$ about
Alfonso Álvarez
Platform engineer & builder. I turn things into systems, in infrastructure, in teams and in life.
I'm an SRE / platform engineer who optimizes processes, in systems and in life, and helps teams get more done with DevOps practices.
By day I run platform and AI-ops work at scale (Kubernetes, AWS, Terraform, observability), and I build the AI tooling teams share. On the side I build ventures, mostly team-wellness SaaS and local services in Mexico.
I've also led people for a long time. I built Tinkerware from zero into a 15-person DevOps company that ran for about ten years, and I turned what I learned about healthy teams into the Better Together Framework and Tribu.
I work almost entirely in the terminal (Emacs, tmux, Claude Code), which is why this site is one.
Off the keyboard I'm a drummer (and I'll get a sound out of any instrument), I learn human languages, I read economics, and I play competitive Smash Bros.
Big 5 personality
Always exploring. New tools, new markets, new languages. I start many experiments and keep the ones that work.
Structured where it matters (automation, checklists, tracked tasks) and flexible elsewhere. I ship first and polish second.
Balanced. Happy presenting and selling, and just as happy with deep solo terminal sessions.
Collaborative and team-first (I literally build team-wellness products), but I'll push back when the data says so.
Calm under pressure. Useful when you're on call and something is burning at 3 a.m.
How I work
- Terminal-first. If I do it twice, I script it.
- Ship small, measure, iterate (YC style, customer development first).
- Write things down. Docs are how teams (and future me) scale.
- Safe teams, clear goals, candid feedback. That's the management I practice and build tools for.
- AI as a pair. I work with Claude daily, the same way this site will answer questions one day.
Leading teams
I've built and led teams for over a decade, and I've spent years studying what makes them work. That became the Better Together Framework (the open method) and Tribu (the product that runs it).
- Built Tinkerware from zero into a 15-person company specialized in DevOps, probably the first in Mexico (2015). We ran it for about ten years and consulted for companies around the globe.
- Team lead at Discovery, and DevOps lead on multiple teams since.
- Designed the Better Together Framework, a 5-radar method for team health: burnout, psychological safety, goal clarity, productivity and work-life balance.
- Built Tribu to run that framework automatically inside Slack, with pulses, reports and AI insights.
What I believe about managing people
- Psychological safety first. People do their best work when it's safe to speak up and to fail.
- Care personally, challenge directly. Candid feedback is a form of respect.
- Clear goals beat motivation speeches. Specific, shared goals are what move a team.
- Emotions are data. How people feel at work is information, not noise.
- Measure team health like uptime. What gets measured regularly gets fixed early.
The science behind BTF: Maslach (burnout), Edmondson and Google's Project Aristotle (psychological safety), Gallup Q12 and Locke & Latham (goals), Self-Determination Theory and Csikszentmihalyi (motivation and flow), WHO and Sonnentag (recovery and balance). Explore the 5 radars ↗
Skills
- Platform / DevOps
- Kubernetes (EKS), Terraform/Terragrunt, AWS, GitLab CI/CD, Datadog, MCP servers
- AI
- Claude everywhere (Claude Code in the terminal, browser and apps), plus Cursor and Codex. MCP servers, shared AI skills across teams, AI-ops agents
- Machine learning
- Statistics, Gaussian methods, linear regression through neural networks (MIT Professional Education, Data Science program). Building models, putting them in production and tuning them
- Data
- Data pipelines, analytics engineering, FinOps / cost intelligence, A/B testing, GA4
- Management
- Built and ran a 15-person DevOps company (Tinkerware, ~10 years), team lead at Discovery, DevOps lead on multiple teams. Psychological safety, candid feedback, goal setting, team-health measurement (Better Together Framework)
- Full-stack
- Firebase, Python, JavaScript/TypeScript, REST APIs, WhatsApp/Twilio, HubSpot
- Entrepreneurship
- Customer development (Steve Blank), YC Startup School, multiple products shipped, GTM planning, conversion optimization
- Languages
- Spanish (native), English, Italian, German. Some Japanese (studied 2 years)
Bookshelf
Books and authors that shaped how I build, lead and think.
Management & people
- The Fearless OrganizationAmy Edmondson
- Radical CandorKim Scott
Psychology
- How Emotions Are MadeLisa Feldman Barrett
- On Becoming a PersonCarl Rogers
Entrepreneurship
- The Four Steps to the EpiphanySteve Blank
- The Startup Owner's ManualSteve Blank & Bob Dorf
- YC Startup School (every course, with my summaries on Medium)Y Combinator
DevOps
- The Phoenix Project (where it all started for me)Gene Kim, Kevin Behr & George Spafford
- The Unicorn ProjectGene Kim
- The DevOps HandbookGene Kim, Jez Humble, Patrick Debois & John Willis
Economics
My current rabbit hole. It helps me understand the world and the debates around it.
- David Hume
- Adam Smith
- David Ricardo
- Carl Menger
- Ludwig von Mises
- Friedrich Hayek
- Murray Rothbard
Looking for a co-founder
I'm looking for a sales/BD co-founder to take Tribu (Slack-native team wellness) to its first paying clients. I bring product, engineering and infrastructure. If closing deals with People/HR leaders excites you, let's talk.
Before we talk, read what I look for in a co-founder.