This is Fine! A podcast about resilience engineering and software

Colette Alexander and Clint Byrum · thisisfinepod.com

A podcast about resilience engineering and software. Ever wondered why things on the internet break? Do you work in software and wish that you could have a Dear-Abby-Like call-in show that could answer your deepest questions about how to make your workplace suck less? We're here to help! Write us anonymously at our open question form Email us at: thisisfine.softwarepodcast@gmail.com Call us and leave a voicemail, or text us at: ‪(401) 592-7574‬

36 episodes

2mo ago latest

fortnightly cadence

English language

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Episodes 36

The academic and the practical in resilience engineering
2mo ago · 46:30
Aerobarrier is super cool if you want to check out how it works: https://glbipro.com/aerobarrier-2/ Colette isn’t drinking alcohol, it’s a delicious herbal mocktail by Casamara Club: https://www.casamaraclub.com/products/como (Maybe we can get them to sponsor us someday) On the passive house that survived the Palisades fire: https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/comments/1hy22ui/house_designed_on_passive_house_principles/ Layer Aleph https://layeraleph.com/ folks have written Crisis Engineering: https://bookshop.org/p/books/crisis-engineering-time-tested-tools-for-turning-chaos-into-cl
Interviewing for Incident Analysis w/special guest John Allspaw
3mo ago · 1:00:55
We chatted with John Allspaw about Naturalistic Decision Making, interviewing for incident analysis, and asked him to do a mock incident interview with us.
Paper Club: Two Years Before the Mast w/special guest eric dobbs
3mo ago · 44:46
Mitchell Hashimoto’s post on leaving Github: https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-leaving-github The Reddit post on Github’s availability historically (that we find questionable): https://www.reddit.com/r/github/comments/1rnvhs9/githubs_historic_downtime_scraped_and_plotted/ A reminder, the Messy 9 are: congestion, cascade, conflict, lag, saturation, friction, tempo, surprise, tangles We have sometimes loved his stuff, but Gergely is annoying us with these posts: https://newsletter.pragmaticengineer.com/p/the-pulse-is-github-still-best-for?r=78c7k&utm_medium=email https://x.com/GergelyOrosz/s
SRECon Americas 2026 recap
4mo ago · 55:07
Colette and Clint talk through the highs and lows of SRECon Americas 2026, and what they learned.
The 2025 DORA Report w/special guest Fred Hebert
5mo ago · 59:05
We chatted with Fred about last fall's DORA report and what it means for those of us who are thinking about resilience and software engineering in the age of AI.
Building and Revising Adaptive Capacity Sharing for Technical Incident Response with Beth Adele Long
6mo ago · 1:09:08
The Keewenaw snow gauge that Colette mentioned is a tourist attraction. If you want to see where measurements are at for the season you can find them here: https://www.pasty.com/snow/ The paper we’re talking about today can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0003687020301903 If you want to know more about SNAFU Catchers, you can see their website here: https://www.snafucatchers.com/ They produced the STELLA report: https://snafucatchers.github.io/ Richard Cook’s Bone Talk is kind of famous - here’s a version from REDeploy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Lbe
Outsourcing and Resilience
6mo ago · 41:44
We answer a reader question about how to activate resilience when teams are far away from each other (organizationally and geographically)
The Messy 9 and Coding with AI - A Panel Discussion
7mo ago · 1:43:05
A panel discussion on how people actually use AI in their day-to-day software work, with special guests John Allspaw, Sheeri Cabral, Martin Smith and David Woods.
Going Solid
7mo ago · 1:01:34
If you’re feeling like you need to do more to respond to our moment: Lots of place to donate to in the twin cities are listed here: https://mspmag.com/arts-and-culture/general-interest/ice-minnesota-support-immigrant-communities-fundraisers-food-drives-trainings/ You can always find mutual aid networks in your own area, including immigrant aid networks https://immigrantdefensenetwork.org/ does good work, too The Hometown Holler podcast with Tressie McMillan Cottom was a wonderful discussion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gr4mW8aR-g The Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s interview that I quoted clumsily
The Year in Resilience w/special guest John Allspaw
8mo ago · 52:35
Seriously though, can’t wait to gtfo of this year. Palisades fire links: https://www.nbclosangeles.com/investigations/anonymous-letter-demands-independent-palisades-fire-investigations/3800442/ https://internationalfireandsafetyjournal.com/palisades-fire-report/ https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2025-12-20/lafd-report-on-palisades-fire-was-watered-down-in-editing-process-records-show Corey Quinn’s commentary on the AWS outage in October is here: https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/20/aws_outage_amazon_brain_drain_corey_quinn/ Time to reset the clock on how many episodes it’s been since
Incident Status: On Hold w/special guest Will Gallego
9mo ago · 42:31
Mentioned multiple times, Em Ruppe’s amazing talk on incident severity: https://www.usenix.org/conference/srecon24americas/presentation/ruppe We talk about the RIS Slack sometimes - you can join us in the slack, by joining the Foundation here: https://resilienceinsoftware.org/ Please ask us a question at thisisfinepod.com
Complex Systems and the Messy Nine w/special guests Dave Woods and John Allspaw
9mo ago · 1:08:11
The writeup on the AWS outage from AWS themselves, if you haven’t seen it: https://aws.amazon.com/message/101925/ Dave’s department at OSU, Cognitive Systems Engineering: https://ise.osu.edu/human-systems-integration/cognitive-systems-engineering is a part of the larger Integrated Systems Engineering school: https://ise.osu.edu/human-systems-integration Dave was talking early on about the discussion on the war on expertise, it was this webinar through the NDM association: https://vimeo.com/1129606494?fl=pl&fe=sh&mc_cid=c807a504fb Dave was a part of the Paul Feltovich got a shout out - he wrote
