Alex Hidalgo, Nobl9; Andrew Clay Shafer, Ergonautic
Deliberately or inadvertently, everyone builds a platform to support their business mission. And in doing so we often look to what others have done to get us there. But: what if other's principles, practices and platforms aren't applicable to our context?
In Sartre's 'No Exit' people are brought to a mysterious room in hell where they had all expected medieval torture devices to punish them for eternity, but eventually realize they had been put together to torture each other. Join Andrew Clay Shafer as DevOps and Alex Hidalgo as SRE as they both wait for Platform Engineering to join them in hell. During their suffering they will explain how you can best retain your agency, identify your needs, and understand how you can avoid the afterlife; while also outlining how we all got here in the first place.
Alex Hidalgo, Nobl9
![](https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/styles/speaker_photo/public/hidalgo_alex_200x230_2.jpg?itok=BI1IEvBs)
Alex Hidalgo is the Principal Reliability Advocate at Nobl9 and author of "Implementing Service Level Objectives." During his career he has developed a deep love for sustainable operations, proper observability, and using SLO data to drive discussions and make decisions. Alex's previous jobs have included IT support, network security, restaurant work, t-shirt design, and hosting game shows at bars. When not sharing his passion for technology with others, you can find him scuba diving or watching Premier League football. He lives in Brooklyn with his partner Jen and a rescue dog named Taco. Alex has a BA in philosophy from Virginia Commonwealth University.
Andrew Clay Shafer, Ergonautic
![](https://www.usenix.org/sites/default/files/styles/speaker_photo/public/shafer_andrew_clay_200x230.jpg?itok=ktZpLEgr)
Andrew Clay Shafer evangelized DevOps tools and practices when DevOps was not a word before falling in love with SLOs in theory and practice. Living at the intersection of Open Source and Cloud Computing across two decades, they gained experience in every role in software delivery from support and QA to product and development. Andrew now focuses on engineering operable resilient socio-technical systems and communities as a founder of Ergonautic.
![](https://www.usenix.org/sites/all/modules/usenix/usenix_files/images/usenix-locked.png)
author = {Alex Hidalgo and Andrew Clay Shafer},
title = {Hell Is Other Platforms},
year = {2023},
address = {Santa Clara, CA},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = mar
}