Kat Cosgrove

Trying to hire a junior to mid-level engineer in Scotland with great benefits and remote working is hard... https://lnkd.in/eQNHVqGR Not because the role isn't attractive (you'd be working on exciting large-scale system infrastructure challenges writing code with Golang - 1,000's of Kubernetes clusters, 10,000s of cloud VMs) or because the team are all crazy (they're thought leaders in their field including multiple upstream Kubernetes contributors from 3 continents!)... you got me... maybe there's a little crazy - but only the good kind! No... my challenge is whether this AI-generated image to go with my LinkedIn post makes any sense! I never have much luck with images containing generated text. Even using prompts like "spell check any text" or as is the case with this one "do not include any text" doesn't seem to work. Not to mention, I know what a Scottish Terrier is... but that "thing" in the bottom right looks more like an angry, tartan-wearing Capybara. Comment below for your biggest concerns with this image... or if you're a junior/mid-level, talented software engineer based in Scotland - maybe just skip over the image and apply online - https://lnkd.in/eQNHVqGR

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Had a chat with Eric Meyer and Brian Kardell about CSS masonry, does it belong in the grid spec or not? With a bit of a discussion about how and why we ask for developer feedback on CSS. https://lnkd.in/d3C-_dwq #css

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Another Thursday, another #podcast episode! This time my guest is Tobie Langel, discussing funding for #opensource maintainers - find out why he says even $10 billion per year isn't too much to ask from the global #tech industry, especially in an era of escalating #softwaresupplychain attacks. #OSS #itops

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#1minuteQandA Continuing the #YouTubeshorts series with another question today. Context : KMS / Encryption Hannah asked "Q12 - Does KMS encrypt data at rest and in transit?" Watch this short video to find out the answer: https://lnkd.in/e9vNRjCD If you find this content useful, consider subscribing my channel: https://lnkd.in/eVwkD3UG #aws #AWSKMS #cloudcomputing #certification #security #encryption

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Interesting discussion with Dave Farley and Emily Bache. There are a lot of things that I agree with in it, however the one main sticking point that I have is that a true "engineer" in the more common incarnations, Mechanical, Civil, etc, require registration and licensing from a local state/district and/or governing body. I'd LOVE for programming to have such a system, but we currently don't. That's one reason why I settle with code craft and call myself a crafter. I agree it's not a perfect term, but to me its better than giving the false impression that there's a standard of skillset or understanding like other engineering disciplines. What do you think? https://lnkd.in/gXqmkden

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This post from Dan Lorenc is spot on. Publishing code gives you no obligations, but participating in a community does. I'll expand the definition of "community" further, though, and say that if you have a public issue tracker associated with your code, that's implicitly an invitation to community with bring some obligations. I'll think about this some more and probably write a blog post once my thoughts have coalesced.

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I'll be jumping on a livestream today at 3:00 PM US EST with Octopus Deploy to talk about: ➡ The state of Kubernetes ➡ k8s future predictions ➡ Key focus points for engineers and A LOT more. If you're around and feel like watching me code up some k8s solutions live, feel free to join! https://lnkd.in/gzfCwx7T #kubernetes #devops #platformengineering

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How much design do you do up front before starting a feature? Personally, having worked on teams from starting development only by knowing the title of the feature to those wanting a full design on paper, there isn't much ground breaking news. But then he gets into two points that Engineering teams do not typically think about. 1) Will the stakeholder still be interested (or need) the project if it takes multiple cycles to fully design or do they need a POC/MVP sooner to keep them interested? 2) More importantly, due to the future value of money, its cheaper to start development today (and potentially start generating or recognizing revenue sooner)! https://lnkd.in/ggHe5w6e

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When people ask me if I think AI will make software developers redundant in the next few years I think about the tiny amount of code out there that is easy to understand and change over time. Given how we still struggle to write simple CRUD based applications that are easy to evolve to meet the next challenge and we are teaching AI based on this data set heavily weighted towards mediocrity I don't worry that good developers will have no work.

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Conference time approaches — I'm joining Liam Bigelow from CloudCannon at the Inaugural 11ty International Symposium on Making Web Sites Real Good on May 9th (US) / May 10th (NZ)! At the very respectable time of 6:55am NZST, we'll be discussing how to manage your content management across multiple connected sites. It's a completely free conference streamed on YouTube and Twitch, and you can register at any time, but if you need slightly more convincing, here's the pitch for our talk: If Jamstack has taught us anything, it’s that websites work best when they’re generated from folders full of flat files. Even massively interconnected websites! We talk through a classically Jamstacky approach to content management for large organizations: mounting shared layout and component repositories, creating a central content lake to aggregate content like news articles, and automating site builds and deployments when your content or dependencies change. (I'm hoping to popularise the word 'Jamstacky', btw. Wish me luck.)

