Podcast update and news!
Software Misadventures
Some reflections on running the podcast and Ronak has some eggciting news to share :) Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en
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Uncrating the Oxide Rack | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)
Software Misadventures
Oxide co-founders Bryan and Steve are back on the show to give an impromptu peek at the Oxide server rack and to chat about writing their own manufacturing software, overcoming false summits before shipping the first rack, the #1 reason startups fail and more. Don't miss the full-circle moment on their "meet cute" story from last time, shared at the end of the conversation :) Segments: (00:00:00) The Oxide rack uncrating experience (00:02:40) The office tour (00:04:03) Challenges of shipping and unboxing hardware (00:11:04) Hybrid hardware company? (00:13:38) Custom designing a crate...
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LLMs are like your weird, over-confident intern | Simon Willison (Datasette)
Software Misadventures
Known for co-creating Django and Datasette, as well as his thoughtful writing on LLMs, Simon Willison joins the show to chat about blogging as an accountability mechanism, how to build intuition with LLMs, building a startup with his partner on their honeymoon, and more. Segments: (00:00:00) The weird intern (00:01:50) The early days of LLMs (00:04:59) Blogging as an accountability mechanism (00:09:24) The low-pressure approach to blogging (00:11:47) GitHub issues as a system of records (00:16:15) Temporal documentation and design docs (00:18:19) GitHub issues for team collaboration...
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From "AI mid-life crisis" to the "time of my life" | Steve Yegge (Sourcegraph)
Software Misadventures
A Silicon Valley veteran and known for his writings like "The Death of the Junior Developer", Steve Yegge joins the show to chat about his "AI Midlife Crisis", the unique writing process he employs, and building the future of coding assistants. Segments: (00:00:00) The AI Midlife Crisis (00:04:53) The power of rants (00:09:55) “You gotta be able to make yourself laugh” (00:11:46) Steve's writing process (00:14:10) “I published them… and nothing happened for six months” (00:17:30) Key to perseverance in writing? Get pissed. (00:23:24) Writing in one sitting (00:29:05) The AI...
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Early Twitter's fail-whale wars | Dmitriy Ryaboy
Software Misadventures
A veteran of early Twitter's fail whale wars, Dmitriy joins the show to chat about the time when 70% of the Hadoop cluster got accidentally deleted, the financial reality of writing a book, and how to navigate acquisitions. Segments: (00:00:00) The Infamous Hadoop Outage (00:02:36) War Stories from Twitter's Early Days (00:04:47) The Fail Whale Era (00:06:48) The Hadoop Cluster Shutdown (00:12:20) “First Restore the Service Then Fix the Problem. Not the Other Way Around.” (00:14:10) War Rooms and Organic Decision-Making (00:16:16) The Importance of Communication in Incident Management...
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Discovering the power of story-telling in engineering | Adam Gordon Bell (CoRecursive)
Software Misadventures
Known for hosting the CoRecursive podcast, which dives into the stories behind the code, Adam joins the show to chat about discovering that the great engineers he had looked up to are actually great communicators, his framework for building one of the best storytelling engineering podcasts, and the journey getting into DevRel. Chapters: (00:00:00) Highlights (00:04:23) The power of casual conversations (00:07:08) Taking the leap into podcasting (00:10:34) The hardest part of running a podcast (00:14:03) Learning to follow up (00:16:26) Storytelling in podcasting (00:20:36) The evolution...
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Behind designing Kubernetes' APIs | Brian Grant (Google)
Software Misadventures
As the original architect and API design lead of Kubernetes, Brian joins the show to chat about why "APIs are forever", the keys to evangelizing impactful projects, and being an Uber Tech at Google, and more. Segments: (00:03:01) Internship with Mark Ewing (00:07:10) “Mark and Brian's Excellent Environment” manual (00:11:58) Poker on VT100 terminals (00:14:46) Grad school and research (00:17:23) The value of studying computer science (00:21:07) Intuition and learning (00:24:06) Reflecting on career patterns (00:26:37) Hypergrowth and learning at Transmeta (00:28:37) Debugging at the...
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Ditching the rules to build a team that lasts | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)
Software Misadventures
From building a new kind of server to building a new kind of company, co-founders Bryan and Steve join the show to chat about their "meet cute" and the origin story of Oxide, their unconventional recruiting process, transparent and uniform salaries, and their solution to the "N+1 shithead problem". Segments: (00:03:03) Bryan and Steve's "meet cute" (00:05:56) "the sun does not shine on me" (00:12:19) the dagger that went into sun (00:21:23) culture of exonerating yourself vs solving customer problems (00:23:25) the shared "error in judgment" of joining joyent (00:27:54) the origin story of...
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Grokking Synthetic Biology | Dmitriy Ryaboy (Twitter, Ginkgo Bioworks)
Software Misadventures
From building a data platform and Parquet at Twitter to using AI to make biology easier to engineer at Ginkgo Bioworks, Dmitriy joins the show to chat about the early days of big data, the conversation that made him jump into SynBio, LLMs for proteins and more. Segments: (00:03:18) Data engineering roots (00:05:40) Early influences at Lawrence Berkeley Lab (00:09:46) Value of a "gentleman's education in computer science" (00:14:34) The end of junior software engineers (00:20:10) Deciding to go back to school (00:21:36) Early experiments with distributed...
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Growing and selling an indie business | Michael Lynch (TinyPilot)
Software Misadventures
Having quit Google in 2018 to bootstrap indie software businesses, Michael is known for writing very transparently about the ups and downs of his journey. After recently selling his hardware business TinyPilot for $600K, Michael returns to the show to chat about the misconceptions about running an indie business, the hardest part of selling a company, and why “hardware is definitely out” for his next move 😂 Segments: (00:04:22) The complexity of selling a hardware business (00:08:49) Why "hardware is definitely out" for Michael's next venture (00:11:57) The evolution of TinyPilot...
info_outlineFrom 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