4 ms·

I always find it funny that half the people/companies advocating these approaches can't even keep a simple WordPress blog up when faced with a bit of traffic.

I always find it funny that half the people/companies advocating these approaches can't even keep a simple WordPress blog up when faced with a bit of traffic. Surely there must be an algorithm for that?

coldcode 13y ago
I guess they didn't pass that test.
aetimmes 13y ago
There's no equivalent "online coding test" for admins, unfortunately.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  Do you mean to tell me that the guy who created a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard during his interview can't set up and manage a WordPress blog that scales reasonably well, and that I need to hire a dedicated systems administrator?
- twic 13y ago
  Where i work, we give prospective sysadmins the same simple programming problems as programmers. Our infrastructure is run with automation - Puppet, plus lots of juicy devopsy madness written in Ruby - so our sysadmins do need to have at least rudimentary programming ability. If they pass that, we don't give them any more programming tests. We give them a hands-on sysadmin assault course problem, where they have to SSH into an EC2 box that has been carefully broken by our devious chief sysadmin, find out what's wrong, and fix it. They do it in a tmux session, with some kind of audio link (Skype, Hangout, etc), so one of our guys can watch and talk to them as they do it. I've listened to several people running through it, and it sounds terrifying.
arikrak 13y ago
I hosted my WP blog for free on OpenShift and (with free Cloudflare) it was able to handle Reddit/HN traffic spikes without a problem. Not sure why everyone doesn't do something similar.
- Killswitch 13y ago
  cache, cache, cache... Reddit and HN do not really send a lot of traffic... It baffles me to see peoples sites go down for 20k+ unique visitors total for the day... I've seen basic Wordpress installs with a few tweaks such as caching in place handle hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a day every day for months... It's not rocket science..
- saching90 13y ago
  Thanks for sharing this :)
saching90 13y ago
You spend day and night on building a product, you make sure everything works right and its scaled for traffic. Once you have a beta product ready, you decide to blog about it, you meticulously work on generating some good content, fire up a large instance on AWS, set up a wordpress blog, and the blog is live. Now you decide to post about it on HN, fortunately some people like what you have written, you start getting traffic. And BOOM, suddenly you find out that the large instance on AWS, cannot handle the traffic, you are befuddled its not like the server is getting million hits/sec. You thought a large server would be enough to handle a single wordpress blog, and you realize that's not the case. Now you go back and start fixing your self hosted wordpress blog, you feel sad that you missed out on audience because the server crashed, your work gets derailed because now you also have to maintain the blog server. I agreed I too would have been irritated to see the link not working, but its not that you switch to an x-large instance each time you post a link on HN. Sometimes you just want somethings to work. But alas that's not the case.
- swamp40 13y ago
  So is there a simple solution?
  - Cakez0r 13y ago
    Cloudflare
- eshvk 13y ago
  HN is not the place for parody but I want to rewrite your entire paragraph talking about developers who ship gigantic systems and suddenly find out that a company is rejecting them because they don't code the intricacies of bubble sort on a white board from the get-go.
- 7Figures2Commas 13y ago
  I empathize with you, but your experience highlights the flaws in the approach you're advocating. I'll use myself as an example: I'm a self-taught developer who has built and managed high-profile, high-usage websites/web applications. I probably could not pass one of your algorithm-based FizzBuzz tests, but if I was hiring and you suggested that a site should scale simply because you threw it on a large AWS instance, I would not consider your candidacy further regardless of your ability to pass a FizzBuzz test.

coldcode 13y ago

I guess they didn't pass that test.

aetimmes 13y ago

There's no equivalent "online coding test" for admins, unfortunately.

7Figures2Commas 13y ago
Do you mean to tell me that the guy who created a bubble sort algorithm on a whiteboard during his interview can't set up and manage a WordPress blog that scales reasonably well, and that I need to hire a dedicated systems administrator?
twic 13y ago
Where i work, we give prospective sysadmins the same simple programming problems as programmers. Our infrastructure is run with automation - Puppet, plus lots of juicy devopsy madness written in Ruby - so our sysadmins do need to have at least rudimentary programming ability. If they pass that, we don't give them any more programming tests. We give them a hands-on sysadmin assault course problem, where they have to SSH into an EC2 box that has been carefully broken by our devious chief sysadmin, find out what's wrong, and fix it. They do it in a tmux session, with some kind of audio link (Skype, Hangout, etc), so one of our guys can watch and talk to them as they do it. I've listened to several people running through it, and it sounds terrifying.

arikrak 13y ago

I hosted my WP blog for free on OpenShift and (with free Cloudflare) it was able to handle Reddit/HN traffic spikes without a problem. Not sure why everyone doesn't do something similar.

Killswitch 13y ago
cache, cache, cache... Reddit and HN do not really send a lot of traffic... It baffles me to see peoples sites go down for 20k+ unique visitors total for the day... I've seen basic Wordpress installs with a few tweaks such as caching in place handle hundreds of thousands of unique visitors a day every day for months... It's not rocket science..
saching90 13y ago
Thanks for sharing this :)

saching90 13y ago

You spend day and night on building a product, you make sure everything works right and its scaled for traffic. Once you have a beta product ready, you decide to blog about it, you meticulously work on generating some good content, fire up a large instance on AWS, set up a wordpress blog, and the blog is live. Now you decide to post about it on HN, fortunately some people like what you have written, you start getting traffic. And BOOM, suddenly you find out that the large instance on AWS, cannot handle the traffic, you are befuddled its not like the server is getting million hits/sec. You thought a large server would be enough to handle a single wordpress blog, and you realize that's not the case. Now you go back and start fixing your self hosted wordpress blog, you feel sad that you missed out on audience because the server crashed, your work gets derailed because now you also have to maintain the blog server. I agreed I too would have been irritated to see the link not working, but its not that you switch to an x-large instance each time you post a link on HN. Sometimes you just want somethings to work. But alas that's not the case.

swamp40 13y ago
So is there a simple solution?
- Cakez0r 13y ago
  Cloudflare
eshvk 13y ago
HN is not the place for parody but I want to rewrite your entire paragraph talking about developers who ship gigantic systems and suddenly find out that a company is rejecting them because they don't code the intricacies of bubble sort on a white board from the get-go.
7Figures2Commas 13y ago
I empathize with you, but your experience highlights the flaws in the approach you're advocating. I'll use myself as an example: I'm a self-taught developer who has built and managed high-profile, high-usage websites/web applications. I probably could not pass one of your algorithm-based FizzBuzz tests, but if I was hiring and you suggested that a site should scale simply because you threw it on a large AWS instance, I would not consider your candidacy further regardless of your ability to pass a FizzBuzz test.