Terrible ideas in Technology Cost Management: The anti-patterns you should always avoid, and three really important things for you to do as a manager right now
In 18 months, we've moved from "growth at all costs" to "profitability first," "year of efficiency," and "cloud cost management" as new buzzwords. There has been a newfound interest in developer productivity and a proliferation of models that attempt to measure it, mostly poorly. All these are a reaction to the perception that we're spending too much money for too few business results, in an environment that increasingly prizes quantifiable results. Yet for most of us, even in management, formal training in "efficiency" stopped at Big
- notation.
As technology professionals, cost is now becoming one of the things we need to be able to speak to, and those of us who have not lived through previous downturns need tools to think about the problem both strategically and tactically. This talk will present a framework to evaluate the problem of cost, anti-patterns to avoid in cost management, and possible alternatives. We will discuss how to drive a culture of cost management, while continuing to deliver value to our customers, and maintaining motivated, interested development teams. It will be useful to both practitioners who have not had to think about these problems before, and to those who have worked through previous downturns and need to apply old practices to new environments. Finally, the speaker will offer a few ideas for all practitioners to think about right now.
Ask your fellow Engineering Managers to join us!
About the speaker
Michael Gat recently left AWS where he was a Senior Technical Program Manager, most recently focused on improving the processing of quadrillions of events per day that are used in billing, cost reporting, and analytics. In previous roles, he was focused on networking and infrastructure, as both a project manager and software development manager for companies ranging from a 100 person startup to the top of the Global 500. Michael started his career as a programmer analyst for a large investment bank, progressing rapidly into project management and after attending graduate school, into technical management. He's originally from New York, holds a bachelor's degree in Computer Science and Economics from Columbia, and an MBA from UCLA. He has been a slave to multiple cats since 2004.
Agenda:
5:00 - 5:15pm Welcoming + Social (small groups in breakout rooms)
5:15 - 6:20pm - Talk + Q&A
6:20 - 6:30pm - Wrap up
Please note that this zoom meeting is password-protected. RSVP will end 12pm the day of the Meetup event. The zoom info will be sent to you (through Meetup) after the RSVP has closed - please check your email. Please join the zoom link with your real name. We would love to hear your feedback on how we can improve on virtual events.
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Please RSVP if you are coming and please update promptly if your plan changes. Our "No Show" policy - we will remove you from the group if you RSVP but do not show up a few times. We hope that it would provide some fairness to our speakers, our organizers as well as other people who got onto the wait list wanting to come to our events.
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