Software Misadventures

Well-known for his insightful and meticulous write-ups on testing distributed systems, Kyle (aka Aphyr) joins the show to chat about the origins of Jepsen, how he built a business around testing distributed systems, his writing process, favorite databases, and more.

Segments:

(00:03:29) From Physics to Software Engineering

(00:07:47) The origins of Jepsen

(00:09:41) Turning Jepsen into a full-time venture

(00:13:14) Jepsen's testing philosophy

(00:16:30) The consulting journey

(00:19:16) Structuring a consultancy

(00:22:32) Setting boundaries

(00:24:32) Pricing misadventures

(00:29:17) Pros and cons of being an independent consultant

(00:32:08) Managing your time when working for yourself

(00:38:23) Best part of the job

(00:41:13) Early writing influences

(00:45:25) LLMs and AI-generated content

(00:48:17) "The period where you can trust what you read is actually very recent"

(00:51:33) How to become a better writer

(00:54:25) Developing a formal understanding of distributed systems

(00:59:30) Common faults in distributed systems

(01:01:17) The complexity of testing distributed systems

(01:07:32) Communicating criticism effectively

(01:10:26) Advice for distributed systems engineers

(01:13:46) "Anybody trying to sell you a distributed lock is selling you sawdust and lies"

(01:16:31) Failure mode documentation

(01:18:52) The pitfalls of containerization

(01:20:17) Lightning round - favorite databases

Show Notes:

"Anybody who is trying to sell you a distributed lock is trying to sell you sawdust and Lies": https://martin.kleppmann.com/2016/02/08/how-to-do-distributed-locking.html

Kyle's excellent write-ups on testing distributed systems: https://jepsen.io/analyses

Kyle's blog: https://aphyr.com/posts

Training courses that Kyle runs: https://jepsen.io/services/training

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

From creating one of the Python's most influential libraries to co-founding Voltron Data, Wes joins the show to chat about why the book cover of the pandas book doesn't feature a panda, open source pitfalls to avoid, the pros and cons of hiring engineers at a non-profit, and more.

Segments:

(00:02:50) Guang's complaint about the pandas book cover

(00:04:38) Quarto and Open Access Publishing

(00:12:00) Convincing Wall Street to Open Source

(00:15:31) Publishing the first python package over Christmas

(00:18:01) Doubling Down on Building pandas

(00:23:23) Personal sacrifices for the sake of impact

(00:26:28) The Evolution of Open-Source

(00:29:19) "Open source development started out as a very privileged activity"

(00:32:40) The Consulting Trap

(00:35:17) The Startup Trap

(00:39:29) The Corporate User Trap

(00:44:21) Avoiding the Startup Trap

(00:46:54) Non-Profit vs. For-Profit

(00:48:09) The Challenges of Hiring Engineers in a Non-Profit Setting

(00:50:08) The Benefits of Remote Work for Open Source Development

(00:52:15) Balancing Open Source and Enterprise Interests

(00:57:25) New Funding Models for Open Source?

(01:00:01) Getting into VC

(01:06:19) The Future of Composable Data Systems

Show Notes:

- online edition of pandas book: https://wesmckinney.com/book/

- the new digital publishing tool that Wes recommends: https://quarto.org/

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

From creating Envoy to co-founding bitdrift to reimagine mobile observability, Matt joins the show to chat about being told to simply "write some proxy in Python" in the early days of building Envoy, early influences from building "shrink wrap" software at Microsoft, the process of spinning bitdrift out of Lyft, and much more.

(00:03:10) Being a plumber on LinkedIn

(00:05:00) Early influences from building "shrink wrap" software at Microsoft

(00:10:44) Getting diverse work experiences

(00:16:36) Setting high standards for the team

(00:20:42) Lessons from failure of the first startup

(00:22:02) Building a successful open source project vs. running a startup

(00:25:25) Why not start a company around Envoy?

(00:29:54) Why not open source bitdrift?

(00:36:01) Mitigating the risk of big companies building in-house solutions

(00:38:16) Co-founding bitdrift to tackle mobile observability

(00:40:37) Applying lessons from the first startup failure

(00:44:14) Why mobile observability is so hard

(00:50:06) Open source vs source available

(00:53:33) The software licensing strugglebus

(00:58:03) How bitdrift was spinned out of Lyft

(01:03:36) Achieving work-life balance through leverage

(01:06:13) The early days of Envoy

(01:09:20) Impact driven development

(01:13:43) The crazy decision to build Envoy in retrospect

• Matt's blog posts on why mobile observability is a hard problem: https://mattklein123.dev/2024/04/24/no-one-talks-about-mobile-observability/

• The new company Matt is building: https://bitdrift.io/

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

From being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems to co-founding Oxide Computer Company to build a new kind of server, Bryan joins the show to chat about being told that he's on a suicide mission when starting Oxide, the moment he felt "I'm actually living HBO Silicon Valley", and lessons from Sun. And much more.

