Slight Reliability

Stephen Townshend

Learning SRE, one day at a time.

  1. 7 hrs ago

    Farewell

    Send us Fan Mail Today I announce the end of Slight Reliability after 4 1/2 years, 125 episodes, and 75 unique guests from around the world. To listen to Tales from the Humpback Sky search for "Humpback Sky" wherever you listen to pods or directly from... Buzzsprout: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2462261 YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYUbPjdZs6U You can find me on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

  2. 11 Aug

    Becoming a Better Leader with Helen Cuddy (Episode 125)

    Send us Fan Mail How do you become an effective leader that gets the best out of people (and yourself)? This week I'm joined by technology leader Helen Cuddy to cover just this! We discuss... 🪴 Getting the best out of people 🤝 Building trust 🌌 How leadership differs depending on the org size 🤯 The need for good leadership even with smart engineers 🪞 The role of belief and self-perception ...and much more. You can find Helen on... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/helencuddy/ In the episode we discuss DISC profiling: https://www.discprofile.com/what-is-disc We also discuss The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni https://www.tablegroup.com/topics-and-resources/teamwork-5-dysfunctions/ You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    Becoming a Better Leader with Helen Cuddy (Episode 125)

  3. 14 July

    Effective Alerting with Krishna Vinnakota (Episode 124)

    Send us Fan Mail How do you design, implement and evolve effective alerting of your services and systems? This week I'm joined by Krisha Vinnakota, Senior SRE @ Microsoft to dive into this topic. We cover... 👩‍💻 Treating your alerts like production code ✅The link between SLOs and alerting 🌡️ How do you decide what thresholds to set? 🔊 Signal to noise ratio and how to manage it 🐒 Chaos engineering and postmortems are levers to improve alerting ...and much more. You can find Krishna on... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/krishna-vinnakota-8a03408/ You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    Effective Alerting with Krishna Vinnakota (Episode 124)

  4. 21 May

    The Trouble with Certificates with Charlie Al-Batty (Episode 123)

    Send us Fan Mail Why do some of the most mature organisations in the world still experience major incidents due to expired or incorrectly applied certificates? This week I'm joined by SRE and DevOps expert Charlie Al-Batty to discuss this and many other things including... ☁︎ His open source project for native SLOs and SLIs in Azure 🔧Building tools and automation to solve problems 🫩 Dealing with alert fatigue 👾 AI enabling us to become super developers 📜 The role of certifications in tech ...and much more. You can find Charlie on... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/charlie-al-batty-1895b911a/ His open source Azure SLO & SLI project "Azure SLO Guardian" can be found on GitHub: https://github.com/IamCharli01/Azure-SLO-Guardian/tree/main We also mentioned Ansible AWX on this episode: https://github.com/ansible/awx You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    The Trouble with Certificates with Charlie Al-Batty (Episode 123)

  5. 5 May

    Being a Digital Nomad with Amin Astaneh (Episode 122)

    Send us Fan Mail Can you combine your career with personal adventure? What would it be like to live in a truck and travel the country while working remotely? This week I'm joined again by SRE & DevOps legend Amin Astaneh in one of the most human interviews I've ever done. We explore... 💉 The impact of the post-Covid layoffs 🛻 The logistics of living in a mobile home 💥 Staring a consultancy ❤️ The impact of the nomad lifestyle on relationships 🧸 Being woken up by a giant black bear ...and much more. You can find Amin on... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/aminastaneh/ His website: https://certomodo.io/ and the Reliability Rebels podcast: https://podcast.certomodo.io/ Companies that Amin partners with... Nobl9 (SLOs as a service): https://www.nobl9.com/ LearnKube (Kubernes education): https://learnkube.com/ Amin also mentioned Go Fast Campers if you were interested (I have no partnership or even knowledge of this company, just putting it here in case anyone was interested in seeing what Amin's living space looks like): https://gofastcampers.com/ You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    Being a Digital Nomad with Amin Astaneh (Episode 122)

  6. 22 Apr

    Four Golden Signals to Kickstart SRE (Episode 121)

    Send us Fan Mail When you first start implementing SRE it's a good idea to find early wins. Implementing monitoring of the four golden signals + availability is something I'm experimenting with at the moment to give our SRE team momentum and to pave the way for SLOs and more advanced observability. In this solo episode I share my experiences, including... 💛 What are the four golden signals? 🦥 Observability in an async processing context 📏 The power of tracking availability 🤷 Why SLOs can be challenging to kick off on day 1 🚪 An invitation to come on the podcast ...and much more. You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    Four Golden Signals to Kickstart SRE (Episode 121)

  7. 7 Apr

    Staying Motivated as a Leader with Cads Oakley (Episode 120)

    Send us Fan Mail As an engineer you get constant dopamine hits by solving technical problems. As a leader you're often working toward long term goals that span months or years. How do you stay motivated in that context? This week I'm joined by technology leader and fellow Aucklander Cads Oakley. We cover... 🐆 Don't chase the result, harvest the learning 🏆 The payoff for being a leader 🎁 Giving feedback and giving others permission to give it to you 💉 The role of dopamine 🤷 How much control do we really have in our work? ...and much more. You can find Cads on... LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cadsoakley/ Website: https://aurelia.nz/ Content mentioned during the episode... Cads' article on the role of dopamine: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/managing-dopamine-mind-cædman-cads-oakley/ "Happy" by Derren Brown https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/30142270-happy What Got You Here Won't Get You There by Marshall Goldsmith https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/1401301304 You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    Staying Motivated as a Leader with Cads Oakley (Episode 120)

  8. 24 Mar

    A Beginner's Guide to SRE (Episode 119)

    Send us Fan Mail This week I repurpose a talk I just did at the JuniorDev meetup in Auckland. If you're new to SRE or observability then this is the talk for you. For the more seasoned listeners, it's a chance to see how my perspective and understanding has changed over the years. In the episode I refer to the This Is Fine! podcast on resilience engineering: https://www.thisisfinepod.com/ You can read the Google SRE books for free online here: https://sre.google/books/ You can buy Slight Reliability merch here (Note: you cannot order the mugs outside of New Zealand): https://slightreliability.digitees.co.nz/ You can find Stephen on: LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephentownshend/ Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/slightreliability.bsky.social YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/SlightReliability Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/slight_reliability/ TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@the_kiwi_sre

    A Beginner's Guide to SRE (Episode 119)
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Ratings & Reviews

5
out of 5
3 Ratings

About

Learning SRE, one day at a time.

Information

  • Creator
    Stephen Townshend
  • Years Active
    2021 - 2026
  • Episodes
    128
  • Rating
    Clean
  • Copyright
    © 2026 Slight Reliability
  • Show Website
    Slight Reliability

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