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On another note, I hate posts from Rachel. My opinion is from reading a dozen posts from her blog by now. It's usually about complaining of fellow colleagues an

by neya 7y ago

On another note, I hate posts from Rachel. My opinion is from reading a dozen posts from her blog by now. It's usually about complaining of fellow colleagues and her employers. I would really hate to be her colleague. I've never seen a post where she admitted she fucked up. It's always about how everyone else is awful and how she is the victim in all this. I really hate this toxic attitude and I would really hate to have a toxic colleague who instead of grabbing her teammates for coffee and giving them constructive feedback (and keeping company events confidential), shames her colleagues publicly.

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quadrifoliate 7y ago
I disagree 100%. I have read quite a few posts on her blog as well. Most of them are purely technical; and the failures described there are mostly "Hey cool, this failed" and could be attributed to any person including herself. In the ones where she specifically blames other people or companies, I mostly see a competent, reasonable person who is fighting an uphill battle against unreasonable management, which is a trope among software developers for a reason. Like this one for example -- do you really think adding (effectively) backdoors for your special service on a Sunday evening constitutes sustainable software development? I'd rather have that "toxic attitude" than some meaningless sunshine-out-the-bottom screed about "team players who get things done".
ThrowawayR2 7y ago
> "On another note, I hate posts from Rachel." I don't but then again I spent years on call for a couple of critical services. SREs / sysadmins are the people who have to work overtime on evenings or weekends to restore services when an incident causes downtime, whether accidental or caused by foul-ups by the development team. After a few years of that, having a rather low opinion of colleagues whose routine bad practices or behavior risks downtime for critical services is more than forgivable in my book.
- Rapzid 7y ago
  Having been in an SRE-like role my entire engineering career I can empathize with the mindset. I've built pub cloud and provided tier(N) support for it and managed hosting having to fix screw-ups from OTHER companies engineering teams, as well as working in-house roles with SRE responsibilities. It's an easy mindset to get into and a blog is certainly a valid place to blow off some steam IMHO.. But when you have the knowledge AND access to fix all of your own mistakes, it's easy to forget that everyone makes mistakes and to empathize with the every-engineer. It can be a toxic mindset to let seep into the workplace; better saved for the pub :)
blub 7y ago
These are anonymous technical critiques of situations that are typical in the life of a sysadmin/RSE/security engineer. Even if your colleagues are super-smart they will still fuck up some of the time. In a large enough project someone's fucking up all the time and these people have to fix it. Of course they're grumpy and tend to complain. That's how they stay sane and don't go postal at work :) So next time you see an SRE or the like grab them for a coffee and tell them how much you appreciate them. It could save your life in the future.
throwaway6845 7y ago
While I don't enjoy the blog either (partly for the reason you cite, and partly for the unspoken assumption behind many posts that FAANG-like companies are a good thing and a good working environment), I wouldn't phrase it like that. There is enough misogyny on the internet that starting a critique with "I hate" is not going to get your point across lucidly.
- neya 7y ago
  Sorry if it came across as this way, this has nothing to do with her gender. I would have said the exact same thing even if it was a male author and I mean it.
- magduf 7y ago
  >partly for the unspoken assumption behind many posts that FAANG-like companies are a good thing and a good working environment Sorry for sidetracking, but are they not good working environments (note this is a separate question from whether they're a good thing)? I've been planning to try to get a job at one of the FAANG companies, and have basically assumed it would be a good working environment based on the reputation, the perks offered, and my prior experience at another very large tech (but not exactly FAANG) company, which was that the working environment was generally very good there though I didn't really like how that particular company operated in the marketplace.
  - Lammy 7y ago
    They have to offer perks because they will work you very hard. You will learn a lot, but you will almost certainly face a lot of stress too. For some people this isn't worth it.
  - ThrowawayR2 7y ago
    > "Sorry for sidetracking, but are they not good working environments (note this is a separate question from whether they're a good thing)?" Depends heavily on which team you join within a company. FAANGs are not monoliths; they are collections of business units cooperating (or sometimes not) with quite a bit of variation in culture and work-life balance.
yairchu 7y ago
Imho her blog is a valuable resource. Can be used to point out "here's what could happen if you do X" in specific cases and in general as "here are a lot of examples for why things should be done in a non-messy way".
Piskvorrr 7y ago
Good news rarely make for interesting reading; cf the phrase "nothing to write home about": "the task was planned well in advance, hit some snags during integration, but got caught by automated tests and eventually was sorted out between frontend and backend teams, shipping roughly on time...snore"
Piskvorrr 7y ago
Aaand...you're THE ONE. Congrats, I guess? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22296439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22296439

