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Why I Left IBM to Work on CockroachDB
- echelon 6y agoI really hate that name. I'm sorry, I know it's been said a million times before. I've thought about forking it and just running a script to rename it to "ButterflyDb" or something pleasant. Nobody thinks "cockroach = doesn't die". We think "disease" because we evolved to have a strong rejection response to these creepy crawlies. Roaches cause disease. Does anybody want that with their infra? They could sell this so hard if they named it "ice cream" or "cheesecake" or "coffee" or anything but slimy cock roach.
- gkoberger 6y agoI like it. It's memorable, and for me it does evoke "doesn't die". I'd even argue that, out of all the DBs, the name is one of the things that made it successful... even if you don't like it, you're gonna remember it.
- asdas1231231 6y agoYep. The data will be allowed to become inconsistent garbage but the DB engine will still be running in a 100% CPU utilisation loop - just like a headless cockroach running in circles on the floor.
- dimitrios1 6y agoThe best part about a name like CockroachDB is it keeps all the people away who would complain about a database being named CockroachDB, who would most likely be your lowest value, highest complaining customers.
- reikonomusha 6y agoI don’t think this is true. It feels like the same kind of argument as “one who cares about their suitor’s appearance must not care about the stuff that really matters, their personality.” It’s not true and it’s a false dichotomy. Software projects that use databases often have lots of people working on it, reporting to people who don’t work on it. While I personally believe it’s easy enough to bury “CockroachDB” from sight, it may not be so easy everywhere. Lots of people, techies and not, care about aesthetics and appeal. It’s not rational (in any technological sense), but it is what it is.
- dimitrios1 6y agoI am not presenting a dichotomy. I am not saying you must either care about aesthetics and appeal or function and form. I am saying a good technologist can look past aesthetics or appeal, which are superficial characteristics in my opinion, and judge a technology based on its technical merits and the problems it is capable of solving.
- reificator 6y ago> Nobody thinks "cockroach = doesn't die". We think "disease" because we evolved to have a strong rejection response to these creepy crawlies. Roaches cause disease. Does anybody want that with their infra? The problem with statements like this is that's exactly what I think. I hear that name and immediately think of a database that's very resilient. If you want to win the argument about changing the name, don't start by claiming that people who think differently than you don't exist.
- munk-a 6y agoI also think that in the day of corporate data inspection including a not safe for work term in your application (even if it's a sub-phrase) isn't going to help with adoption at all - some potential customers may simply be blocked from searching for it (or flagged to HR) due to bad regexes.
- abraae 6y agoIf you find yourself working at a place where it's frowned on to use words like cocktail, cocky or cockroach.... then it might be time to find somewhere less stultifying.
- munk-a 6y agoAbsolutely - but some people do work in such places and why don't you want those people to be able to use your tool?
- systemvoltage 6y agoAgreed, first impression matter. We evaluate it by name before we even know it, in milliseconds. It leaves a bad taste.
- 737min 6y agoThere are plenty of unpleasant names in tech. I don’t think this is going to make a difference.
- rexarex 6y agoTwinkieDB
- ECA_stax 6y agoHopefully, once they get acquired, they'll be forced to change it
- temp43 6y agoAgreed. I grew up in a roach-infested apartment and hearing the name as an adult gives me creeps.
- microtherion 6y agoBut so does "IBM", for computer professionals who came of age in a certain era…
- temp43 6y agoOh really? I'm still quite young so I may not have heard of that. Curious to learn more tho.
- reificator 6y agoIt's mostly a joke. Mostly...
- zdragnar 6y agoThere used to be a somewhat common phrase "nobody gets fired for buying IBM", implying that, while less than good, their products were at least a safe choice. Maybe it's just the changing of the generations, or proliferation of SaaS and AWS etc, but I haven't heard the phrase used in probably 10 or 15 years. That in itself is probably an indication of where they are at more than anything. Edit: Safe choice for the purchasing manager. The poor sods who had to deal with it, on the other hand...
- Tsiklon 6y agoI've encountered plenty of sysadmins who either wince or get visibly angry at the mere mention of "Lotus Notes"
- skissane 6y agoNotes is actually a really cool idea. A cross-platform rapid application development environment with a built-in replicated document-oriented database. I guess it is just a pity that there were some flaws in the execution, plus it got shoehorned as an email system rather than emphasising its full potential.
- codeisawesome 6y agoMeh. I’m likely as creeped by the crawlies as you... still not really phased by the name. I can imagine some business stakeholders reacting negatively though - but they might write that off as general tech weirdness...
- ampdepolymerase 6y agoUnfortunately Tardigrade DB has already been taken. Radiodurans DB might be a good alternative.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- xibalba 6y agoI think the problem is the morpheme "roach", which evokes uncleanliness. I would propose renaming it to "CockBase" or, even better, "CockDB". Don't @ me lest it is to figure out where to send the naming royalties chex.
