Denzel

Thank you for being a helpful human being. From one swe to another, why does Meta require one-off corrections from a back channel based upon an individual employee’s generosity?

Shouldn’t our responsibility scale, not just our technical systems, with the level of trust users place in your system when they base their livelihoods on it?

I say this as a parent whose stepson spent 5 years building up a substantial following on Instagram only to have it ripped away from him like this poor girl. He went through all the proper channels, provided his identification to prove who he was, and sent all his frustration into the black hole that is Meta user support.

Certainly we can do better as an industry, right?

Exactly, the opportunities for you to converse are there. You can act upon the author's advice. I suspect you're choosing not to in your daily life.

You can talk to anyone, not just the regulars, with a little bit of observation. Most people are happy to talk about their lives because we all go through life with little to no people showing an interest, not even people close to us.

Another example from just the other night, I see a person with an amazingly low percentage of body fat and muscle tone. That's a feat that takes dedication! So, I ask them if they strength train and run... how are you able to stay healthy without injuring yourself with that training volume... oh you run trails, do you have any good recommendations for someone just starting out (because I want to get into trail running), so on and so forth.

There's a wealth of opportunities for conversation out there my friend. Be proactive, give it a go!

You captured two of the author's points well: 1) more vulnerable, intimate conversations that eschew social norms can lead to more and deeper friendships; and 2) to grow deeper connections you should cast a wide net and filter down based upon compatibility. The author makes other points about taking initiative and following up as well.

Your critique of point #2 is that a middle-aged adult has less opportunities for casual conversations with a stranger than a university student?

Maybe. Off the top of my head, here's a list of places a middle-aged adult can find casual conversations that may lead to friendships: gym, grocery shopping, volunteer work, hikes, walking in the park, sports, library, cafe, public events, bar, club, mall, in the checkout line at any store... I can go on. If you consider all these different avenues, you encounter 100+ strangers every day.

I'm a middle-aged adult that had no problem making friends throughout school. It was easy, almost the default. I lost most of them to time and distance. And now, I find myself with little to no close friends, outside of my family and significant other, because making friends isn't the default as an adult. Making friends takes work!

The author correctly highlights that you must exercise intent to make friends. I've discovered some parts of this through trial-and-error over the past couple months as I've been intentionally putting myself out there, and have received promising results so far. I still have a ways to go.

I leave you with a recent experience of mine that touches upon a lot of the author's points.

I workout 5-6 days a week at the gym. Headphones in, don't bother me. I see this same guy every day I'm there. He's working out, but he's talking with people too. Half the people there know him. For weeks, we'd pass by each other and say nothing. Until one day, I passed him in the hallway and asked him "How often do you work out and for how long?" Such a random question, but I was curious because I see him every time I'm there no matter the time. He gave me a long detailed rundown, told me about his 165-day streak, why he does it, etc etc. We exchanged names and then went about our days. Since then, we've spoken to each other every time we see each other, and our conversations have gradually gone deeper and deeper. And there's something strange about him... he's present. He's not in a rush, he's fully engaged in the conversation, and he's not afraid to talk about anything. So when we talked about what we did for Thanksgiving, I shared a little bit of vulnerability about how most of my family and friends are spread out across the country in different locations. Well, he was familiar with one of them, and actually traveled there to propose and get engaged. Turns out we'd been to some of the same places off the beaten path and enjoy the same things. Then the next time we talked, I asked about his wedding, and he shared some vulnerability about how the woman left a year after the engagement, just before the wedding, so on and so on.

This experience isn't unique. Since becoming intentional, open, and willing to share my actual self, I've had this same experience many times over the past couple months. Once with the cashier who was checking me out at a sporting goods store. Our conversation twisted and turned into her sharing vulnerability about growing older, with her birthday just a week away. Now, when I see her, we have real meaningful conversations without feeling like we have to be "normal".

Yet still, after these positive experiences, I don't exchange information, follow up, or take initiative. And that's what I need to improve upon. Because why wouldn't I do that after having a few good conversations? Well because I'm scared, I don't want to feel like I'm imposing, and what happens if we don't actually get along. Oh well... just have to dive in. :)

What’s a good email to get in contact with you?

The rate of repetitions scales sublinearly with respect to time.