All the things about Incident Command
10mo ago · 37:25
It’s Spamton G (not J) Spamton, Clint! Get hip to the game characters! https://deltarune.fandom.com/wiki/Spamton There are a couple of incident command trainers out there who tend to get recommended in the tech world (that we know of): https://www.blackrock3.com/ and Great Circle: https://greatcircle.com/im/
Root Cause Analysis vs. Resilience Engineering w/special guest Lorin Hochstein
10mo ago · 59:43
A history of the 5 whys and root cause analysis from papers Some critiques of the 5 whys: From John Allspaw: https://www.oreilly.com/radar/the-infinite-hows/ From Alan J Card: https://qualitysafety.bmj.com/content/26/8/671 James Reason and the Swiss Cheese Model: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8514562/ James Reason’s book Human Error: https://bookshop.org/p/books/human-error/9e06d8a100a07537?ean=9780521314190&next=t And a classic from Sidney Dekker (et al.) on the implication of complexity within safety investigations: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0925753511
First Stories/Second Stories
11mo ago · 52:55
More robustness than resilience, but worth repeating that you should always check your earthquake go-bag: https://www.earthquakeauthority.com/blog/2019/how-to-make-an-earthquake-emergency-kit Clint did ASA 103: https://americansailing.com/learn-to-sail/certifications/asa-103-coastal-cruising/ Since this is a science podcast, there is a scientific reason people get emotional on airplanes: https://www.cntraveler.com/story/why-do-we-always-cry-on-planes 52 Hertz Whale documentary: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Loneliest_Whale:_The_Search_for_52 And Leslie Jamison wrote 52 Blue as a chapter in
How (Not) to Introduce Resilience Engineering at Work with special guest Michelle Casey
11mo ago · 53:21
Lorikeets are pretty: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainbow_lorikeet You think Colette’s kidding about the kangaroo? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQjHVRHXbc8 The Mackinac Bridge is long: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackinac_Bridge Michelle’s Blog post: https://resilienceinsoftware.org/news/1288714 DORA has some good writing on Westrum’s cultural models if you’re wondering about it: https://dora.dev/capabilities/generative-organizational-culture/ The link to our TiF live event with Michelle where we will be discussing the blog post! https://resilienceinsoftware.org/networks/events/143194 P
How long should you wait after an incident to do your retro?
1y ago · 44:24
Corn sweat is a real thing: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/humidity-from-corn-sweat-intensifies-extreme-heat-wave-in-midwest-u-s/ Also, plugging Tajin here, because: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taj%C3%ADn_seasoning Wikipedia tells me Tajin is Mexican. I dunno, Clint. Beaumaiden report, for those that didn’t listen to the prior episode where we mentioned it: https://dmaib.com/reports/2021/beaumaiden-grounding-on-18-october-2021 John Allspaw’s talk at Spotify that we referenced: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M8mYPyRG1fQ Lorin’s Law is always a good plug: https://surfingcomplexity
Lund University - Academic Theory and Practice
1y ago · 1:04:32
A huge thanks to our panelists: ⁠John Allspaw⁠ ⁠Jed Needle⁠ ⁠Chad Todd⁠ RISF and TiF will host a live follow up to this episode on July 31st! You can sign up here: ⁠https://resilienceinsoftware.org/networks/events/133948⁠ If you’re interested in Lund’s Masters of Science program in Human Factors and Systems Safety, or any of their learning labs, you can check out more info here: ⁠https://www.humanfactors.lth.se/⁠ ⁠Adaptive Capacity Labs⁠ is how Jed was introduced to some of the concepts of LFI & Resilience Engineering, which eventually landed him at Lund. John mentioned SciShow Tangents, a pod
What’s the ROI on Reliability and Resilience work?
1y ago · 58:03
Dave Wood’s Talk at SRECon 25 was on Complexification and SRE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lmBvUJnGUX4 Jens Rasmussen’s model - Is really well explained by Richard Cook’s talk at Velocity: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGLYEDpNu60&t=3s Lorin’s blog also has a good summary: https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2021/05/31/transgressing-the-boundaries-rasmussen-and-woods/ And finally, Jens Rasmussen’s original paper on the subject: Risk Management in a Dynamic Society https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S0925753597000520 SRECon 25 talk on Incident Metrics that Matter that was awesome - h
Runbooks: the Good, Bad and Ugly w/special guest Andrew Hatch
1y ago · 53:37
We chatted with Andrew Hatch about runbooks and when they're terrible, or when they might not suck so bad.
What is an incident? How come no one declare them?
1y ago · 55:08
We talked about the politics and trouble with declaring incidents, and how to improve how your organization handles them.
Chaos Engineering w/special guest Casey Rosenthal
1y ago · 48:13
We chatted with Casey Rosenthal about what chaos engineering is and how it’s different (or the same) than resilience engineering.
Burnout on Aisle 3
1y ago · 46:44
Colette and Clint talk burnout and why resilience engineering sees so much of it.
Resilience, Complexity, and Your Boss a collab w/Punk Rock Safety
1y ago · 55:02
Ben (Goodheart), Dave (Provan) and Ron (Gantt) have the very awesome podcast Punk Rock Safety (punkrocksafety.com) - you can get your own punk rock safety merch at punkrocksafetymerch.com Charles Perrow wrote Normal Accidents and talks about safety and power in his essay (book, really), Complex Organizations. Drew Rae lit the stage on fire about safety work as soothing rather than actually improving safety: EHS Congress Berlin 2024 - Day2 Dr. Richard Cook’s concepts of ‘Above the Line/Below the Line’ got a shout out - here’s the paper, and here’s John Allspaw giving a talk about the concept.
Live From SRECon
1y ago · 49:12
We grabbed a room at SRECon and some folks talked to us about Resilience Engineering.

