Tore Friskopp

Failure Friday #1- How we maxed out a credit by not capping API usage

Tore Friskopp — Fri, 15 Mar 2024 08:42:02 +0000

It’s time for a Failure Friday, one of my many F-ups! This time a story about how we maxed out a credit card 🤑 by not capping the google API usage.

This happened while creating Attentionflow.ai, a service that generates game previews and reviews using sport statistics and event data.

We had a bright idea Let’s add weather data! Did the players battle it out in a downpour ☔ or bask in the sunshine? ☀️

To get that info, we combined three APIs;

A sports API ️
Google’s Geolocation API
A free weather API ️

The first API gave us the date and venue. Google’s Geolocation API gave us the latitude and longitude of that location which was needed as input for the weather API, which gave us the weather data.

And – boom – we had weather forecasts in all our reports!

And very soon we had a maxed out credit card.

The mistakes: Our code had checked the location of every stadium in the world every 5 minutes, and also checked, and re-checked, and re-checked again the latitude and longitude of each of those locations. ⏱️

Google had, dutifully, charged us for every. single. request.

Of course, we should have had endless cache on the data retrieved. Stadiums very seldom move to a new address. ️➡️ That was a fail number one.

However, those whoopsies can happen when you are trying to push out new features at a high pace.

The real lesson learned, for me at least, was to always make sure you have a cap on API usage.

All in all, it cost us €1,000. Money that could have been better spent elsewhere. Literally anything else would have been better.

But at the time I was super happy we had not used the other credit card that had a 25K spend limit.

The image above is not from our API usage, it’s from another insane growth.

Don’t be cocky funny as a manager

Tore Friskopp — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 12:00:00 +0000

There is a form of humour which is called “cocky funny”. It’s the type of humour in which you make a joke at somebody elses expense, without being rude. Confident guys excel in this. Both at giving it and at receiving it. This type of humour is very often used when guys hang out with their best friends or when they are trying to pick up women. If you are a confident guy you are probably pretty good at cracking these types of jokes.

However, there are situations when you should avoid using this kind of humour. When managing people is one of them. If you are in a power position, like being somebodys boss, jokes work differently. A joke that in a bar would be “cocky funny” will be “sleazy rude” in the office.

The receiver of the jokes might still laugh but will start harboring a bad feeling inside. Your joke will be re-told to the co-workers and the HR department as an example of you being a bad boss.

Being management means being professional and treating coworkers in a professional way. You are no longer their buddy. You are their manager.

Be professional. Save the Cocky Funny for your friends and the Tinder-date. Avoid it when talking to your co-workers.

Lead by example – even when it sucks

Tore Friskopp — Thu, 09 Nov 2017 09:30:00 +0000

If you are in management or a senior staff – higher standards apply to you. As management, or senior, people will look up to you. What you do sets an example for the rest. That means that you sometimes just have to suck it up and go with the corporate line – even when it sucks.

Whatever you do – the rest will copy. The damage of your sloppiness will be multiplied by how many employees you have. If you are 10 minutes late and have 20 employees that sees it, 20 people will be 10 minutes late. This means 200 lost minutes instead of just 10.

Make sure you follow these rules

Always be on time
Follow company policy like a fundamentalist
Smoke in the designated smoke area
Use the recycle bin
You know the rest…

People with excuses will not be good employees

Tore Friskopp — Fri, 03 Nov 2017 15:00:00 +0000

Some people always have an excuse. If something they have done is not up to par – they will tell you a reason. And that reason won’t be that they made a mistake.

Excuses are bad for two reasons.

There are two reasons why this is a problem in an organisation.

1. The person will have a hard time learning.

A lot of learning is done through trial and error. If somebody can’t take feedback – and instead fire away excuses – that person will learn at a slower pace than somebody who won’t be full of excuses.

2. The person needs to be micromanaged

Excessive use of excuses comes from a fear of making a mistakes. Maybe their parents gave them a hard time every time they made a mistake, maybe they had a terrible teacher in school, maybe their grandma didn’t hug them enough. I don’t know why some people are more afraid than others, but it doesn’t matter. What matters is that there are people who are afraid of making mistakes. They are afraid of being wrong. This fear stops them from doing things that they don’t have full control over. Which means that they will disturb you with a lot of unnecessary questions. Questions they could figure out the answers to by themselves, if they just had more guts.

How to use this to your advantage

During the probation period, as soon as possible, try to see if the employee is full of excuses. Give them a task that they will fail. See how they react. If they give you excuces: End the probation. He/She will never be a superstar.

Not ending the probation early is wasting that persons time.