Consider a uniform repetition approach that repeats each item once per day. The rate of our uniform repetition system scales linearly with respect to time. If one item takes 1 second to review, then I will lose 1 second per day. Therefore, N items causes me to lose N seconds per day. Even in the case where I don’t add items to my list, I lose N seconds per day.

In contrast, as you stated, the amount of time we lose per item per day reduces exponentially with spaced repetition, however. If we don’t add any items to our list, the review time asymptotically approaches 0 seconds/day.

Unrelated to all of this, I agree the title may be a touch embellished. :)

Not quite. Jeff’s “edict” came via a lot of analysis, trial-and-error, and information gathering throughout the entire Amazon organization over the course of many years.

Amazon had huge dependency problem, both technical and organizational. Technically, the effort to work in their monolith scaled superlinear with respect to the CL size due to coordination and review with other teams. Organizationally, teams were dependent on an ever growing set of centralized, global processes that further slowed their ability to make progress.

Jeff (and S-team) saw these issues and worked to solve them through a series of experiments. Specifically, Jeff tasked his then CIO with finding a solution. This CIO worked throughout the organization to gather on-the-ground feedback around what was and wasn’t working; built a model for how Amazon _should_ work based upon that sense making; and then tested, iterated, and refined that model into what we’ve come to know as Single-Threaded Leaders and Two-Pizza teams, etc., today.

In parallel, a couple Amazon business units were experimenting with exposing their data via textual (XML) APIs like the Amazon Associates API which went on to become the Amazon Product Listings API. These early APIs were sort of the POCs that allowed Amazon to see early validation around the concept of web services.

Synthesizing all these different streams of information, ideas, and actions lead to Jeff’s “edict” around building standalone web services (which eventually led to what we know as AWS today).

In short, Jeff is the exact antithesis of GP’s straw CTO. He speaks from data, facts, and information gathered from a myriad of internal and external sources, not merely anecdotes of success from a CEO buddy. :)

Source: Working Backwards has a lot of information on Jeff (and Amazon’s) decision making.

Exactly this. I was working with the managing director of a large-cap (> $2B market cap) pharmaceutical consulting company who was able to explain really complicated, interconnected topics with ease, in a way that was really easy for others to understand. He was like a guide on a metaphorical hike, you were with him every step of the way no matter how many levels you went down the rabbit hole.

Through his communication, he had an uncanny ability to persuade. I mean, he laid everything out in an easy to understand way, and you either agreed or disagreed. It’s easy to agree when a person has seemingly answered all your questions and concerns without you even asking.

One day in his office, I asked him, how did you become so good at communicating really complex topics? He sat back, thought for a beat, and then jumped up towards his book case. “This!” He handed me his copy of the Minto Pyramid Principle scribbled with notes in the margin and all.

Needless to say, after reading that book, I was able to see immediately how those principles applied to him.

Of course it takes lots and lots of practice even after you understand the concepts. But the Minto Pyramid Principle comes highly recommended!

Do you have a link to that research that claimed 20-30% of medical school students use SRS?

The Minto Pyramid Principle is what you're looking for - https://www.amazon.com/NEW-Pyramid-Principle-Writing-Thinkin.... A timeless book on how to structure writing. Once you understand it, you'll start to notice applications of the book out in the wild. You'll also start to loathe writing that isn't structured as such because it's needlessly tedious and more difficult to understand.

The Minto Pyramid Principle is heavily used and recommended within Amazon, a company famous for their culture of written narratives.

Most of what you say is accurate however it’s worth understanding that GTO really only applies in specific situations. E.g., heads up (2 players) play. GTO is unable to produce an unexploitable strategy against 2+ players. Additionally, as a matter of practical application, less of theory, GTO suffers in ultra deep stacked heads up play where effective stacks are > 500 BB deep.

NL Hold ‘Em has progressed a lot but it’s far from solved.

I don’t disagree. What I mean to say is that FSD is not worth $12k or whatever insane price it is today and there’s no sign that it’ll ever be worth it in the near-term 2 years. And when I say FSD I mean the literal FSD that’s supposed to navigate everything (city, highway, weather, etc) from one address to another address cross country with zero interventions.

With that said, yes I agree, highway driving with Autopilot is worth somewhere on the order of $1-2k to me personally. It’s made long highway drives a lot more pleasant — just used it this past July 4th for 500+ miles of highway driving.

