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Engineering Leadership with Tess Rinearson
Tess on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/_tessr
George Stocker 0:00
Hi, I'm George Stocker, and this is the build better software podcast. Today I'm joined by test rynearson. And we're here to talk about engineering and Engineering Leadership tests. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Now for people who don't know who you are or what you do. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Tess Rinearson 0:19
Yeah, absolutely. So I am the VP of Engineering at a small blockchain company based in Berlin, which is called interchange. GMB H. GMB H is like LLC or Inc, but in German.
And I've been working in engineering management at blockchain companies for the last while I've been in the blockchain space for the last five years or so. And for about the last three years that I've been in, in management positions. Before that, I was a software engineer at medium and before that I was a computer science student.
George Stocker 0:54
Okay, now let's let's start backwards. You're working in the blockchain space now, as someone who's never been in the blockchain space and doesn't really know what that's like, describe, you know, developing new products in that space.
Tess Rinearson 1:09
Yeah, totally. Um, it's a really fun space to work in because lots of things are new. And because the, like most blockchain projects have a bit of a unique funding model where
not necessarily all of the funding but often a lot of the funding comes from token sales. And so a lot of the people who are sort of like, like invested in your product are also your users are also like, like regular people in a lot of ways. And so there's, there's a different kind of like, like product development and funding cycle from a lot of other like software tech companies, I would say, and I think that gives you like a lot of a lot of latitude and also like a very community oriented
way to do your work. When you're building software,
George Stocker 2:01
and you're in a nascent market, I mean, we like we don't know the full potential of blockchain. We at least seen it realized yet. So how do you as a leader, how do you work within that that largely unexplored territory?
Tess Rinearson 2:18
Yeah, totally. That's a really good question. So when I got started in the blockchain space, it was 2015. And I joined a tiny blockchain company which is called chain because this was early enough in the sort of like blockchain, you know, lifecycle that you could actually call your blockchain company something like that. And chain worked on like a really, really wide range of products built, you know, first of Bitcoin and then kind of like our own blockchain product, and some stuff with like cloud blockchains, like explored a really, really wide range of products that you could build with block chains. And none of them really stuck. And the team ultimately got acquired by another blockchain company, which is a whole other story. But anyway, what I learned from that experience was that even though I am personally super, super excited about the technology behind blockchains, I don't really think I'm like the person who's going to build like a great product from it, at least not a great End User Product. And it's funny because I think that is like kind of the thing that needs to happen for the blockchain industry to really advance like, like when we get when we finally have something that you know, is used by, by regular people, by everyday people, not just by like, crypto nerds. I think that that will be a huge milestone for the whole industry. But I'm not sure that like, I am the person to work on that particular effort. What I realized is that I'm really excited about the infrastructure and like kind of the lower level stuff. So what I work on now is mostly a consensus algorithm, which is basically like one of the key building blocks for building block chains. No pun intended. And so it's just like a lower level thing. And so most of our users are other engineering teams that are also in the blockchain space. And they are building. Most of them are building products that can be used by end users or again by like non blockchain teams. So I'm kind of like one step removed actually from from, like, the product product process. And so what we think about really is just like, you know, what do we what do we need to do to make this tool basically, this piece of infrastructure, as stable as possible, as secure as possible? as standard as possible is actually a really big thing because there's so many things you can explore and do and innovate on in the blockchain space. Like we want to keep everything that we're not trying to experiment with as standard as possible. So that's like something else that we've been really driving towards this year is trying to standardize You know, it As much as our own pieces as much as possible. So yeah, again, just trying to like build really good software for other engineers fundamentally.
George Stocker 5:09
Okay. everything I know about blockchain, I learned from the show Silicon Valley. And so I probably know next to nothing, what is the consensus algorithm and how does it work?
Tess Rinearson 5:19
Yeah. So, this is one of my favorite subjects actually. So if I, if I get too deep, please cut me off. But basically, consensus algorithms, let a group of computers come to consensus on a value, right? And you can do this in a centralized way in a really easy way where you say like, okay, one computer is, you know, the canonical source of truth and if you need to know what value you should be having, just go ask that. Just go ask that computer for most blockchains or really for most like open blockchains on open networks where, where anyone should be able to join And it's like truly meant to be decentralized. You don't want to have one machine that is like the only source of truth, because that's, you know, very vulnerable to malicious behavior from that, that single entity. And so broadly speaking consensus algorithms are Yeah, how you get here you get a bunch of computers to come to agreement on a value. But in the blockchain space specifically, we really focus on consensus algorithms that are Byzantine fault tolerant, which is a term that means like, you know, able to withstand behavior from from the machines from the computers where they may tell like part of the network one thing and another part of the network, another thing you know, some people say like malicious behavior, which is roughly correct. And yet you want to be able to protect against that in a blockchain network. Because if you can have anyone join, you know, you're sort of inviting potentially bad actors into your system. If needed to be able to withstand a certain amount of that kind of like, Melissa, malicious or inconsistent behavior.
George Stocker 7:08
And because the work you're doing is, like I said, largely unexplored, you're relying a lot on theoretical papers and computer science research. You know, how do you how do you find ways to to learn more about this topic? And how do you? How do you level up to where you are with understanding how blockchain works?
Tess Rinearson 7:34
Yeah, totally. So we have actually like a, like a sister company that has a lot of researchers in it. And a lot of those folks are from like, have an academic background. And they largely are the ones who kind of like design the what's the right way to say this, like the protocol, and especially like the finer kind of like binary details of the protocol. They do a lot of that design work. And they actually also are in the process of formally verifying it using TLA plus. So TLA plus lets you like, kind of write out your specification...
