On episode 90 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Jessica “Jess” Kerr speak with Cory Ondrejka. Together, they unpack the rise of agentic AI, the shifting identity of software engineers, and the growing importance of measuring real-world impact. Cory shares his concept of Outcome Engineering and how teams can adapt to a world where building is fast but validation is everything. Come find the Honeycomb team at O11yCon on May 21st! https://events.honeycomb.io/o11yConSF2026 Use discount code SFCast2026 for...
May 07, 2026•53 min
On episode 89 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Charity Majors are joined by Bryan Cantrill. They dive into the origins of observability, the realities behind AI productivity gains, and the tension between cloud convenience and infrastructure control. The discussion highlights how major tech shifts often look obvious only in hindsight. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Apr 08, 2026•41 min
On episode 88 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Jessica Kerr speak with Charity Majors about the shifting role of observability in modern software development. From AI-assisted instrumentation to reducing developer cognitive load, the episode examines how teams can move from reactive monitoring to continuous learning. It’s a deep dive into observability as a sense-making practice, not just a tooling problem. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Jan 14, 2026•37 min
On episode 87 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Jessica Kerr sit down with Lada Kesseler to explore how experienced engineers can work effectively with AI coding assistants. They discuss why AI feels like a fast, noisy black box, and how patterns like semantic zooming, feedback loops, testing, and observability can help developers stay in control. This episode is a deep dive into using AI without sacrificing clarity, quality, or trust. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Dec 23, 2025•48 min
In episode 86 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Jessica Kerr sit down with Amarilis Campos from Nubank. They explore how Brazil’s largest digital bank uses observability to build resilience and autonomy at scale. Amarilis shares how Nubank’s culture of “acting like owners, not renters” and its journey from metrics and logs to tracing with Honeycomb helped the company grow to over 100 million customers. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Oct 29, 2025•37 min
In episode 85 of o11ycast, Dr. Cat Hicks unpacks AI’s impact on software teams from a psychological and social-science perspective. Along with Ken, Jess, and Austin, she explores how AI magnifies long-standing tensions between solitary and collaborative models of development, and how fears about AI often reflect deeper issues like undervaluing collaboration or having unrealistic productivity expectations. The discussion also explores empathy, theory of mind, and pluralistic ignorance, highlighti...
Aug 13, 2025•51 min
In episode 84 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Martin Thwaites welcome Maddy Montaquila, lead PM for .NET Aspire at Microsoft. This episode dives into the "magic" of Aspire, exploring how it streamlines the developer experience from frictionless app startup to telemetry-rich development. Discover how Aspire makes telemetry a first-class citizen, simplifying debugging and enhancing observability for modern applications. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Jul 14, 2025•41 min
In episode 83 of o11ycast, the Honeycomb team chats with Dan Ravenstone, the o11yneer. Dan unpacks the crucial, often underappreciated, role of the observability engineer. He discusses how this position champions the user, bridging the gap between technical performance and real-world customer experience. Learn about the challenges of mobile observability, the importance of clear terminology, and how building alliances across an organization drives successful observability practices. The post app...
Jun 11, 2025•36 min
In episode 82 of o11ycast, Ken and Jess chat with Morgante Pell, the visionary behind Grit, an AI-powered agent designed to automate developer toil and technical debt. The discussion covers the evolution of AI in coding, the challenges of building and deploying AI agents, the future of combining code awareness with production awareness, and Grit’s acquisition by Honeycomb. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
May 28, 2025•39 min
In episode 81 of o11ycast, Charity Majors and Martin Thwaites dive into a lively discussion with Hazel Weakly and Matt Klein on the evolving landscape of observability. The guests explore the concept of observability versioning, the challenges of cost and ROI, and the future of observability tools, including the potential convergence with AI and business intelligence. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
May 14, 2025•41 min
In episode 80 of o11ycast, Ken Rimple and Jessica Kerr chat with Kent Beck about the emerging world of AI-assisted coding. Beck shares his experiences with "augmented coding," discussing the benefits, challenges, and the evolving relationship between developers and AI agents. They explore how these tools are changing software development practices and what it means for the future of coding. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Apr 30, 2025•40 min
In episode 79 of o11ycast, Hamel Husain joins the o11ycast crew to discuss the challenges of monitoring AI systems, why off-the-shelf metrics can be misleading, and how error analysis is the key to making AI models more reliable. Plus, insights into how Honeycomb built its Query Assistant and what teams should prioritize when working with AI observability. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Mar 18, 2025•47 min
Episode 78 of o11ycast examines the world of OpenTelemetry Transformation Language (OTTL) with Tyler Helmuth and Evan Bradley, the maintainers behind this innovative framework. Discover how OTTL enables powerful telemetry data transformations, its practical applications, and what lies ahead for OpenTelemetry's transformative ecosystem. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Feb 11, 2025•42 min
In episode 77 of o11ycast, Charity, Martin, Ken, and Jess welcome Jeremy Morrell to talk about OpenTelemetry, the future of observability, and how small teams can get started. Jeremy shares stories of debugging breakthroughs, adopting standards, and building tools that help engineers focus on what matters. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Jan 15, 2025•45 min
In episode 76 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Andrew Keller, Principal Engineer at ObservIQ, about the evolving world of telemetry and observability. They explore the role of OpenTelemetry, the groundbreaking Open Agent Management Protocol (OpAMP), and how open standards are shaping the future of data pipelines. Learn how ObservIQ’s innovations help standardize telemetry collection and empower organizations with dynamic, scalable tools for managing their observability ec...
