iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 14/09/2026

Wide events, winning again!

Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 19/08/2026

yes and the internet HATED IT. "we have too many abbreviations and shortened words as it is ... this is offputting to non-experts and inaccessible to the majority..." etc etc. (i think it's cute, and i'm glad you like it too)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 20/07/2026

Love it. Why stop there? nines don’t matter until you don’t have them nines don't matter if the answer is slop nines don't matter when you are the training data four nines of confidently incorrect nines don't matter when you’re the product "human in the loop" is what you say when you've...

“human in the loop” is what you say when you’ve already decided humans don’t matter
nines don’t matter until you don’t have them
nines don't matter if the answer is slop
four nines of confidently incorrect
nines don't matter when you are the training data
nines don't matter when you’re the product

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 21/06/2026

oh yes... i have a sticker printer of my own now. 😈 only 3x3, but still (and a sticker-printer-cutter for 7x4 sheets, but no time to do that at the moment) (is this what it feels like being drunk on power?? magic 8 ball say YES)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 21/06/2026

i love this. 😭 * Truth is what it is (ideally something we can potentially measure) * Faith is what we believe is true (measurement is always inexact, or delayed, or…) * Beauty is what we’d like Truth to be or become — John Wilkes (Borg/Omega talks on distributed systems, 2021)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 20/06/2026

omg... somehow i missed this wondrous graph the first time i skimmed my history. thank goodness i went back for a second pass. TOO GLORIOUS 😭 here, have my most recent iteration:

"human in the loop" is what you say when you've already decided humans don't matter

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 07/06/2026

www.bonfire.com/nines-dont-m... 😉 and the modern version ...

nines don't matter if the answer is slop

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 06/06/2026

yes!! thank you for noticing!! :D i have been going to TOWN lately generating sticker art and slogans and learning graphic design fundamentals. maybe i will write about that today, hm. this is one of my favorite themes.. it feels very.. scandinavian? i will mail you some if you give me an address!

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 28/02/2026

omg.. i added that five days ago! just ordered her new one from 2025, thanks for the rec!

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 19/01/2026

I don't think I've ever shared this here before, so share I must: www.amazon.com/Subtle-Art-S... (If you open it up, it just says "No no no no no no no no no" for fifty pages or so. Makes a great Christmas gift!)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 19/01/2026

I thought you'd never ask. 🐺👠🦄💕🥂✨

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 16/01/2026

You'll note a new co-author on the cover, @aparker.io 👏 We have a stellar lineup of guest contributors, case studies, and deep dives. The material is almost entirely new (maybe 5-8% carryover from 1st ed?), and at least 40-50% longer. Books will be out by June, with preview chapters much sooner.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 16/01/2026

The first edition of "Observability Engineering was...fine. It was an ok book. Books are like children, in that you aren't really supposed to say you aren't proud of them, at least the ones you made. But the world changed SO MUCH between 2019, when we started writing, and 2022, when it came out.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 13/11/2025

If only I could remember which anonymously quoted friend I should honor, but I have gotten **so** **many** of these. "Someone didn't realize that 'userid' shouldn't be enabled in a custom metric. That metric has been costing us $4500/month." ($4500/metric is on the low end, honestly.)

"Someone didn't realize that 'userid' shouldn't be enabled in a custom metric. That metric has been costing us $4500/month."

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 13/11/2025

omg, how on earth did i forget about this wondrous gem of art by @forrestbrazeal.bsky.social?? 😭 more importantly, why did i not get this ENLARGED and FRAMED and HUNG IN MY OFFICE? simmer down girl, we can fix this. is not too late.

My name is Charity, hello.
I'm a startup founder and CTO.
I build, I ship, I test, and so,
I've got some opinions on how that should go.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 13/11/2025

tryna remember.. 🧐 when did I (mostly) stop shitposting about metrics? 🧐 was it in .. 2021? 2022? TO THE ARCHIVES! 🔪 🧐

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 22/10/2025

spotted in the wild!! go matty! 🙌 recently shipped a v2 of this sticker, which i like even better:

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 22/10/2025

"Manage subscriptions" is by far the best thing gmail has ever done since....gmail. discovered this last week, looks like it was rolled out in July.. have y'all found this?!? click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click-click, ahhhhh. simple joys. 🌱

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 21/10/2025

shipping is the heartbeat of your company. it should happen by default after each diff gets merged -- swiftly, automatically, no muss no fuss. i dub thee 'saint shelby' for thy proselytizing the good word.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 14/10/2025

ah. yes, it's true, as the AI has learned, i *do* have an evil doppelganger. her name is Charity Majors and she is a pastor's wife & influencer from Idaho who writes blush pink books about how Christian women can find their purpose. i can only hope she is more embarrassed by me than i am by her.

