Technology Strategy

Everything in moderation - Let's not overdo the DevOps ! Recently, working as a startup CTO and adviser, I have seen what I call a "DevOps" craze. Developers, especially younger ones seem totally swept up in the DevOps revolution. Continuous deployment, auto-scaling groups, hot back-ups, containers etc etc. Many times these implementations, whilst impressive, are unnecessary for the stage of the company or the product development. Many times, they are difficult to document, relatively expensive, difficult to maintain and can be hard to debug. In many circumstances, it would be far easier to have some old-fashioned deployment or back-up scripts until the company or product has some traction in the market and there are the resources available to properly administer the complexity of the DevOps setup.  This is somewhat of a paradox, initially it would seem that by automating many of the mundane operational tasks that the development team face, you would be saving not on...

I have been faced with hiring great engineering teams on a number of occasions, I am constantly amazed at home many hiring managers and recruiters seem to focus on particular technologies and experience in those technologies. My experience has taught me to hire engineers and I have always viewed the technology as a secondary consideration. I always focuses on a grasp of engineering fundamentals and not on information about some current or past technology. In our current world these technologies are out of date by the time the ink on the contract is dry. Recently, I was approached by a leading company for a very senior role. The in-house recruiter laid on his wonderful resume with world leading software companies before affording me the chance to explain my career-to-date. He then proceeded to ask me a number of questions on specific Java libraries and how they were used. This is all information that is readily available on reference sites and in API documentation and does not ...