Observability as a Success Catalyst | Momento’s Co-Founder & CTO Daniela Miao
Also, the Developer Survey, AI safety, and the inability to unplug.
This week, co-host
sits down with Daniela Miao, co-founder and CTO of Momento, to discuss her journey from DynamoDB at AWS to founding the real-time data infrastructure platform Momento.Daniela covers the importance of observability, the decision to rebuild Momento's stack with Rust, and how observability can speed up development cycles. They also explore strategies for aligning technical projects with business objectives, building team trust, and the critical role of communication in achieving success.
“By giving more visibility into what's happening with your software, your application, you actually do enable development to be faster as well. It's not just insurance for when something goes wrong.”
Episode Highlights:
02:01 Why is observability often treated as an auxiliary service?
06:14 Making a push for observability at your org
13:32 Picking the right metrics to observe
15:49 The technical shift to Rust
19:23 How did you create trust and buy in from your team to make a switch?
26:31 What could other teams learn from Momento’s move to Rust?
38:15 Daniela’s advice for other technical founders
The Download
The Download is engineering leadership content we’re reading, watching, and attending that we think you might find valuable.
1. AI safety bill gets the banhammer
Some of the biggest news out of last week was California governor Gavin Newsom’s veto of SB 1047, AKA the ‘AI safety bill.’
The legislation captured the attention of Silicon Valley, sharply dividing some of the biggest names and companies in tech. Despite the veto, Newsom says he is committed to help California “develop workable guardrails” for generative AI.
Full story: California governor vetoes contentious AI safety bill
2. Don’t miss the 2024 Developer Survey
Let us start by apologizing for not already featuring one of the most interesting surveys we’ve seen all year - Stack Overflow’s 2024 Developer Survey.
Featuring over 65,000 developers from 185 countries, there is a lot to digest. So much so, we might just have to invite them on the podcast to break it down for us? 🤔
3. Is your vacation safe from yourself?
According to the latest survey from LinkedIn, over half of US workers check in with colleagues during planned time off. Those stats get even worse (77%!) with director level and above positions.
Nothing like pairing a Mai Tai and ocean views with a knock brush sound effect, right?
LinkedIn’s latest Workforce Confidence survey
Engineering Leader's Guide to Accelerating Developer Productivity (Sponsor)
Developer productivity can make or break whether you deliver value to your customers. But are you tracking the right metrics that truly make a difference?
To highlight how you can adjust your approach to both measure what matters and identify the right corrective strategies, LinearB just released the engineering leader's guide to accelerating developer productivity. Download your copy here:
4. Speaking of AI safety…
Former OpenAI chief scientist Ilya Sutskever is finding traction as the co-founder of Safe Superintelligence (SSI). The 10-person company just announced a $1 billion raise, with sources indicating the total value to be $5 billion.
Not bad for a three month old company.