USA: Director of DevOps who has been building systems for 20+ years: I am on call this week
India: Engineer of ~2-3 years experience, who is still learning stuff: I WONT do on call. Its not quality work!
Every Credit Card Company:
Dear Member your amount ABC is due by XX/XX but please ignore if already paid
Me:
Dude you already have access to my transactions, your systems better know if I have already paid. Why can you not send message only if it is not paid :D
Hey Pune startup folks - we have an office with spare capacity available for ~10-14 folks available (We are fully distributed)
We are in Aundh, great access to cafes, walking & nature.
Please reach via. DM.
RT for karma 💚
Its fairly tough time for some tech companies
We are hiring - talk to some of our early engineers for kind of work & culture we are building
Specifically hiring:
- Software Engg for Go Lang + Infra APIs (Think K8S, Prometheus etc)
- DevOps/SRE folks
- Dev Advocates
In India, its tough for non software industries
The regulation, taxmen, lack of growth, skill gap, pressure from bigger players - way way too many challenges
Its a privilege if you are in software - acknowledge it
One has to be a special kind of idiot to not get this!
Ultra 🔥 take
In India many managers, founders end up creating toxic work environments
This stems IMO from
- Lack of training of working with people+empathy
- Lack of planning & prioritisation
A 🪡 on anecdotes & why this is critical for us to retain talent as a community!
/1
One pattern I have noticed is ClickHouse - a OLAP DB used as a log management backend & for analytics use cases
- CloudFlare moved from Postgres & Citus to ClickHouse at massive scale
- Zerodha moved from ELK to ClickHouse & saved massive in storage & operational efforts
🧶
#1
So when I finally met the one & only
@kelseyhightower
- I knew its not about Kubernetes/tech that I wanted to talk about!
We spoke about how to choose tech in a minimalistic way, what not to do, first principles & so many interesting things
One day, we will meet in India!
Excellent points by Kailash Nadh - CTO of Zerodha in Reddit AMA
Scaling the product to the scale they have with ~30 folks is commendable but also very very non conventional.
Other areas where he had really good inputs: How they manage salaries in such market?
After a few years in tech you can
Pickup a new tech, spend ~1 hour CONSISTENTLY & get to a decent level of knowledge in ~60 days
Yet many complain "I am not learning enough at my current job"
Learning is your responsibility, not just your employer's
(Bonus if they care too)!
In office setup - a junior engineer could walk to a colleague who would solve a tech problem or find someone who can.
In a distributed setup - this gets slightly harder. You can ask questions in a common channel - with no guarantees.
Any interesting ideas to work & scale this?
Hear me out: KubeCon NA, 2023 in New Orleans. Fall/winter should be decent weather. Fun, historical city. Great food. Used to large crowds.
I have not been there since Katrina, but it had a nice big convention center...
I think we need more local cuisines in our conferences
Not every conf needs to have noodles & paneer curry 😀
Lets have
- Dosa stall at a BLR conf
- Misal Pav at Pune conf
I started my career with app support. Over years unpeeled & learnt deeper layers of software - backend dev (Java/Go), infrastructure (Docker/Puppet/Kubernetes), OS & so on
Last ~9 months been exhilarating - closer to hardware. 800GBPS switches to 22GBPS write speed & of course
Skills = Knowledge x Practice
Knowlege can be found in: Blogs, videos, certifications, courses, books
Without practice you won't develop skills.
Optimise for 10-20% learning and 80-90% practice
You can never have enough of knowledge & still reach nowhere without practice 😅
As folks travel for
@rubyconfindia
&
@GopherConIndia
next weekend, here are some interesting & small things to checkout while in Pune if you have some time.
Pune has a rich heritage of history, food, nature & education and if you are a buff - you may enjoy some of these 🧵 1/6
The best article I have read about growing as an engineer!
"Your job isn’t just to write code; your job is to make good decisions and help your company succeed, and that requires understanding what really matters"
Found via
@_swanand
Hot take❤️🔥
content != competence
A lot of blogs/videos etc. online, does not necessarily mean they are a competent engineer/tech leader/manager etc.
The content gives one an impression of the person as someone who is really good, but that MAY NOT translate in many areas.
Software engineering is like Onion
Learn/unpeel a layer like front end technologies
Then you unpeel APIs, backend etc.
You can then unpeel DBs, MQs
Next OS, Deep end of Storage/NW/compute etc
Best engineers start at one layer, but navigate many over years!