Dec 17, 2024•39 min
In episode 75 of o11ycast, Daniel Ravenstone and Adriana Villela dive into the challenges of adopting observability and OpenTelemetry in modern organizations. From breaking down vendor loyalty to getting developers to see the value of instrumentation, they explore how to foster a culture of curiosity and collaboration to make observability a core part of development. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Nov 05, 2024•46 min
In episode 74 of o11ycast, Liudmila Molkova unpacks the importance of semantic conventions in telemetry. The discussion highlights the challenge of agreeing on naming conventions, the role of working groups in maintaining these standards, and the potential for future integration with AI technologies. Liudmila underscores the importance of a shared, vendor-agnostic approach to telemetry, enabling smoother interoperability across platforms. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Oct 22, 2024•45 min
In episode 73 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr, Martin Thwaites, and Austin Parker speak with Animesh Koratana, founder and CEO of PlayerZero, about the future of observability with AI. Discover how PlayerZero leverages LLMs to democratize institutional knowledge, improve software quality, and make problem-solving more accessible to all engineers. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Sep 18, 2024•39 min
Episode 72 of o11ycast explores the world of mobile observability with Hanson Ho, Android Architect at Embrace. Hanson unpacks how mobile's diverse device landscape impacts data collection and performance monitoring, the role of OpenTelemetry in simplifying these challenges, and the importance of tailoring observability strategies to real-world user experiences. Join hosts Charity, Jess, and Austin for this insightful examination of an often overlooked observability niche. The post appeared firs...
Aug 21, 2024•43 min
In Episode 71 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Austin Parker sit down with Shir Chorev to delve into the nuances of incorporating Generative AI into applications and testing the outcomes. Shir shares her journey from a data scientist to founding Deepchecks, driven by her vision to enhance the quality and reliability of machine learning and AI in real-world scenarios. Gain valuable insights on how LLMs are reshaping the development landscape, making advanced projects more accessible, and strategies ...
Jun 20, 2024•41 min
In episode 70 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Dan Gomez Blanco of Skyscanner. Dan shares his expertise on evangelizing better observability practices at Skyscanner and offers insights from his experience on the OpenTelemetry governance committee. Discover how observability can minimize organizational costs, the future of auto-instrumentation, and valuable advice on detecting and avoiding over-instrumentation. Plus, learn about the importance of tail sampling and OpenTelemetry’s semantic ...
May 21, 2024•46 min
In episode 69 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Charles Herring of WitFoo. Together they dive deep into the world of cybercrime investigations. Discover the intricate processes of data collection and analysis in the realm of cybersecurity, all while balancing the imperative of cost-effectiveness and citizen privacy. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Apr 24, 2024•49 min
In episode 68 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Michele Mancioppi of Dash0. This talk examines what it takes to make observability more accessible to non-experts in the space. Additional topics explored include the differences between monitoring and observability and Michele's shift from staff engineering to product management. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Mar 19, 2024•47 min
In episode 67 of o11ycast, Martin, Jess, and Liz dive deep on performance engineering. Pulling heavily from Liz’s extensive experience in the field, they share insights on utilizing data to balance resources like developers’ time and infrastructure costs. Listeners can expect to learn helpful lessons on infrastructure optimization, performance data accessibility, and why Honeycomb embraced Kubernetes. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Feb 27, 2024•44 min
In episode 66 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Iris Dyrmishi of Miro. They dive deep on what it takes to build an observability platform with open source tooling. Additionally, they explore the expense of outsourcing observability, the journey from logs to traces, tips for adopting new tools, and the spread of the FinOps movement. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Jan 17, 2024•35 min
In episode 65 of o11ycast, Jess and Martin speak with Sophie DeBenedetto of GitHub. This talk explores observability at GitHub, the value of tracing, the BEAM ecosystem, the Elixir language, and insights on leveraging observability at scale. The post appeared first on Heavybit .
Nov 21, 2023•36 min
In episode 64 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Austin Parker of Honeycomb. This talk explores how observability within an organization provides a shared language between teams to discuss reliability. Other topics examined include numeronyms in the tech space, OpenTelemetry, and Kubernetes. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Oct 24, 2023•35 min
In episode 63 of o11ycast, Charity and Jess speak with Lukas Fittl of pganalyze about database observability. This talk explores relational database management systems (DBMS), the open source library Sqlcommenter , query plans, and insights on supporting application teams. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Oct 04, 2023•36 min
In episode 62 of o11ycast, Jessica Kerr and Martin Thwaites speak with Doug Ramirez of Uplight. This conversation covers many aspects of adopting OpenTelemetry including integration concerns, social challenges, building trust, and running it at scale. Listen in to find out why after 35 years of diverse experiences across several industries, Doug’s excited about observability. The post appeared first on Heavybit ....
Sep 07, 2023•37 min
In episode 61 of o11ycast, Jessica and Martin speaks with Heidi Waterhouse of Sym. Together they explore the sensations of proprioception and interoception, how they relate to the future of observability, and the ways machine learning could assist in simplifying that future. The post appeared first on Heavybit .
May 31, 2023•43 min
