Software Misadventures

What does it mean to change the economics of software development? Nathan Marz joins the show to share how they reduced the cost of building Mastodon at Twitter-scale by 100X and the 10 years journey to build Rama, a new programming platform that made this feat possible.

Nathan is the founder of Red Planet Labs. Prior to RPL, he led engineering for BackType which was acquired by Twitter in 2011. Nathan created the Apache Storm project and wrote the book Big Data: Principles and best practices of scalable realtime data systems. Outside of working, Nathan is a private pilot, loves going to stand-up comedy shows, and is forever trying to teach his dog new tricks.

Show Notes:

• Nathan's Twitter: https://twitter.com/nathanmarz
• What is Rama? https://redplanetlabs.com/learn-rama
• Reducing the cost of building Mastodon at Twitter-scale by 100X: https://blog.redplanetlabs.com/2023/08/15/how-we-reduced-the-cost-of-building-twitter-at-twitter-scale-by-100x/

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Segments:

[0:00] flying

[0:07] inefficiencies of backend software development

[0:17] suffering oriented programming

[0:23] AI programming?

[0:25] RAMA's programming model

[0:33] deployment & monitoring with RAMA

[0:36] building a twitter clone at scale with RAMA

[0:43] migrations with RAMA

[0:54] driving adoption for RAMA

[1:01] fundraising

[1:15] building a fully remote team

Kelsey Hightower was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. In this second part of the conversation, we focus on Kelsey's retirement - the financial planning that enabled him to retire at 42, how he got started advising startups and his perspectives on compensation, turning down a substantial offer from Microsoft and meeting Satya Nadella in person. And, of course, plans for the future.

Kelsey Hightower was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. In this first part of the conversation, we delve into pivotal moments in Kelsey's career journey ranging from buying his first car by working at mcdonald's after school, to starting his own computer store that turned into a music studio after 6pm, to hacking on python infrastructure with the core developers. Through these stories, we learned a ton about how Kelsey thinks about acquiring new skills - getting paid for it, breaking into the world of open source, navigating corporate politics, building trust within a team, and much more.

Short episode about reflections on the past year and plans for 2022.

Michael Lynch is the founder of TinyPilot. After doing software engineering at Microsoft and Google for 7 years, Michael decided in 2018 to quit and start working for himself by building small software businesses. From years of negative profit to now building a $450K+ ARR hardware business, Michael joins the show to chat about what made him quit his cushy job at Google, how he builds in public with monthly retrospectives, what he has learned over the 3 years indie hacking and much more.

Ashwin is a Startup Partnership Lead at Stripe. From web development to co-founding a YC startup, to deep learning, Ashwin has a knack for picking up new skills extremely quickly. In this episode, we chat about the methods he employed to successfully make these transitions, learnings/tips from winning 30+ hackathons in a row, and what engineers can gain from better story-telling.