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> Another reason to have in-house expertise in various areas is that they easily pay for themselves ... If, in the lifetime of the specialist team like the kern

> Another reason to have in-house expertise in various areas is that they easily pay for themselves ... If, in the lifetime of the specialist team like the kernel team, a single person found something that persistently reduced TCO by 0.5%, that would pay for the team in perpetuity ... people will also find configuration issues, etc., that have that kind of impact. KEY observation that we forget when we wear many hats at small companies. This is the satisfying core reason 'why we debug'. Our deep dives matter. (Though not as much as they would at BigCos)

qaq 5y ago
Hmm reducing TCO by 0.5% at Twitter would pay for the team in perpetuity. Reducing TCO by 0.5% at small Co. will pay for a beer once a month.
- awinter-py 5y ago
  yes -- at smaller places, the goal is usually fixing something urgently broken and the economics are harder to justify which is really frustrating and leads old hands at small places to become obsessed with conservative build/buy decisions and low TCO tech nice to be reminded that it's not like that everywhere, there are places where debugging labor pays consistent dividends
  - feoren 5y ago
    > which is really frustrating and leads old hands at small places to become obsessed with conservative build/buy decisions and low TCO tech Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying that when people cut their teeth in big companies and then move to small startups, they tend to be overly conservative and favor low TCO tech, when instead they should be spending more money for, what, more growth? Should they be building more in-house, or buying more off the shelf? I'm just not clear which direction you're going here.
    - awinter-py 5y ago
      ah no, I'm saying that small co experience leads to visceral fear of tech that is non-mature / difficult to debug / unpredictable (whether or not you're ex-big-5) sorry, by 'low TCO' I wasn't just thinking about $/month -- I was thinking of technology that is non-experimental, easy to hire for and manage, that doesn't take one of your senior people a week per quarter to keep alive. TCO is the wrong word for that.
- handrous 5y ago
  Why hello my old friend, economy of scale. We meet again.

qaq 5y ago

Hmm reducing TCO by 0.5% at Twitter would pay for the team in perpetuity. Reducing TCO by 0.5% at small Co. will pay for a beer once a month.

awinter-py 5y ago
yes -- at smaller places, the goal is usually fixing something urgently broken and the economics are harder to justify which is really frustrating and leads old hands at small places to become obsessed with conservative build/buy decisions and low TCO tech nice to be reminded that it's not like that everywhere, there are places where debugging labor pays consistent dividends
- feoren 5y ago
  > which is really frustrating and leads old hands at small places to become obsessed with conservative build/buy decisions and low TCO tech Can you clarify what you mean here? Are you saying that when people cut their teeth in big companies and then move to small startups, they tend to be overly conservative and favor low TCO tech, when instead they should be spending more money for, what, more growth? Should they be building more in-house, or buying more off the shelf? I'm just not clear which direction you're going here.
  - awinter-py 5y ago
    ah no, I'm saying that small co experience leads to visceral fear of tech that is non-mature / difficult to debug / unpredictable (whether or not you're ex-big-5) sorry, by 'low TCO' I wasn't just thinking about $/month -- I was thinking of technology that is non-experimental, easy to hire for and manage, that doesn't take one of your senior people a week per quarter to keep alive. TCO is the wrong word for that.
handrous 5y ago
Why hello my old friend, economy of scale. We meet again.