True, 2015 Teslas are much different (read: worse in some ways) than 2018 Teslas. That’s why I waited for them to improve the technology haha. Been following them since the Roadster’s R&D. I remember having to convince everybody back then that electric cars were going to be viable soon - no one believed Tesla could do it back then. Crazy how things have gone since.

Ok? As a Model 3 owner for 3+ years the car shows well and has been rock solid this whole time.

> Parts break difficult to replace

I think I had a set of squeaky control arms that Tesla replaced under warranty in less than a week, free of charge. I don’t remember because it was such a nonissue.

Side swiped by another driver; dented my fender, bumper, smashed the headlight. Their insurance took fault, Tesla certified body shop gave estimate and fixed in less than a week (from the time dropped off).

> The battery degrades

Knew this going in. What battery doesn’t? Still comfortably road-tripping and camping with the family in my car.

> They stopped providing maps

Huh? I receive updates every time my car updates which is often. I’m guessing you’re talking the an older Model S.

> Recall/warranty and unable to schedule appointment

I’ve scheduled 5+ appointments with Tesla service center or mobile service through the app. Never been an issue.

On top of all that, my car is worth more now than it was when I bought it. Everyone in my family that drives the car loves it. The car turns heads and generates questions on the daily for 3+ years now. My young daughter’s friends still lose their mind when she gets picked up in the Model 3. It’s almost like owning a supercar without the price tag or the inconvenience.

So I guess different people have different experiences. But this is the first car I’ve ever wanted to drive until it dies.

Oh, and FSD certainly IS NOT worth it. And I doubt it will be anytime soon. :)

Speaking from the perspective of working remotely for over 5 years with multiple teams (all of differing compositions): salaried + contractors, US (all three timezones) + South America + Europe (Eastern and Western) + Asia, junior + senior + staff engineers, etc.; and being involved in plenty of interview loops for remote engineering positions.

You're missing two key reasons why salaries won't normalize to developing country level pay:

1) Timezones are painful. +3h west to east coast US is usually tolerable if not slightly inconvenient at times, but not too bad. +5h and above starts to strain team dynamics. East US to London/Ireland caused more than a couple great US engineers to seek greener pastures within other teams at the company; a few teams had difficulty staffing majority European teams with US talent. A 50\50 split was usually more tolerable. Any time difference more than that within a team is insanity. Feedback loops become too large, there's no cohesion, and a host of other issues.

2) 10M+ engineers at the senior level don't exist. You want engineers that can autonomously churn through "we have a problem with no identified solution" situations. These engineers earn 2x to 3x their cost through technical leverage. At the senior+ level, talent supply is lower than demand. And if you want to train up an employee from junior to senior, good luck doing that with a timezone difference > +3h.

As long as there are tech companies printing gobs of money while demanding more talent than is available for engineers to produce $$$ for $, then salaries won't normalize to developing country pay.

Props to you for designing the life you want and thanks for the reply :) Happy to hear you're having more fun in this arrangement.

Are you still doing software while training to become an electrician?

I'd like to become a licensed electrician. After completing a few successful projects around the house, and studying the 2020 NEC inside out, I looked into becoming licensed. The required 4 year apprenticeship, before I'm able to take the exam, turned me off. How would I ever be able to satisfy that requirement while keeping my day job. It's like a forced pay cut to become licensed.

What's your arrangement look like?

If there’s an unserved market need: you want it, society and the global economy needs it; then go compete in the market, create your own competitive alternative. No one is preventing you from doing that. The market will dictate how right you are.

> people should be able to install anything they want without some unwanted middleman

What “people” are you referring to? The millions of people, like yours truly, who’ve made the conscious decision to pay Apple because of their App Store model.

I’m an engineer, I have a desktop and a laptop I can install whatever I want on. I’m ok with not doing that on my phone. In fact, I don’t want that experience on my phone.

So, I don’t understand when others speak for “people” like me who’ve voiced their opinion via purchase. There’s a long list of moments where I’ve been over-the-moon, downright happy with Apple’s payment and subscription experience. It’s been a breath of fresh air vs. dealing with independent providers where, oh, I have to cancel by calling your customer support center? Oh, no, you need me to send an email instead? With a photo of my ID? Oh, you accidentally continued charging me because the subscription wasn’t canceled? That’s ok, but why did you double the price of the subscription without so much as an email notifying me? Oh, you sent an email titled “Thanks for being a customer” and buried it in the addendum, gotcha. Yeah, I’m ok, I’ll stick with Apple’s payments and subscriptions system on my phone.

