Staff SRE @ honeycomb.io, Tech Book Author, Resilience in Software Foundation board member, Erlang Ecosystem Foundation co-founder, Resilience Engineering fan. SRE-not-sorry. blog: https://ferd.ca notes: https://ferd.ca/notes/https://bsky.app/profile/ferd.cahttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mjxavydvo22pWriting my action items on a piece of paper that I will burn to ward off spirits20 Apr 2026 19:58 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjxavydvo22phttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mjrtnchhmc2iI wrote for @resilienceinsoftware.org on "Superficial Blamelessness", where under the label of "blamelessness", we avoid punishing people, yet still focus fixes and interventions based on the same individualistic framing rather than a broader systemic stance. resilienceinsoftware.org/news/11502437 https://resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1150243718 Apr 2026 16:17 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjrtnchhmc2ihttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3miwvpbmplc2dI've gotten an early copy of Crisis Engineering by Marina Nitze, Matthew Weaver, and Mikey Dickerson, and just in time for its release today, here's my review of it: https://ferd.ca/notes/on-crisis-engineering.html TL:DR; I like it, good perspectives and an interesting mix of approaches.07 Apr 2026 23:12 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3miwvpbmplc2dhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3miusiipqhc2nOne of my assignments asks whether a given set of psychological constructs amount to “good science” and it’s very weird as someone who’s written zero papers and done no real science to just attempt to go “sure dawg it’s okay science I guess but these hundreds of researchers could pick better models”07 Apr 2026 03:09 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3miusiipqhc2nhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mimjuzcd5c2mEvery time I am faced with this Swedish login form, I have to say 'Logga in' out loud with a terminator voice. It is one of the few rules we can't change and must be respected.03 Apr 2026 20:14 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mimjuzcd5c2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mhqpiojz4k2jhell yeah @resilienceinsoftware.org swag is in! the law of requisite variety states that only variety in the regulator can destroy variety in the system being regulated. so if you need to deal with complexity you know you gotta join the club & begrudgingly increase complexity to keep things simple23 Mar 2026 18:40 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mhqpiojz4k2jhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mh7illlt6k2mwould you rather have many incidents of various small to moderate size for the foreseeable future or just one very big incident and then be done with them for good?16 Mar 2026 22:21 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mh7illlt6k2mhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mgkxiwxngk2iAs usual @grimalkina.bsky.social is worth listening to. These principles are also worth considering and applying in all sorts of contexts. Here’s a sample from safety research I happened to read just yesterday (Dekker - Reconstructing human contributions to accidents, 2002) that aligns with it! [contains quote post or other embedded content]08 Mar 2026 18:22 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mgkxiwxngk2ihttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mgifvdgz422oWhen I joined the program I'm currently in, I told myself I would not read more papers and technical books outside of it because I'd need to balance about my energy levels—not spending it all on this. I was right, but also there's lots of other cool nerd shit I want to read through now and welp.07 Mar 2026 18:01 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mgifvdgz422ohttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mfxwyucye22aI really need to do this year’s garden planning. It’s gonna be time for seedlings in a few weeks and it’s gonna be nice to once again get going on one of them hobbies where you can’t really obsessively dictate the pace nor feel pressured in going faster. Just watch the plants grow and see what goes.01 Mar 2026 04:52 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mfxwyucye22ahttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mfrrlhe3wk2oBack in December, we had a large outage at work. The internal investigation took a while and the internal report was roughly 40 pages long. For the public, we managed to try and condense it to a much shorter format that we think can still offer useful insights to other organizations: https://www.honeycomb.io/blog/incident-report-exercises-cleanups-and-evacuations26 Feb 2026 17:59 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mfrrlhe3wk2ohttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mfnf53inqs2gI believe I had a relatively intuitive sense of how much Swiss cheese I could consume in one sitting before I can take no more. I also believe I now have a fairly empirical sense of how much literature about the Swiss Cheese Model I can consume in one sitting before I can take no more.25 Feb 2026 00:06 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mfnf53inqs2ghttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mfk5e5utvs2rAI SREs are framed as nameless job automation; Coding Assistants as named partners. The framing used to create these products reveals a lot about how the builders and buyers perceive these roles. I also write about the challenges and risks of picking self-limiting analogies in building systems. https://ferd.ca/the-picture-they-paint-of-you.html23 Feb 2026 17:09 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mfk5e5utvs2rhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3meypjst5qk26buddy, my challenge isn't generating more content, it's figuring out how to produce a lot less.16 Feb 2026 18:46 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3meypjst5qk26https://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mecd6paw7k2bReading a text on Cognitive Systems Engineering (CSE) & its morality. It starts with the Ea Nasir tablet but then starts going hard and just won't let up, aiming for a morally relativist and nihilistic conclusion of "the real issue is our fake ass sense of absolute morality" The hell is this ride?07 Feb 2026 21:06 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mecd6paw7k2bhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mebgohia6s2hRadiologists intimidate me, it feels like they can always see right through me07 Feb 2026 12:36 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mebgohia6s2hhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mebg33vad22hPrinciples/approaches I’ve argued for and adopted in my career got me good results & have helped my own and many peers’ growth. Yet it feels like I’m always “losing” in that what “wins” in the industry often directly conflicts with lots of it. It’s increasingly harder to deal with the dissonance.07 Feb 2026 12:25 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mebg33vad22hhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3me3d3jithk2eBeing sick with a fairly sore throat forces me to talk less to avoid fits of coughing, which incidentally probably makes me a lot more pertinent than usual in zoom meetings.05 Feb 2026 02:16 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3me3d3jithk2ehttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mdxkntamwk2yPaper review: William H. Starbuck & Frances J. Milliken in Challenger: Fine-Tuning the Odds Until Something Breaks. If you heard of "normalization of deviance", this is an alternative framing where accidents are normal outcomes of optimization processes when operationalizing systems and tradeoffs. https://ferd.ca/notes/paper-challenger-fine-tuning-the-odds-until-something-breaks.html03 Feb 2026 14:21 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdxkntamwk2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mdwhpwqsqs2fOnce again noticing that LLMs that write code often get a person’s name and are described as partners, but AI SREs are generally named “AI SRE” and they are there to make sure nobody’s got to stop to do that lowly unproductive work.03 Feb 2026 03:56 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdwhpwqsqs2fhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mdowwphlgk2yAgreed. As a “yes, and,” sometimes what one wants to learn isn’t in the code itself, but something else supported with quick experiments where code is an inessential detail or enabler for the time being. There’s no sin in picking your focus, and maybe revisiting later with more purpose if need be. [contains quote post or other embedded content]31 Jan 2026 04:07 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdowwphlgk2yhttps://bsky.app/profile/ferd.ca/post/3mdlt4fvr4c2tWhile I was bent over my seat to stow my bag under the seat in front of me, with passengers hurrying by, the guy next to me set his coffee on my seat and I sat on it. Being committed to blame-aware retros, I will analyze the systemic elements contributing to my ass smelling like a damp coffee crisp;29 Jan 2026 22:20 +0000at://did:plc:uvdyep6dqes5eqb3ge5caa4n/app.bsky.feed.post/3mdlt4fvr4c2t