3 ms·

The bit about metrics really rang true. At 1 company, we had a situation where 2 of the 3 webservers were out of service for various reasons. I knew from past

The bit about metrics really rang true. At 1 company, we had a situation where 2 of the 3 webservers were out of service for various reasons. I knew from past experience that even a single web server should have a load less than 1 with all our traffic. The others were just there in case they went down. (Like they did!) In the middle of that, the 1 working server suddenly starts spiking load to 40 and misbehaving. There was a really smart new guy there that was usually right. But this time, he said there was no way 1 server could handle our traffic and that was the problem. He refused to listen to reason and eventually I gave up and started working on the problem alone. I eventually found the code that was going crazy and fixed it... And voila. 0.4 load. The point is that people get things in their head that 'have' to be true, but they aren't necessarily. He assumed that the existence of 3 webservers meant we had that much load, but it was just for redundancy. If I had had metrics to prove my case, it would have gone a lot smoother... But instead I just had my experience.

JonLim 16y ago
I think having numbers to prove your case is generally a good way to approach things. If you can get objective numbers that really show and prove what you are talking about, you can swing most people your way. If not, they are probably not the best of people to work with.
- wccrawford 16y ago
  I want to reiterate that the guy was really good at his job. One of the best people I've ever worked with. He was generally pretty easy to get along with. But my lack of hard data meant I couldn't sway him on that problem, no matter how right I was. That company had a history of not having metrics to work with. Every new sysadmin or db admin came in and asked for metrics and we'd shrug and laugh nervously. (I mean, there was a reason why hired so many new ones!)
  - JonLim 16y ago
    Oh, no, heard you very loud and clear. Was just reinforcing your anecdote by saying that it's applicable to a lot more than just scaling apps. :)
- KaeseEs 16y ago
  If you don't have numbers, you're not doing engineering, you're practicing druidism.

JonLim 16y ago

I think having numbers to prove your case is generally a good way to approach things. If you can get objective numbers that really show and prove what you are talking about, you can swing most people your way. If not, they are probably not the best of people to work with.

wccrawford 16y ago
I want to reiterate that the guy was really good at his job. One of the best people I've ever worked with. He was generally pretty easy to get along with. But my lack of hard data meant I couldn't sway him on that problem, no matter how right I was. That company had a history of not having metrics to work with. Every new sysadmin or db admin came in and asked for metrics and we'd shrug and laugh nervously. (I mean, there was a reason why hired so many new ones!)
- JonLim 16y ago
  Oh, no, heard you very loud and clear. Was just reinforcing your anecdote by saying that it's applicable to a lot more than just scaling apps. :)
KaeseEs 16y ago
If you don't have numbers, you're not doing engineering, you're practicing druidism.