[Pune] We have started a new group for enthusiasts & professionals interested Rust programming language. We plan do a greet & meet in June first week & go from there. Join today if this is something that interests you:
One of the most underrated things about software industry: you can "practice" without an industrial setup. Just need a Laptop + Internet. OSS is force multiplier!
This luxury is NOT available in many industries.
You can not build a factory at home.
Nor a chemical lab
Skills = Knowledge x Practice
Knowlege can be found in: Blogs, videos, certifications, courses, books
Without practice you won't develop skills.
Optimise for 10-20% learning and 80-90% practice
You can never have enough of knowledge & still reach nowhere without practice 😅
A shortcoming of working for large orgs for too long:
One thinks they know how business works, but one is dealing with abstractions so high that one never really deals with harsh realities
Being in smaller org - very close to customers, problems & harsh realities is powerful
"Premature Resignation" is root of many missed growth opportunities IMHO.
People
1) Lose sight of sea over a small storm
2) Miss out signs of upward currents
3) Miss inflection points
As Donald Knuth famously said -"Premature optimisation is root of all evil"
🧶
1/
We had a new 1-day intern at our office yesterday. Her job was to read books, watch rhymes for 30 minutes & write for some time. The intern seemed to love colourful things, dolls & story book as you can see :)
I so want to exchange my job with her 🤩😍
I read
@codinghorror
's post on
#parenting
I think first in 2013. It resonated so much then as it is now after having kids.
"Children give the first four years of your life back to you."
You may be already aware
@cra
but most folks who got Dan Kohn Diversity Scholarship for KubeConNA from India won't make it due to visa wait being 500+ days RN.
It may be worth providing more slots in EU/APAC KubeCons & inform slight early for now till things get better.
If you are a parent, who isn't into reading, please do a favor:
Get kids into reading at early age. Start with story books, get library routine & see it grow
Your future kids will thank you
A habit which is easy to grow young & has a compounding effect like very few things!
It's afternoon, sitting under trees, by the footpath, in a side lane which is peaceful in an otherwise hustling & bustling city.
A kindle book to company, thoughts & ideas marinating along with coffee
This is an incredibly well-done series of Kubernetes concepts and basic commands grouped in various themes. Highly recommended for people new to Kubernetes
"Understanding Kubernetes: part 24 – Node operations" by
@aurelievache
#DEVcommunity
Irrespective of stage of career - optimise for people you work with. Almost everything else - brand etc will pale in long term.
People with whom
- Your core belief/values match
- You will grow personally & at your craft
In long enough time "Culture eats strategy for breakfast"
Every growth wave creates distortions of roles. Examples:
- 2002-2010: In IT companies folks got project manager role with less than 5 YOE
- 2013 on: Many people took up "Associate Product Manager" right out of MBA
- 2019 on: People becoming Dev Advocates fresh out of college
Excited be at OpenSourceIndia
@OpenSourceForU
in BLR next week.
I will be part of panel discussing "OSS is not just code, it’s a Community" & talking about "InfraCloud’s journey from contributing to creating OSS"
@infracloudio
If you are around, would love to chat & connect!
Dont listen to
Steve Jobs
Jeff Bezos
Instead listen & learn from
Dan Rose
Tony Fadell
The former: you may not get actionable details: media distortion+high level
The later: you will hear depth & details.
Listen to people far away from media who are getting stuff done.
Who would deny a tour of a supercomputer facility?
The lab uses
@fissionio
for some data processing & was super exciting to see tape rack, super computers & research they are doing on cooling the facility with natural air & water instead of AC.
Two words I hate and try to discourage people in my industry and specially in company to use:
1) "Resources" for people
2) "Sir" for anyone
Let me explain why I think this wording is so important. 🧵 1/6
If you are a senior technical leader - keep at least one day every two weeks, at the least - for writing
Write down: Your opinions, learnings, observations, views
Doesn't have to be public. Will clarify thinking greatly!
Movin from tech to managing & wanna succeed?
Think of tech as a drug. It's easy, you've done it & you will like it!
But your top 2 focus should be building people & systems.
Both are hard & you will fall back to your drug!
Small amounts-great, overdo & fail at managing!
Super excited to meet everyone at
@infracloudio
on board the cruise for Yearly Celebration Meet! As we closed last year with 100% growth again, launched a new Managed Service for Kubernetes - its a good time to reflect on last year and celebrate together 🧵 1/8
The first Rust Pune meetup was energizing - so many folks who have seen so many layers & evolution of software.
