The Cutover: Stories Of When The Switch Flipped cover art

The Cutover: Stories Of When The Switch Flipped

The Cutover: Stories Of When The Switch Flipped

Written by: Lawrence Spector
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What happens when the system you knew stops working, and there’s no rollback?


The Cutover: Stories of When the Switch Flipped is a podcast about the defining moments that change the direction of our lives, careers, and businesses.


Hosted by Lawrence Spector, an engineering leader with 25 years of experience building and leading teams across industries including finance, defense, telecom, medical devices, gaming, cybersecurity, and AI, The Cutover takes an engineering concept and applies it to something much more personal.


In technology, a cutover is the moment a new system goes live. Months of preparation lead to one point of no return. Life has cutovers too, but unlike at work, there’s usually no rehearsal, rollback plan, or war room waiting when they happen.


Each week, Lawrence shares a story from his own journey or sits down with founders, engineers, leaders, and builders to examine one real moment when something changed. The decision they almost didn’t make. The diagnosis they didn’t expect. The failure that forced a new direction. The opportunity that opened one door while closing another.


These aren’t highlight reels. They’re stories about what someone believed before, what actually happened, what became clear afterward, and what they would do differently now.


Because sometimes the most important part of the story isn’t where you ended up.


It’s the moment the switch flipped.

© 2026 The Cutover: Stories Of When The Switch Flipped Art
Episodes
  • One Line of Code, 10x Performance Improvement | EP 2

    One Line of Code, 10x Performance Improvement | EP 2
    Oct 13 2026

    What if the reason your server keeps crashing has nothing to do with a bug in your code?

    In this episode, Lawrence shares how a gaming server struggled with slow responses, delayed messages, and unexpected crashes, yet every test showed nothing wrong. After three frustrating weeks of debugging, he discovered a hidden difference between the production and testing environments: RAID 5 storage. Combined with an overloaded logging queue, this setup caused serious performance issues during peak traffic. The surprising solution? A single line of code that improved message throughput by 10 times! Laurence shares valuable lessons about server performance, production debugging, and why comparing system environments matters. Discover how recognizing patterns, questioning assumptions, and looking beyond the code can save engineers weeks of troubleshooting.

    Episode highlights:
    (1:05) The gaming server performance problem begins
    (2:06) Why traditional debugging methods failed
    (3:16) Investigating threading bugs and memory leaks
    (4:25) Recognizing the connection between server load and performance
    (4:53) Discovering the RAID 5 storage bottleneck
    (5:53) How excessive logging overwhelmed the server
    (6:38) The one-line fix that solved the problem
    (7:32) Achieving 10x faster message throughput
    (7:58) Lessons learned from differences between test and production environments
    (9:25) Why engineers should investigate what's different before blaming the code

    If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who might find it helpful. Want to stay connected or learn more? Find me through the links and contact information below.

    Youtube: @LawrenceSpector, @the-cutover
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawrence.spector/, https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Cutover-with-Lawrence-Spector/61594426252229/
    Instagram: @lawrence.spector
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrencespector/
    Twitter/X: @SpectorLS
    Bluesky: @lawrencespector.bsky.social, @thecutover.bsky.social
    Show More Show Less
    11 mins
  • LADA and the "Off By One" Error | EP 1

    LADA and the "Off By One" Error | EP 1
    Oct 6 2026

    What happens when you do everything right, but the numbers keep telling you something is wrong? In this deeply personal episode of The Cutover, Lawrence Spector shares how months of warning signs, rising blood sugar, and a type 2 diabetes diagnosis eventually led to the real answer: LADA, often called type 1.5 diabetes. He reflects on the shock of starting insulin, losing his father during the same difficult period, and learning that effort alone cannot fix a plan built on the wrong diagnosis. Drawing from 25 years in engineering, Lawrence connects health, leadership, and system failures through one powerful lesson: when the plan stops working, question the diagnosis. He also shares how life with LADA has become manageable, even if the condition is always present.

    Episode highlights:
    (1:20) Episode 1.5: LADA and the “off by one” error
    (1:28) Early warning signs that were easy to explain away
    (2:52) Rising A1c levels and the first diabetes warnings
    (3:58) When the numbers stopped matching the plan
    (4:35) The type 2 diabetes misdiagnosis
    (5:06) The ZNT8 antibody test that confirmed LADA
    (6:18) Starting insulin for the first time
    (7:31) Losing his father while adjusting to a new diagnosis
    (8:18) Lessons from treating the body like a system
    (9:29) Why failed plans should make us question the diagnosis
    (10:10) Learning to live with LADA, insulin pumps, and CGMs
    (11:14) Managing hard days while becoming a new dad
    (11:36) Why “type 1.5” is the perfect off-by-one diagnosis
    (12:19) Preview of the next episode

    If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast, leave a review, and share it with someone who might find it helpful. Want to stay connected or learn more? Find me through the links and contact information below.

    Youtube: @LawrenceSpector, @the-cutover
    Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawrence.spector/, https://www.facebook.com/people/The-Cutover-with-Lawrence-Spector/61594426252229/
    Instagram: @lawrence.spector
    LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lawrencespector/
    Twitter/X: @SpectorLS
    Bluesky: @lawrencespector.bsky.social, @thecutover.bsky.social
    Show More Show Less
    13 mins
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