Lessons from the $750 Bill: Managing Massive Scale with Karam

For our May meetup, we are thrilled to host a fantastic session hosted by Karam Kabbara, Lead Software Engineer from Kraken and Danish Javed, Senior Software Engineer from Codurance who will be discussing everything from cloud to culture via AI. Come along to learn, share and be inspired!

Details
From pricing up washing machines to customising coffins... and now saving the universe by controlling your electric vehicle while you sleep at Kraken Technologies. Unfortunately for you, you’ve probably run into code that Karam Kabbara has written at some point in your life.

Karam will lead a lively discussion alongside Senior Software Engineer Danish Javed from Codurance to share the hard-won lessons that only come from working on systems at a massive scale. This isn't a lecture; it's a candid discussion about what happens when good intentions meet bad production realities.

What to expect
We’ll be hosting a facilitated Q&A and group discussion, where Karam will be opening up about his journey through some of the UK's biggest tech platforms, starting with the infamous story of how he once came home to a $750 AWS bill... and how you can avoid the same fate.

We’ll be diving into:

• The True Cost of Cloud: Why "serverless" and "on-demand" can be a double-edged sword without the right guardrails.
• Building for Scale: Lessons on managing millions of connected devices and high-concurrency environments.
• Engineering Accountability: How to foster a culture where developers take ownership of the infrastructure they trigger.
• Modern Tooling: A frank discussion on the tools we use today (including the hype vs. reality of AI assistants) and whether they are making us better engineers or just faster at breaking things.

Who should attend?
This meetup is for software engineers who care about the "Craft" in Software Craftsmanship. If you’re interested in architectural patterns, cloud cost-optimisation, or just want to hear some honest war stories from a Lead Engineer at one of the UK’s biggest tech success stories, this is an event not to be missed.

What to bring

• Your curiosity: This is an open-floor discussion.
• Your own "war stories": We’ll be sharing reflections as a group, so bring a time you broke something (and what you learned from it).

Note: This is a discussion-based event. While you’re welcome to bring a laptop if you’re taking notes, no live coding or specific software is required to participate.

A big thank you to Codurance for hosting the event at their fantastic office in Bonded Warehouse and sponsoring the pizza and drinks.