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suhailpatel

374 karma · joined March 26, 2012

Software Engineer based in London, United Kingdom

http://suhailpatel.com

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suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Best “I brought down production” story?
This is the standard approach and the one we have detailed runbooks for. We've scaled the cluster fine one at a time after this experience. It also prompted us to get a much better understanding of all the other flags that have been changed beyond the defaults.
suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Best “I brought down production” story?
After having spent many years working with it and interacting with it deeply, I would strongly recommend folks stay far away from Cassandra if you remotely care about your data. It provides way too many footguns to lose or corrupt or outright ruin your data.

Unless you work at Apple or Netflix or Spotify, finding Cassandra experts is going to be nigh on impossible and the community just isn't there unfortunately.

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Best “I brought down production” story?
I'm in the fortunate position of having been able to tell our story in detail on our blog after a major outage involving Cassandra and bootstrap behaviour that we didn't fully understand. This is a story of how I bought down the bank for two hours.

https://monzo.com/blog/2019/09/08/why-monzo-wasnt-working-on...

In summary, we were scaling up our production Cassandra data store and we didn't migrate/backfill the data properly which led to data being 'missing' for an hour.

In a typical Cassandra cluster when scaled up, data moves around the ring a single node at a time. When you want to add multiple nodes, this can be an extremely time and bandwidth consuming process. There's a flag called auto_bootstrap which controls this behaviour. Our understood behaviour was that it will not join the cluster until operators explicitly signal for it to so (and this is a valid scenario because as an operator, you can potentially backfill data from backups for example). Unfortunately it was completely misunderstood when we originally changed the defaults many months prior to the scale up.

Fortunately, we were able to detect data inconsistency within minutes of the original scale up and we were able to fully revert the status of the ring to it's original state within 2 hours (it took that long because we did not want to lose any new writes so we had to carefully remove nodes in the reverse order that they came in and joined the ring).

Through a mammoth effort across the engineering team across two days, we were able to reconcile the vast majority of inconsistent data through the use of audit events.

This was a mega stressful day for everyone involved. On the plus side though, I've had a few emails telling me that the blog post has saved others from making a similar mistake.

suhailpatel··on What is your company's on-call compensation scheme?
Two colleagues did a survey of on-call compensation: https://oncall.wtf/articles/2019-02/on-call-survey-2019.

It’s quite skewed towards the UK due to the social circles and reach but still useful nonetheless. I’m sure they would appreciate more data points!

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (June 2018)
Citymapper | Backend/iOS/Android Engineers | London, UK | ONSITE, VISA | https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. We're running our own services to fill gaps in the transit network. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

We recently launched our new Smart Ride service, aimed at encouraging better shared mobility in cities. Read about The Responsive Network: https://medium.com/citymapper/the-responsive-network-part-3-.... This is super interesting and rewarding work from a technical perspective, we're constantly iterating and improving our planning, routing and simulation algorithms for Smart Ride to better serve our network. If you are interested in this sort of problem space, now is a fantastic time to get involved from the ground up.

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

Read our other blog posts at https://medium.com/@Citymapper. We've also launched an engineering blog: http://engineering.citymapper.com, if stuff like that interests you, definitely apply!

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2018)
Citymapper | Backend/iOS/Android Engineers | London, UK | ONSITE, VISA | https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. We're running our own services to fill gaps in the transit network. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

We recently launched our new Smart Ride service, aimed at encouraging better shared mobility in cities. Read about The Responsive Network: https://medium.com/citymapper/the-responsive-network-part-3-.... This is super interesting and rewarding work from a technical perspective, we're constantly iterating and improving our planning, routing and simulation algorithms for Smart Ride to better serve our network. If you are interested in this sort of problem space, now is a fantastic time to get involved from the ground up.

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

Read our other blog posts at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2018)
Citymapper | Backend/iOS/Android Engineers | London, UK | ONSITE, VISA | https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. We're running our own buses to fill gaps in the transit network. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

We recently launched our new Smart Ride service, aimed at encouraging better shared mobility in cities. Read about The Responsive Network: https://medium.com/citymapper/the-responsive-network-part-3-...

