Am I the problem? Interviewing another team to find out

I'm grateful to Ngrok for funding my article, though the views expressed here are my own. In my early days as a DevOps engineer at Cisco, I learned valuable lessons about working alongside a friend. After two years, we argued about everything from git branching strategies to architecture and security. I left the job, sought therapy, and lost touch with my former colleague.

I pondered if technical disagreements are a universal experience, so I interviewed the infra team at Ngrok to discover the truth. I wrote about how other teams handle conflicts, hoping to understand the source of these issues better.

During my interviews, I met with James, a photographer, cat fosterer, and sushi enthusiast. He joined Ngrok four years ago and focused on pipelines and developer tooling. James and his team were debating whether to adopt Argo Rollouts or build a custom in-house tool to replace their current Buildkite CI/CD system. The update process for Ngrok's Mux service, which handles hundreds of thousands of TCP connections, is complex and recently required a script running on a developer's laptop. The team agreed on the need for improvement but disagreed on how to achieve it.

I also spoke with Stacks, Alex, and Sabrina, who all shared their perspectives on the Argo discussion. They acknowledged the pros and cons of both options and expressed openness to hearing each other's viewpoints. Despite their disagreements, the team members remained respectful and collaborative, ensuring that their decision-making process remained productive and positive.