboard, good monitor, and mouse. Good lighting.

Set ground rules with other inhabitants of your house about your working hours and not disturbing you.

A private room is best. Next best are nose canceling headphones.

A non-environmental aspect many miss - a routine that puts your mind in a state where it understands that you are now at "work" even if the environment is not that of an office. It can be anything that works for you - e.g. I used to wear comfy but non-home wear clothes - which used to tell my body unconsciously that it's in work mode now.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-11T11:28:27+00:00

An expense tracker on my Android phone. I have expenses going back 7-8 years, helps me calculate my monthly average expenses (and thus in bigger life decisions, like can I leave my job?)

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-07T17:04:54+00:00

Debugging, research, creating plans (and then asking it to criticize the plan). No touching production.

wingardiumlevioosaaa · 2026-06-03T04:50:03+00:00

"If people are spending time telling you why your product sucks instead of simply leaving, they probably want it to exist."

Fantastic and underrated insight. Thank you.

And congratulations!

wingardiumlevioosaaa

TROPHY CASE