6 ms·

bai

jeppesen-io 6y ago
well-put
dijit 6y ago
> This guy used to run infra at uber and was incredibly salty about every single new technology. There were a lot of bad ones, but every conversation was about as constructive, free of evidence, and bitter as this blog post. I'm going to assume you're a developer? Infra people are usually much more apprehensive to take on new technology. Crucially I would describe classically trained sysadmins as 'pessimists to the core'. This is why there's memes of operations saying 'no'. This is what devops was all about, the shared responsibility of it all. I'm going to assume that uber was perfect and got devops exactly right- but adding technology should in my mind always be met with the absolute most critical eye imaginable; and if he's a classically trained sysadmin then it probably comes from that place of being once bitten twice shy.
- mooted1 6y ago
  > I'm going to assume you're a developer? No, but thanks for explaining my career to me and helping me empathize with toxic people.
  - dijit 6y ago
    > thanks for explaining my career to me I'm explaining that the majority of the people who were sysadmins in 2005 are more likely to be pessimists than optimists and are change/risk averse, I don't think that's controversial and definitely is a meme.[0] > [thanks for] helping me empathize with toxic people. You're welcome. :) [0]: https://books.google.se/books?id=0VRnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA490&lpg=PA490&dq=sysadmins+say+no&source=bl&ots=yDlR_epQGo&sig=ACfU3U2Ms2VGXeUr_Fxun9sKIbSy_0NXIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjz9NPNmc3qAhXc8qYKHSbEAPIQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=sysadmins%20say%20no&f=false https://books.google.se/books?id=0VRnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA490&lpg=P...
- mplewis 6y ago
  saying "no" does not a devops engineer make
  - dijit 6y ago
    What is a devops engineer? Devops is a culture as originally defined. With sysadmins and software engineers. And, yeah, sysadmins used to say no a lot but younger ones tend not to because they haven't been rubbed wrong by the silo's of yore.
    - kingraoul3 6y ago
      ..yet
  - chucky_z 6y ago
    if your company has a position called 'devops engineer,' they've failed as an entire company to resemble anything called devops.
- pm90 6y ago
  The apprehensiveness of sysadmins May have been justified in the world 5 years ago but today it sounds somewhat out of place. Note that critically evaluating new technologies is still an important skill and many infrastructure people I work with are extremely cautious about adopting new tech without spiking/getting to know it. But the sysadmins with the penchant for saying no is probably one of the reasons the devops movement actually kicked off: developers and infrastructure folks could see the immense productivity gains from being able to ship code quickly to production and got onboard the technologies that enabled this after being frustrated with the amount of time that traditional software deployment processes took. So in today’s world, that kind of attitude is hardly productive. Skeptical? Absolutely. But open minded.
  - bandrami 6y ago
    Revisit this comment of yours in a decade.
    - pm90 6y ago
      A decade is a long time in software engineering. Kubernetes would be obsolete by then. What do I need to revisit?
      - bandrami 6y ago
        It is and it isn't. I remember the first time I thought "this software is just X that everybody forgot about, reinvented again". That was 2005. Not coincidentally that was a decade after I started working as a sysadmin. Venkatesh Rao says that there comes a point in your life when you realize things you thought were permanent are temporary, and things you thought were temporary are permanent; he uses "40" as a good rubric for that developmental stage. IT goes through many pendula, whether it be containerization vs. amalgamation, or thin clients vs. thick. What, over time, you learn to hold on to is the tools that have lasted decades and will probably continue to. Right now the pendulum is starting to swing back towards amalgamation, and it will probably swing back towards containerization again in another decade. Whatever the tech is at the time, it can be good to reconsider whether your views will have changed not on the technology, but on the larger pendulum it's riding.
- cylon13 6y ago
  I love that we're far enough in the future that there's such a thing as a classically trained sysadmin.
  - dijit 6y ago
    hardly new, Matt Simmons coined the term in 2014. https://standalone-sysadmin.com/the-difference-between-site-reliability-engineering-system-administration-and-devops-d05031495499 https://standalone-sysadmin.com/the-difference-between-site-...
calpaterson 6y ago
If you dislike the article, go ahead and say why. Leaving negative personal comments about the person who wrote it approximates your own comments: unconstructive, free of evidence and bitter
- Analemma_ 6y ago
  Given that Uber is infamous for its extreme NIH syndrome, unnecessarily reinventing the wheel and spending enormous amounts of dev effort to create internal versions of products that already exist, I think it's relevant to the article to point out that the author almost probably had a key role in that culture, and what his philosophy leads to if taken unchecked.
- rodw 6y ago
  I haven't even read the article and hence don't really have an opinion either way, but "[not] constructive" and "free of evidence" seem like pretty specific criticisms to me.
dilandau 6y ago
ad-hominem and hearsay. >There were a lot of bad ones Sounds like he had a point, then. Also, apparently HN would rather read your rather salty gossip, than comment on the article on its own merits. Nice!
hacker_newz 6y ago
Run infra? Not according to his LinkedIn.
jpeg_hero 6y ago
Its safe to say the unix crowd recreated the Windows Registry. I guess it turns out the Microsoft guys weren't idiots its just a messy problem that requires a messy solution.
- dekhn 6y ago
  etcd is not a windows registry- it's more similar to active directory, but with consensus protocols to implement the multi-machine requirements for consistency.

