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Foo Fighters complaint letter

Below is a copy of the letter that I have sent to SeeTickets, Gaming International Ltd (owners of MK Bowl) and Sony Music Entertainment UK (record label of the Foo Fighters) regarding the shambolic Foo Fighters gig on Sunday 3rd July 2011.

I’ll keep you posted, and see what happens.

SEE GROUP LIMITED 2nd Floor, Norfolk House 47 Upper Parliament Street Nottingham NG1 2AB 5th July 2011

To whom it may concern,

I bought 2 tickets (ticket #: AA12345 and AA54321) to the 3rd July 2011 performance of the Foo Fighters at the Milton Keynes back on the 3rd November 2010 using the O2 Priority service, a day earlier than general release. Despite, being logged on some time before the 09:00 release of tickets, by the time I got through the queue all of the Saturday tickets had been sold.

Knowing the uncertainty of live music I was apprehensive as to whether I should proceed. However, due to the advertised door open time of 14:00 on SeeTickets.com and 13:30 on FooFighters.com, I expected a warm up act or two with the Foo Fighters coming on around 17:00 for an 20:00 finish.

Given the 3 hour travel time to Milton Keynes from Norwich, I expected my partner and I to return at home at a reasonable time such that we could attend work the next day at 07:00.

As it turned out, we arrived at 14:00 to spend a non-advertised £7 on parking (ticket #: 1234) before having to walk 2 miles to the MK Bowl. We then preceded to sit in the MK Bowl for 2 hours and nothing happened. Nothing at all. No music at all.

It was at this time when discussing our frustration with another music event go-er that we were interrupted by a Milton Keynes local stood behind us who informed us that there were no less than 4 warm-up acts, with the music not even being planned to start before 16:30 to 17:00. When we asked where he got this information, he replied that it had only been in a local newspaper

At this point another woman behind us added, that she had a “camping ticket” in which the event organisers had arranged for a series of coaches to ferry people between the MK Bowl and the campsite. She informed us that the buses were booked for between 01:00 and 02:00.

Clearly, there was no intention of the Foo Fighters coming on until at least 22:00 or 23:00 and playing until gone midnight. If we include time to get out of the venue (~15 min), the 2 mile walk back to the car park (~30 min), trying to get out of the car park (30 min), plus journey time to Norwich ( 3 hours) using the optimistic 01:00 finish, we would not have returned home before 05:00 to be up at 06:00 for work at 07:00.

As a result, my partner and I decided to cut our loses and left the venue at 17:00 having been in Milton Keynes for 3 hours and HEARD ABSOLUTELY NO MUSIC.

Quite frankly I am disgusted that the advertised time had absolutely nothing to do with when the music would start, and was somewhere in the region of 9 hours from when the billed act were to perform.

Had I known such was the state of affairs I would have never had bought the tickets in the first place. As a result I find myself in a position where I shall be boycotting all of your future products and shall be advising others to be doing the same.

Yours faithfully,

Morgan Bye

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LEADERSHIP, SCALE, AND THE HUMAN ELEMENT

Principles & Perspectives

How do you define successful engineering leadership?

The Philosophy

Many view technical leadership as being the “smartest architect in the room.” I see it as the opposite. My job is to build a room where I don’t have to be the smartest person because the systems, culture, and communication are so robust that the team can out-innovate me.

The Strategy

  • Alignment: Does every engineer understand how their sprint task impacts the company’s bottom line?
  • Velocity vs. Stability: We aren’t just “shipping fast”; we are building a predictable, repeatable engine that doesn’t collapse under its own weight at the next order of magnitude.
  • The Human Growth Curve: Success is when the engineering team’s capability evolves faster than the product’s complexity. If the team feels stagnant, the tech stack will soon follow.

What is your approach to scaling technical organizations?

The Philosophy

Scaling isn’t just “hiring more people” - that’s often how you slow down. Scaling is about moving from Individual Heroics to Organizational Systems.

The Strategy

  • The 3-Continent Perspective: Having managed global teams, I focus on “High-Signal Communication.” As you grow, the cost of a meeting triples. I implement “Asynchronous-First” cultures that protect deep-work time while ensuring no one is blocked by a timezone.

  • Modular Autonomy: I advocate for breaking down monolithic teams into autonomous units with clear ownership. This reduces the “communication tax” and allows us to scale the headcount without scaling the bureaucracy.

  • Automation as Infrastructure: At petabyte scale, manual intervention is a failure. I treat the developer experience (CI/CD, observability, self-service infra) as a first-class product to keep the “path to production” frictionless.

How do you balance high-growth velocity with technical stability?

The Philosophy

Technical debt isn’t a “bad thing” to be avoided; it’s a set of historical decisions that no longer serve you. Like any loan, leverage can accelerate growth when investments payoff. But if velocity and returns are slowing you need a payment plan before the interest kills you.

The Strategy

  • The ROI Filter: I don’t refactor for the sake of “clean code.” I don’t refactor a micro-service with no users. I refactor when the pain on that debt - measured in bugs, downtime, or developer frustration - starts to exceed the cost of the fix.

  • Zero-Downtime Culture: Especially at scale, stability is a feature. I implement “Guardrail Engineering” where the system is designed to fail gracefully, ensuring that a Series B growth spike becomes a success story rather than a post-mortem.

  • The 70/20/10 Rule: I typically aim to dedicate 70% of resources to new features, 20% to infrastructure/debt, and 10% to R&D. This ensures we never stop innovating, but we never stop fortifying either.