Chapters:

(00:02:24) The Origin of Bryan's Nom-de-Guerre: "Colonel of Data Corruption" (00:04:02) What Debugging Performance Issues at Twitter in the Early Days Revealed About Silicon Valley (00:13:37) Value of Formal Education and the Experience That Everyone Should Have (00:16:02) Balancing Following One's Passion vs. Having Stability (00:21:14) What Shaped Bryan's Sense of Integrity (00:25:39) The Moments When Values Are Instilled (00:30:25) The Dark Side of Tech (00:35:12) "Economic Opportunities Attract Economic Opportunists" (00:40:35) The Origins of Oxide Computers (00:50:20) Building the A-Team (00:52:18) "Compaq Was the Most Successful Startup" (00:55:51) The Venture Capitalist's Dilemma (01:03:04) Being Told "You're on a Suicide Mission" (01:07:12) The Lifestyle of the "Lifestyle Business" (01:09:30) The Harsh Reality of Raising Venture Capital (01:13:12) The Challenges of Building Hardware (01:16:36) Why You Should Think About Not Only Gross Margin but Net Margin (01:19:14) Hardware and Software Co-Design (01:22:06) The Frustrations of Infrastructure Deployment (01:26:46) Finding the Right VCs (01:28:16) "Oh My God, I'm Actually Living HBO Silicon Valley" (01:33:12) Oxide's Principles and Lessons from Sun Microsystems (01:39:51) Sun's Unspoken Values (01:45:03) Sun's Legacy of Empowering Employees (01:48:53) Sun's Missed Opportunities (01:53:04) The Reason Why Sun Survived the Dot-Com Crash (01:56:21) "God Bless the Early Adopters" (01:57:39) A Tweet from Shopify's CEO (02:01:24) The Hard Thing About Hard Things (02:12:55) The Hardest Moment in Oxide's History

Show Notes:

- Oxide's principles: https://oxide.computer/principles

- Requests for Discussion (RFDs): https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/

- Toby's tweet: https://x.com/tobi/status/1793798092212367669

- Bryan on twitter: https://x.com/bcantrill

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

From writing the first lines of Kafka over a Christmas break as a LinkedIn engineer to running a public company as the CEO of Confluent, Jay joins the show to chat about how he and his co-founders convinced investors to take a chance on their vision, what many engineers get wrong about communication, and why engineers can make great CEOs - even when coding is not in the job description. And much more.

Segments:

(00:01:16) The Shaved Head Bet (00:04:07) Fundraising (00:12:16) The Role of Technical Background in VCs (00:15:48) The power of believing in the possibility of important changes (00:18:29) The Journey to starting Confluent (00:27:11) Kafka's Controversial Beginnings (00:34:30) Effective Communication in Engineering (00:44:20) The Early Days of Kafka (00:48:31) The Power of Storytelling (00:57:19) Early days of Confluent (01:03:06) Do Engineers Make Good CEOs? (01:07:59) A Typical Day in the Life of a CEO (01:12:24) The Evolution of Data Streaming

Show Notes: - "The log" blog post that solidified Jay and his co-founders' conviction to found Confluent: https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying

- Jay on twitter: https://x.com/jaykreps

Stay in touch: 👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

If you've worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and even fewer engineers have done this back to back. In part 2 of the conversation, we talk about Max's journey in open source.

Segments:

(00:03:27) "Project-Community Fit" in Open Source (00:08:31) Fostering Relationships in Open Source (00:10:58) Dealing with Trolls (00:13:40) Attributes of Good Open Source Contributors (00:20:01) How to Get Started with Contributing (00:27:58) Origin Stories of Airflow and Superset (00:33:27) Biggest Surprise since Founding a VC-backed Company? (00:38:47) Picking What to Work On (00:41:46) Advice to Engineers for Building the Next Airflow/Superset? (00:42:35) The 2 New Open Source Projects that Max is Starting (00:52:10) Challenges of Being a Founder (00:57:38) Open Sourcing Ideas

Show Notes:

Part 1 of our conversation: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/maxime-beauchemin-llm-ready Max on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximebeauchemin/ SQL All Stars: https://github.com/preset-io/allstars Governator: https://github.com/mistercrunch/governator

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

If you've worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and even fewer engineers have done this back to back. In Part 1 of this conversation, we chat about how to adapt to the LLM-age as engineers.