I never thought to register the domain charitymajors.com, or the charitymajors address on google, or @charitymajors on twitter, and on and on. (She married into the name -- I consider that cheating.)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 30/07/2025

yay, thank you!! send me an address if you want some stickers (as modeled by my friend's dog 🥰)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 11/07/2025

Hahahahaha. Have I cracked the secret of the kind internet? 😍 (Bubba says hi)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 23/06/2025

Huh.. I'd be pretty fucking irritated if I was this CEO and my CTO went off and bombed a huge initiative, then came back perkily informing me it was "his own personal training session" that "lasted two years and taught him what didn't work."

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 15/05/2025

Abby @abangser.bsky.social is giving an absolute barnstormer of a talk on platform engineering + observability, and I am so sleepy/jetlagged that I keep forgetting the killer quotes in the time elapsed between snapping a photo and opening bsky 🥱

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 15/05/2025

"We want to build you a mecha suit, not replace you", and "if you don't have to use kubernetes....maybe don't" -- @lizthegrey.com, live debugging a k8s autoscaling incident onstage.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 15/05/2025

@lizthegrey.com talking about the principles of observability and strategic themes that our platform roadmap is built around. * works where you work * unite teams through data * scale with confidence * learn once, use everywhere

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 15/05/2025

Also adored this slide, on "mean time to correctly attributed rage" 😅 @olane.bsky.social

Mean time to correctly attributed rage slide

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 15/05/2025

OH "as @jessitron.bsky.social, my boss would say, the ultimate root cause of every incident is, inevitably, capitalism" ~ Martin Thwaites (with @olane.bsky.social and coworker, at @honeycomb.io o11y days London)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 14/05/2025

Oh yeah... You can get a "nines don't matter" or "test in prod or live a lie" or "if you liked it then you should have put an SLO on it" t-shirt or hoodie at my old bonfire shop, lol. www.bonfire.com/store/mipsyt...

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 14/04/2025

....do I have a sticker for that? 🤔 Hah, of course I do.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 04/04/2025

I don't even remember how or why this site popped up in my tabs last week, but every time I go to close it I'm like...should it? 🤔 Says who? When? Where, why? 🤔 Is this just like some person's philosophical yearning? In what universe has maintaining code *ever* been easier than writing it?

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 03/04/2025

Test in prod or live a lie!!! ✊ (i actually commissioned art for an AI themed version of this quote, but after staring at it a while, i concluded no one would get the joke. Thoughts? "Test in prod or live a L-AI??" 🤔)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 01/04/2025

@ives.sh awww, thank you for the shout-out!!! 💃 if you want to dm me a mailing address, i'd love to send you and your team a care package of snarky systems stickers 😉

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

You can't help solve collective action problems by sitting on the sidelines. If you want your critique to be heard, make it an informed critique. Society is full of haters, but critique from the inside cuts deep. Or as someone else there said..you can't stop a train by jumping in front of it. 🌈✨

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

And finally...my pitch for SREs to lead with curiosity and empathy. Do you have grave concerns about AI and its impact on artists, the environment, our industry? Great. So do I!! Even more reason to get up close and personal, become an expert.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

In my career, every time I've had managers or execs asking me to do something that made *no fucking sense*, it turns out that they were under intense pressures I knew nothing about. (Here is where @ferd.ca and I swapped stories onstage of execs asking for shit that seemed *absurd*.)

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

This is a season of immense change. And where there is change, there is opportunity. There is also great risk. People who can reason about that risk and help guide orgs through it are more needed than ever. But to evaluate the risk, you have to appreciate -- truly appreciate -- the opportunity.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

As SREs, we expect the worst. It's what we do. You tell me about some cool new thing you're building, I'm already thinking about how it's going to break. There's a reason ops engineers rarely start companies. 🙈 Being a founder requires a suspension of disbelief...faith in the new & untested.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 31/03/2025

Which makes perfect sense; SREs have long been the guardians of risk for complex software systems. But there are many, *many* ways an organization can fail. The biggest existential risk most face is not moving or innovating swiftly enough -- being out-competed.

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 27/03/2025

Terra Field "the tires are finally getting what they deserved" 🔥😆🔥 @rainofterra.bsky.social

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 27/03/2025

Fred "I have so many opinions it doesn't matter what the slides are" Hebert, doing slide karaoke, ranting about numbers and millionaires and capitalism. this is my favorite part of SREcon 😍 @ferd.ca

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Charity Majors @charity.wtf · 26/03/2025

I was already in love with the essay long before she wound up by appealing to the engineer/manager pendulum as a model for how to move forward in an AI-enabled world. Damn. 🙌🥂✨

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