Father’s Day just passed, which got me thinking—not just about fatherhood in general, but how weirdly useful my job as a DevOps engineer has been in helping me parent. I have three kids: two sons (8 years old, and 6 years old), and one daughter (4 years old). They’re amazing, unpredictable, and chaotic—kind of like a Kubernetes cluster that’s constantly in flux, demanding constant monitoring, quick rollbacks, and a whole lot of automation to keep from spiralling into an unmanageable mess.
I’m not the world’s greatest parent. Far from it. But I’m learning. Slowly. And somewhere between incident response and bedtime battles, I’ve realised that parenting, like DevOps, is mostly about managing chaos, making tiny, incremental improvements and iterating on what works.
Just like in DevOps, the key to a happy home is good ‘observability’ – mainly through the faint sounds of mischief from the other room.
A few months ago, my six-year-old began resisting going to school. Each morning turned into a dramatic struggle. When we asked him why he didn’t want to go, he would simply shrug and mumble, “I don’t like it.” Unfortunately, that didn’t provide us with much actionable information.
In engineering, when problems arise, we start by gathering context. We don’t jump to conclusions; instead, we observe and investigate. So, one day, I invited him into my home office—my safe space—and told him it was our safe space now. “In here,” I explained, “we’re friends who can talk about anything, from the silliest thing to the craziest. Just us. No pressure.”
He sat quietly in the chair beside me for a while. Then, finally, he said:
“I don’t like school because… I don’t know how to talk to the other kids.”
That hit me hard. He wasn’t being defiant; he was simply overwhelmed. It particularly resonated with me because it was an issue I struggled with as a child too.
From there, we were able to speak to his teacher, who gently helped him integrate into games with other children. Now that he has friends, he actually looks forward to seeing them. That breakthrough happened not through interrogation but through observability and patience.
Using my home office as our safe space has now become a regular occurrence. Strangely, this technique of establishing a room as our “safe space” doesn’t work for my wife.
🔁 Blameless Postmortems (Even When Homework is Due Tomorrow) Link to heading
DevOps culture teaches us to run blameless retrospectives after incidents. Not because we don’t care about what went wrong but because assigning blame prevents learning.
My 8-year-old has a bad habit of revealing school projects the night before they’re due. No matter how often we ask him, “Any homework?” he’ll respond with an Oscar-worthy performance of “Nope.” Then, at 8:00 PM on a Thursday: “Oh yeah, I need to make a cardboard Roman sword and write about it.”
The old me would’ve panicked or scolded. But now, I try to treat it like a retro: What were the signals we missed? How can we improve visibility? Do we need a new “homework alerting system” (also known as a whiteboard on the fridge)?
We still get frustrated. But now it’s frustration aimed at the system, not the child.
🧭 Observability: Beyond the Logs (and into the Babychinos) Link to heading
With my youngest, she’s four—things are different. She’s in the plushie-and-babychino phase of life, so we go on “coffee dates” together. I get a double espresso latte; she gets a babychino and a cinnamon swirl, and we just… sit. She talks about Barbie, how she wants to be a ballerina, and how she wants a real pet sheep she’d call ‘Baa-llerina’ because it’s a sheep, and sheep say “baa,” and she likes ballet.
She doesn’t say, “Dad, I’m feeling emotionally disconnected and would benefit from some focused one-on-one time.” But I’ve learned to watch the metrics: her mood shifts, clinginess, eye contact, sleep patterns. You get better at reading logs when you stop waiting for alerts.
Parenting isn’t just about reacting to tantrums—it’s about noticing subtle changes and responding early.
Observability at home? It’s empathy, finely tuned with instrumentation.
🤖 Automation: The Bedtime Pipeline (and Beyond) Link to heading
In DevOps, we obsess over automation. Why? Because it reduces friction, ensures consistency, and frees up our engineers for more complex, creative work. Turns out, the same principle applies when you’re trying to get three small humans from hyperactive to horizontal.
Our bedtime routine, for example, is a finely tuned, automated pipeline: Dinner, PJs, brushing teeth, using the toilet, stories, cuddles, and lights out. When it works, it’s beautiful. Each step flows into the next, reducing decision fatigue for both us and the kids. They know what’s coming, which minimises resistance. We know what’s coming, which minimises parental meltdowns.
It’s not just bedtime; it works for the morning routine before school or even just having designated spots for shoes and backpacks – these are all tiny automations. They’re like mini-scripts running in the background of our family life, reducing cognitive load and preventing us from constantly having to “manually deploy” every single task. When the system is automated, we have more time and energy for unexpected ‘incidents’ – like explaining for the fifth time why we can’t have a pet unicorn.
🔄 Continuous Integration and Daily Stand-Ups Link to heading
In engineering, Continuous Integration refers to the practice of frequently merging code into a shared project repository. This approach includes automated builds and tests that detect issues early on, assisting in the identification of conflicts before they develop into major problems.
My wife and I may not be merging lines of code, but we are continually integrating our parenting approaches. We represent two distinct ‘branches’ of the same ‘project,’ and if we don’t regularly synchronize, we risk encountering merge conflicts that affect the entire ‘system’ (i.e., the kids).
Our daily stand-up usually happens over breakfast or after the kids are asleep. We ask questions like, “How was school pickup?” “Did you talk to him about the math homework?” and “She seems a bit quiet or clingy today; is something wrong?” These are not formal meetings but quick and important check-ins. We share what we notice, align our responses to new behaviors, and bring up any potential issues before they escalate. This keeps our family approach—our shared way of parenting—consistent and harmonious. When we are not on the same page, things become chaotic. One parent says yes, the other says no, and suddenly, our perfectly crafted ‘deployment’ (e.g., getting everyone out the door on time) grinds to a halt. CI, even in parenting, makes for a smoother operation.
🧩 The Monolith vs Microservices Debate (aka Marriage) Link to heading
My wife and I parent in very different ways. She’s not an engineer. She doesn’t think about “event-driven architecture” or “incident response timelines.” Her approach is more intuitive, relational, and deeply human.
At first, this led to some friction. Why didn’t she want to optimise bedtime flow with a Kanban board? Why didn’t I just feel that someone was about to have a meltdown?
But over time, I’ve realised that our differences are a feature, not a bug. We balance each other out. Like a good system composed of microservices and a stable monolith—you need both agility and cohesion. Flexibility and structure. Love and logic.
We’re both debugging this system in real-time, just using different tools.
🕹 When Roblox Becomes Pair Programming Link to heading
I don’t particularly enjoy Roblox. The games are confusing, and they give me motion sickness like I just went on a roller coaster.
But my 6-year-old loves it. He lights up when we play together.
The other day, he tried to explain a game to me. I nodded along, trying not to feel sick while hiding from “Scary Larry.” He laughed at how lost I was. I was confused but still there.
This is what matters. The primary objective of pair programming is to write better code and share knowledge. However, its real strength is in the teamwork and connection built during the process. Similar to Roblox, the most valuable result isn’t always what shows up on the screen.
🙃 Closing Thoughts Link to heading
DevOps didn’t make me a perfect parent, but it gave me a mindset: one that values systems thinking, curiosity, and resilience.
And fatherhood made me a better engineer, too. It taught me that no system—technical or human—responds well to blame. That emotional outages need graceful recovery.
So, this Father’s Day, I’m not celebrating my success. I’m celebrating the debugging process. The retros. The messy commits. The half-working prototypes.
And the three little humans who remind me daily that parenting is the most complex system I’ll ever help build.