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field CTO at Portainer.io
Joep works at the overlap of socio-technical design, technical story-telling and platform engineering technologies. Driven by empathy to reduce burnout caused by platform obesity/complexity and tech industry hype. Organizer of devopsdays Amsterdam, FastFlowConf NL. Field CTO at Portainer.io
We like to say Kubernetes platforms fail because they’re “too complex”. But complexity isn’t the problem. Platforms fail because they’re obese.
They’re bloated with an excess of features, tools, abstractions, and opinions.
The cloud-native ecosystem doesn’t help. It rewards addition, not subtraction.
Eventually, the platform collides with reality: finite talent, finite attention, finite time. Cognitive load exceeds capacity. Operational friction grows. Engineering quality cracks. Business outcomes stall. ROI quietly evaporates.
So how do you fix an obese platform? The same way you fix obesity: by creating a calorie deficit, rigorous exercise and discipline. Learning to say 'no'. Subtract, not add. Stay within those constraints across technology, processes, organizational culture, budget, engineering skills, team cognitive load and more.
In this talk, I'll show you concrete ways to learn to say 'no', subtract, all while improving your platform's capabilities.
