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Jason Smale
Jason Smale

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Jan 11

2022 review

2022 was the year I left Zendesk and my third child was born. Plus lots more. Zendesk I joined Zendesk in 2012. My initial task was to build some integrations and in doing so we started the Product and Engineering team in Melbourne that is now over 350 people. Along…

9 min read

2022 review
2022 review

9 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Mar 8, 2022

ZEN and the art of Reliability

ZEN and the art of Reliability Zendesk’s reliability principles and the real-world stories as we transitioned from a humble IT help desk software to providing mission critical systems for enterprises. Zendesk handles approximately 250,000 requests per second at daily peak into our infrastructure, with over ½ of those requests needing…

Reliability

13 min read

ZEN and the art of Reliability
ZEN and the art of Reliability
Reliability

13 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Dec 27, 2019

10 tips for growing a globally distributed engineering team

Zendesk has built out a global engineering team spread across four continents, nine countries and 10 cities around the world. We started the journey relatively early in our company’s life, it’s been difficult, and we’ve learned lessons along the way. Many of the things we got right, came from key…

Startup

14 min read

Startup

14 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Apr 23, 2019

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 3) — Foundation team forming and evolving

Introduction In Part 2, I wrote about our adventures moving from physical data centers to the Cloud. Let’s move on to how we transformed our organizational structure to take advantage of being in the Cloud and enable self-service. Building the foundation In early 2018, our organizational structure was stereotypically old…

Cloud Computing

9 min read

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 3) — Foundation team forming and evolving
The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 3) — Foundation team forming and evolving
Cloud Computing

9 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Dec 27, 2018

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 2) — the messy middle

In my last post interviewing Zendesk’s co-founder, Morten Primdahl, we talked about Zendesk’s infrastructure development from 2006 to 2012, when we started growing like crazy and put out the first burning fires. This time, I’ll be looking at 2012 to 2017. This period of Zendesk’s history taught us that infrastructure…

Cloud Computing

9 min read

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 2) — the messy middle
The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 2) — the messy middle
Cloud Computing

9 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Oct 23, 2018

Having better One-on-Ones

A great tweet from Julia Evans got me thinking about 1:1s. So many of us are exploring the potential of one-on-ones every week. I have personally had some amazing conversations and learned so much from trying different things. I thought I’d capture my journey so far. 1:1s are often my…

Management

4 min read

Management

4 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Aug 29, 2018

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 1) — constant tradeoffs

I think Zendesk’s infrastructure journey is an important story to tell. Our path will always be unique to Zendesk, but our story will probably resonate with companies who were growing around the same time. The story of our growth is one we’ve often told internally, as new engineers have joined…

Cloud Computing

11 min read

The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 1) — constant tradeoffs
The history of infrastructure at Zendesk (Part 1) — constant tradeoffs
Cloud Computing

11 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Apr 5, 2018

Blameless Culture

Blameless culture has been on my mind recently. Aspects of it can be seen in the Toyota Production System, however, only more recently did “blameless” start to be used to describe it. …

Management

4 min read

Management

4 min read


Published in

Zendesk Engineering

·Mar 20, 2018

Inclusion — getting the basics right around communication

I feel really passionate about making my workplace inclusive, an environment where everyone is respected and also feels respected. It’s something I never really thought about until joining the workforce and I’m thrilled it’s often a topic of discussion. …

Open Source

7 min read

Open Source

7 min read

Jason Smale

Jason Smale

823 Followers

SVP Engineering @Zendesk.

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