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# Lessons from Charity Majors
- URL: https://www.antoinebuteau.com/lessons-from-charity-majors/
- Published: 2025-09-22T01:00:03.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-06T14:23:51.000Z
- Description: Charity Majors, a prominent voice in software, connects observability with engineering management, team culture, and career development. Her perspective makes a technical practice part of a larger organizational question: how should observability shape management, culture, and careers?
- Author: Antoine Buteau
- Tags: Profile, Engineering, Tech Entrepreneurs & Founders Profiles

Charity Majors writes and speaks about observability, engineering management, and the systems that shape software teams. — [Kubernetes Podcast #230](https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/230-observability%5Fengmgmt/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

![Infographic for "Lessons from Charity Majors".](https://www.antoinebuteau.com/content/images/2026/07/lessons-from-charity-majors-optimized.webp)

## On Observability

1. **Defining Observability:** For software engineers, observability means being able to infer what a system is doing internally by asking new questions of its external outputs. — [Observability Is a Many-Splendored Definition](https://charity.wtf/p/observability-is-a-many-splendored-thing?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
2. **Explore Unknown Unknowns:** Observability is designed to let engineers investigate unexpected behavior and ask questions they could not predict when they instrumented the system. — [Observability Is a Many-Splendored Definition](https://charity.wtf/p/observability-is-a-many-splendored-thing?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
3. **Keep Context Connected:** Telemetry becomes more useful when the context around an event stays connected rather than being split into isolated data streams. — [Kubernetes Podcast #230](https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/230-observability%5Fengmgmt/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
4. **Page Less, Debug Better:** Charity argues that teams over-page partly because they do not trust their tools to diagnose production problems reliably. — [InfoQ Interview](https://www.infoq.com/articles/charity-majors-observability-failure/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
5. **Know How a Change Could Break:** Before merging code, engineers should be able to say how they will detect a breakage and what they will inspect after deployment. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
6. **Instrument for Emergent Systems:** As systems become distributed and unpredictable, teams need rich instrumentation to investigate behavior they cannot fully reason out in advance. — [Sociotechnical Teams Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/the-sociotechnical-path-to-high-performing-teams?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
7. **Build Resilience to Failure:** Charity urges teams to maintain high quality while practicing how to detect, investigate, and recover from failures instead of assuming they can prevent every failure. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
8. **Use Dashboards as Starting Points:** Static dashboards encode past questions; Charity favors interactive investigation when a new problem demands a question the dashboard cannot answer. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
9. **Preserve Request Context in Events:** For observability, Charity recommends wide structured events that retain the full context of each service's handling of a request. — [Observability Is a Many-Splendored Definition](https://charity.wtf/p/observability-is-a-many-splendored-thing?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
10. **Bring Observability into Development:** Charity's observability 2.0 framing extends beyond operating software to instrumenting, deploying, and verifying code during development. — [Kubernetes Podcast #230](https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/230-observability%5Fengmgmt/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

## On Engineering Management

1. **Management Is a Different Profession:** Charity argues that moving from engineering to management is a change of profession, not a promotion on the same ladder. — [Engineer/Manager Pendulum](https://charity.wtf/p/the-engineer-manager-pendulum?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
2. **Choose Management for People Work:** The strongest reason to manage is wanting to support people and tackle their problems, not seeking title or power. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
3. **Manage Up as Well as Down:** Managers must communicate the team's work and needs to leaders above them, not only support direct reports. — [It Shipped That Way](https://www.itshipped.fm/episodes/19?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
4. **Keep Technical Context Fresh:** Charity values managers who have recent hands-on engineering experience because technical skills and production context can become stale. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
5. **Develop the Managerial Craft:** Teams deserve a manager who wants to manage, understands sociotechnical process, and invests in colleagues' careers. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
6. **Keep Engineers Connected to Context:** Rather than acting as a blanket filter of difficult information, managers should give engineers the context they need to understand the business and make sound decisions. — [Swarmia Interview](https://www.swarmia.com/podcast/charity-majors-honeycomb/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
7. **Management Skills Travel Beyond Work:** Charity says the interpersonal skills learned in management can improve relationships outside the workplace as well as work itself. — [Why Become an Engineering Manager](https://charity.wtf/p/why-should-you-or-anyone-become-an-engineering-manager?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
8. **Build an Engineering Foundation First:** Before trying management, Charity advises engineers to gain confidence and substantial experience in their technical craft. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
9. **Make Career Goals Discussable:** Managers should ask engineers about their career goals and offer chances to practice management to those who express interest. — [How to Hire an Engineering Manager](https://charity.wtf/p/how-to-hire-an-engineering-manager?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
10. **Frontline Managers Shape Growth:** A frontline manager who crafts challenging work for each engineer can support learning and loyalty, benefiting the organization over time. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

