Michal Gryko, Tempest
Infrastructure has evolved from hand-managed servers to YAML pipelines and internal developer platforms. But even with new tools, challenges around speed, scale, and safety still persist.
This talk explores 25 years of change, from sysadmins and DevOps to cloud sprawl and the rise of platform engineering. We’ll look at how internal platforms aimed to simplify infrastructure, where they fell short, and what lessons teams can carry forward.
We’ll also explore what's next. AI agents are beginning to let developers request infrastructure in natural language. Platform and SRE teams continue to play a critical role by defining safe systems and enforcing guardrails.
You’ll walk away with:
- A clear view of how infrastructure has evolved
- Insights into the challenges of building and scaling internal platforms
- An introduction to agentic platform engineering
- Practical ideas on where human oversight remains essential
Since childhood, Michal has been fascinated by electronics, often disassembling devices to understand how they worked. This early curiosity led to a degree in Biomedical Engineering, providing a strong foundation in electronics, signal processing, and low-level programming. Over the past 20 years, Michal has worked as what today would be called a systems engineer or infrastructure specialist, building and maintaining complex systems across a wide range of environments.
author = {Michal Gryko},
title = {Lessons from 25 Years in Infra: {What{\textquoteright}s} Changed, What {Hasn{\textquoteright}t}, and {What{\textquoteright}s} Next},
year = {2025},
address = {Dublin},
publisher = {USENIX Association},
month = oct
}
