Arrested DevOps

We’ve all been there: burning out on volatile tech jobs, tangled in impossible systems, and wondering what our work actually means. On this episode of Arrested DevOps, Matty Stratton sits down with Kat Morgan for a heartfelt, funny, and sharply observant conversation about AI: what it helps with, what it hurts, and how we navigate all of that as humans in tech.

They dive deep into how large language models (LLMs) both assist and frustrate us, the ethics of working with machines trained on the labor of others, and why staying kind—to the robots and to ourselves—might be one of the most important practices we have.

“We actually have to respect our own presence enough to appreciate that what we put out in the world will also change ourselves.” – Kat Morgan

Topics Why strong opinions about AI often miss the nuance Using LLMs to support neurodivergent workflows (executive function as a service!) Treating agents like colleagues and the surprising benefits of that mindset Code hygiene, documentation, and collaborating with AI in GitHub issues Building private, local dev environments to reduce risk and improve trust Ethical tensions: intellectual property, environmental impact, and the AI value chain Why we should be polite to our agents—and what that says about how we treat people Key Takeaways AI isn’t magic, but it can be a helpful colleague. Kat shares how she uses LLMs to stay on task, avoid executive dysfunction, and manage complex projects with greater ease. Good context design matters. When working with AI, things like encapsulated code, clean interfaces, and checklists aren’t just best practices. They’re vital for productive collaboration. Skepticism is healthy. Kat reminds us that while AI can be useful, it also messes up. A lot. And without guardrails and critical thinking, it can become more of a liability than a partner. Build humane systems. From privacy risks to climate concerns, this episode underscores that responsible AI use requires ethical intent, which starts with practitioners.

Download

Openness plays a significant role in propelling DevOps and organizational processes forward. This is not to imply that everything must be open, but the default should be openness unless a valid reason indicates otherwise.

Andrew Zigler, developer advocate at Mattermost, and Matty from Arrested DevOps recently shared insights on this subject. They discussed creating impactful developer advocates, managing community writing programs, and dealing with the challenges of open source communities.

The Importance of Open Source in Communities

Andrew emphasizes that the loudest and most contributory voices in open source projects are usually the paid internal staff. However, he champions setting up pathways in the community to validate the experience of all contributors and reward them with anything from thought leadership, platforms, or even swag. The key is to influence individuals at all levels of engagement and ensure that they feel they own part of what they are contributing.

One of the challenges he identified is over-influencing which often stems from the fact that the paid staff are the ones driving the open source project vehicle. This imbalance usually drowns out the voices of other contributors, particularly those who may not have the luxury of dedicating as much time and energy to the project as the paid staff.

Andrew suggests a solution: the company creating more developer advocates through the multiplier effect. This means ensuring that everyone across the board understands the importance of the open-source community and empowers them to contribute. The more developers contribute, the larger and more diversified the community becomes, leading to better outcomes and solutions.

The Critical Role of Leadership in Open Source Communities

Matty highlights how vital leadership is in these initiatives. By allocating resources, prioritizing open source community engagement, and maintaining a strategic focus, leaders can do much to foster a healthy open-source community. Successful leaders understand that engagement levels differ, so they create opportunities for different levels of contributors to partake and contribute to the community.

To ensure the project remains harmonious and aligned with company goals, the leadership should give equal weight to both staff and contributors’ voices. In the end, everyone involved in the project is part of the community.

Engineering Blogs: The Balance of Output

The conversation took an interesting turn when they started discussing engineering blogs, a tricky subject for many organizations. Matty points out that these blogs have the tendency to publish sporadically, often dominated by lengthy droughts of content or a sudden overflow of posts.

Such inconsistency happens when the contributors, mostly engineers, write when they can spare the time. Balancing this dynamic is crucial, and one suggested solution is to involve people whose primary job is creating content. They can collaborate with subject matter experts to create consistent, relevant content.

Conclusion

Operating under a default open environment for your projects does not mean that everything has to be open. Nevertheless, transparency and openness should be the norm unless necessary otherwise. By dealing with the occasional echo chamber and understanding that contributions will always ebb and flow, the community will thrive and keep moving forward.

