If you consider yourself a good infrastructure thinker and ops person, across different categories of systems and processes, what’s your top tip for being good at it?
As low-level habit as possible. For eg “keep work spaces clean” or “inspect everything once a week”
Conversation
Replying to
Differentiate Euclidean cadences from fractal cadences
Man made cadences usually tend to be Euclidean + check list based (do x every week until y, inspect desktop every morning, etc.)
Organic cadences tend to be fractal (fast 1 day a week, then 2-3 days every other month, etc.)
1
15
Replying to
cultivate people you can talk to,
to help you distill the gestalt of an idea
work hard to determine the true constraints, and factors that play into a merit function
consider designs suggested by the extrema
look for conservation principles
if you want to remember, communicate
1
4
26
can’t say this is particularly specific to infrastructure ops, but i tried to make it reasonably low level and general
1
Replying to
Use a system you trust to track tasks, projects, & commmitents (inbound & outbound)--review it regularly.
Write everything down. You may need to do it again (or teach someone) later.
Practice talking to humans. If ppl knew how to solve their own problems why need you?
1
1
9
💯 “practice talking to humans”
My team is fully remote, on chat and email all day
When a problem comes up, my first question is:
Have you TALKED to them about it?
No, almost always. As soon as they do, they remark about how easy it was to solve in conversation
2
Replying to
Visualize the process you’re working on - whiteboard, digital doc, whatever
Best done separately with different functions/ groups so you understand how *they think things work*
Comparing diagrams side-by-side will show gaps in the process, and wild misconceptions across teams
1
At a high level, I always start with 2 things:
Communication: if you don’t have good communication fundamentals, then anything good that happens with your team is basically luck
Process: visualize & document assumptions around Duration => Path => Outcome to get everyone aligned
Replying to
Repeatedly prove the base case (I.e. you learn 10x more and design from manually brute forcing yourself through single examples than from weeks of "strategy")
4
45







