Charity Majors

Honeycomb CTO

ServerlessTalk

with Erica Windisch

ServerlessTalk - S02 Episode 2 – Discussing Observability with Honeycomb CTO Charity Majors

S02 Episode 2 - Charity Majors

In this episode:

ServerlessTalk has a super special guest for our second episode of season two.

Introducing the veritable Charity Majors, also known as MipsyTipsy on Twitter. She’s the CTO of Honeycomb, former systems engineer and manager at Facebook, Parse, and Linden Lab, and the co-author of “Database Reliability Engineering.”

But you already know who she is.

Timeline:

  1. Charity Majors Intro
  2. On being the first infrastructure engineer at Parse (1:19)
  3. Early observability at Facebook (3:25)
  4. Hatred and loathing for tools (6:22)
  5. Decoupling infrastructure from code (9:00)
  6. The furious debate about putting engineers on call for their systems (10:01)
  7. Deploying code on a Friday debate (12:40)
  8. Thanksgiving disaster and shifting the story (18:01)
  9. Advice for engineers transitioning to executive roles (19:50)
  10. Quality over quantity with speaking engagements (37:02)
  11. Peers versus mentors (38:10)
  12. FaaSt React Q and A (41:19)

FaaSt React Q and A:

Favorite language? Bash, deal with it.

Biggest role model? Anne of Green Gables, maybe?

Gadget you can’t live without? Sadly, it is my phone.

First computer? Linux laptop. I was working as a systems administrator for four or five years before I owned a computer.

Favorite game? I learned all of my management skills running the test server for Everquest.

Favorite thing to do away from a computer? Walking

Best advice you’ve ever received? Probably to come to San Francisco. I grew up in Idaho, and I was given the advice to drop out of school and move to San Francisco.

Episode Music credits:

Intro: Javon Harper, IOpipe Product Engineer – "Joy of the Unknown"

Outro: Maurice Rickard, IOpipe Software Engineer – "To Lie Hidden"