Top Topics at DeveloperWeek Austin 2021

Rootstack was one of the companies that participated in the most recent edition of DeveloperWeek Austin 2021, where more than 40 companies and teams of developers shared their most valuable experiences in this industry, as well as their best practices to continue growing in the business world and technological.

More than 100 talks were given at this event, with the participation of more than 3,000 developers, executives, and entrepreneurs. They talked about relevant topics in today's technological news such as Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, API Microservices, Containers, and Kubernetes, among other aspects of equal importance in the industry.

Cybersecurity, one of the fundamental topics at DeveloperWeek Austin 2021

One of the fundamental conferences of DeveloperWeek Austin 2021 was "DevOps & Security", an occasion in which different speakers gave their points of view on the importance of cybersecurity in companies, especially at this time in which the work of Millions of companies are online due to the pandemic.

They emphasized that one should not wait for security to become an "interesting" topic to work on in this area, as companies must make sure to keep their platforms free of hackers and digital vulnerabilities.

"To avoid making headlines for being the victims of a major cyberattack, companies must learn to incorporate security processes directly into their development process," says DevSecOps quoted in DeveloperWeek 2021 by Eric Brinkman, Cobalt product manager.

According to his point of view, today companies have a “reactive” approach to cyber security, an aspect that should be changed for greater protection of systems.

"Despite the growing prominence of DevSecOps, the disparity between security and engineering teams, coupled with a traditionally 'reactive' approach to security, often stifles critical DevSecOps practices", he said.

At DeveloperWeek Austin 2021, the importance of adding security practices to DevOps lifecycles was emphasized and how proactive security measures can improve and enhance the work of developers, benefiting the effectiveness of systems that are creating.

Developer burnout

The work of developers has always been quite flexible, being able to execute their tasks either from home or from the office of their respective companies. But in the wake of the pandemic, there was no choice: all the work has been done remotely, which has been a challenge for developers and companies alike.

This new reality was also reflected in the talk “How to prevent burnout and improve your developer culture”, in which they discussed how essential it is to have a balance between work and personal life to prevent overwhelm or “burnout” and improve the work of technology professionals.

Thom Duran, SRE Director at Moogsoft, was in charge of speaking on this topic at DeveloperWeek Austin 2021, offering his point of view on the matter. He recognizes that software developers and engineers are experts at "putting out fires," solving problems and keeping a software product afloat. But at the same time, they strive to "know everything" and work very hard.

And this effort, often superhuman, is reflected more in companies that are starting up or startups, where developers can register up to 100 hours of work a week.

According to Duran's point of view, the developer who is working 40 hours a week does not mean that he is "lazy", he is simply setting boundaries between work and personal life.

“Developers, SREs, and engineers constantly feel that they need to keep up with the knowledge of their peers and the pace of changing technology. If they don't know the answer to a question, they will most likely quickly Google the answer instead of asking for help. Nobody wants to feel vulnerable because of their lack of knowledge, but the pressure developers, SREs and engineers put on themselves can quickly feel like a total failure”, he said of the pressure developers feel.

So, in this talk, they talked about how professional excellence can be achieved, with deep training by developers, without this meaning sacrificing personal life or well-deserved rest.

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