Segments:

(00:01:59) The Rise and Fall of the Data Engineer (00:11:13) The Importance of Executive Skill in the Era of AI (00:13:53) Developing the first reflex to use AI (00:17:47) What are LLMs good at? (00:25:33) Text to SQL (00:28:19) Promptimize (00:32:16) Using tools LangChain (00:35:02) Writing better prompts

Show Notes:

- Max on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximebeauchemin/ - Rise of the Data Engineer: https://medium.com/free-code-camp/the-rise-of-the-data-engineer-91be18f1e603 - Downfall of the Data Engineer: https://maximebeauchemin.medium.com/the-downfall-of-the-data-engineer-5bfb701e5d6b - Promptimize: https://github.com/preset-io/promptimize

Stay in touch:

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

Out of thousands of engineers at Uber, there's only a handful of Distinguished Engineers and Joakim was one of them. In this conversation we chat about

• Why software engineering is a lot like a sausage factory.

• Considerations for leaving big tech for a startup.

• "How to beat the promo commitee".

• How can one effectively shape engineering culture?

• "Mentoring two people on the same team is a waste".

• Much More.

Subscribe now

[0:01:52] The "reverse sausage" architecture

[0:07:36] How to get people on board with the new deployment system?

[0:13:55] What does it mean to be a distinguished engineer?

[0:17:47] Under-appreciated soft skills?

[0:21:28] How to improve technical writing

[0:24:16] Do all senior engineers need to write and review code every day?

[0:30:19] How to search out where to contribute when your time is so constrained?

[0:43:10] How to maximize your impact as a mentor

[0:48:52] "How to beat the promo committee"

[0:52:56] Effective means to influence engineering culture?

[0:57:09] Capping the company at 150 employees

[1:03:33] Why join a startup instead of moving to another big tech company?

[1:11:14] What Joakim is working on now at Beyond Work

• Joakim on leaving Uber to start Beyond Work: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-left-uber-start-beyond-work-joakim-recht-o63of?trk=public_post_feed-article-content

• Read Joakim's other excellent posts here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/recht/recent-activity/all/

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infrastructure with the core developers, to meeting Satya Nadella for an interview.

In part two of this conversation, we dive deep into Kelsey's experiences learning in public and writing "Kubernetes: Up and Running":

• The biggest barrier to getting started with learning in public and a step-by-step guide to overcome it

• Cautionary tale of the "JavaScript sucks" guy

• Developing the skill of crafting good analogies

• The business and economics of writing a book

• Much more

[0:01:12] Writing and learning in public.

[0:10:58] Writing "Kubernetes: Up and Running."

[0:16:05] The business and economics of writing a book.

[0:21:27] Why your first book should not exceed 100 pages.

[0:23:36] What prevented Kelsey from giving up on the book.

[0:26:15] Being intentional about building an audience and the cautionary tale of the "JavaScript sucks" guy.

[0:36:44] Authenticity does not guarantee success.

[0:39:09] Developing the skill of crafting effective analogies.

[0:47:47] Advice for engineers to leverage their technical skills outside of the nine-to-five.

• Kelsey on twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower

• Our previous conversation with Kelsey about retiring as Distinguished Engineer from Google at 42: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/kelsey-hightower-on-retiring-as-distinguished-057

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]

We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infrastructure with the core developers, to meeting Satya Nadella for an interview.

In part one of this conversation, we dive deep into Kelsey's experiences and expertise as a startup advisor:

• How to break into advising when you don't have a lot of connections

• How to influence without authority

• Passive vs. active advising

• How to add value as an advisor

• Setting boundaries and expectations

• Much more

[0:01:53] Being a "junior retiree"

[0:11:00] How Kelsey got started with startup advising.

[0:17:43] How to avoid mismatches in advisory engagements?

[0:27:23] How to influence without authority as an advisor?

[0:32:58] How to establish boundaries as an advisor.

[0:38:29] Actions engineers can take today to prepare themselves for future startup advising roles.

[0:42:55] How to manage the balance between advising and your primary job.

[0:44:32] How to cultivate perspectives beyond engineering.

• Kelsey on twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower

• Our previous conversation with Kelsey about retiring as Distinguished Engineer from Google at 42: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/kelsey-hightower-on-retiring-as-distinguished-057

👋 Make Ronak's day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! [email protected]