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ctrl-alt-expletive

ctrl-alt-expletive

By: Mark McCracken & Michael McCarthy
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 Join us for a laid back catch up on what's going on in the world of software, enterprise business, news for software and tech, and miscellaneous bureaucracy.© 2025 Cracksoft Economics Management Management & Leadership Politics & Government
Episodes
  • Episode 16: FinOps, with Alison McIntyre

    Episode 16: FinOps, with Alison McIntyre
    Jun 13 2025
    Alison McIntyre, Director of Cloud Economics at Capgemini gives us a tour of modern FinOps, and the state of FinOps report Michael is investigating Liberating Structures (https://www.liberatingstructures.com/31-ecocycle-planning/) Mark doesn't know what a Clementine is Alison gets in on the ground floor on a new FinOps project Subscribe to our new Newsletter! (https://newsletter.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/subscribe) Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links. Who is Alison McIntyre? IT support -> Scottish Parliament -> Lloyds Bank -> Capgemini, with some stories along the way! Quickfire Questions: What is one FinOps practice you take into your personal life? What is the most likely offender of unnecessary spend in your experience? Which roles are most receptive to the introduction of FinOps concepts? What is one memory that sticks out from interviewing Michael? What is the biggest misconception about FinOps? What is the most memorable reaction you’ve seen when you’ve shown someone the cloud spend their team is accountable for? What is FOCUS? What is Cloud Plus, and Scopes? Breaking Prod Alison will happily unplug your network cables for you Big Topic: FinOps The term ‘unit economics’ comes up in all the literature, what does it mean What is the structure of that team? What sort of roles exist in a team like this when a company decides to have one? If you have an internal developer platform, does chargeback need to include the cost of the team developing that platform? What if other teams internally aren’t willing to eat that cost? Can they reject the Internal Developer Platform and do it themselves? Is there a lot of tooling provided by the hyperscalers? Is it significantly harder to track consumption with on-premise infra? News We cover the 2025 State of FinOps report (https://data.finops.org/) We get hot takes from our expert. "Workload optimization and waste reduction is the top priority by a clear margin" "In the next 12 months, governance and optimization are top for future priorities" "“Organizational Alignment” still the top way to achieve priorities but “Investment and Tooling” has risen significantly" "Practitioners are increasing effort in many capabilities while reducing effort in very few" Recommendations FinOps FinOps Foundation (https://www.finops.org/) website Cloud FinOps (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/cloud-finops/9781492054610/) book, by J. R. Storment and Mike Fuller (O'Reilly) FinOps Weekly (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZp7eZoOt-1yIMDhIb7LwEmVkutatcXYH) podcast Books Unlearn (https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/Unlearn-Audiobook/0008359644) audiobook (audible) 1984 Audiobook (https://www.audible.co.uk/pd/George-Orwells-1984-Audiobook/B0CRS2YMLQ), featuring Andrew Garfield, Cynthia Erivo, Andrew Scott and Tom Hardy TV & Film A Real Pain (https://www.disneyplus.com/en-gb/browse/entity-31d1e6f6-b11a-4848-9153-0a832cdc22a4), Drama film on Disney+ The Studio (https://tv.apple.com/gb/show/the-studio/umc.cmc.7518algxc4lsoobtsx30dqb52), Comedy series on Apple TV White Lotus (https://www.sky.com/watch/series/ed2f46ed-0636-4585-ac14-88b553f3d0cb), Drama series on Sky MobLand (https://www.paramountplus.com/gb/shows/mobland/), Crime Drama on Paramount+ Music Cultdreams - Love Won't Let Me Go & Death Consumes Me :: Indie Rock :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/love-wont-let-me-go-death-consumes-me/1777832399) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/1nKdqI6QZBXnBhfMnPtvVA?si=6NPuVWlvTjqjNXXyK4kC5w) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_nEcltOw5TTWl-RccpqxIjddiECuiUPVyg) Technology Arc browser (https://arc.net/) Crossplane (https://www.crossplane.io/) If you've enjoyed the show, recommend it to a friend! Or leave us a rating/review on apple/spotify to help others find us. Subscribe to our new Newsletter! (https://newsletter.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/subscribe) Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links. GIVE US FEEDBACK! Do this form, it will take 4 mins (https://forms.office.com/e/gQJFBRJJAY) Special Guest: Alison McIntyre.
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    1 hr and 32 mins
  • Episode 15: Working with Neurodiversity