In line with the open source spirit, scaling advocacy is crucial in DevOps. It involves not only the individuals whose title is developer advocate but everyone within the company. By creating more advocates and amplifying community efforts, the DevOps movement continues seamlessly.

Links Matty’s blog post about SharePoint (including broken images!) Community Pulse podcast

Download

Read more of Chelsea Troy’s writing here!

Download

Every ADO Cold Open Ever “Episode 0” of ADO “Old Geeks Yell At Cloud” video

Download

The First 90 Days “It’s not a promotion - it’s a career change” (Lindsay Holmwood) “Not All Leaders Are Managers” - (Aaron Bassett)

Download

John Willis’s talk at DevOpsDays Atlanta 2016 on Burnout https://platformengineering.org/talks-library/internal-platform-enterprise-courtney-kissler ADO - How to Eff Up Devops with Pete Cheslock, Nathen Harvey, and Randi Harper

Download

OWASP Top 10 Stripe: The developer coefficient (quantifies the cost of bad code to companies to be $59B annually) Facebook: FAUSTA: Scaling Dynamic Analysis with Traffic Generation (how runtime analysis was used at WhatsApp to catch design flaws before they reached production) Dragan Stepanović - Async code reviews are choking your company’s throughput (from LAS 2022, a talk which highlights the systemic problems with developers trying to do manual code reviews of large PRs) AppMap, the runtime analysis company which Brian works for Cloud Native Security with Michael Isbitski ADO Episode

Download

It's a complex world! Matty and Michael Stahnke wax philosophical about whether our systems need to be as complicated as we have made them

Download

Arrested DevOps - The Database: The Elephant in the Room Arrested DevOps - Data! Data! Data! With Francesco Tisiot Arrested DevOps - The New DevOps With Adam Jacob History of databases talk from Matty and Kat Cosgrove

Download

Arrested DevOps - DevOps With Better Marketing with Pete Cheslock Arrested DevOps - Platform Engineering with Daniel Bryant Arrested DevOps - Platforms with Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer Lean Enterprise The Future of Ops Is Platform Engineering Charity’s talk from devopsdays NYC Jess Kerr’s blog that Matt mentioned Cargo Cult Science

Download

https://www.instagram.com/ziggy.odoodle/?hl=en https://twitter.com/opentofuorg https://github.com/opentofu https://linkedin.com/company/opentofuorg https://github.com/opentofu/opentofu

DevOps World is back for 2023, and you won’t want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind event! This year’s program is packed with exclusive insights, immersive workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities taking place across multiple cities in the US, UK, and Asia. Elevate your DevOps game and register using the following links: NYC area, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and London.

Download

Links to Resources Mentioned 10+ Deploys Per Day: Dev and Ops Cooperation at Flickr *The DevOps Handbook The System Initiative Switch: How to Change Things When Change Is Hard

DevOps World is back for 2023, and you won’t want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind event! This year’s program is packed with exclusive insights, immersive workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities taking place across multiple cities in the US, UK, and Asia. Elevate your DevOps game and register using the following links: NYC area, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and London.

Download

The Importance of Your Personal Brand

Whether you’re working for a startup or a corporate giant like Visa, Target, or JP Morgan Chase, your personal brand helps to define your professional identity. This brand is not just about showcasing your GitHub contributions, but about telling your unique story. It’s about how you solved a particular problem or contributed to a project, not just about the technologies you used.

Building Your Brand Story

Building your personal brand starts with self-reflection. Here are three questions to ask yourself:

Who are you professionally? Identify your top three technical specialties, professional specialties, and team contributions.

Who are you personally? Identify three interests and hobbies, your most important beliefs and values, and aspects of your social, family, or community life that you want to connect with people over.

How do you connect with people? Identify shared interests, the advice or information you’re seeking, and what you want to know about other people.

Answering these questions gives you a wealth of material to draw from when telling your story and helps you identify your strengths and areas of expertise.

Show, Don’t Tell

When you’re creating your brand content, remember the old adage: show, don’t tell. Instead of proclaiming yourself a “thought leader,” demonstrate your expertise through your work. Share your accomplishments in a way that highlights how your work benefited others, not just yourself. This approach makes your story more engaging and relatable.