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By George StockerTess on Twitter:
https://twitter.com/_tessr
George Stocker 0:00
Hi, I'm George Stocker, and this is the build better software podcast. Today I'm joined by test rynearson. And we're here to talk about engineering and Engineering Leadership tests. Welcome to the show. Hi, thanks for having me. Thank you for being here. Now for people who don't know who you are or what you do. Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
Tess Rinearson 0:19
Yeah, absolutely. So I am the VP of Engineering at a small blockchain company based in Berlin, which is called interchange. GMB H. GMB H is like LLC or Inc, but in German.
And I've been working in engineering management at blockchain companies for the last while I've been in the blockchain space for the last five years or so. And for about the last three years that I've been in, in management positions. Before that, I was a software engineer at medium and before that I was a computer science student.
George Stocker 0:54
Okay, now let's let's start backwards. You're working in the blockchain space now, as someone who's never been in the blockchain space and doesn't really know what that's like, describe, you know, developing new products in that space.
Tess Rinearson 1:09
Yeah, totally. Um, it's a really fun space to work in because lots of things are new. And because the, like most blockchain projects have a bit of a unique funding model where
not necessarily all of the funding but often a lot of the funding comes from token sales. And so a lot of the people who are sort of like, like invested in your product are also your users are also like, like regular people in a lot of ways. And so there's, there's a different kind of like, like product development and funding cycle from a lot of other like software tech companies, I would say, and I think that gives you like a lot of a lot of latitude and also like a very community oriented
way to do your work. When you're building software,
George Stocker 2:01
and you're in a nascent market, I mean, we like we don't know the full potential of blockchain. We at least seen it realized yet. So how do you as a leader, how do you work within that that largely unexplored territory?
Tess Rinearson 2:18
Yeah, totally. That's a really good question. So when I got started in the blockchain space, it was 2015. And I joined a tiny blockchain company which is called chain because this was early enough in the sort of like blockchain, you know, lifecycle that you could actually call your blockchain company something like that. And chain worked on like a really, really wide range of products built, you know, first of Bitcoin and then kind of like our own blockchain product, and some stuff with like cloud blockchains, like explored a really, really wide range of products that you could build with block chains. And none of them really stuck. And the team ultimately got acquired by another blockchain company, which is a whole other story. But anyway, what I learned from that experience was that even though I am personally super, super excited about the technology behind blockchains, I don't really think I'm like the person who's going to build like a great product from it, at least not a great End User Product. And it's funny because I think that is like kind of the thing that needs to happen for the blockchain industry to really advance like, like when we get when we finally have something that you know, is used by, by regular people, by everyday people, not just by like, crypto nerds. I think that that will be a huge milestone for the whole industry. But I'm not sure that like, I am the person to work on that particular effort. What I realized is that I'm really excited about the infrastructure and like kind of the lower level stuff. So what I work on now is mostly a consensus algorithm, which is basically like one of the key building blocks for building block chains. No pun intended. And so it's just like a lower level thing. And so most of our users are other engineering teams that are also in the blockchain space. And they are building. Most of them are building products that can be used by end users or again by like non blockchain teams. So I'm kind of like one step removed actually from from, like, the product product process. And so what we think about really is just like, you know, what do we what do we need to do to make this tool basically, this piece of infrastructure, as stable as possible, as secure as possible? as standard as possible is actually a really big thing because there's so many things you can explore and do and innovate on in the blockchain space. Like we want to keep everything that we're not trying to experiment with as standard as possible. So that's like something else that we've been really driving towards this year is trying to standardize You know, it As much as our own pieces as much as possible. So yeah, again, just trying to like build really good software for other engineers fundamentally.
George Stocker 5:09
Okay. everything I know about blockchain, I learned from the show Silicon Valley. And so I probably know next to nothing, what is the consensus algorithm and how does it work?
Tess Rinearson 5:19
Yeah. So, this is one of my favorite subjects actually. So if I, if I get too deep, please cut me off. But basically, consensus algorithms, let a group of computers come to consensus on a value, right? And you can do this in a centralized way in a really easy way where you say like, okay, one computer is, you know, the canonical source of truth and if you need to know what value you should be having, just go ask that. Just go ask that computer for most blockchains or really for most like open blockchains on open networks where, where anyone should be able to join And it's like truly meant to be decentralized. You don't want to have one machine that is like the only source of truth, because that's, you know, very vulnerable to malicious behavior from that, that single entity. And so broadly speaking consensus algorithms are Yeah, how you get here you get a bunch of computers to come to agreement on a value. But in the blockchain space specifically, we really focus on consensus algorithms that are Byzantine fault tolerant, which is a term that means like, you know, able to withstand behavior from from the machines from the computers where they may tell like part of the network one thing and another part of the network, another thing you know, some people say like malicious behavior, which is roughly correct. And yet you want to be able to protect against that in a blockchain network. Because if you can have anyone join, you know, you're sort of inviting potentially bad actors into your system. If needed to be able to withstand a certain amount of that kind of like, Melissa, malicious or inconsistent behavior.
George Stocker 7:08
And because the work you're doing is, like I said, largely unexplored, you're relying a lot on theoretical papers and computer science research. You know, how do you how do you find ways to to learn more about this topic? And how do you? How do you level up to where you are with understanding how blockchain works?
Tess Rinearson 7:34
Yeah, totally. So we have actually like a, like a sister company that has a lot of researchers in it. And a lot of those folks are from like, have an academic background. And they largely are the ones who kind of like design the what's the right way to say this, like the protocol, and especially like the finer kind of like binary details of the protocol. They do a lot of that design work. And they actually also are in the process of formally verifying it using TLA plus. So TLA plus lets you like, kind of write out your specification...