In medieval times, there was a mythical land of Cockaigne in popular culture that served as a fantasy for the hungry masses. In this land, physical comforts were always available, and the harshness of life was banished. Plentiful food and drink was a pleasant thing for a starving peasant to contemplate as she stared at her thin broth in a cold hut in darkest winter.

Any company that has made it past the earliest startup, launching-from-your-living-room phase has two things: engineers and marketing. Engineers to design and build your product or service, and marketing people to sell it. These are both essential components if a business intends to, you know, make money.

In 2018, ex-AWS employee Paul Johnston and I jointly published a report on the state of energy use in the cloud. How could we as consumers make ethical and future-proof choices about hosting?

This post is part of a three-part series on middle managers and Cloud Native transformation. Here are parts one and two.

In the second part of this series we looked at how mid-level managers may not wholly function as a force for good within your organisation, and the ways that this ‘frozen middle’ may actually be impeding progress. The power they hold over an initiative’s success often goes unrecognised, but it does exist and can be used to.

This post is part of a three-part series on middle managers and Cloud Native transformation. Here are parts two and three.

Being a middle manager is a tough gig.