@charity.wtf@rss-parrot.net
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charity wtf's about technology, databases, startups, engineering management, and whiskey.
Site URL: charity.wtf
Feed URL: charity.wtf/feed
Posts: 10
Followers: 3
How many pillars of observability can you fit on the head of a pin?
https://charity.wtf/2025/10/30/the-pillar-is-a-lie/
Published: October 30, 2025 05:27
My day started off with an innocent question, from an innocent soul. “Hey Charity, is profiling a pillar?” I hadn’t even had my coffee yet. “Someone was just telling me that profiling is the fourth pillar of observability now. I said I think profiling is a…
Got opinions on observability? I could use your help (once more, with feeling)
Published: October 13, 2025 03:39
Last month I dropped a desperate little plea for help in this space, asking people to email me any good advice and/or strong opinions they happened to have on the topic of buying software. I wasn’t really sure what to expect — desperate times, desperate…
Are you an experienced software buyer? I could use some help.
https://charity.wtf/2025/09/19/are-you-an-experienced-software-buyer-i-could-use-some-help/
Published: September 19, 2025 18:12
If it seems like I’ve been relatively quiet lately on social media and my blog, that’s because I have. Liz, Austin, George and I have been busy toiling away on the second edition of “Observability Engineering” ever since April or May. I personally have…
How We Migrated the Parse API From Ruby to Golang (Resurrected)
https://charity.wtf/2025/07/24/how-we-migrated-the-parse-api-from-ruby-to-golang-resurrected/
Published: July 24, 2025 02:14
I wrote a lot of blog posts over my time at Parse, but they all evaporated after Facebook killed the product. Most of them I didn’t care about (there were, ahem, a lot of “service reliability updates”), but I was mad about losing one specific piece, a…
Thoughts on Motivation and My 40-Year Career
https://charity.wtf/2025/07/09/thoughts-on-motivation-and-my-40-year-career/
Published: July 9, 2025 21:20
I’ve never published an essay quite like this. I’ve written about my life before, reams of stuff actually, because that’s how I process what I think, but never for public consumption. I’ve been pushing myself to write more lately because my co-authors and…
In Praise of “Normal” Engineers
https://charity.wtf/2025/06/19/in-praise-of-normal-engineers/
Published: June 19, 2025 17:11
This article was originally commissioned by Luca Rossi (paywalled) for refactoring.fm, on February 11th, 2025. Luca edited a version of it that emphasized the importance of building “10x engineering teams” . It was later picked up by IEEE Spectrum (!!!),…
On How Long it Takes to Know if a Job is Right for You or Not
https://charity.wtf/2025/06/08/on-how-long-it-takes-to-know-if-a-job-is-right-for-you-or-not/
Published: June 8, 2025 23:28
A few eagle-eyed readers have noticed that it’s been 4 weeks since my last entry in what I have been thinking of as my “niblet series” — one small piece per week, 1000 words or less, for the next three months. This is true. However, I did leave myself some…
On Pronouns, Policies and Mandates
https://charity.wtf/2025/05/02/on-pronouns-policies-and-mandates/
Published: May 2, 2025 18:28
Hi friends! We’re on week three of my 12-week practice in writing one bite-sized topic per week — scoping it down, writing straight through, trying real hard to avoid over-writing or editing down to a pulp. Week 1 — “On Writing, Social Media, and Finding…
On Dropouts and Bootstraps
https://charity.wtf/2025/04/28/on-dropouts-and-bootstraps/
Published: April 28, 2025 05:05
In my early twenties I had a cohort of friends and coworkers, all Silicon Valley engineers, all quite good at their jobs, all college dropouts. We developed a shared conviction that only losers got computer science degrees. This sounds like a joke, or a…
On Writing, Social Media, and Finding the Line of Embarrassment
https://charity.wtf/2025/04/19/on-writing-social-media-and-finding-the-line-of-embarrassment/
Published: April 19, 2025 00:19
Brace yourself, because I’m about to utter a sequence of words I never thought I would hear myself say: I really miss posting on Twitter. I really, really miss it. It’s funny, because Twitter was never not a trash fire. There was never a time when it felt…