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Old School Burke is an engineer and blogger passionate about tech, leadership, and resilient systems, with a playful, old-fashioned style.

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Internet Computers Incident management culture Observability Monitoring Tech industry Engineering leadership

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The blog post discusses the challenges faced by engineering managers (EMs) when navigating ambiguous decision-making scenarios that fall outside established guidelines. It highlights a common pattern where EMs seek external valida...
Immediate responses in Slack can lead to confusion and an urgency culture, highlighting the need for leaders to think before they communicate.
The text discusses the importance of Mean Time to Isolate (MTTI) in incident response, highlighting the chaos and inefficiency caused by the lack of a clear isolation phase. It outlines the impact of high MTTI and provides a 30-da...
Context collapse occurs when content intended for one audience is consumed by multiple audiences simultaneously, undermining performance reviews in organizations. The phenomenon flattens the complexity of engineering work, leading...
The text discusses the importance of unblocking yourself when facing challenges and provides steps to do so before seeking help from others.
The text discusses the importance of autonomy in a team and presents a Ladder of Autonomy model, which is a continuum of autonomy levels from Level 1 (complete direction needed) to Level 7 (extreme ownership). It explains the char...
The text discusses the importance of taking complete ownership during incidents in software engineering. It emphasizes that service owners should not treat incidents as someone else's problem, but rather take full responsibility a...
The text discusses the importance of resourcefulness in a large organization, highlighting common pitfalls that stall growth and providing strategies to build resourcefulness. It emphasizes the need for engineers to take ownership...
The text discusses the challenges of being on-call for engineering teams and the importance of having a well-prepared on-call system. It outlines the stress and lack of preparation that engineers often face, and the need for a pro...
The text provides practical advice on technical mentorship, the concept of sponsorship, and supporting women in senior roles. It also discusses the essence of being a good mentor and setting practical goals.
The text discusses the concept of 'vulnerability' in leadership, emphasizing the importance of 'purposeful vulnerability' in creating trust and an inclusive culture. It provides strategies for practicing vulnerability effectively ...
The text discusses various aspects of on-call experience in the tech industry, including the importance of well-crafted runbooks, on-call compensation, incident metrics, and sustainable software development. It also includes a cas...
The text discusses the essentials of what makes a good alert, the importance of a solid theoretical framework for effective observability, and the personal and systemic impacts of on-call duties. It offers insights into how to bet...
The text discusses various resources and courses for building a strong technical documentation culture, including Google's technical writing courses for engineers, design docs at Google, writing practices and culture at HashiCorp,...
The text discusses the importance of writing in engineering, with insights from various professionals on how writing can enhance communication, learning, and problem-solving skills.
The text discusses the importance of shaping behaviors and management practices to build a strong company culture. It emphasizes the need for understanding organizational dynamics, creating an anti-toxic culture, and improving the...
The article discusses the importance of creating an effective off-boarding plan when leaving a job, particularly for engineering leaders. It outlines three key steps for managing the off-boarding process, including transparent com...