Humans of Reliability

Incident response is as much about people as it is about systems. In this episode, David Owczarek, a veteran Unix administrator and seasoned incident commander, joins Silvan Kalache to unpack the human dynamics behind effective reliability leadership.

Drawing on experiences across startups and global enterprises, David shares what really matters when everything breaks, including:

– How incident response strategies shift between small companies and large enterprises

– Why not every engineer should be an incident commander

– How empathy and transparency during outages can deepen customer trust instead of eroding it

– Where AI is sh...

AI is transforming reliability work—from reactive firefighting to proactive engineering. In this episode, Ryan Lockard, VP of Platform Engineering and AI Enablement at CVS Health, joins Sylvain Kalache to break down how AI is showing up on the frontlines of healthcare infrastructure and operations.

From LLM copilots to cultural shifts in ownership, Ryan walks us through:

In this episode, we sit down with Cosmo Wolfe, Head of Technology at Metronome, to unpack how reliability, trust, and architecture intersect in one of the most critical and overlooked parts of the AI product stack: billing.

As AI workloads introduce unpredictable usage patterns and nontraditional pricing models—from token-based to outcome-based—companies are navigating a new frontier of customer trust. Cosmo explains why billing is more than just a backend function; it’s a key moment of truth in the product experience.

We explore how event-sourced systems, rigorous monitoring, and internal accountability help avoid trust...

Internal platforms promise speed, consistency, and scale — but what happens when they become a distraction? In this episode, Chase Roberts, COO at Northflank, joins Sylvain Kalache to examine the quiet ways platforms erode developer experience when not planned carefully. 

From abandoned golden paths to shadow deployments and brittle YAML pipelines, Chase walks us through: 

In this episode of Humans of Reliability, we sit down with Justin Reock, Deputy CTO at DX, to unpack the real impact of generative AI on developer productivity. Drawing from early data in DX’s GenAI Impact Report, he explains why time savings alone don’t tell the full story and why the real value might lie in shifting cognitive load toward meaningful work. 

We also explore how traditional productivity metrics like PR throughput can backfire, why teams need to move beyond DORA, and how modern frameworks like SPACE and the DX Core 4 offer a more complete view...

In this episode, we explore how networking has shaped reliability as we know it. Marino Wijay cloud networking expert and Staff Solutions Architect at Kong shares how his journey began not as an SRE, but with cables, routers, and switches.

Marino explains the evolution of the fabric holding systems together through virtualization, and how software-defined networking, which is now a key element to resilient applications.

This episode also dives into the new challenges LLMs are introducing into networking. Marino discusses how these workloads introduce new types of reliability challenges: longer response times, context preservation, model...

In this episode of Humans of Reliability, Ryan McDonald is joined by Mark Quigley, Head of Platform Engineering at 90, for a conversation that cuts through the noise around developer productivity metrics and AI.

Mark dives deep into how teams can measure what matters—without falling into the trap of turning every measure into a target. He shares how tools like Developer NPS, DORA metrics, and balanced scorecards can help teams optimize for both output and well-being—but only when framed with the right intent.

As AI tools like GitHub Copilot begin to shift how engineering work...

Last year, over 89% of companies claimed to have adopted platform engineering. And, in the past month, LLMs have been disrupting how we think about software development. In this context, Kaspar, asks if the role of Site Reliability Engineers is being obsolete as we know it. Kaspar argues that while SREs aren’t going anywhere, their responsibilities are evolving—fast.

We talk about:

Dan Slimmon is an incident management veteran who's worked at Etsy, HashiCorp, and now leads consulting and training on pragmatic, non-bureaucratic incident response. 

In this episode, Dan shares his philosophy on "scientific incident response," the importance of hypothesis-driven troubleshooting, and why incidents should be seen as normal in complex systems. 

We also explore:

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Mariano, Staff Product Manager at Vercel, explains why serverless architectures are hitting unexpected limits—they’re too fast. 

The industry has spent millions optimizing serverless for speed, but AI workloads are changing the game. In the AI realm, slower execution often leads to better results. The challenge? Paying for all that idle compute time while waiting for AI responses. 

Mariano explains how Vercel Fluid is introducing a new execution model that blends the best of serverless and traditional servers—scaling efficiently while reducing costs. Mariano breaks down Fluid’s architecture, its built-in reliability features, and how it red...

In this episode, we sit down with Adriana Villela, Principal DevRel at Dynatrace and OpenTelemetry contributor to break down how observability impacts reliability. 

We dive into what contributes to SRE burnout and how managers can create psychologically safer spaces for responders. 

Adriana also shares her perspective on AI as an observability-buddy to navigate incidents. 

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In this episode, we sit down with Sean Goedecke, Staff Software Engineer at GitHub, to discuss where LLMs fit into real-world development. 

Sean shares how he’s using LLMs how he’s drawing the line for AI-assistance in the codebases he manages—though, as he says, this might all change by next summer. 

Sean also weighs in on how LLMs could assist SREs during outages—especially when you’re only half-awake at 3 a.m. after a rather inconvinient page. 

Tune in for a nuanced take on the future of AI in software engineering, “vibe coding,” a...

In this episode of Humans of Reliability, we sit down with Steve McGhee, Reliability Advocate at Google, to discuss his journey from early SRE work to advocating for reliability best practices. 

Steve shares fascinating stories from his time at Google, the challenges of implementing SRE in enterprises, and what people often misunderstand about the discipline. 

He also offers valuable insights on incident response, distributed systems, and the underrated skill every reliability engineer should master. Whether you're new to SRE or a seasoned professional, this conversation is packed with wisdom and practical takeaways.

This ep...

What does it take to lead service delivery at a company experiencing massive growth? 

Hannah Hammonds, Service Delivery Lead at Prolific, shares her journey from an IT networking apprentice to a tech leader shaping reliability and incident response. 

We discuss the evolving role of service delivery, the power of mentorship, and how confidence transforms careers.

Plus, we debate hot dogs, spoilers, and The Office.

Tune in for career insights, leadership lessons, and a few laughs! 🎙️🚀

This podcast episode is also available on YouTube if you want to see a video vers...

What happens when a Google-trained SRE joins a fast-moving e-commerce company? 

Gastón Rial Saibene, SRE Lead at Boozt.com, joins Humans of Reliability to talk about adapting reliability practices for different company sizes, the limits of SLOs, and the importance of automation. 

We also dive into decision-making, his favorite books, and—just for fun—whether he’d survive a zombie apocalypse. Tune in for insights, laughs, and a fresh perspective on the world of reliability engineering! 

🎙️ Humans of Reliability: Keeping systems up and the lights on isn’t just about technology—it’s about the people behind it. In this episode, we’re thrilled to chat with Nuno Tomás, founder of IsDown.app, a vendor outage monitoring tool transforming how teams handle third-party incidents.

Nuno shares his journey from software engineer to entrepreneur, the pivotal 4 a.m. moment that inspired Isdown, and the challenges of balancing startup life with family. We dive into the complexities of incident communication, how to tackle alert fatigue, and why transparency is key to building trust in SaaS...