imsofuture

You'd probably be better off trying to fix these issues by addressing them directly -- for the sake of your relationships with the other parties. That said, you won't be blackballed for leaving a floundering startup your heart is no longer in, regardless of your role.

Make an earnest effort to fix all the things that are bothering you and then re-evaluate your situation.

> "you’re showing you can afford to spend your social capital… You’re saying, I’m so autonomous and successful that I can afford to dress in a non-conforming way."

That's the most interesting take-away for me. Obviously the pendulum of fashion swings back and forth -- but the nonconformist signaling is an interesting phenomenon that spans it.

We're in the process of switching from Puppet to SaltStack. It's a change measured in light-years. We didn't evaluate Ansible, so I can't speak to it -- but we are extremely happy with Salt's speed, flexibility + extensibility.

>The conclusion is that an irresponsible and deaf company now holds power over huge swaths of people.

Walled gardens and all that. We're all choosing to play in them.

I'm objecting to the implication you are either rational or religious.

False dichotomy.

"Theist" should be a choice. I believe in god/a god, perhaps (likely?) not a knowable one.

Seems like a lot of beanplating around "it wasn't actually compelling to enough people to make money".

Not sure 'apache' is quite the same as 'redskins'.

Absolutely. I spent 3 years on MacBook Airs + OSX, and about a month ago, I just had finally had enough of the 'not-quite-right' development environment. Installed Ubuntu (on the MBA, it actually worked perfectly), and haven't looked back.

All the things I'd learned to work-around, suddenly became non-issues, and all of a sudden I had a real window manager again.

I quit doing deadlifts when I stopped competing in powerlifting. Deadlifts are a fine lift, and not inherently dangerous -- but I do think they are inherently risky.

After hurting my back (while being competently coached), now lifting uncoached, and without one of my goals being 'deadlift a big number to get a medal' -- I've dropped them from my routine. I just don't find the benefits necessarily worth the risk, in my specific case.

Chat support is extremely helpful when it comes to minor issues. Sure, if there's a core networking issue in the datacenter that's strangely impacting my servers I want to be on the phone with a well-informed tech.

Rackers are a smart bunch, their first-level chat support is great for the million minor issues I need solved. ("We've got a noisy neighbor, can you check it out?", "Can you move this VM to a new host?", etc.)

That's 10 seconds of divided attention required from me vs 10 minutes of dedicated attention for a phone call.

No joke, they took away our ability to use chat support a few months ago.

Why? Because we're such an important client, that they want us to have a more personal relationship, by forcing us to interact over the phone. I wish I were kidding.

Rackspace has been dropping the ball on support, big time, over the past 6-12 months. I'm not sure what's changed, but it's not for the better.

Not everyone browses the web with a MacBook trackpad.

I find them most often (and useful, it turns out) in really out of the way places. I live in a town of 800 people in Montana -- 2 of our 4 food establishments use Square (a BBQ joint + a Pizza place). I've also purchased Lobster Rolls on remote, tiny Maine islands with Square.

I don't think this is terribly good advice. Many databases have specific domains in which they excel. I agree you shouldn't be worried about scaling before you have users, but you should absolutely evaluate different tools before picking one.

That's utterly meaningless. I don't think Google is amoral; I do think their product is selling my information to advertisers.

Facebook is 'evil' because their actual, factual business plan is collecting and selling your personal information. You just can't really argue your way out of that one.

No, of course I don't think the people that work there are off their rocker, or actually evil -- I just don't intend to participate in their monetization plan is all.

It's funny because I didn't notice that at first. Followed up with "ohhhhhh, right". :-P

Sorry, if you think Facebook "gets it", you are deluded.

It's also awesome to interact with people who are legitimately happy about the stuff that you build.

As an introverted engineer Olarker, I strongly disagree that introverted engineers can't do customer support! :)

I do agree that it is a great hiring filter though: we definitely want to work with people that can maybe step out of their comfort zone a little and get a new perspective on the product they build, and the people that use it. You don't have to be a social butterfly, but you shouldn't need to wall yourself off from your customers, or the rest of the company for that matter.

It's link-baity and disingenuous to generalize around gender here [in this article].

Rockin, thanks for the update!

Likewise, same question for Rackspace's Cloud LBs.

try: dpkg -s openssl

I would disagree that any of those things you think are hurting you are that important. They're certainly all nice-to-haves, but if I were looking at your resume I wouldn't think for a second of discounting it just because you didn't have those on there.

We use Spread and Wackamole. I can't say I love them, but they certainly work with not-too-many-quirks.

This 'Real Programmer' thing is a dumb strawman.