- foobarian 6y agoI don't mind the insect reference at all. But my problem is, I read Cockroach and right away I think this is some service on top of Kafka so now I think to use this CockroachDB I have to deploy a Kafka infra too and I just move on.
- atarian 6y agoGood thing we don't pick our tech stack just based on how the name sounds... right?
- solotronics 6y agonervous laughing
- aesyondu 6y agoI hate(fear?) cockroaches with the entirety of my being, especially the flying variant. As a child, a cockroach once bit my toe. That's one times too many. I immediately grab the nearest hard object I can find to slay these F#$%^ERS. I've also heard stories of cockroaches entering people's ears (EWW!). That said, I have no problem with the name CockroachDB whatsoever.
- offtop5 6y agoI have to agree with this , Phoenix DB maybe ? Once you need to pitch it to your boss she might think your joking or not taking it seriously. I would be reluctant to use this in any work projects
- ternaryoperator 6y agoSurprised you didn't mention the more salient implication: cockroaches are bugs.
- jordanlewis 6y agoYou're in luck - there's a database just for you! It's all of CockroachDB, with whatever name you want: https://github.com/tbg/bikesheddb https://github.com/tbg/bikesheddb
- abiogenesis 6y agoWell played, but I don't think naming an enterprise product is bikeshedding.
- SilasX 6y agoAgreed, and I pretty thoroughly unpacked that argument in the thread from three years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14309984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14309984 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14310444
- x87678r 6y agoActually I used to hate it but now I'm starting to like it.
- bsg75 6y ago> I know it's been said a million times before. But yet this a comment about CRDB's name finds it way to the top of the HN discussion once again. What does not die is the need to complain about a product name instead of a constructive discussion about what it actually does.
- edgyquant 6y agoThe fact that this is a purely technical community proves the name is bad imo. Managers who aren’t tech savvy won’t adopt it.
- bsg75 6y agoIf you work with management that base technical decisions on a single word name, one with relevance to its ability, then you have bigger problems than database platform names. "What is this Postgre thing? I can't pronounce it so it can't be any good." "MySQL sounds like a toy. We need 'OurSQL'." "Oracle is the right choice because I'm familiar with the name." "Nobody ever got fired for buying IBM." "Eww, bugs! Gross!"
- anonunivgrad 6y agoYou are right. Honestly, it makes me severely question the judgment of the leadership. I can just imagine the kind of difficult tech personality heading such an operation that refuses to change the name. All of the replies disagreeing with you are filed in my "engineers aren't socially normal" mental folder.
- nexus2045 6y agoI have a phobia of cockroaches, having grown up in a place where they would appear here and there. I am grossed out by their body's front side especially. I've avoided opening their site in case they put up an actual picture of a cockroach.
- secondcoming 6y agoWhile the article was interesting, I found it quite odd that IBM would put someone fresh out of university in a team lead position of an area they initially had no interest in, and then make them team lead again of an area they admittedly knew nothing about. Maybe his teams were all India based?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- simtel20 6y agoI believe the open systems db2 team was mainly based out of Canada, but I don't think you were really honestly asking that question. However, in case I can share a bit that I may know some small amount about is that the area that the author worked on is quite well-known to IBMs db2 customers. The ability for db2 to self-tune has put it ahead of sql server, oracle and others in some ways, for decades. While the author clearly got hired and found himself in a good niche at IBM and grew there, IBMs database teams have definitely hired and sustained people from various backgrounds because the work can be challenging and rewarding. I'm saying this because one of my uncles maintained the lock manager in the mainframe db2 codebase for most of a couple of decades including being there at the time the author mentioned, working on sysplex and parallel sysplex, and he entered that gig without a particular interest in databases as he told it. But he really did take to assembly and production code maintenance
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- secondcoming 6y ago> I don't think you were really honestly asking that question. I don't know what you're getting at by this statement. I'm asking how it comes to be that someone fresh out of uni is immediately made a Team Lead. It doesn't tally with my understanding of career ladders.
- ajstorm 6y ago
- workOrNah 6y agotwinkieDB could survive an apocalypse. much better name
- natmaka 6y agoMaybe not: https://www.npr.org/2020/10/15/923411578/a-disturbing-twinkie-that-has-so-far-defied-science https://www.npr.org/2020/10/15/923411578/a-disturbing-twinki...
- codernyc16 6y agoWell even in that article they say it was most likely mold that got in there before packaging.
- natmaka 6y agoHence the "maybe"...
- orangechairs 6y agoCockroach employee here, and I'm all in on TwinkieDB. Please start a write-in campaign.
- sliken 6y agoSeems likely TwinkieDB would likely cause some legal problems.
- siliconc0w 6y agoAs far as 'autonomic' DB tuning, it'd be nice to essentially have a model that provides a set query performance and redundancy for a lowest possible dollar amount for a given workload. i.e I want my application's queries to have 99th percentile <=100ms latency - use whatever combination of memory, flash, disk, or compute is necessary to make that happen with four-nines reliability minimizing price. It'd then figure out what columns need to be stored on which medium, what in-memory indexes should exist, how many 'nodes' should be spot-instances vs reserved and so on..
