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Every industry has its survival guides, but in tech, the only one worth reading is
Adam Korger: Hello everyone.
Ganesh the Awesome: You're listening to Cloud Next your go to source for Cloud innovation and leaders insight brought to you by Global Dots. Every industry has its survival guides, but in tech, the only one worth reading is written like a comedy roast. We're live at CloudHub Berlin with someone who swears he's not here as himself. Our guest is publishing under the name of Adam Korger, partly because his real Polish surname tends to terrify conference hosts like me, and partly because this book pulls no punches and he would like to remain semi anonymous. He's a battle tested veteran of the tech world with nearly two decades of scars from startups that broke things and enterprises that broke people. I'm Ganesh, the awesome solutions architect at Global Dots, where we research innovations every day so you don't have to. Today we'll decode it Dictionary, A, survival manual for anyone who's ever wanted to set Jira on fire, politely blame users, or make it through a corporate meeting without losing their soul.
You claim humor is the only sane coping mechanism in tech
But first we must ask, why publish a book under a pseudonym, instead of your real name?
Adam Korger: Well, there are, as you mentioned, two reasons. One is my Polish last name, which is not the easiest to remember. For Polish standards it's easy to pronounce, but for Polish standards. But also I didn't want to pull punches and sometimes direct connection between full on satire could be risky for professional reasons.
Ganesh the Awesome: And you claim humor is the only sane coping mechanism in tech? Is it sarcasm or is that career advice for people in tech?
Adam Korger: I don't consider it a, career advice, more like life philosophy. Basically every hard stuff is easier to cope to digest with a bit of humor instead of treating everything serious and well in it. And Polish culture, it's quite common in it. British humor is all the time everywhere in Polish culture. There's a lot of laughing at Handstone stuff as well as just to remain sane.
Ganesh the Awesome: So, so you, do you, do you keep it a secret from the people you work with? Ah, other people you work with aware of you?
Adam Korger: Oh, believe me, they do.
Ganesh the Awesome: believe me, they do. So you didn't do so well. your book walks us through five realms of tech hell, which are Core It, Agile Rituals, Copper Land, Startup Startup, Tizian Startup Startupism and AI. which one would you personally pick as your eternal punishment?
Adam Korger: Oh, that's, I have to admit I'm torn between Agile Rituals and Corp because they both come with their endless rituals or alignment meetings. So it is in both cases slightly different variation of Death by a Thousand meetings.
Ganesh the Awesome: Yeah, I, I, I Have to say, say that probably Agile Rituals would win it for me.
Adam Korger: Agile, itself is not bad, but as I titled the title the part it's Agile, Rituals and Other Cargo Calls. So the problem starts when it becomes cargo calls.
Ganesh the Awesome: yeah, I can think of numerous examples in my own career which I won't get into. But it's like agile for agile sake I think is definitely one of the things that's happening there.
Adam Korger: That's exactly what I mean. And early readings suggest that people recognize this almost as a documentary.
Ganesh the Awesome: Ah, ah, but you, you, you, you have to pay the Scrum master so you know, you need to keep up the Agile Ridge sales.
Adam Korger: Yeah, I was professional Scrum. I am professional Scrum master. I worked as Scrum master. I'm team leader working in Scrum band. So I think many variations and I know how, how it goes.
Ganesh the Awesome: So. So you're part of the problem in some way.
Adam Korger: Of course, of course. I'm not hiding.
Ganesh the Awesome: I'm
Adam Korger: Everything I've written is drawn from experience.
Ganesh the Awesome: I was gonna say from experience or about yourself maybe.
What's the one brutal truth that you want a young developer to take away from this book
so behind all the satire, what's the one brutal truth that you want a young developer to take away from this book?
Adam Korger: I'd say everything is every system complex, advanced system is difficult but the real problem starts when we go into extremes. So if you look at the book, ah, first part core, it represents pure, very harsh sarcasm m that developers and engineers show. Agile Rituals goes on the other side where everything has to be polite and nice. Then Corpolan describes full bureaucracy mode, where idea needs to get aligned. And on opposite force you have startup Istan where you have total anarchy and Jesus take the wheel, let's go. And all of them have some advantages. There's a reason why they are so common and popular. But if they go to extremes, we start having problems. It applies in it and not only I think so that would be the main lesson, I think.
IT dictionary is the first piece of what you've described as a bigger trilogy
Ganesh the Awesome: and you mentioned that IT dictionary is the first piece of what you've described as a bigger trilogy. From satire to cataloguing failures to understanding why we humans keep making the same mistakes. can you give us a sneak peek into what's next and why you see it as one connected journey?
Adam Korger: Yes, sure. I wouldn't, I'm not sure if trilogy is a really good term because the tone will shift quite a lot. But you could think of it as ah, it dictionary just shows how the industry doesn't work. What is wrong in there? the next would be about disaster stories, titles as Everything Fuck Up Almanac, but focused on, not just making fun of, what went wrong, more about what are the lessons and what's the value of postmortem, of analyzing mistakes and how to make sure that we don't make them again. Then third would go even broader without, go outside engineering and go into common mental traps and repeat thinking errors that as a humanity, we keep repeating. And they go as I started drafting, as long as the written word goes. So they all show how we can analyze and learn from mistakes to get better. And at some point I actually realized that there is a systemic thinking in practice. Because when I started explaining some concepts with very surprising analogies, like Kubernetes, as a CIA agency, used to explain entire architecture, really it is possible. I found out that this hits people and I want, and I think that it will be a good base to go into systemic thinking. I'm definitely not a person who invented it. There are really good books about that. But you can use that. I, think that mixed with my weird and specific sense of humor, it might reach to some other people and maybe potentially for book, because why not?
Ganesh the Awesome: Well, we, we definitely look forward to them. We. Everybody who works on, production frontline systems definitely needs more humor in their life, that's for sure. And, we're happy that you're bringing it to us. So, Adam, real pleasure chatting to you. Any parting words before we leave you?
Adam Korger: Well, I just hope that people will enjoy, the reading. and thank you for having me.
Ganesh the Awesome: yeah, pleasure. Thanks. Great for coming on. Thank you.
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That's it for today. Thank you all for listening. If you're ready to rethink your cloud practices and cybersecurity strategy, then the team and I at Global Dots are at your disposal. We've been doing it for over 20 years. It's what we do. And if I don't say so myself, we do it pretty well. So have a word with the experts. Don't be shy, and remember that conversations are, always for free. I'm Ganesh the Awesome, and this episode was produced and edited by Toma Mulvidson, sound editing and mix by Bren Russell. Stay tuned for more episodes.
