# Pedro Dias | Thoughts on Tech & Leadership

> Personal blog of Pedro Dias, sharing evolving thoughts on tech, software, and leadership—opinions shaped by experience and curiosity.

## About
Senior Site Reliability Engineer at [FanDuel](https://www.fanduel.com) / [Blip](https://www.blip.pt). Obsessed with building reliable and cost-effective systems and always looking for ways to improve things.

## Posts


- [Beyond the SELECT: Object-Centric Debugging with URNs and Safe AI Triage](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/mcp-urn-debugging/): In distributed systems, the debugging tax isn't the fix; it's the navigation. Learn how Uniform Resource Names (URNs) and the Model Context Protocol (MCP) enable safe, deterministic AI triage with verifiable audit trails.


- [From O(n) to O(1): How We Made DataFrame Lookups 23x Faster](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/data-processing/): We optimize APIs. We scale databases. We architect systems for speed.
But sometimes the biggest performance wins hide in plain sight — in a single function called thousands of times.


- [The Observability Pipeline: Taming Your Observability Costs](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/observability-pipelines-cost-control/): Your observability bill is out of control because you're sending everything to your vendor. It's time to take back control with an observability pipeline—a central hub to filter, shape, and route your telemetry data, slashing costs and breaking vendor lock-in.


- [Beyond the Key: The Power and Peril of End-User IDs](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/beyond-the-key-end-user-ids/): You've isolated your services with unique API keys. But what about the users behind them? This article explores the next layer of observability: passing end-user IDs to third-party APIs, and the critical balance between visibility and privacy.


- [The Hidden Dangers of Sharing API Keys Across Services](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/one-key-to-rule-them-all/): Reusing a single API key across multiple applications seems efficient, but it creates a nightmare for observability, reliability, and security. This post breaks down why this common anti-pattern is so dangerous and why unique keys are essential for robust systems.


- [Beyond the Demo: An Engineer's Short Guide to Choosing Tools, Not Vendors](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/choosing-tools-not-vendors/): Choosing a third-party service is an architectural decision, not just a purchase.
This is a guide for engineers to navigate the procurement process, separating the technical evaluation from the sales relationship to avoid long-term traps.


- [The Datadog Bill You Didn't See Coming: APM's Hidden Costs](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/datadogapmcost/): Datadog is a powerful observability platform, but its true cost often lies hidden in the interconnectedness of its features.
Let's explore how one decision, like enabling APM, can lead to a cascade of unexpected expenses.


- [The Accidental Bottleneck: When Managers Turn into Human Load Balancers](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/lbmanagement/): We optimize code. We scale databases. We architect systems for speed and resilience.
But what if the real performance bottleneck in the org… is a person?


- [Investing in Value: Aligning Software Efforts with Business Impact](https://itspedrodias.com/posts/valueinsoftware/): An idea to simplify your decision making with value quadrants