Volvo Cars

• Improving reliability and incident response together with my great colleagues.
• Helping roll out an observability solution while implementing shift-left and full ownership across the company.

Sr Staff Engineer (Enterprise Architecture)

• Rolled out Service Levels across a large org (110+ teams) sitting with 70% of those teams and their consumers face to face to identify their services, set sensible SLI, and reasonable SLO.
• Developed Service Level Calculator as an open source tool to run SLO workshops effectively
• Crowdsourced software catalog with 400+ components and 80+ systems across 110+ teams. Later migrated it to Backstage using Deno and Notion API.
• Improved operations and on-call support to shift left and implement “You build it, You own it”
• Acting PM for a platform team, I led product strategy and execution for the Reliability Ownership Dashboard on the internal developer platform at Volvo Cars.
• Collaborated with cross-functional teams to ensure successful launch and adoption of the dashboard.
• Achieved seamless integration and usability of the dashboard across the organization, enhancing overall developer productivity.

Sr Staff Engineer (Platforms & Operation)

• Introduced DORA metrics across the org
• Established the ADR (architecture decision records) format and lightweight process to reduce meetings and improve decision quality across the software division. This led to 500+ ADRs after 2.5 years
• Kick started Volvo Cars Engineering blog by a few of my own works and working with other software engineers to publish their ideas. Later we grew it to have an editorial team.

Sr Staff Engineer (Global Online Experience)

Alex Ewerlöf Notes

Testing ideas to find a product market fit for a AI powered product in the junction of Service Levels, observability, alerting, and incident management.

Founder

Warner Bros. Discovery

• Led the migration of discoveryplus.com from a bespoke solution based on nginx and custom Python scripts to cloud-native with Lambda@Edge with 4 teams
• Established the ADR process by creating 30+ ADRs, and leading the ADR Forum
• Set SLI/SLO for the face of discovery+ and established on-call alerts, playbooks and incident management

Staff Site Reliability Engineer (discoveryplus platform)

Schibsted

• Was elected as Tech Lead by the team (9 out of 11 votes).
• Created a community of 150+ developers across 3 countries for an inner source web platform.
• On-call for 2 large TypeScript microservices serving 25 media websites with 80% penetration in SE & NO.
• Led the conversion of 150 KSLOC JavaScript to TypeScript.
• Implemented the observability pillars (logs, metrics traces) for our application platform.
• Re-architectured the config system to serverless to increase response time by 90% and reduce costs 11x.

Staff Engineer (common news platform)

• Rewrote the OAuth 2 browser JS SDK after adding 100+ unit and integration tests.
• Refactored a high load Node.js Microservice handling 150 req/sec to improve performance and quality.
• Re-Architectured the multilanguage email system using Lambda, Transifex, and DynamoDB.

Sr. Software Engineer, Identity, SDK

• Carried user research sessions at the editorial room to understand their workflows.
• Created product strategy for improving photojournalist flows and executed with a team of 6 devs.

Associate Technical Product Manager

RaySearch Laboratories

• Joined a small team to kick-off RayCare Oncology Information System (OIS) which went to become a new product line for the company.
• Worked with the hospital personnel to rethink the flows that connected patients, doctors and machines.
• Created the initial low-fi prototypes to verify the workflow and later translated it to frontend using TypeScript, Angular and SASS as well as a mock backend in Node.js.
• Helped grow the team to 50+ engineers in less than 2 years.

Sr. Software Developer

Bilitti

• Created an Android app for public transportation tickets using NFC and PhoneGap in 3 months.
• Worked with my partner to pitch the idea and get feedback and funding.

Co-Founder, CTO

Klarna

• Created the first version of Klarna Developer portal with 2 back end developers.
• Created the first web based Klarna brand guidelines.
• Created a WYSIWYG tool for the legal team to edit markdown templated text (later became my first popular open source project)

Sr. Software Engineer

Cobham

Created the web interface for controlling and monitoring our new repeater line up.
• Learned Lua and JavaScript at the job in 4 months.
• Rewrote the legacy application to gain 1200x faster load time and reduced memory consumption by 10.4x.
• Wrote over 200 unit, UI, and integration tests.

Software R&D engineer

Rebtel

• Carried UX research and designed the first desktop VoIP client for Rebtel (a response to Skype).
• Created hi-fi interactive prototype using J2SE Swing to communicate the designs and gather feedback.
• Worked with a team of 6 .NET WPF developers to implement and release the first GA version.

UX Engineer

Mobile Life VINN Excellence Centre

• Gathered quantitative data from 24 player experience sessions as well as qualitative surveys.
• Wrote a research paper that was accepted to ACM and published in Oct 2010.