Looking forward to making this a monthly routine along with
@vaibhaw_vipul
& rest of community
We plan to Rust 101 workshops often so join us & learn together
It's said there are no stupid questions
I have come to believe the contrary in many cases
Ex. when a CEO of a big, successful company is doing a session, people ask questions to
- Seek validation of thoughts
- To be visible to speaker
- Peer pressure
- Even knowing answer
April 2023:
- Week1: US customer meetings (Zero jetlag® )
- Week2: India (Huge jetlag®) :D
- Week3: KubeCon Amsterdam
- Week4: Customer meetings-Germany+Finland
A lot of travel & tiring but fantastic to be with customers, friends etc - learning & connect is unprecedented!
Humbled to be among some exemplary folks from India building OSS & contributing to community.
Thank you
@githubindia
for the shout out.
Looking forward to doing more & helping more devs level up!
Our Marwari family folks are funny. They spend few Software Engg's YEARLY salary in a marriage in a matter of few days.
And they will say they are "middle class" & how can govt tax them so much etc.
I feel like screaming but for now I don't 🤣
Zomato posted 4 days ago that they are moving out of Elastic & switching to ClickHouse (Link in next Tweet).
I think Elastic has got some serious challenger in form of ClickHouse!
One pattern I have noticed is ClickHouse - a OLAP DB used as a log management backend & for analytics use cases
- CloudFlare moved from Postgres & Citus to ClickHouse at massive scale
- Zerodha moved from ELK to ClickHouse & saved massive in storage & operational efforts
🧶
#1
Two blogs around Software engineering that I always keep on my bookmarks.
Pick any random one or look for something specific & you will be amazed at level of help you get
- by
@spolsky
- by
@rands
It's great to have a cup of tea with folks you interact with virtually.
While we are fully distributed, we care for F2F interactions. Our teams meet alternate Quarters & entire company offsite alternate Qs. Always looking forward to 4 trips/meet a year to meet amazing people!
2 things to ♥️ abt India passport office
1) Been 8ish years: consistent experience Fast, efficient & manages scale well. Very unlike other govt offices in India
2) For kids - super fast track. Was done in 22 minutes. Very thoughtful
Hope we can replicate in other govt offices
Periodic PSA, MAY sound strong, but truth is!
- Managing community != DevRel/DevAdvocacy
- DevRel is not less technical. In fact you need to wear engineering + product hat
- Writing blogs is way harder than writing code
Pune in global top 100 startup ecosystems!
"Two cities — Pune at 90th and Hyderabad at 97th — entered the top 100 to take the total count to 5. Pune has seen an improvement of 14 spots ..."
@aparanjape
@Girbane
@sudhirmehtapune
@venture_center
When Marwari family folks spend ~2Cr in a wedding and say - We are "middle class" - it outrages me.
Sure you had your own struggles - but that does not take away that you are EXTREMELY privileged!
Trust me - even Ambani has his own struggles - you may not just relate to them.
Hyderabad folks - we are looking for Java engineers who want to build cloud native applications & observability products. If you are interested, please reach out.
The first week of June I did a first high altitude trek - reaching 14402 feet (4389m) (Except when I was flying in a plane ✈️😅 ). The trek was daunting at times - but totally worth to see Mt. Shivling from base to summit
I (re)-discovered a thing or two about life & work 1/6
My fav coach aboard the Finnish train has always been number 3!
The third coach is usually a "Ravintola" - a restaurant car.
Sipping your poison, watching frozen/liquid lakes outside, moving at 170KMPH
LifeIsGood
Circa 1700s
Englishmen roaming in their colonies
They find a hard fruit, name it "wood apple"
Then found a sapota, call it "mud apple"
They find a green, name it "custard apple"
Find a long fruit, call it "PineApple"
Like Seriously!! 😂
Unpopular opinion: If a team has to do twice a day sync up/status on work done meetings - that is a 🚩sign of micro management or overworked team or worst - both! 🚨
Like are things really going to change between EOD sync and next morning sync? Should I sleep or ?!?
I met a cancer surgeon today and he said:
"For you it might be 50th patient of the day but for the patient you are the first doctor and potentially his saviour"
That is one of the most powerful statements I have heard in a long time.
Chatting scale, what "working on scale" really means, how good stuff is boring & FOMO of shiny things, writing a temp convert function that works both ways in Prolog & such stuff at
@GopherConIndia
I was lucky to hear
@martinfowler
-2010/Pune, his books & others by likes had a butterfly effect on my career.