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This is Fine! A podcast about resilience engineering and software

Episodes 36

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Interviewing for Incident Analysis w/special guest John Allspaw

Paper Club: Two Years Before the Mast w/special guest eric dobbs

SRECon Americas 2026 recap

The 2025 DORA Report w/special guest Fred Hebert

Building and Revising Adaptive Capacity Sharing for Technical Incident Response with Beth Adele Long

Outsourcing and Resilience

The Messy 9 and Coding with AI - A Panel Discussion

Going Solid

The Year in Resilience w/special guest John Allspaw

Incident Status: On Hold w/special guest Will Gallego

Complex Systems and the Messy Nine w/special guests Dave Woods and John Allspaw

All the things about Incident Command

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First Stories/Second Stories

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Episodes 36

The academic and the practical in resilience engineering

Interviewing for Incident Analysis w/special guest John Allspaw

Paper Club: Two Years Before the Mast w/special guest eric dobbs

SRECon Americas 2026 recap

The 2025 DORA Report w/special guest Fred Hebert

Building and Revising Adaptive Capacity Sharing for Technical Incident Response with Beth Adele Long

Outsourcing and Resilience

The Messy 9 and Coding with AI - A Panel Discussion

Going Solid

The Year in Resilience w/special guest John Allspaw

Incident Status: On Hold w/special guest Will Gallego

Complex Systems and the Messy Nine w/special guests Dave Woods and John Allspaw

All the things about Incident Command

Root Cause Analysis vs. Resilience Engineering w/special guest Lorin Hochstein

First Stories/Second Stories

How (Not) to Introduce Resilience Engineering at Work with special guest Michelle Casey

How long should you wait after an incident to do your retro?

Lund University - Academic Theory and Practice

What’s the ROI on Reliability and Resilience work?

Runbooks: the Good, Bad and Ugly w/special guest Andrew Hatch

What is an incident? How come no one declare them?

Chaos Engineering w/special guest Casey Rosenthal

Burnout on Aisle 3

Resilience, Complexity, and Your Boss a collab w/Punk Rock Safety

Live From SRECon