bai

well-put

> This guy used to run infra at uber and was incredibly salty about every single new technology. There were a lot of bad ones, but every conversation was about as constructive, free of evidence, and bitter as this blog post. I'm going to assume you're a developer? Infra people are usually much more apprehensive to take on new technology. Crucially I would describe classically trained sysadmins as 'pessimists to the core'. This is why there's memes of operations saying 'no'. This is what devops was all about, the shared responsibility of it all. I'm going to assume that uber was perfect and got devops exactly right- but adding technology should in my mind always be met with the absolute most critical eye imaginable; and if he's a classically trained sysadmin then it probably comes from that place of being once bitten twice shy.

mooted1 6y ago
> I'm going to assume you're a developer? No, but thanks for explaining my career to me and helping me empathize with toxic people.
- dijit 6y ago
  > thanks for explaining my career to me I'm explaining that the majority of the people who were sysadmins in 2005 are more likely to be pessimists than optimists and are change/risk averse, I don't think that's controversial and definitely is a meme.[0] > [thanks for] helping me empathize with toxic people. You're welcome. :) [0]: https://books.google.se/books?id=0VRnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA490&lpg=PA490&dq=sysadmins+say+no&source=bl&ots=yDlR_epQGo&sig=ACfU3U2Ms2VGXeUr_Fxun9sKIbSy_0NXIQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjz9NPNmc3qAhXc8qYKHSbEAPIQ6AEwAHoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=sysadmins%20say%20no&f=false https://books.google.se/books?id=0VRnDwAAQBAJ&pg=PA490&lpg=P...
mplewis 6y ago
saying "no" does not a devops engineer make
- dijit 6y ago
  What is a devops engineer? Devops is a culture as originally defined. With sysadmins and software engineers. And, yeah, sysadmins used to say no a lot but younger ones tend not to because they haven't been rubbed wrong by the silo's of yore.
  - kingraoul3 6y ago
    ..yet
- chucky_z 6y ago
  if your company has a position called 'devops engineer,' they've failed as an entire company to resemble anything called devops.
pm90 6y ago
The apprehensiveness of sysadmins May have been justified in the world 5 years ago but today it sounds somewhat out of place. Note that critically evaluating new technologies is still an important skill and many infrastructure people I work with are extremely cautious about adopting new tech without spiking/getting to know it. But the sysadmins with the penchant for saying no is probably one of the reasons the devops movement actually kicked off: developers and infrastructure folks could see the immense productivity gains from being able to ship code quickly to production and got onboard the technologies that enabled this after being frustrated with the amount of time that traditional software deployment processes took. So in today’s world, that kind of attitude is hardly productive. Skeptical? Absolutely. But open minded.
- bandrami 6y ago
  Revisit this comment of yours in a decade.
  - pm90 6y ago
    A decade is a long time in software engineering. Kubernetes would be obsolete by then. What do I need to revisit?
    - bandrami 6y ago
      It is and it isn't. I remember the first time I thought "this software is just X that everybody forgot about, reinvented again". That was 2005. Not coincidentally that was a decade after I started working as a sysadmin. Venkatesh Rao says that there comes a point in your life when you realize things you thought were permanent are temporary, and things you thought were temporary are permanent; he uses "40" as a good rubric for that developmental stage. IT goes through many pendula, whether it be containerization vs. amalgamation, or thin clients vs. thick. What, over time, you learn to hold on to is the tools that have lasted decades and will probably continue to. Right now the pendulum is starting to swing back towards amalgamation, and it will probably swing back towards containerization again in another decade. Whatever the tech is at the time, it can be good to reconsider whether your views will have changed not on the technology, but on the larger pendulum it's riding.
cylon13 6y ago
I love that we're far enough in the future that there's such a thing as a classically trained sysadmin.
- dijit 6y ago
  hardly new, Matt Simmons coined the term in 2014. https://standalone-sysadmin.com/the-difference-between-site-reliability-engineering-system-administration-and-devops-d05031495499 https://standalone-sysadmin.com/the-difference-between-site-...

calpaterson 6y ago

If you dislike the article, go ahead and say why. Leaving negative personal comments about the person who wrote it approximates your own comments: unconstructive, free of evidence and bitter

Analemma_ 6y ago
Given that Uber is infamous for its extreme NIH syndrome, unnecessarily reinventing the wheel and spending enormous amounts of dev effort to create internal versions of products that already exist, I think it's relevant to the article to point out that the author almost probably had a key role in that culture, and what his philosophy leads to if taken unchecked.
rodw 6y ago
I haven't even read the article and hence don't really have an opinion either way, but "[not] constructive" and "free of evidence" seem like pretty specific criticisms to me.

dilandau 6y ago

ad-hominem and hearsay. >There were a lot of bad ones Sounds like he had a point, then. Also, apparently HN would rather read your rather salty gossip, than comment on the article on its own merits. Nice!

hacker_newz 6y ago

Run infra? Not according to his LinkedIn.

jpeg_hero 6y ago

Its safe to say the unix crowd recreated the Windows Registry. I guess it turns out the Microsoft guys weren't idiots its just a messy problem that requires a messy solution.

dekhn 6y ago
etcd is not a windows registry- it's more similar to active directory, but with consensus protocols to implement the multi-machine requirements for consistency.