Five years on-call taught me the pager’s first demand is context, not heroics. From half-built clusters to rogue upgrades, this post shares war stories, triage tactics, and manager tips for keeping incidents—and engineers—under control.
Strapping a Raspberry Pi Zero to my wrist, I built the "PiSpot Watch"—a chunky, lovable smartwatch that briefly challenged the Apple Watch, at least in spirit. From learning FreeCAD and 3D-printing cases, to battling hardware quirks and automating deployments with Ansible—this was my IoT odyssey.
When our CTO declared it "impossible" to know how WiFi users connected across our messy network, I took it as a personal challenge. However, looking back now, I ponder over how much better my decisions could have been with proper mentorship.
As an intern in 2015, I automated provisioning and streamlined CPE deployments, combining DHCP66, TR-069, R, Python, and Selenium. Turns out Bill Gates was right—the best "lazy" engineers put extra effort into smart solutions upfront, saving countless hours down the line.
In summer 2015, I stumbled upon TR-069 technology, unaware it would define my career. Today, GenieACS—an open-source ACS managing CPE devices—is central to my journey. I've contributed Docker-based solutions and simplified deployment with Docker Compose and Kubernetes.