Scientific Researcher

Original daily inspiration: Tech Leadership | SRE | Growth

Casually open to the next level in my career development as a distinguished engineer or CTO.

See https://www.alexewerlof.com/who or Google my name.

DISCLAIMER: ALL OPINIONS ARE MINE. WHAT I SHARE PUBLICLY IS NOT REPRESENTING MY CURRENT OR PREVIOUS EMPLOYERS OR CUSTOMERS, NOR DOES IT REPRESENT MY CURRENT CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS-IS FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION.

7 days have passed since I got the news that I'm laid off from Volvo Cars! Here's what happened:

☺️ I think I should feel sad, rejected, angry, etc. but I feel relief! Volvo Cars has been tough. Not because it's a bad company but because it takes A LOT of effort to transform a traditional manufacturer where the car is the star of the show to a "software driven company". I gave it my 110% but honestly I'm relieved it's over. If I've left a small dent, I'm happy.

💞 This sabbatical couldn't happen at a better time. "Everyone you meet is fighting a war you know nothing about" is so accurate here. I'm not going to rant about it in public but safe to say it's been a blessing to have some quality time off with my son (who took this pic). With salary insurance & my savings I have a runway for 12 months and my highest priority is family. That's plan B.

📖 This is a great opportunity to work on my book and the accompanying open source software with AI at its core. As AI is rearranging the seats in our industry, this is a great time for me to master it. I've been building with AI on the side since last year. Now upskilling takes the center stage and who knows, maybe the passive income from the book and my product and talks take off. That's Plan C.

🌎 I received several opportunities from Belgium to New Zealand. I might have jumped the gun too early announcing that I'm open right after I left the meeting with my boss! Regardless, I promise to systematically go through each door that you kindly opened 🙏. That's for Plan D.

❤️ I got many heart warming messages from ex-colleagues who were touched by my work anywhere from resilient architecture to my ideas on organization design and personal growth. Some of you kindly shared your words as LinkedIn recommendation. Thank you.

🚗 Resilience is not about SLI and SLO. It starts with organization design and unfortunately the industry has a long way to go. Above a certain level, no one understands or genuinely cares about software. It's a cost center. I knew what I was getting into. No regrets.

📖 I feel blessed to have a calm time without economic distractions. Partly because I did my best to dodge lifestyle inflation, but the majority of the opportunities ahead is due to sharing my thoughts and observations honestly and transparently here on LinkedIn and on my blog in an effort to open new dialogues, build meaningful connections and learn from them.

🌟 The real privilege is being surrounded by interesting people to observe, discourse, and learn from. That's the raw material for growth. My main criteria going forward continues to be maximizing the learnings because in my experience the money follows that.

Alex Ewerlöf

💎Follow for original thoughts on Reliability Engineering, Technical Leadership and Growth

🚨PLEASE UNFOLLOW ME🚨

I don't have anything to sell or capitalize your eyeballs. All I wanted to do was to share some observations. Over time, some of you saw value and encouraged me to keep going.

⛔ I haven't paid a cent to LinkedIn or marketing channels to boost my words.

I don't use gen AI to put slop in your face either. If you give me your organic attention, the least I can do is to not burn it on synthetic content.

The follower count has grown organically to this point and I still firmly believe:

𝐖𝐡𝐞𝐧 𝐢𝐭 𝐜𝐨𝐦𝐞𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐟𝐨𝐥𝐥𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐬, 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐭𝐫𝐮𝐦𝐩𝐬 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲.

I rather have 10 connections who give me quality feedback and challenge my assumptions than 10 million who clap for everything I say.

Why?

Like everyone else, I'm trapped in my perception which is shaped by my career and life trajectory. I totally depend on other perceptions to gain a perspective.

For me, LinkedIn is a free learning platform. I've carefully curated my feed and ruthlessly unfollowed repeat garbage-producers. When I go through my feed, I learn something useful.

Sometimes people confuse popularity with value. The currency of social media is views and engagement after all.

Optimizing for views and follower count is a downward spiral that leads to populism and self-censorship at best and mass manipulation and propaganda at worst.

I want to be surrounded by people smarter than me. Not those who take everything in and essentially delegate their own thinking.

Now we're at 18k. If 10% are critical thinkers, I got way more than I bargained for.

What I do differently is to ignore the unwritten rules of LinkedIn:

🔴 Stay clear from humble brags and cheesy advice (no this post is not humble brag! I genuinely mean it. Unfollow or block even, there will not be any hard feelings. Test it.)

🟠 Focus on the learnings and never make it personal or take it personal in a public forum. I genuinely haven't experienced harassment on this platform. The majority of the comments are very insightful and are the reason I continue posting. It's free education for me where I get to test ideas at scale and learn from the feedback and comments. The biggest risk on this platform is that what you say is seen by previous, current, and future customers, employers, and colleagues. I think it's a fair price to pay, for me.
🟢 Put yourself out there, normalize authenticity on this platform and encourage others to share their thoughts.

