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A "goodbye" post after only 3.5 years. Hard to relate. In my world it's hard to imagine an impact after that short of a time. And in fact, reading the list of
by fn-mote 11mo ago
A "goodbye" post after only 3.5 years. Hard to relate.
In my world it's hard to imagine an impact after that short of a time. And in fact, reading the list of accomplishments ("interviewed by the Wall Street Journal") makes it clear it's a good PR piece.
I'm perfectly willing to believe he's fabulous, but this didn't move the needle for me.
- rossjudson 11mo agoIt didn't move the needle for you. For other people, they're going to be thinking "some other company is going to get one of the most effective and impactful performance engineers on the planet".
- stingraycharles 11mo agoYeah, I understand the responses, but this guy legit has a great track record. And if you read between the lines (especially the last few), it seems like he had problems pushing certain initiatives of his forward within Intel.
- caspar 11mo agoCertainly if you take it in combination with his earlier "Intel is listening" blog post: https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-11-22/intel-is-listening.html https://www.brendangregg.com/blog/2025-11-22/intel-is-listen...
- candeira 11mo agoDude shipped flamegraphs (which he also created in 2011) for cloud GPU loads and persuaded internal stakeholders to release the code as open source. The "interviewed by the WSJ" line is for managers. Reading between the lines, I'd say he did really well and, if he didn't do better, it's because the organisation didn't let him.
- smelendez 11mo ago> The "interviewed by the WSJ" line is for managers. It’s a green flag for hiring managers for sure. Even a lot of valued employees wouldn’t be allowed to represent a big company to the WSJ for various reasons, even with a PR person sitting next to them.
- bigiain 11mo ago> if he didn't do better, it's because the organisation didn't let him. The last few sentences to me read like he knows for sure that the organisation is actively working against what he sees as his important goals. Carefully worded (and likely personal lawyer approved) to avoid burning the bridges as he mic-drops and deftly avoids having the door hit him in the arse as he struts out.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo agoI felt like he avoided saying anything negative about Intel just in case it would be taken that way. Intel doesn’t have the best reputation so we are all interpolating a much more negative message than he actually said.
- deleted 11mo ago[deleted]
- pm90 11mo agoAgreed. He also mentioned these years being “some of the toughest at intel”. To me it read as 1) Amazing that he managed to get anything done at all with this kind of turmoil and 2) A not so subtle hint that things aren’t all good at Intel.
- seanmcdirmid 11mo agoI can’t tell if he is just good at self promotion or he is just good. But that’s always the case at bigcorp.
- brailsafe 11mo ago
- bibimsz 11mo agoive been at my company 16 years and still haven't had an impact, so... yeah.
- ivanbalepin 11mo agothat is some brutal self-honesty right there
- stevenjgarner 11mo agoIf you've been there 16 years, I'm sure you employer feels your impact has been worth the investment. Are you really saying that you don't feel you have made the impact you would have liked to make? Do you feel under-utilized?
- bombcar 11mo agoYou can work your entire career and have "no impact" depending on how you define it. A factory worker may be one of the best assembling doodads, but have no real impact on the job over their career, for example.
- nrhrjrjrjtntbt 11mo agoThat is because these days what used to be high impact is now table stakes.
- komali2 11mo agoClicking through his links to various posts about e.g. stack pointers or flame graphs, my takeaway is he's an outlier in productivity, and got a lot done in 3.5 years at a monstrously large organization. I'm pretty envious of his capabilities, in 3.5 years I can ship a couple webapps, I would never personally get JVM compilation flags added.
- stingraycharles 11mo agoBrendan Gregg is somewhat of a systems engineering legend and contributed more to the field than most people could dream of. Is his post self promotion? Yeah, probably. Does it matter and do the top 3 comments on HN be salty about that? Probably not that useful.
- brazukadev 11mo ago[flagged]
- signatoremo 11mo agoYou are tired, but you still read, still commented (or worse, commented but didn’t read). I always give people benefits of the doubt. He posted it on his personal blog, going back so many years. Most of his content are technical in nature, the kind of things that would never be on the front page of HN.
- brazukadev 11mo agothe fact that he posted in his personal blog doesn't change the fact that for many of us this is corporate BS and should not be in the top of HN first page. If you disagree, upvote comments you like, don't try to be a moderator. > Most of his content are technical in nature, the kind of things that would never be on the front page of HN. That is exactly what many of us prefer to see, actually. The hacker part of hackernews, remember?
- astrange 11mo ago
- oldpersonintx2 11mo ago[dead]
- hiddencost 11mo agoHe's arguably the most famous performance engineer. I've followed his work for 15 years.
- boruto 11mo agoScreaming at Disk drives has been my go-to party trick to break ice the last decade.
- almosthere 11mo agoPeople should try to remember that people post this on their blogs, the way it gets in HN is not always their own doing.