## On the Engineer/Manager Pendulum

1. **Identify as a Technologist:** Charity encourages engineers and managers to see themselves as technologists who can learn both technical and people-management skills. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
2. **Move Between Tracks:** Charity argues that senior technical leadership can be strengthened by experience on both engineering and management tracks. — [Engineer/Manager Pendulum](https://charity.wtf/p/the-engineer-manager-pendulum?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
3. **Refresh Hands-On Skills:** Extended time away from coding can erode a manager's technical fluency, so Charity recommends returning to hands-on engineering while that path remains viable. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
4. **Let Engineers Try Management:** A period in management can give senior engineers empathy for organizational work and a clearer sense of how technical choices connect to business needs. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
5. **Respect Different Attention Demands:** Engineering often needs uninterrupted focus; managing people requires availability and responsiveness. Trying to do both jobs fully at once can undermine each. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
6. **Management Can Develop Staff Engineers:** Charity suggests that a senior engineer's stint in management can strengthen the perspective needed for staff-level technical leadership. — [Why Become an Engineering Manager](https://charity.wtf/p/why-should-you-or-anyone-become-an-engineering-manager?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
7. **Carry Institutional Memory Across Tracks:** When people move between engineering and management, they can preserve institutional knowledge and leadership continuity on both sides. — [InfoQ Pendulum Talk](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hands-on-coding-managers/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
8. **Give the First Management Tour Time:** Charity recommends a meaningful first management stint—roughly two years in her example—to learn the basics before judging the fit. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
9. **Build a Varied Career:** Charity argues that moving among engineering and management roles can make a long career more adaptable rather than narrower. — [LeadDev Pendulum Slides](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
10. **Separate Leadership from Management:** Technical leadership is valuable even without a management title; management and leadership are not synonymous. — [InfoQ Pendulum Talk](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hands-on-coding-managers/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

## On Team Culture and High-Performing Teams

1. **Avoid Dependence on a Hero Engineer:** A healthy engineering organization should not depend on one exceptionally productive person to understand or rescue its software. — [In Praise of Normal Engineers](https://charity.wtf/p/in-praise-of-normal-engineers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
2. **Teams Shape Engineers:** Charity argues that engineering organizations develop stronger engineers by creating conditions for learning, teaching, and safe delivery. — [In Praise of Normal Engineers](https://charity.wtf/p/in-praise-of-normal-engineers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
3. **Treat Team Performance as Sociotechnical:** Engineering performance emerges from the interaction of people, practices, and tools—not technical skill alone. — [Sociotechnical Teams Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/the-sociotechnical-path-to-high-performing-teams?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
4. **Improve the System Around the Engineer:** How quickly and safely an engineer ships depends heavily on team feedback loops, tooling, and operational practices. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
5. **Hire for the Team's Work:** Charity recommends hiring people who share the team's values and have needed skills, then deliberately building the team rather than assuming star hires alone create performance. — [Sociotechnical Teams Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/the-sociotechnical-path-to-high-performing-teams?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
6. **Learn Through Small, Safe Shipments:** Frequent, small deployments and production feedback help engineers learn how their software actually behaves. — [Shipping Software Should Not Be Scary](https://charity.wtf/p/shipping-software-should-not-be-scary?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
7. **Mix Disciplines to Avoid Monoculture:** Charity favors interaction among engineering, operations, sales, and other functions because cross-pollination can produce creative ideas and broader understanding. — [Intercom Interview](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
8. **Adapt On-Call to Context:** Charity warns that on-call practices must be adapted to each organization's circumstances; few rules apply without context. — [On-Call Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
9. **Link Team Health with Customer Outcomes:** Charity frames production excellence as a way to improve life for both customers and engineering teams, rather than treating either group as expendable. — [Sociotechnical Teams Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/the-sociotechnical-path-to-high-performing-teams?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