    Episode 15: Working with Neurodiversity
    Mar 29 2025
    Chris Knight, Head of Data & AI Demand, Delivery & Financial Operations, talks about his work life, and dealing with Neurodivergence Mark has been fiddling around with Kit and automation for emails for our newsletter. Chris is says you can only last a week without a dishwasher Michael calls people Rain Man. Hasn't even seen it. Subscribe to our new Newsletter! (https://newsletter.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/subscribe) Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links. Who is Chris Knight? Chris has a very unusual story of how he eventually landed into his senior role. Buckle in! Quickfire Questions: What’s one thing that’s certain to distract you, when you’re working? When are you at your most focused? Do deadlines help or stress you out? What’s something neurotypical people often get wrong about neurodivergence? One app or tool you couldn’t live without? You meet someone new at work, and although they haven’t come out and said “I’m Neurodivergent”, you can just tell. What sort of things are you noticing? What does time management look like for neurodivergent people? Breaking Prod Chris is breaking records in style, with an email whoopsie to all customers Big Topic: Neurodiveristy What sort of stigma comes with being neurodivergent? Have you tried during your career did you pretend you weren't neurodivergent, by “masking”? Did you ever tell yourself, or have other people tell you, “you need to try harder”, even though you felt you were already giving it your all? When’s the right time to tell your boss/employer? From the corporate side, what does good support look like from your employer? In some ways, your Neurodivergence makes things more difficult – are there any ways in which it’s your superpower? What's your take on medication? What should parents know about neurodivergence? How do you support your daughter? News TikTok Misinformation Is Warping Young People's Understanding of ADHD (https://www.sciencealert.com/tiktok-misinformation-is-warping-young-peoples-understanding-of-adhd) (sciencealert.com) “of the top 100 most-viewed TikTok videos tagged for attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) content, fewer than half matched the professional diagnostic criteria for the condition.” “using the top 100's five most accurate and five least accurate videos, as judged by clinical psychologists. These 10 clips were then shown to 843 undergraduates taking an introductory psychology course, who were asked to rate them based on their perceived educational value. While the best five videos scored an average of 3.6 from psychologists for accuracy, they only got a score of 2.8 from the students. The worst five videos for accuracy scored 1.1 from psychologists, but 2.3 from students.” Wes Streeting: there is overdiagnosis of mental health conditions. Health secretary says too many people are being ‘written off’ and that is driving ministers’ changes to welfare (https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/mar/19/culture-warriors-overdiagnosis-mental-health-cuts) (The Guardian) From Wes Streeting: “Here’s the other thing, mental wellbeing, illness, it’s a spectrum and I think definitely there’s an overdiagnosis, but there’s too many people being written off and, to your point about treatment, too many people who just aren’t getting the support they need. So if you can get that support to people much earlier, then you can help people to either stay in work or get back to work.” Neurodiverse staff well suited to a changing world (https://www.thetimes.com/business-money/article/neurodiverse-staff-well-suited-to-a-changing-world-pmzztt69k) (The Times, paywalled) > "People with conditions such as autism, ADHD, dyspraxia and dyslexia bring unique skills to the workplace" Recommendations Neurodivergence NHS Website (https://www.hee.nhs.uk/our-work/pharmacy/transforming/initial/foundation/resources/edi/neurodiversity) ADHD Love, YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/@ADHD_love) How to ADHD, by Jessica McCabe (https://howtoadhdbook.com/) TV LOL: Last One Laughing (https://www.amazon.co.uk/LOL-Last-One-Laughing-Season/dp/B0DSJRWRHC), reality comedy on Amazon Prime Gangs of London (https://www.sky.com/watch/gangs-of-london) Action Drama from Sky Music Why? - The Well I Fell Into :: Alternative :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/the-well-i-fell-into/1742837370) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/6s2rZ96eQJvjsN5j9eIv1Y) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLAy2wbQa84SouruZQBc91U0iMo0UKIclG) HHY & the Kampala Unit :: Electronic Jazz :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/hhy-the-kampala-unit/1531710246) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/7GcuBD0DAlemw4ebJU925p) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCQ5uFxLSDeRApuTFBb1gyjg) Wilkinson :: Electronic, Drum 'n' Bass :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/wilkinson/3075647) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/...
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    1 hr and 36 mins
  • Episode 14: DevOps, Platform Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering, with Dave McNeill

