Your job as an engineer is to make yourself unnecessary.
A fun story 👇
A fun story 👇
We built a caching system for a slow 3rd party that our ops team uses to do stuff. Sometimes webhooks take 30min to tell us the cache needs updating.
Eh whatever, they set up well in advance. This isn’t a problem
And then ...
Eh whatever, they set up well in advance. This isn’t a problem
And then ...
Hey we did this thing and it isn’t instantly showing up!!
Yeah it wouldn’t. Wasn’t designed to.
BUT WE NEED IT!!!!!111one
💩
Okay, we’ll clear the cache for ya. Ping us when you need us
Yeah it wouldn’t. Wasn’t designed to.
BUT WE NEED IT!!!!!111one
💩
Okay, we’ll clear the cache for ya. Ping us when you need us
The requests became constant. Many per day. Often with 30min of back-and-forth as the ops and eng teams tried to sync up and ensure the cache is cleared at just the right time.
It sucked.
And only 3 of us knew how to do this. Others wanted to help, couldn’t. 🙃
It sucked.
And only 3 of us knew how to do this. Others wanted to help, couldn’t. 🙃
One day I had enough of this shit and wrote an SOP (standard operating procedure)
When ops says X, do Y, say Z, verify it worked.
Everyone could help, yay! And now the whole eng team was distracted 🤣
When ops says X, do Y, say Z, verify it worked.
Everyone could help, yay! And now the whole eng team was distracted 🤣
We lobbied our PM for a feature. PLEASE make time between features to build a bandaid for this problem
This sprint she did 🥳
An afternoon of translating the SOP into code and now there’s a DO THE THING button. Ops needs us no more and everyone’s happy
This sprint she did 🥳
An afternoon of translating the SOP into code and now there’s a DO THE THING button. Ops needs us no more and everyone’s happy
This is why engineers are so valuable — we build assets, not run the day-to-day
swizec.com//blog/why-engi…
swizec.com//blog/why-engi…
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