## On On-Call and Operations

1. **Close the Production Feedback Loop:** On-call ownership connects the engineers who build a service to its behavior and users outside normal working hours. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
2. **Make On-Call a Two-Way Compact:** If engineers own production support, managers owe them time to improve the system, training, alert tracking, and humane conditions. — [On-Call Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
3. **Protect the On-Call Week:** Charity recommends freeing the on-call engineer from normal roadmap work so they can repair the system and reduce future pages. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
4. **Make Opt-In On-Call an Aspiration:** Charity believes an on-call rotation can become meaningful enough that engineers might volunteer for it, but treats this as a design aspiration. — [On-Call Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
5. **Spend Reliability Budget Deliberately:** Charity recommends using service-level objectives to balance resilience and experimentation rather than treating any risk or downtime as forbidden. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
6. **Make Alerts Actionable:** Do not page someone who lacks the access, training, or authority to act on an alert. — [On-Call Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
7. **Own the Whole Software Lifecycle:** Engineering ownership extends from building code to deploying, observing, operating, and improving it. — [On-Call Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
8. **Design On-Call for Humans:** On-call should respect sleep, family commitments, training needs, and the real human cost of unreliable systems. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
9. **Name the Rotation Owner:** A sustainable on-call rotation needs explicit responsibility for who supports a service outside working hours and how the rotation is maintained. — [On-Call Talk](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com).
10. **Do Not Add Complexity Without Need:** Charity advises using a simpler monolith, LAMP stack, and basic monitoring when those tools meet a system's real requirements. — [InfoQ Interview](https://www.infoq.com/articles/charity-majors-observability-failure/?ref=antoinebuteau.com).

---

Learn more:

1. [Charity Majors — Observability Is a Many-Splendored Definition](https://charity.wtf/p/observability-is-a-many-splendored-thing?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
2. [Charity Majors — The Engineer/Manager Pendulum](https://charity.wtf/p/the-engineer-manager-pendulum?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
3. [Kubernetes Podcast from Google — #230: Observability & Engineering Management with Charity Majors](https://kubernetespodcast.com/episode/230-observability%5Fengmgmt/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
4. [InfoQ — Charity Majors on Observability and Understanding the Operational Ramifications of a System](https://www.infoq.com/articles/charity-majors-observability-failure/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
5. [Charity Majors — The Sociotechnical Path to High-Performing Teams (Speaker Deck)](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/the-sociotechnical-path-to-high-performing-teams?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
6. [Intercom — Honeycomb’s Charity Majors on Operations Engineering](https://www.intercom.com/blog/podcasts/honeycomb-charity-majors-operations-engineering/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
7. [Charity Majors — How to Hire an Engineering Manager](https://charity.wtf/p/how-to-hire-an-engineering-manager?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
8. [It Shipped That Way — The Culture You Want to Build with Charity Majors (Episode 19)](https://www.itshipped.fm/episodes/19?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
9. [LeadDev — The Engineer/Manager Pendulum and You (Charity Majors slides)](https://leaddev.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/The-Engineer-manager-pendulum-and-you-PDF.pdf?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
10. [Charity Majors — Becoming an Engineering Manager Can Make You Better at Life and Relationships](https://charity.wtf/p/why-should-you-or-anyone-become-an-engineering-manager?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
11. [Swarmia — Charity Majors on Engineering Management and Context](https://www.swarmia.com/podcast/charity-majors-honeycomb/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
12. [InfoQ — The Engineer/Manager Pendulum (Charity Majors)](https://www.infoq.com/presentations/hands-on-coding-managers/?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
13. [Charity Majors — In Praise of Normal Engineers](https://charity.wtf/p/in-praise-of-normal-engineers?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
14. [Charity Majors — Shipping Software Should Not Be Scary](https://charity.wtf/p/shipping-software-should-not-be-scary?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
15. [Charity Majors — On Call Shouldn’t Suck: A Guide for Managers](https://charity.wtf/p/on-call-shouldnt-suck-a-guide-for-managers?ref=antoinebuteau.com)
16. [Charity Majors — Being On Call Does Not Have to Suck (Speaker Deck)](https://speakerdeck.com/charity/being-on-call-does-not-have-to-suck?ref=antoinebuteau.com)