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

Read our other blog posts at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (February 2018)
Citymapper | Backend/iOS/Android Engineers | London, UK | ONSITE, VISA | https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. We're running our own buses to fill gaps in the transit network. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

Read our blog at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2018)
Citymapper | Backend & Mobile Engineers | London, UK | ONSITE, VISA | https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. We're running our own buses to fill gaps in the transit network. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

Read our blog at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (May 2017)
Citymapper | Software Engineers | London | ONSITE, VISA

https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

Read our blog at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (April 2017)
Citymapper | Software Engineers | London | ONSITE, VISA https://citymapper.com/jobs

Cities are complicated. We use the power of mobile and open transport data to help humans survive and master them. We are building the best public transit app, one that caters for the needs of commuters. We are building a routing engine which is truly multimodal. To power all of this, we're leveraging open data as well as building the tools necessary for agencies to add and fix data.

Read our blog at https://medium.com/@Citymapper

See all our open positions at https://citymapper.com/jobs

We're hiring for Backend (Python, Go, C/C++, AWS), Frontend (Web, React, ES6) and iOS/Android engineers as well as Data Science.

If you have any questions, feel free to drop me an email at suhail -at- citymapper -dot- com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (August 2016)
Citymapper — London, UK | Full Time | Onsite (we offer visa support) | https://citymapper.com

Join us in our mission to make cities usable by building the ultimate transport app.

Hiring for ALL roles (Engineering, Design, Product), including:

-- Web Developer (React, Redux)

We build a lot with modern JS technologies. We have our web app, but also many systems behind the scenes that allow us to be the best source of transit data in our cities. We use React + Redux, CSS modules and PostCSS, Webpack, Django.

-- Android Developers & iOS Developers

We're particularly interested in developers who are passionate about UI, and/or using sensors & location efficiently.

-- Site Reliability Engineers

Help Citymapper scale its platform by orders of magnitude. We are currently in +30 cities, but we are going to be expanding to reach everyone who needs us.

-- Data Science

We're looking for data scientists to work on a variety of projects including improving the experience of the apps to make them more personal.

Read about our $40M Series B: https://medium.com/@Citymapper/getting-from-a-to-series-b-88...

Apply at https://citymapper.com/jobs/

Contact me at suhail at citymapper dot com if you have any questions.

suhailpatel··on LogMeIn acquires Lastpass
Even on Android 1Password feels like a first class citizen (I think some third party app integration is lacking but i'm used to going back and forth to copy passwords). I am very happy with what it provides.
suhailpatel··on Bonsai: Bulletproof contracts, simple e-signing, escrow for freelancers
Would love a service like this for the UK!
suhailpatel··on How many hours do you work a day (developers)?
I really want to do this just so I can get some time to work on my own projects. How did you sell this to your employers (or are they one of a very few shops which do the 4 day week thing like Treehouse)
suhailpatel··on Looking after your wellbeing at DjangoCon Europe
Such a fantastic idea. There really needs to be more awareness on Mental Health and this is a great step towards that.
suhailpatel··on Ask HN: What book changed your life in 2014?
Also read Starting Strength. I'd been lifting before I read it but my technique was very poor. The most I got out of the book was cues (such as actively push legs out when squatting to avoid cave in). Would definitely recommend!
suhailpatel··on About the OS X Yosemite v10.10.1 Update
My rMBP updated just fine to 10.10.1 but when I went to update my sister's MBP with a 840 SSD and Trim Enabled I ran into the grey forbidden screen and safe mode yielded the 'Waiting for root device' error. This can be fixed by going into recovery mode (Command+R) on boot and running the following commands:

    rm -rf /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext
    cp -r /System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext/Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions/IOAHCIFamily.kext
    touch /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>/System/Library/Extensions
    kextcache -u /Volumes/<10.10 Partition>
The update installed just fine after that, the commands disable TRIM and restore the original OSX kext which was replaced by TRIM Enabler

Commands Source: http://www.cindori.org/forums/topic/heads-up-osx-10-10-beta-...

suhailpatel··on Nexus 6
Yep pretty how most companies price their tech in the UK, change $ to £ and call it a day (we pay a premium even with VAT added onto the USD price)
suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (October 2014)
OnApp - http://onapp.com - London, UK - On Site

-------------------------------------

OnApp is all about helping service providers build their own public clouds. We build software that helps hosting companies compete against Amazon by providing a turn key Cloud and CDN platform. We are well funded and have big clients such as major cloud hosting companies (Dediserve, VPS.net etc.) and big telcos on our Cloud and CDN platforms.