If you stay, it's your risk. You've been warned! 🙂

This is not your typical humble brag and cheesy advice channel. If you still want to take the risk, you can react and reshare because I will NOT pay LinkedIn to spread my words! No "pay to play".

If the content is good enough, it can spread on its own, organically. I refuse to be part of "pay to play".

If it's not good, just ignore, unfollow or block.

 Whatever you do, PLEASE share your genuine HUMAN side on this social media platform. The norm is shaped by us.

🎉 Good news! You can now try running a small language model in your browser without installing any app!

✅ Works on Linux, Mac, Windows, and ChromeOS
✅ Offers controls over critical initialization parameters (system prompt, temperature, topK, etc.)
✅ Does not track any user interaction.
✅ Does not store any data locally.
✅ Does not make any remote calls.
✅ Does not contain any ads.
✅ Uses the absolute minimum browser permissions (only side panel). It doesn’t even have access to your page, although I may change that if there’s enough demand to chat with the current page in the extension.
✅️ Using native browser API to build a familiar chat interface leads to a small code base.
✅ The code is in plain JavaScript using native browser API. To make the code easier to explore to the widest possible audience, I did not use any frameworks or preprocessors.
✅ Does not have any hidden catch or monetization (although I appreciate a sub to my newsletter)
✅ It’s completely free and open source with the permissive MIT license which means you can fork it and do whatever you want.

PLUS: you can learn how it was built, what's the difference between Cloud AI and Edge AI, and 3 ways to use Edge AI in an illustrated article with lots of examples: https://lnkd.in/d7u8gbps

Thanks to Leonard Aukea and Ehsan Najafi for early feedback.

#ai #llm #chromeextension #usetheplatform #webai #webllm #promptapi #opensource

🎉 The upcoming Google Chrome split-screen is the coolest feature! It's potentially as big of a feature as the introduction of tabs! ❤️

Currently it's available in Chrome Canary, which means it may come to your browser very soon! Looking forward to it.

The image shows two pages side by side open next to a Chrome Extension side panel.

#chrome #browser #usetheplatform #product #ux

There are only 2 types of people in this world:

1️⃣ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐚𝐜𝐭 𝐚𝐬 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐥𝐢𝐯𝐞 𝐟𝐨𝐫𝐞𝐯𝐞𝐫: these are the people who get into pointless arguments, take prestige too seriously, hate, or take advantage of others.

2️⃣ 𝐓𝐡𝐨𝐬𝐞 𝐰𝐡𝐨 𝐤𝐧𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐫𝐞'𝐬 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐧𝐝 𝐚𝐭 𝐚 𝐫𝐚𝐧𝐝𝐨𝐦 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐱𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐲: these are the people who know every day is a gift and every life is precious.

Since death is a taboo in many cultures, we tend to forget how rare and unique it is for matter to form a living being (and even be conscious) then collapse back to its original lifeless form.

Read about the open prison theory in the first comment.

Apple M5 is big news for Edge #AI:

✅️ Every compute block of the chip is optimized for AI.
✅️ The 10-core GPU features a dedicated Neural Accelerator in each core
✅️ Delivers 4x peak GPU compute compared to M4
✅️ Up to 30% faster graphics 
✅️ 3rd gen ray-tracing, 45% faster
✅️ Unified memory bandwidth of 153GB/s, providing a nearly 30 percent increase over M4

I worked on Local Browser #AI pretty much the entire day and it got a good facelift!
It's a free open-source privacy-first extension for Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge using the new Prompt API.

Google's Gemini Nano, requires less memory, has larger context window, and gives 4x faster token per second in my tests.

You can try everything on your machine without installing any native app or component. Link in the comments.

Kudos to Kenji Baheux and the team.

In light of internet disruptions, you probably should know that you can get a lot done locally. I've made an open-source privacy-first browser extension that runs without any internet connection! It works on Chrome or Edge on Linux, Mac, Windows, and even Chromebook!

Disclaimers:
- You don't need to install any app other than Chrome or Edge.
- It needs internet to download the model initially but after that you're good to go
- It requires a semi-decent machine. All Apple products with M1/2/3/4/5 are supported and if you have an NVIDIA card, it should work too.
- I don't make a dime from this even though it took me 2 weeks at this point to ideate, code, test, and publish. A sub or reshare would be nice but totally optional. ☺️ 
- Link in the comments.

Update: I just published a new page that allows selecting a piece of text or an entire page and add it to the chat for context!

#chrome #browser #edge #extension #opensource #ai #chatgpt #llm

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