Those are all real experiences, by the way, that I’m happy to say I haven’t had with Apple for the past decade.

Allow me to give a counterpoint to the feedback on your book. It’s not the type of book I’d read, but the cover actually looks cool / interesting / professional to me. The first chapter was moderately engaging, much more so than what I’d expect from an amateur writer or college student. I can see why some people might feel it’s simplistic, but it doesn’t feel objectively “bad” to me.

I’m surprised and inspired you were able to write two books in two wildly different genres while being a SWE. Also surprised that did this while English isn’t your first language.

You’re putting yourself out there and being vulnerable in a lot of different ways, and I applaud you for that. Your work ethic isn’t unnoticed by me. I’d say please keep it up, I think you should continue writing and honing your craft. You’re off to a great start!

Reading your post felt like I was reading my own experience. My mom just passed away a month ago from stage 4 stomach cancer after a brief, hard fight.

> Having an advocate

There aren’t enough upvotes in the world to highlight this! The average person never understands until they go through it. My dad, my brothers, and I were her advocates. At one point, laying the facts out to the doctors who were delaying some of her tests due to “insurance requirements” (false) and pleading with them that it felt like my mom was being forced to advocate for her own life at a time when she should be taken care of by the “experts”!

We took shifts, around the clock, getting visitation exceptions to at least have 1 person sitting in the room with her at all times. Because the doctors had the amazing ability to burst into a room and present options to a half-cognizant woman suffering from cancer and expect her to make a decision there-and-then.

> I can’t imagine what would have happened if me and my siblings weren’t able to help her.

The exact thought I had as I walked out of the cancer ward past all the other rooms filled with people, laying there, alone. No one to advocate for them.

There’s just a dizzying amount of information, decisions, staying on top of doctors, following up, describing symptoms such that nurses / doctors actually check to rule out new causes (e.g. describing stomach pain and lack of bowel movements over multiple days before they finally checked her stomach and found a blockage due to a new tumor in her intestine)... it’s hard to imagine how anyone could get along alone in a hospital with a complex case.

Overall, the hospital experience left a bad taste in my mouth.

I was happy that my mom knew she was loved by all of us though, and I got be bedside and talk with her for her last couple weeks. I never thought I’d lose my mom this early, but I’m glad there wasn’t anything left unresolved between us. She knew I was proud of her; she knew she was the best mom a son could ever ask for in my eyes. I loved her.

Congratulations, that's great! There are certainly different paths towards achieving the same goal. I'm sorry you weren't able to get any promotions to work out.

You and the article author are both right! From the author:

> For example, I didn’t teach her how to advocate for herself or how to navigate the system.

In fact, it takes less energy to advocate for a promotion with a new manager than to jump ship. Ideally, you have a multi-year track record to lean upon at your current company. You'd have no such track record at a new company.

To the author's point, if you put together a persuasive promotion packet, resting upon your accomplishments and past "exceeding expectation" reviews, and make it a priority to repeat how important this is to your new manager, then often you'll get the promotion.

If after some time, you don't? Jump ship. :)

Finding the optimal execution time of an arbitrary program is equivalent to the halting problem. [1] If you narrow the “arbitrary” constraint to only include well-structured, analyzable, guaranteed-to-terminate programs, then you can at least start to approximate a solution. Finding the true optimal case, even under those conditions, would be computationally expensive.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halting_problem

> other technologies can be leveraged

That’s my point: your software architecture must evolve to deliver on your promises (open-source Datadog) because it’s impossible to satisfy your promises with the architecture as it exists today.

Nonetheless, I appreciate all the responses. Good luck to OpsTrace!

No need to be sorry, you do a great job moderating HN dang!

I just felt let down because the promise of the title (which I was excited by) doesn’t match reality in that it’s quite impossible to deliver Datadog’s feature set for metrics, traces, and logs — and tie all three together — on top of prometheus+grafana because the underlying TSDB doesn’t even support the notion of user-customizable indexing. Prometheus indexes all labels, which is why most Prometheus users even have to worry about high cardinality and time series explosion. This is one point highlighting how OpsTrace’s current architecture can not satisfy their positioning; there are many more. I’m sure they’re aware of them.

As an aspiration, the title makes sense. As someone in their target market, I was a bit turned off by the embellishment.