by neya 7y ago

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quadrifoliate 7y ago

I disagree 100%. I have read quite a few posts on her blog as well. Most of them are purely technical; and the failures described there are mostly "Hey cool, this failed" and could be attributed to any person including herself. In the ones where she specifically blames other people or companies, I mostly see a competent, reasonable person who is fighting an uphill battle against unreasonable management, which is a trope among software developers for a reason. Like this one for example -- do you really think adding (effectively) backdoors for your special service on a Sunday evening constitutes sustainable software development? I'd rather have that "toxic attitude" than some meaningless sunshine-out-the-bottom screed about "team players who get things done".

ThrowawayR2 7y ago

> "On another note, I hate posts from Rachel." I don't but then again I spent years on call for a couple of critical services. SREs / sysadmins are the people who have to work overtime on evenings or weekends to restore services when an incident causes downtime, whether accidental or caused by foul-ups by the development team. After a few years of that, having a rather low opinion of colleagues whose routine bad practices or behavior risks downtime for critical services is more than forgivable in my book.

Rapzid 7y ago
Having been in an SRE-like role my entire engineering career I can empathize with the mindset. I've built pub cloud and provided tier(N) support for it and managed hosting having to fix screw-ups from OTHER companies engineering teams, as well as working in-house roles with SRE responsibilities. It's an easy mindset to get into and a blog is certainly a valid place to blow off some steam IMHO.. But when you have the knowledge AND access to fix all of your own mistakes, it's easy to forget that everyone makes mistakes and to empathize with the every-engineer. It can be a toxic mindset to let seep into the workplace; better saved for the pub :)

blub 7y ago

These are anonymous technical critiques of situations that are typical in the life of a sysadmin/RSE/security engineer. Even if your colleagues are super-smart they will still fuck up some of the time. In a large enough project someone's fucking up all the time and these people have to fix it. Of course they're grumpy and tend to complain. That's how they stay sane and don't go postal at work :) So next time you see an SRE or the like grab them for a coffee and tell them how much you appreciate them. It could save your life in the future.

throwaway6845 7y ago

While I don't enjoy the blog either (partly for the reason you cite, and partly for the unspoken assumption behind many posts that FAANG-like companies are a good thing and a good working environment), I wouldn't phrase it like that. There is enough misogyny on the internet that starting a critique with "I hate" is not going to get your point across lucidly.

neya 7y ago
Sorry if it came across as this way, this has nothing to do with her gender. I would have said the exact same thing even if it was a male author and I mean it.
magduf 7y ago
>partly for the unspoken assumption behind many posts that FAANG-like companies are a good thing and a good working environment Sorry for sidetracking, but are they not good working environments (note this is a separate question from whether they're a good thing)? I've been planning to try to get a job at one of the FAANG companies, and have basically assumed it would be a good working environment based on the reputation, the perks offered, and my prior experience at another very large tech (but not exactly FAANG) company, which was that the working environment was generally very good there though I didn't really like how that particular company operated in the marketplace.
- Lammy 7y ago
  They have to offer perks because they will work you very hard. You will learn a lot, but you will almost certainly face a lot of stress too. For some people this isn't worth it.
- ThrowawayR2 7y ago
  > "Sorry for sidetracking, but are they not good working environments (note this is a separate question from whether they're a good thing)?" Depends heavily on which team you join within a company. FAANGs are not monoliths; they are collections of business units cooperating (or sometimes not) with quite a bit of variation in culture and work-life balance.

yairchu 7y ago

Imho her blog is a valuable resource. Can be used to point out "here's what could happen if you do X" in specific cases and in general as "here are a lot of examples for why things should be done in a non-messy way".

Piskvorrr 7y ago

Good news rarely make for interesting reading; cf the phrase "nothing to write home about": "the task was planned well in advance, hit some snags during integration, but got caught by automated tests and eventually was sorted out between frontend and backend teams, shipping roughly on time...snore"

Piskvorrr 7y ago

Aaand...you're THE ONE. Congrats, I guess? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22296439 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22296439