- rpcwork 6y agoMight I suggest we add a touch of subtlety and call it “RoachDB”. Still the that undying stoic of the much disliked critter, but without invoking the full image of a cockroach. Love the work you guys are doing <3
- nexus2045 6y agoA case could be made if you consider that the first part of the word is masculine and inappropriate.
- kev009 6y agoSeems like younger tech companies finally realized IBM was full of mid to high end talent that is severely underpaid. For instance Facebook and Amazon have poached a lot of the Linux kernel talent that used to work on POWER arch and performance. Although the products tend to be interesting, seeing the sheer fame and popularity younger companies and contributors are enjoying must be a downer. It's bittersweet because a well run IBM would still deliver a lot more interesting projects than most startups that are hanging on for dear life until the big event like an IPO or acquisition.
- sjtindell 6y agoI have heard the same from a manager I know at Oracle. Not to say there’s a bunch of hidden talent there, but in the last couple years there has been a long string of good, high level people who got huge offers from FAANG and walked away. Oracle doesn’t even try to compete, and couldn’t. In most cases that person is also replaced by an offshore, sub-par employee with no money to hire a real replacement.
- harrygeez 6y agoThis seems to be a recurring pattern. Should we be worried? What if FAANG just poach all the good talents and put Intel, IBM, Oracle, etc out of business? Is this not anticompetitive?
- foxyv 6y agoCompetition implies that there are winners and losers. If FAANG just poaches all the talent, then Intel, IBM and Oracle will just have to start competing for the talent they need instead of resting on their laurels. Anti-competitive would be if they agreed NOT to poach talent in order to keep salaries low.
- stonecharioteer 6y agoI used to be in a trio of "hackers" as a kid. We were the ones who were always learning new stuff about programming. We picked up javascript before anyone else in our community at an early age, and we also explored Digit magazine CDs and discovered Ubuntu earlier. This was a time when most people didn't even have an internet connection (oddly me included) The two others who were with me were better at it than I was. One is at Broadcom, if you have a Samsung phone, your Bluetooth works because of her. Quite literally. She is the best at the drivers. The other is in some silo at IBM. He's been there forever, and he says he's found his peace there. These two wrote their own music player in VB during high school, called it FireAMP. They used to do things that I couldn't understand. Right now, neither of them is even writing a blog. They're in their silos and I'm praying someone gets them out and helps them share their knowledge with the world. They're the best programmers I know, and I've been at several conferences and spoken at a few. I wish they'd not sunk into their corporate holes so hard.
- rvba 6y agoWhat is the purpose of this post apart from self promotion of its author? It looks like some sort of a "textual CV", where the author tries to push the agenda that he is not only a technical expert (without any real examples, just buzzwords), but also a managerial expert (here even less examples, just sucking own dick). We can learn that he worked "really hard" on IBM products, so hard that he fell asleep during work (dear recruiters I can work hard at a startup, pleas hire me!!!), yet those products seem to be so irrelevant, that once when he writes about cloud, he does not even have the courtesy to list IBM as a cloud provider. Also the integrity of this piece: guy writes about others changing their jobs to maximize the salary, but of course at the time when the author switched job, he didnt do it for better money, he did it for the great product and great team :) IBM is a sinking ship, so for me it looks just like a story of a guy who changed job to earn more money, which for some reason allowed him to put his CV on their own website, so he can be headhunted by someone else (who will pay him even more money?).
- brd529 6y agoDisagree hard. This piece is interesting because it is a relatable window into the history of database concepts and what it's like being on teams that work on them. For anyone who has done serious work on databases its a fascinating read. For example, IBM was working on a cloud native analytical database that separated storage from compute!? They could have had the next snowflake on their hands.
- markus_zhang 6y agoHave to say that whole exp is extremely fascinating to a non programmer such as me. Looks like once you dig deep into system programming you can get yourself some challenging and comfortable long term job. Stick to the fundamental bro.
- eeks 6y agoSome references to the mentioned works, missing from the OP: DB2 BLU: https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-ipandis/vldb13db2blu.pdf https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-ipandi... Wildfire "v0", the "failed" HTAP project: https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-ytian/wildfire.pdf https://researcher.watson.ibm.com/researcher/files/us-ytian/... Wildfire "v1", the shared-nothing architecture over cloud storage (EventStore 1.0?): http://cidrdb.org/cidr2017/papers/p123-barber-cidr17.pdf http://cidrdb.org/cidr2017/papers/p123-barber-cidr17.pdf DB2 EventStore (EventStore 2.0?): http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol13/p3299-garcia-arellano.pdf http://www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol13/p3299-garcia-arellano.pdf
- m23khan 6y agoSurprised the Author didn't mention IBM Canada being a very unstable place to work.
- Graphguy 6y agoEh? Source?