Software Engineering

Have you ever joined a new team with a new tech stack, with a new process, and a production issue already waiting for you? Here is how I ramp up fast: I zoom out before I zoom in. The Problem: Everyone Hunts Where They’re Comfortable During my consultant gigs, I am constantly dropped into an unfamiliar environment. New teams, new architecture, new tech stack, new development process, new deployment process, it’s always new. The question is always the same: how do you stay on top of it? ...

There’s a really weird communication pattern that I keep seeing all the time in big companies and small companies. Picture this: You’re hiring an employee, consultant, contractor, whatever you want to call them. You think this person has good experience and you’re paying them hundreds of thousands of dollars. Once you hire them, you tell them, “Hey, I want you to do this.” This is super weird. You’re not explaining the problem. You’re just trying to use this person as a human tool. ...

I want to argue that you should build your product on microservices; not because of technical reasons, but because you should see it as a team management strategy. The Double-Edged Sword of Microservices Let’s zoom out and first remember what a microservice is. A microservice is basically a small, deployable piece of service that, when meshed together with others, forms a larger application. If you’re already working with microservices or even if you haven’t built any so far, you’ve probably heard about it. ...

When building cloud applications that handle sensitive data, encryption isn’t optional, it’s essential. But there’s an important difference between just doing the basic encryption vs. implementing it correctly at scale. In this article, we’ll explore envelope encryption, a pattern that AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure all use internally and recommend for production applications. Table of Contents What Is Envelope Encryption? The Problem with Direct KMS Encryption The Envelope Encryption Solution Why This Is Superior Production Implementation with Google Cloud Prerequisites: Set Up Infrastructure Production-Ready Implementation Best Practices Common Pitfalls to Avoid Conclusion What Is Envelope Encryption? Envelope encryption is a cryptographic pattern where you use two layers of keys: ...