We have more than 500 individual hosting providers running our software and we want to cluster them all to bring a compute federation so users can spin up a cloud server of any scale anywhere in the world. We've already done this for the CDN market: http://onapp.com/platform/onapp-cdn/

-------------------------------------

Our dev stack comprises of Rails, Git, Postgres, Redis and Ansible but there's plenty of other technologies being used like Python, C++, Java, MySQL and more.

We are actively looking for Rails Developers for our London office to help us develop the OnApp Compute Marketplace. If you are interested, email me directly: suhail@onapp.com

suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Who is hiring? (September 2014)
OnApp - http://onapp.com - London, UK

-------------------------------------

OnApp is all about helping service providers build their own public clouds. We build software that helps hosting companies compete against Amazon by providing a turn key Cloud and CDN platform.

We have more than 500 individual hosting providers running our software and we want to cluster them all to bring a compute federation so users can spin up a cloud server of any scale anywhere in the world. We've already done this for the CDN market: http://onapp.com/platform/onapp-cdn/

-------------------------------------

Our dev stack comprises of Rails, Git, Postgres, Redis and Ansible but there's plenty of other technologies being used like Python, C++, Java, MySQL and more.

We are actively looking for Rails Developers for our London office to help us develop the OnApp Compute Marketrplace. If you are interested, email me directly: suhail@onapp.com

suhailpatel··on Frame.io: A GitHub for Video
The video should play if the user prompts it. To be honest, it's not the video but more the music/sound which bothers (so maybe do what Facebook does and enable sound when user clicks or something?)
suhailpatel··on Ask HN: Life advice for 25yo Web Dev, single, no debt, $30k/£20k savings
Big up fellow drum and bass listener! I go to most drum and bass gigs in London on my own (none of my friends are into it) and always have a fantastic time and come out with a massive smile.
suhailpatel··on Screenshot Saturday
I've been following your stuff at /r/fitness. Definitely keep working on it, looks real solid!
suhailpatel··on Textbooks Prices: Out of Control
Same for my university in the UK (most of our prestigious universities pride themselves with the quality of their libraries). I think it's more a case that there are only a single/few copies of each required reading book in the library and on loan, others miss out.
suhailpatel··on Linode CLI
Unless i'm missing something, Linode is a VPS. They give you full SSH access to a VPS just like every other VPS provider does. This tool is just so you don't have to use the web UI to provision a new VPS Linode Server and can instead use the command line
suhailpatel··on VC Pitches in a Year or Two
I remember here in the UK, Three (a UK mobile network operator) allowed for free access to Facebook. This was before the days of the iPhone though and it took you to a stripped down mobile site.
suhailpatel··on Launching Crashlytics for Android Studio
I've been using Crashlytics to monitor an Android app I released very recently. The service and integration are both flawless. It's incredibly easy and intuitive to set up and the staff are very friendly when I had a few queries. I actually got recommended the service by another happy user.

My only concern is about how they will make money. They have an Enterprise version with more interesting features but haven't seen any pricing info.

suhailpatel··on Revealed: Qatar's World Cup 'slaves'
A very similar article was written 4 years ago in The Independent about Dubai and as far as I know nothing has changed. Definitely worth a read to find out about a very similar culture of modern day slavery

'The Dark Side of Dubai': http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari...

suhailpatel··on GitHub announces 3D File Diffs
Not sure why but from just reading the title I was expecting a new way to view diffs of normal files in some funky 3D mode
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