A guide 🧵 on books which make one a better & well rounded engineer from my experience
YMMV
(May keep updating thread as I recall more)
1/9
"Developer Advocate"
You are an advocate of the developer who is a user of the product/tech
(OSS or otherwise)
You are not advocate of the company, product or technology
Crucial difference but important to keep in mind
👋 Chicago &
#KubeCon
2023
Already met a bunch of amazing folks & had interesting discussions at Rejekts & dinner at Adda
Looking forward to a lot more in coming week
Networking is a crucial part of many Software roles. One might have studied fundamentals but may not have true understanding of it.
I truly understood through working of DNS after a few years into profession!
If there is one course that can do this really well, this is it
/1
Unpopular Opinion
CONSTANTLY thinking about money, who is making more, how to make more etc. is counter productive
Do your best to get best offer internally/externally when time is there
And then go back & focus on your craft, skills - those are superpowers
$$ will follow
@shantanugoel
I think that advice is great for a organisation (Private work and private outcomes by and large).
I don't think the rule is good for things such as a national sports team for example.
Landed in Bay Area & dinner with
@jayesh_ahire1
talking observability, what’s next in Gen AI and all other life catch-up
Will be in Bay Area whole week & would love to meet people!
We
@infracloudio
folks were at
@GopherConIndia
last weekend of August. While we hope folks who visited us had a good time, I thought about work that went behind the scenes. It was inspiring to see what team did without least involvement from me and none from
@shilamkar
🧵
1/4
One of the best filters for interviewing senior folks is - let a relatively very junior person interview them or a non engineering person do an interview of them. How they treat and if they take on their ego, speaks volumes about their maturity.
I have always told myself & students/professionals in friends and family to look at
@TheNikhita
as an example and learn and grow as an engineer.
She is also a very kind person and has been helpful to communities and people around!
Truly inspirational 🚀
7 Sept 2016, a few months in InfraCloud with Girish, we were on 2nd call with a customer. They were looking for help with Kubernetes
8th they gave green signal & I was on a plane to US on 10th Sept
Nov 2023, by coincidence landed on same street, for another special win!
/1
Are you this old & from specific areas of Maharashtra to have eaten this plenty in childhood
(Packaging was in much smaller packs, sold for 25p each, earliest I recall)
I am so used to async working model now that was about to say "Please send me a document which I will review first & then we will discuss this topic" - but then realised this is home & I am talking to my wife. Would be a high risk action 🤣
Being the first engineer in a geography for an early stage company can change your career trajectory. You will build a SaaS Data product, you will learn a lot while designing for scale.
More details in second Tweet
At
@KCDBengaluru
was watching sketch note of talks being drawn live
Lot of people including myself first thought that it is a video being played only to realise later
I was hoping to get a sketch note too and Tanvi Agarwal did an amazing job at it!
When a current customer introduces you to someone in such words, it makes your week.
But what made this possible is engineers working for 1000s of hours & delivering value!
Super proud of amazing Infranauts at
@infracloudio
, respect to you 🙏
Always superb to catch-up with
@vaibhaw_vipul
& talk about languages, databases, ML/DL/GenAI, debugging, systems programming, formal methods of verification and what not!
"The silent mentee"
I get mentored by many people
- By reading their writing
- From whatever they share publicly
I may meet them or not
I may post a pic with them or not
But I have learnt a ton from them & do thank them personally when I can
Social media is a mirage
A multi year focus on improving your own skills, getting to a better understanding your profession's systems & thinking clearly about it (Specially what you know & don't)
Can have a profound impact on your career for a decade at least
Do spend mindful time on it
BeatBoxing by Deepak Soni with in-house rapper
@sahilakhwani
In a silent corner, folks playing Sequence at midnight
Some fun at photo booth
QBR review with folks leading
An awesome start to 2023, meeting fellow
@infracloudio
Infranauts
#LifeAtInfraCloud
I never thought this could happen:
@fissionio
the project I contribute to now has a meeting room named after it in
@GitHubIndia
Hyderabad office!
Such emails are like love letters 💌 and you get energy to do so much more💗!
Woot Woot!!
@GitHubIndia
's Hyderabad office now has a meeting room named after "Fission" project
We ♥️
@github
@GitHubIndia
for such a warm gesture!
Thanks to community and contributors for making this possible 💗
USA is a country of immigrants. You will find people of all the nations & backgrounds on this earth.
India is a country of emigrants. You will find folks from India in every nation & place on this earth.