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In case you missed it while prepping for Flag Day 🇺🇸 Happy State of Engineering Management Report Day happened this week! The annual thought leadership piece from Jellyfish has dropped. Hear from Engineering leaders, managers and frontline ICs .... we cover a range of topics that matter to great R&D leaders. Key Points: 1️⃣ Engineers are now strategic partners! 🙌 2️⃣ Burnout continues to be a challenge 😱 3️⃣ The talent shortage is spiking back up. 4️⃣ Many teams have embraced #AI 🧠 5️⃣ Others have legit concerns about AI ⁉ If #developerproductivity #genAI #engineeringexcellence are important to you .... have a read! (link in the Comments)

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I keep hearing the idea that pull requests are bad and that developers shouldn't do them. Well, to me, most of these arguments are somewhat of a straw man variety and they encourage throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Pull requests aren't the problem. Pull requests won't prevent you from doing continuous delivery. The problem is pull requests that take a long time to review and approve. This is the thing that will prevent you from doing continuous delivery. But this is a very avoidable problem. It doesn't have to be this way. In our team, PRs don't normally take long to review and things in the trunk are being updated regularly. So it was in my previous team in my previous place of work. I worked in at least three different teams where we would try to get rid of PRs to see what will happen. In all of those cases, we had to get back to doing PRs because removing them caused more problems that we were trying to solve by removing them. I get it. It may work for some teams that do pair programming all the time, which I see as the only way to keep the code quality up without the PRs. However, this approach will not suit every company and every developer. Many developers I know will find it exhausting having to pair-program all the time. Even when you pair program, PRs still have their use. Just before you push all those commits you created, you can create a PR to view all the challenges to make sure you haven't missed anything. You will not only be able to verify that no temporary code changes go in, but you will also create a nice audit trail of who made the change and who reviewed it. I even sometimes create a PR for my own changes because because it's a tool that makes a pre-push verification very convenient. PRs are just a tool. Just like any other tool, it can either be used or misused. It only causes problems when it's misused and not when it's used properly. This tool may not be useful to you, in which case you may discard it. But you may also find out that it's not as useless as some people say it is and it won't stop you from doing continuous delivery, as these people say.

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These past couple of weeks, I've been working on porting my Apple ][ emulator[1] from `egui` to `iced`. For those of you not familiar with the Rust GUI landscape, it's... a mess. These two libraries are the top contenders, but they still have a long way to go. The main difference is that egui is immediate mode while iced is retained mode (ask me if you want more details on what that means). What was interesting to me is that while I think both are very decent libraries, and while egui is clearly more popular, it has always violated the principle of least surprise for me and laying things out with it has been a constant struggle. The simple act of lining widgets up is so hard with egui, which is probably due to a mix of personal feelings and biases and the fact that immediate mode GUI's are by definition harder to lay out. iced is so much more intuitive to me. I write some code to put widgets together, and 90% of the time, it's exactly where I wanted it. And the other 10% takes 2mn to correct. Anyway. Probably still in the honeymoon phase, but another aspect of iced I've enjoyed is that it's following the Elm model. It's been a lot of work porting all my graphic code to iced, but I'm enjoying the journey so far. Once I get to a point that I'm happy with, I'll post some comparative screenshots between the two GUI's. [1]

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The fifth State of CI/CD report from the Continuous Delivery Foundation has arrived. This year's report is superbly interesting and I've zoomed in on one area in a new article to accompany the report. Thanks to the smart folks at the CDF and SlashData, we found out some interesting things about DevOps tool adoption and how it changes with experience. The general trend is more experience, more tools... but there's more to uncover. You can read all about it on the CDF site and download the full report. #DevOps #CICD #SoftwareDevelopment

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I saw an interesting post today, which called for an end to technical tests in software developer interviews, because they're stressful and time consuming. I thought I'd share my view on this, and why I take candidates through technical questions, because for me it's about so much more than finding out whether or not their CV is accurate. I've always taken candidates through technical tests. This is partly to get a general sense of where they are in terms of technical experience, but much more than that, it tells me about their mindset, their attitude, and their ability to communicate. If they know the answer, can they convey it in concise terms? I'm looking for developers who can describe a technical concept in an unambiguous way, because that leads to less confusion, better collaboration, and fewer mistakes. If they don't know the answer, are they honest about it, or do they just try to fluff their way through? I'm looking for developers who can raise their hand and say "I don't know" or "I'm stuck". If they don't know the answer, do they *want* to know the answer? Are they curious? Do they want to discuss different approaches? Do they want to learn and grow? Are they passionate about tech? Once or twice I've interviewed developers (one comes to mind in particular) who "failed" most of the technical questions, but the way that they answered them told me everything I needed to know about them, and I hired them because of their mindset and their attitude. For me, it's not about whether or not a candidate knows the "correct" answer, it's about how they respond to the question that can tell me so much about whether or not they're passionate, curious, and a good communicator.

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Lots of interest in setting up Observability with open source tools today at my Unconference session today @opentelemetry is a big part of how people are thinking of re imagining their Observability stacks in 2024 and cost is major consideration #OSSummit

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“I’ve been saying this for a whole year and no one listens, then the CEO said the same thing last week and everyone is acting like it was the most brilliant thing they ever heard” A QA engineer said that at a company I worked for in the past and it cracked me up because it’s so true of life in general. People are quick to dismiss advice that doesn’t come from a “high authority” or “reputable source”, that's just how we are wired to filter information. But if you hire really smart, proactive people and then reduce their voice to a whisper, your company is going to suck. This is why important that leaders do three things: 1. Listen to your employees and help amplify their voice → If you spot a great idea, give credit and then use your clout to push it to make it happen 2. Make them a higher authority, put them in charge of things, expand their remit → It doesn’t matter if you hire the top talent in the world if you box them in a tiny space or put them under management of someone who is not qualified to understand the output of their work. 3. Ensure you have clear values, mission and vision so it’s easy to spot what the great ideas are. → A great idea in Apple may not be a great idea in Amazon. Two companies, two very different values, that’s why it’s important that everyone in your company understands what the north star is, so they know what the metric for good idea is. 

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