The headline feels deliberately clickbait-y and disingenuous. I love and support the idea. Aspirationally, the founders may want to compete with Datadog, but OpsTrace overlaps some small percentage of Datadog’s feature set.

I’m surprised the mods haven’t edited this title.

Source: I’m an engineer that’s used, operated and hacked on a medium-sized prom+grafana; and used Datadog at a large, multi-region, global scale.

This is not a bug.

I also drive a Model 3, spiritedly. Of course, I’ve rotated my tires many times, on schedule, but I replace them all at the same time. It’s standard practice. I’ve never experienced OPs behavior.

The algorithm is such that there’s a limit to the amount of “slippage” it will accept before traction control engages. A difference in tire diameters, exacerbated by a hard curve, leads to more slippage than the algorithm is willing to accept. What do you think would happen if traction control was off? :)

Furthermore, there are unknowns here - OP hasn’t specified the diameter (between 2 and 8/32’s) of their old tires. They simply stated that the tires had enough tread to meet their personal standards. Clearly traction control sees the situation differently.

7 jobs; 2-3x offers over career, and I’ve never written a cover letter.

Involved in interviewing for 2/7, and a cover letter has never factored into a hiring decision.

Not to be shallow, but this runs counter to Amazon's purported customer obsession - no? I say this as someone recently "tricked" into buying some movies through Prime. The layman in me thought, surely the distinction between "Rent" and "Buy" on this screen means I own the content. While the software engineer in me thought: what would happen if Prime or Amazon disappeared; how would I keep my purchase?

Guess I have the answer to my question now. I don't.

Will most likely purchase physical media for things that are important enough to me now.

> If Tesla's goal was to have an impact on climate change they should allow other car companies to purchase their batteries and motors to build from.

They have and they did. [1] You have it backwards. The other car companies have chosen not to purchase batteries and motors from Tesla anymore.

Tesla wanted to be a spark. They thought, worst-case scenario: other car companies will come and dominate, and we'll be positioned as a supplier with the best technology. Well, that didn't happen.

So now we have a simple dilemma. Tesla needs $$$. $$$ represents choices, research, development, improvement, etc. (Did I mention that Tesla's constant investment in battery technology has been driving down the cost across the industry?) Let's say they want to shutter their car business and just supply batteries and drivetrains.

We'll put the cost of a battery pack at $10k. Like any supplier, when selling to other car companies, they have to add X% markup to cover their future goals, research, development, etc. Now, other car companies pay $15k for the battery pack, which leaves $10k left over for all the other parts of the car to reach break-even on that $25k economical car. Margins are already thin, that ain't gonna work.

Well, Tesla could just sell the battery packs at cost since they care so much, right? Just so happens Tesla raised $5B. $5B / $10k = 500k battery packs. Great! But there were 17 million vehicles sold in the U.S. alone last year... that's a drop in the bucket. Tesla would need $150B / yr just to sell enough batteries to other car companies at cost. That ain't gonna work.

So where do we end up? Well, Tesla can "supply" the battery pack to their self at $10k because, well, it's their battery pack. Thus bestowing a competitive advantage upon their company.

> Or actually build an economical car, sub $25k

That's the plan. Do you not see their steps towards accomplishing that goal? Tesla literally laid out their plan from the beginning: start at the upper end of the market to capture enough money to throw into R&D such that they can work their way down the curve into the more economical price range. Not sure how this isn't obvious from Tesla Roadster ($150k+), Model S ($75k+), Model X ($80k+), Model 3 ($35k+) ...

By the way, you don't get down to a $25k car unless the parts that go into that car cost less than $25k. Tesla has been working to drive those costs down since the inception of their company. Evidence being the many factories they're building and the working partnership they've maintained for R&D on batteries with Panasonic.

> no self-driving

Self-driving is an add-on. It's not included in the base price of a vehicle.

> no performance mode

Once again, another lineup. Not the base model.

> Just a working, fully electric car that any working-class person could buy, globally

Working-class person with a Model 3 checking in. Similarly the Model 3 price point put it firmly within the grasp of my parents who have subsisted on Toyota Camry's and Honda Accord's their whole lives. Their next car will be a Model 3.

> That would have much more impact than building luxury electric vehicles.

Yeah. Tesla agrees. They're getting there. I'm not sure what they've done in the past two decades hasn't proven that.

[1]: https://evannex.com/blogs/news/when-tesla-partnered-with-the...