3 ms·

I've done startup engineering for a while. I've seen exactly 1 issue that we couldn't solve easily (N+1) or with simply turning our server count up (often way c

I've done startup engineering for a while. I've seen exactly 1 issue that we couldn't solve easily (N+1) or with simply turning our server count up (often way cheaper than putting an engineer to a problem). Basically, to move development velocity faster we "load everything". Seems like a really bad idea on the surface. In practice, we only ran into an issue with a single customer that was literally 1000x as large as the other customers. It took about two weeks by 1 engineer to rework a select few calls that were egregiously slow and we were back at it. ---- In other words, even with some arguably inefficient technical decisions, I've rarely if ever seen performance issues at early stage startups.

tomp 5y ago
Even before using more servers, one should consider using (one) bigger server (and another as backup). Massive servers are laughably cheap these days. E.g. 16 cores, 128GB RAM is €112 from Hetzner.
- mwcampbell 5y ago
  Damn, wish those dedicated servers were available in Hetzner's US data center. As far as I'm aware, the closest thing to a competitor in the US is OVH, and the server you get for that price is about a quarter of the capacity. That's plenty for my little company, but still...
  - hardwaresofton 5y ago
    Same here -- I'm eagerly awaiting them having a dedicated server offering In the meantime have you looked at leaseweb? https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-servers#US https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-servers#US I'm planning on running nimbus web services[0] there and there are a few other smaller providers I have earmarked depending on how brave you are: https://www.defendhosting.com/usa-unmanaged-servers/ https://www.defendhosting.com/usa-unmanaged-servers/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicated-servers/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicated-servers/ https://greenserver.io https://greenserver.io [0]: https://nimbusws.com https://nimbusws.com
- SkyPuncher 5y ago
  In our case, we're running on top of a PaaS (think Heroku). Vertical vs Horizontal scaling is essentially the same complexity for the scale we're currently at.
irjustin 5y ago
Exactly, the cost of turning on additional servers is measured in ~US$100's/mth vs an engineer's time ~US$10k-25k/mth. If you can make the problem go away by spending more in servers always do it. For startups, the life and death is product market fit and you only get there by iterating on the business as many times as possible, not making something more efficient. Put engineers on business iterations.
- dgb23 5y ago
  Using more machines also introduce complexity.

tomp 5y ago

Even before using more servers, one should consider using (one) bigger server (and another as backup). Massive servers are laughably cheap these days. E.g. 16 cores, 128GB RAM is €112 from Hetzner.

mwcampbell 5y ago
Damn, wish those dedicated servers were available in Hetzner's US data center. As far as I'm aware, the closest thing to a competitor in the US is OVH, and the server you get for that price is about a quarter of the capacity. That's plenty for my little company, but still...
- hardwaresofton 5y ago
  Same here -- I'm eagerly awaiting them having a dedicated server offering In the meantime have you looked at leaseweb? https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-servers#US https://www.leaseweb.com/dedicated-servers#US I'm planning on running nimbus web services[0] there and there are a few other smaller providers I have earmarked depending on how brave you are: https://www.defendhosting.com/usa-unmanaged-servers/ https://www.defendhosting.com/usa-unmanaged-servers/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicated-servers/ https://cc.delimiter.com/cart/dedicated-servers/ https://greenserver.io https://greenserver.io [0]: https://nimbusws.com https://nimbusws.com
SkyPuncher 5y ago
In our case, we're running on top of a PaaS (think Heroku). Vertical vs Horizontal scaling is essentially the same complexity for the scale we're currently at.

irjustin 5y ago

Exactly, the cost of turning on additional servers is measured in ~US$100's/mth vs an engineer's time ~US$10k-25k/mth. If you can make the problem go away by spending more in servers always do it. For startups, the life and death is product market fit and you only get there by iterating on the business as many times as possible, not making something more efficient. Put engineers on business iterations.

dgb23 5y ago
Using more machines also introduce complexity.