jvans

6 ms·

31.
by jvans 2y ago
The desire to rewrite something is the single biggest red flag for me that someone has questionable technical decision making skills. Yes there can be good reasons for it, but my priors shift dramatically once I hear someone suggest it
32.
by jvans 2y ago
They mean rewriting. People love rewriting stuff they didn't write
33.
by jvans 2y ago
why is a migration such a burden in that scenario
34.
by jvans 2y ago
> Human beings, especially in groups, can only reasonably make linear decisions. This seems to be getting a lot of attention. I couldn't agree more, we assume linearity all the time because reasoning non-linearly is exceptionally di
35.
by jvans 2y ago
> Yes, I will waste 45 minutes of my time explaining word for word to you, exactly what is written in this design document And they will misunderstand you, turn around and butcher the explanation to some higher up, indirectly claiming cr
36.
by jvans 2y ago
This is just being hindsight oriented. The way it worked out it was better to DRY from the start, but the person implementing it didn't know how the chips would fall. If you do what this guy did and are wrong, it looks like yes obvious
37.
by jvans 2y ago
The problem with not null is people classify them from a domain perspective and not from a distributed systems perspective where basically everything can be null but only some fields mean rendering the page is impossible. It also depends pa
38.
by jvans 2y ago
Additional graph pain points I'd add: Reliability: * Not null fields in a distributed system are a lie. Clients write code assuming something is not null, so a query that fetches data from N sub systems breaks the entire page when one
39.
by jvans 2y ago
the cost is usability. When there's dozens of options you don't need or care about, you have to spend the time to understand what they are to realize you don't need them
40.
by jvans 2y ago
This is classic feature bloat of a product that's been around for a while. Some customer wants a really niche feature so product adds a new option for it. It's just one new option so the experience isn't that different. Rinse
41.
by jvans 2y ago
the compensation structure in big tech makes people lose their minds optimizing for that next promotion/stock grant. It helps big tech retain talented people but the incentives to look "impactful" drive all the wrong behavior
42.
by jvans 2y ago
small things don't show up on p&l reports or a/b tests so the bean counters ignore them. But they have an outsized impact on long term success and people who are really great at what they do sweat the small stuff regardless of
43.
by jvans 2y ago
That's sort of true but also used as an excuse for crappy design/execution.
44.
by jvans 2y ago
Raft is a lot easier to digest than paxos: https://raft.github.io/raft.pdf
45.
by jvans 2y ago
Approaching the problem of doctor burnout by spamming patients with half correct responses to important medical questions is not a solution
46.
by jvans 3y ago
Notice how all the benefits they mention are for physicians and not for the patients. That's a pretty backwards approach to healthcare
47.
by jvans 3y ago
A lot of things I've seen engineers do in the name of cleaning up technical debt actively make things worse Left to their own devices a lot of engineers will go to enormous lengths for either marginal improvements or changes that activ
48.
by jvans 3y ago
So is the implication here that any system that allows SSH and contains this malicious code is vulnerable?
49.
by jvans 3y ago
Exactly. A lot of us work at #2 so we wish our predecessors saved us our current pain. But if they went that route we wouldn't be employed at that company because it wouldn't exist
50.
by jvans 3y ago
Not all engineers care about engineering or quality. Boeing self selects for those that don't
51.
by jvans 3y ago
Thank you for the thoughtful response! I have actually read Extreme Ownership. I agreed with most of it, although one thing I started noticing is what I'd call "fake ownership". Once people realize the value of ownership, the
52.
by jvans 3y ago
I love this whole speech. I'm curious how people put some of these efforts into practice, particularly holding people to high standards while still giving them autonomy and ownership. Holding someone to a high standard seems like it re
53.
by jvans 3y ago
This is the opposite of an MBA answer. MBAs are famous for hand waving over important details and this answer hammers home the point of them
54.
by jvans 3y ago
Wouldn't low performers hurt production output and piss off upper management? What's the "ideal" employee who succeeds in that environment look like in their day to day work?
55.
by jvans 3y ago
There is no single or set of standards that can prevent you from having to think critically about a result. Rarely are results so overwhelmingly positive that it's obvious what the result means. In those cases it doesn't matter wh
56.
by jvans 3y ago
in my experience academics are the worst at understanding uncertainty. They refuse to believe anything that doesn't pass their beloved t-test, believing the holy threshold of 0.05 is the arbiter of all truth
57.
by jvans 3y ago
This is exactly what you should expect. Documentation is corporate frauds biggest enemy. If you are going to commit crimes and kill people, it's far better that you don't have records of incompetence even if lack of records is its
58.
by jvans 3y ago
And Boeing of course knows this, and this is exactly why they're so brazenly ignoring NTSB requests.
59.
by jvans 3y ago
I would settle for major booking sites to provide a clear filter for Airbus. Not everyone will use it but it'll go a long way for those of us that do care
60.
by jvans 3y ago
A lot of it happens in closed discussions with pros who are running various simulations. Some of it is posted on training sites but a lot is not. The game these days is all about reverse engineering strategy principles from GTO simulation o

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