Infrastructure TPMs are a different breed – Michael Gat

I’m that weird breed, an Infrastructure Technical Program Manager (iTPM). [To make things easier, in this article I’ll refer to Infrastructure TPMs as iTPM and Sofware TPMs as sTPM. I’ll use the term TPM only when referring to the role more generally.] [Update, 15 May, 2025: I’ve considered that “software” vs “infra” is the wrong terminology. In infra, much or all of what we deal with is software: Linux, K8s, massive control planes, etc. A better understanding is “applications” vs. “infra.” I’ll leave this blog post as written, but will update my terminology in future writing.] To explain why, let me first address what’s different about infrastructure in general. I need to set this context, because as I’ll explore going forward, in infrastructure, context is everything, and much of the work we do is in understanding the context. This is not as trivial as it sounds, and has profound implications for how we operate, as explained in this video, that partly inspired my thoughts: He notes t

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• Annie Zhou