Kubernetes

A tech leader reflects on four years of infrastructure decisions for a scaling startup. Key endorsements include AWS, EKS, RDS, and GitOps for stability and customer focus. Regrets involve EKS managed addons, Datadog's pricing, and shared databases. Recommendations emphasize simplicity, automated post-mortems, and early adoption of identity platforms like Okta.

The transition from Generalist DevOps heroics to Platform Engineering addresses the burnout caused by increasing system complexity. By building Internal Developer Platforms and Golden Paths, engineers reduce cognitive load and shift from manual infrastructure management to 'enablement-by-design,' significantly improving Developer Experience and organizational efficiency as shown by tools like TutorCLI.

This piece examines the transition from hardware-focused engineering to cloud-native architectures. It explores how Go and Rust provide different philosophies for managing distributed system failures and complexity. Ultimately, it argues that modern cloud engineering shifts responsibility from code debugging to managed ecosystems, where abstractions such as AWS and Kubernetes introduce new layers of uncertainty and cost.