Embrace Vulnerability

Being open about what you don’t know can be a powerful part of your personal brand. It shows that you’re a lifelong learner, open to new ideas and willing to grow. Plus, asking for help or resources can lead to valuable connections and insights.

Pay It Forward

Sharing your knowledge and helping others is a powerful way to build your personal brand in tech. It demonstrates your expertise and your willingness to support your peers. This approach is not about trading favors but about creating a positive ripple effect in your community.

In conclusion, building a personal brand in tech is about more than just showcasing your skills. It’s about telling your story, connecting with others, and contributing to your community. By being authentic, open, and generous, you can create a personal brand that truly stands out.

Links to Resources Mentioned Keep a Brag Book KubeCampus: Free Kubernetes Training Purposeful Personal Branding - Nov 2018 Slides 13-15 have the 3 questions DevOps World is back for 2023, and you won’t want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind event! This year’s program is packed with exclusive insights, immersive workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities taking place across multiple cities in the US, UK, and Asia. Elevate your DevOps game and register using the following links: NYC area, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and London.

Download

“Everything is a Product” - Matty’s talk “More Buzzwords Won’t Help” - Andrew Clay Shafer Telemetry Hub channel on YouTube DevOps World is back for 2023, and you won’t want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind event! This year’s program is packed with exclusive insights, immersive workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities taking place across multiple cities in the US, UK, and Asia. Elevate your DevOps game and register using the following links: NYC area, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and London.

Download

Sysdig 2023 Cloud-Native Security and Usage Report Pushing Left With Tanya Janca (ADO epsiode) Shifting Left Securely (Matt’s talk) DevOps World is back for 2023, and you won’t want to miss out on this one-of-a-kind event! This year’s program is packed with exclusive insights, immersive workshops, and unparalleled networking opportunities taking place across multiple cities in the US, UK, and Asia. Elevate your DevOps game and register using the following links: NYC area, Chicago, Silicon Valley, Singapore, and London.

Download

Pete’s Video Project Pete’s TikTok Want to join a future version of Pete’s videos? Platform Engineering With Daniel Bryant (ADO Episode)

Download

Sonia Gupta and Corey Quinn - Embarrassingly Large Numbers: Salary Negotiation for Human Talking pay in the public square

Download

Kafka Connect tool Metadata parser Francesco’s SOFT blog post

Download

Kafka Connect tool Metadata parser Francesco’s SOFT blog post

Download

ADO Episode - Platforms with Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer Daniel’s Kubecon talk Daniel’s blog/tweet thread the kicked off his interest in Platform Eng Spotify golden paths Crossing the Chasm - Technology Adoption Lifecycle Backstage project Backstage as a service

Download

ADO Episode - Platforms with Kelsey Hightower and Andrew Clay Shafer Daniel’s Kubecon talk Daniel’s blog/tweet thread the kicked off his interest in Platform Eng Spotify golden paths Crossing the Chasm - Technology Adoption Lifecycle Backstage project Backstage as a service

Download

VOID The Verica Open Incident Database (VOID) makes public software-related incident reports available to everyone, increasing understanding of software-based failures in order to make the internet a more resilient and safe place. After scrutinizing nearly 10,000 incidents, one thing is crystal clear: Resilience saves time. Taking the time to understand how to better respond when something green turns red—learning from the people, the processes, and the systems—will make your next incident smoother. 2022 VOID Report “Taylorism is a corporate disease that we haven’t developed a vaccine for yet” - Courtney

Download

VOID The Verica Open Incident Database (VOID) makes public software-related incident reports available to everyone, increasing understanding of software-based failures in order to make the internet a more resilient and safe place. After scrutinizing nearly 10,000 incidents, one thing is crystal clear: Resilience saves time. Taking the time to understand how to better respond when something green turns red—learning from the people, the processes, and the systems—will make your next incident smoother. 2022 VOID Report “Taylorism is a corporate disease that we haven’t developed a vaccine for yet” - Courtney

Download

Jess and Roni talk about what continous feedback: where it came from, what it looks like in the context of a dev proces, and the benefits it can bring to engineers and developers. They also discuss Roni’s observability project, Digma.ai… and his other passion, complicated board games.