    Episode 14: DevOps, Platform Engineering and Site Reliability Engineering, with Dave McNeill
    Mar 21 2025
    We have the long awaited and hugely experienced Dave McNeill, talking all things Operations, DevOps, Site Reliability Engineering, Platform Engineering, tales of incidents, working in a startup environment, opinions on golang and python, and so much more. Subscribe to our new Newsletter! (https://newsletter.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/subscribe). Stay informed about new episodes, and get beautiful news and recommendation links. Michael has been feeling old We're using Vault and wondering about building kubernetes operators Who is Dave McNeill? How did you first get into computers? How did you get your first job in tech? Where are you working now, What does your day to day job look like? Quickfire Questions Vim, VSCode, or vibe coding in cursor? You can only code in one language for the rest of your life, what do you pick? Personal texting – preferred platform? Why? Why not whatsapp? Biggest user crime of making container images? Oldest piece of untouched software you’ve seen running in production? Breaking Prod Leaderboard Surely someone in Ops has seen something go wrong... with account balances? Big Topics Hot Takes, and what Dave thinks of them: * "SRE is just re-branded Ops" * "DevOps is Dead, Long Live Platform Engineering" * "Programming Languages will become obsolete, English is the new programming language" * "Disaster recovery training is just something google wrote in a book and nobody does it" News * More supply chain attacks (https://www.wiz.io/blog/new-github-action-supply-chain-attack-reviewdog-action-setup) (wiz.io blog) Google Acquires Wiz for $32 Billion (https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2025/03/18/google-acquire-wiz-32-billion/) (helpnetsecurity.com) Amazon removing privacy options from Alexa (https://www.techspot.com/news/107175-amazon-removing-option-local-alexa-processing-forcing-all.html) (techspot.com) BYD have a car that charges in 5 minutes (https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/mar/18/byd-ev-fast-charging-system-petrol-fuel-speed) (The Guardian) Recommendations DevOps, Platform Eng, SRE The SRE Handbook (https://sre.google/sre-book/table-of-contents/) (Free google book) A Tour of Go website (https://go.dev/tour/list) Release It! (https://pragprog.com/titles/mnee2/release-it-second-edition/) (pragmatic prorammer bookshelf) Platform Engineering, Camille Fournier (https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/platform-engineering/9781098153632/) (O'Reilly) Wardley Mapping (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkePAhnkHeg) (YouTube) Music Truthpaste :: Manchester Indie Pop :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/truthpaste/1793805265) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/1jX7jSANud3GSSMfs41KPs) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sRsdPzCthUM&t=1s) Sharon Van Etten - Sharon Van Etten & The Attachment Theory :: American singer-songwriter Alternative Album :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/album/sharon-van-etten-the-attachment-theory/1770826874) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/album/5aGKc7OL3d1aJodCG2747F?si=o2VqwgKbTIernpKx6ES8GQ) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kwnCx-2Y7F_8SM8dLrOiz8aLML14-9OgU) The Bug Club :: Welsh indie energetic garage and punk :: Apple Music (https://music.apple.com/gb/artist/the-bug-club/1552259279) · Spotify (https://open.spotify.com/artist/7eiTMbuHYUPjrAMjIhAVDB?si=jo2FyAeARCCVfB7stSfTJA) · YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChXs6Ghb4yDtMGHypiRPj7w) TV Adolesence (https://www.netflix.com/gb/title/81756069) (Netflix) School Swap: UK to USA (https://www.channel4.com/programmes/school-swap-uk-to-usa) (Channel 4) Podcast Steering Engineering (https://steering-engineering-podcast.simplecast.com) If you enjoyed the show, please leave us a recommendation, subscribe to our new newsletter (https://newsletter.ctrl-alt-expletive.com/subscribe), but most importantly, tell a friend! Special Guest: Dave McNeill.
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    1 hr and 15 mins
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