About

The Data-Driven CPO

Hey there,

I'm Alexander, a veteran tech lead with a healthy obsession for data and a knack for building products that people actually want to use. I've spent years in the trenches, leading product teams through the chaos of the tech world, from scrappy startups to massive corporations. I build, have built and contribute to data open source projects, mainly Hadoop and IoT focussed, founded startups, won and lost. At the moment I'm an "entrepreneur in residence" - means I had some exits, enjoy now the Meds, take care about our 12 yrs old Frenchy (Heinrich), getting more into watersports and sailing and drive my food passion - Vegan cooking :)

This blog is where I share my hard-won insights, strategies, and (occasionally) rants about everything product-related. It's my opinion and experience, maybe it's useful for the one or another.

What You'll Find Here:

Open Source Stuff: I'm a developer turned systems architect. I blog here about that.
Data-Driven: I write about using data and analysis to make decisions so profound as they can be, paired with gutt feeling and experience.
Team Setup: Build collaborative, cross-functional teams that actually deliver.
AI Stuff: I research since years, and test here and there.

To reach out to me use either my LinkedIn or X profile, you can also send a message over the contact page.

Why Is Customer Obsession Disappearing?

It's wild that even with all the cool tech we've got these days, like AI solving complex equations and doing business across time zones in a flash, so many companies are still struggling with the basics: taking care of their customers.The drama around Coinbase's customer support is a prime example of even tech giants messing up. And it's not just Coinbase — it's a big-picture issue for the whole industry. At some point, the idea of "customer obsession" got replaced with "customer automation," and now we're seeing the problems that came with it. "Cases" What Not to Do Coinbase, as main example, has long been synonymous with making cryptocurrency accessible. Whether you’re a first-time buyer or a seasoned trader, their platform was once the gold standard for user experience. But lately, their customer support practices have been making headlines for all the wrong reasons: Coinbase - Stuck in the Loop: Users have reported being caugh...

MySQL Scaling in 2024

When your MySQL database reaches its performance limits, vertical scaling through hardware upgrades provides a temporary solution. Long-term growth, though, requires a more comprehensive approach. This involves optimizing the database strategically and integrating complementary technologies. Caching The implementation of a caching layer, such as Memcached or Redis , can result in a notable reduction in the load and an increase ni performance at MySQL. In-memory stores cache data that is accessed frequently, enabling near-instantaneous responses and freeing the database for other tasks. For applications with heavy read traffic on relatively static data (e.g. product catalogues, user profiles), caching represents a low-effort, high-impact solution. Consider a online shop product catalogue with thousands of items. With each visit to the website, the application queries the database in order to retrieve product details. By using caching, the retrieved details can be stored in Memcached (a...

Deal with corrupted messages in Apache Kafka

Under some strange circumstances, it can happen that a message in a Kafka topic is corrupted. This often happens when using 3rd party frameworks with Kafka. In addition, Kafka < 0.9 does not have a lock on Log.read() at the consumer read level, but does have a lock on Log.write(). This can lead to a rare race condition as described in KAKFA-2477 [1]. A likely log entry looks like this: ERROR Error processing message, stopping consumer: (kafka.tools.ConsoleConsumer$) kafka.message.InvalidMessageException: Message is corrupt (stored crc = xxxxxxxxxx, computed crc = yyyyyyyyyy Kafka-Tools Kafka stores the offset of each consumer in Zookeeper. To read the offsets, Kafka provides handy tools [2]. But you can also use zkCli.sh, at least to display the consumer and the stored offsets. First we need to find the consumer for a topic (> Kafka 0.9): bin/kafka-consumer-groups.sh --zookeeper management01:2181 --describe --group test Prior to Kafka 0.9, the only way to get this in...

novatechflow

Search This Blog