Download

Jess and Roni talk about what continous feedback: where it came from, what it looks like in the context of a dev proces, and the benefits it can bring to engineers and developers. They also discuss Roni’s observability project, Digma.ai… and his other passion, complicated board games.

Download

linkedin.com/in/dagnabieda www.themindfuldev.com How Dagna works with her clients https://www.arresteddevops.com/principal-engineer/

Download

Download

Breaking Down Gates with Tim Banks (previous episode with Tim)

Download

Download

You know how so many devops folks are like “lol let me tell you about this time I accidentally took down production”? I would *love* to get to that level of blamelessness and shame-free acceptance with phishing, security misconfigurations, and other such mishaps.

— Kat Sweet (@TheSweetKat) October 25, 2021

If you're in infosec, what are you 5 top priorities for your team right now?

— MattGPT (@mattstratton) October 26, 2021

Download

Download

Melody: melody.dev

Download

Melody: melody.dev

Download

Favorite Episodes Drawing DevOps with Ashton Rodenhiser Multicluster Service Mesh With Phillip Gibson and Annie Wang Brigade With Kent Rancourt Most Popular Episodes Most listened-to episode in 2021 was All Things Docker Second most listened-to episode in 2021 was Foundational Practices With Johan Abildskov Number three was Doing Releases Right With Scott Hain Pet photos! Moxie Nimoy and Ripley

Download

Emily’s book ProAgile Emily’s blog Emily’s github

Approval testing tools mentioned

https://approvaltests.com/ https://github.com/texttest/texttest

Download

Matty’s dog on Twitter Shifting Left Securely (Matty’s talk at devopsdays denver 2017) Steve’s “Collaboration over competition” talk Trivy Checkov from bridgecrew Cosecast Pushing left with Tanya Janca (ADO episode) Cosecast with Tanya Janca We Hack Purple Security Chaos Engineering With Aaron Rinehart (ADO epsiode)

Download

Bridget chats with Kent Rancourt about Brigade.

Download

Emily Freeman, Principal, DevOps Solutions at AWS and Matt have a frank conversation about how DevOps has changed, where it's going, and the merits of the Oxford comma.

Download

Bridget chats with Phillip Gibson and Annie Wang about multicluster service mesh.

Download

"If you invest enough into foundational practices you can ignore them" - this is a heady statement, and special guest Johan Abildskov takes us through a journey to explore what our foundationa

Download

Matt is joined by Ashton Rodenhiser, who has become a fixture at many conferences where she provides graphic recordings of various talks and presentations!

Download

In this episode, Jess talks with guest Cat Swetel about her career, writings, and thoughts on DevOps.

Download

Does tech ask more from its community than other industries? What does it mean to be part of a community and what is expected of us?

Download

Bridget chats with Justin Cormack and Donnie Berkholz of Docker.

Download

Learning, as well as teaching, are both skills. Skills that we can develop with intentionality and practice. Shelby Spees, a Developer Advocate at Honeycomb, shares her insight into this topic.

Download

Sources differ on where this started, but Kurt Vonnegut posited that there are basically six story types. Matt wondered if there was similarly only six stories that are told on tech Twitter. Guests Sasha Rosenbaum, Kat Cosgrove, Quintessence...

Download

Releasing software is more that just having a clever pipeline. Scott Hain (Hashicorp) digs into some of the practical considerations of improving your release engineering process.

Download

It's that time of year again! Matty, Trevor, Bridget, Jessica, Jeff, and Joe wrap up the year with a discussion of favorite episodes, the Year That Was, and a deep dive into 90s-era sci-fi.

Download

Tim Banks joins Matt for a blunt discussion about how to break down gates and barriers in tech. Also, chili is discussed, in depth.

Download

DevOpsDays Chicago 2020 was the first time the long-running conference went virtual. A panel of speakers and organizers discuss the event, how it was produced, and what the experience was like!

Download