March 30, 2020. Just a day before WHO declared COVID-19 as a pandemic. The world felt like it was in one of those sci-fi movies where the virus is spreading exponentially through some form of social media. Except this wasn’t a Hollywood plot twist; this was real life.

At work, we were already seeing signs that things would never be the same. Slack channels about remote working setups and Zoom meetings were becoming as common as the ones discussing GitOps strategies with ArgoCD. I found myself debugging Kubernetes clusters more than I expected, trying to keep our services running smoothly while people were suddenly working from home.

It was a strange time, one where the tech world’s biggest challenges seemed both mundane and unprecedented. Just yesterday, I had a heated discussion about whether we should use Backstage or some other internal developer portal tool. Now, Zoom was making headlines for all the wrong reasons.

One of our key projects at work involved scaling our Kubernetes infrastructure to support a remote-first workforce. We were trying to balance the need for more resources against the risk of running into resource constraints as everyone suddenly needed access from their home networks. The Kubernetes complexity fatigue? It felt like everyone was dealing with it, but no one wanted to admit it.

The day before, I spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting an issue that kept cropping up in our eBPF code. We were using eBPF for tracing and monitoring network traffic to optimize our services. A small change had caused some unexpected behavior, and I was trying to figure out what exactly went wrong. It’s moments like these where you realize the full depth of your expertise is just scratching the surface.

On the personal front, the pandemic forced me to rethink my daily routine. No more morning commute or midday coffee runs—just a steady flow of Zoom calls and Slack messages. I found myself setting up a home office in what used to be an unused guest room, complete with a second monitor to avoid eye strain during long meetings.

One particularly frustrating day, I received an alert from our monitoring tools about high CPU usage on one of our Kubernetes nodes. After a series of checks, I realized the culprit was a misbehaving service that had been running for weeks without any issues. The lesson here? Sometimes things can go wrong in unexpected ways, and being thorough is key.

That evening, as I scrolled through Hacker News, I couldn’t help but feel a mix of empathy and frustration. The news about Zoom’s privacy practices, the shutdown of SETI@home after 21 years, and the discussions around remote work were all swirling around my mind. It was a stark reminder that while technology can connect us in unprecedented ways, it also comes with its own set of challenges.

As I wrote down notes for today’s blog post, I reflected on how much has changed since February. The tech industry is adapting to new normals, and so are we as individuals. While the pandemic brought about unprecedented changes, it also highlighted the resilience and adaptability of both technology and people.

In the end, these were the days when Kubernetes clusters had to be managed with extra care, when remote work became a new norm, and when every bug could feel like the biggest one yet. But as challenging as they were, they also taught us valuable lessons about flexibility and perseverance in the face of uncertainty.

---

That’s my take on March 2020, a month that felt like a turning point for many. Hope this resonates with anyone who found themselves in similar situations.