The question you ask matters, and I have a clear fondness for the question why. Asking how will help you along on the path you’ve picked, while why will ask you questions back and make you reflect. So, why a new blog?

This is an especially important question to ask. My background is in Cloud Engineering, and I don’t think I can add much value to the world by covering well-trodden topics in this field. The space has been well-covered by reputable engineers and thought-leaders, from Werner Vogels’ All Things Distributed to the community-driven dev.to.

The world doesn’t truly need another cloud blog, yet here I am. The reason is two-fold. First, I believe there is demand for slower, nuanced discourse in a fast-moving and polarizing world. Second, this isn’t a cloud blog.

Nuance and technological skepticism

The modern world is often described as volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. I shall spare you the lecture on this new world order that contemporary leadership programs adore. In the technology sector we don’t know any different: change is certain and uncertainty is a part of life.

Even so, it feels like our work as engineers has been evolving at a faster rate than before. The best way of doing something is continuously in flux, until something comes along that makes it irrelevant and we move onto a completely different paradigm altogether. The world of technology is like a train, if trains could change direction at a whim.

This innovation violence is a good thing, but it also means that as engineers we are continuously bombarded with the idea that we are on the verge of obsolescence. That the cloud will take over. That serverless will re-define how we build. That machine learning will put us out of a job. All that unless we board the right train. So which train do we board as engineers? I would argue none.

Technological skepticism, or opposition to dogmatic belief, shouldn’t be the hot take it seems to be. There’s a lot of people willing to sell you that Kubernetes / Serverless / No-Code is the best way to do so something. Once someone connects their identity to one particular technology it becomes that much harder to be skeptical of it. Believe me, I know, having consulted numerous firms on cloud myself.

Granted, it’s all a bit more nuanced than that. As engineers we do not have the luxury of staying out-of-touch either, because over time our jobs do evolve. There is no easy solution, but de-coupling ourselves from hype-cycles and not connecting our identities to any technology is a good start.

Cloud in context

This will not be a cloud blog. I see no point in advocating solely for one technology. There’s many trends of change going on at any one time, and it is much more interesting and productive to discuss each of them on their own merits. What matters is that we look at technology without assumptions, without premise, and learn from a place of curiosity. Having said that, the cloud has become ubiquitous and there is a lot to learn there.

Cloud providers have left their mark on the way we work. The high degree with which they automated their systems, coupled with the ability to pay for services by use has forever expanded the toolbox of engineers. There’s a lot to learn here, and these advancements are worthy of celebration. But the cloud is not one thing, nor is it the solution to every problem in existence. And above all, the cloud is not static.

Over the past decade and a half we’ve had multiple waves of cloud adoption. First, companies migrated their systems without drastic changes from on-premises to the cloud. Then cloud-native development took hold to beter utilize elasticity and pay-per-use services. With each wave our definition of what constitutes the cloud has evolved, and it is reasonable to assume that something else will come along in the future and further change that definition.

In summary

This blog is my attempt at creating a safe haven and sharing some thoughtful balance that I wish I had developed earlier in my career. We will take a step back, look at the broader picture, embrace some of the inherent contradictions in the field and enjoy the ride.