43 episodes

A show about not just the technologies, but the people and stories behind them. In every episode, Ronak and Guang sit down with engineers, founders, and investors to chat about their paths, lessons they’ve learned and of course, the misadventures along the way.

Software Misadventures Ronak Nathani, Guang Yang

    • Technology
    • 5.0 • 1 Rating

A show about not just the technologies, but the people and stories behind them. In every episode, Ronak and Guang sit down with engineers, founders, and investors to chat about their paths, lessons they’ve learned and of course, the misadventures along the way.

    Impact Driven Development | Matt Klein (Envoy, bitdrift)

    Impact Driven Development | Matt Klein (Envoy, bitdrift)

    From creating Envoy to co-founding bitdrift to reimagine mobile observability, Matt joins the show to chat about being told to simply “write some proxy in Python” in the early days of building Envoy, early influences from building “shrink wrap” software at Microsoft, the process of spinning bitdrift out of Lyft, and much more.
    Segments: (00:03:10) Being a plumber on LinkedIn
    (00:05:00) Early influences from building “shrink wrap” software at Microsoft
    (00:10:44) Getting diverse work experiences
    (00:16:36) Setting high standards for the team
    (00:20:42) Lessons from failure of the first startup
    (00:22:02) Building a successful open source project vs. running a startup
    (00:25:25) Why not start a company around Envoy?
    (00:29:54) Why not open source bitdrift?
    (00:36:01) Mitigating the risk of big companies building in-house solutions
    (00:38:16) Co-founding bitdrift to tackle mobile observability
    (00:40:37) Applying lessons from the first startup failure
    (00:44:14) Why mobile observability is so hard
    (00:50:06) Open source vs source available
    (00:53:33) The software licensing strugglebus
    (00:58:03) How bitdrift was spinned out of Lyft
    (01:03:36) Achieving work-life balance through leverage
    (01:06:13) The early days of Envoy
    (01:09:20) Impact driven development
    (01:13:43) The crazy decision to build Envoy in retrospect
    Show Notes: Matt’s blog posts on why mobile observability is a hard problem: https://mattklein123.dev/2024/04/24/no-one-talks-about-mobile-observability/
    The new company Matt is building: https://bitdrift.io/
    Stay in touch: 👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com
     
    Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

    • 1 hr 19 min
    Build the scary stuff | Bryan Cantrill (Oxide)

    Build the scary stuff | Bryan Cantrill (Oxide)

    From being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems to co-founding Oxide Computer Company to build a new kind of server, Bryan joins the show to chat about being told that he’s on a suicide mission when starting Oxide, the moment he felt “I’m actually living HBO Silicon Valley”, and lessons from Sun. And much more.

    Chapters:
    (00:02:24) The Origin of Bryan's Nom-de-Guerre: "Colonel of Data Corruption"
    (00:04:02) What Debugging Performance Issues at Twitter in the Early Days Revealed About Silicon Valley
    (00:13:37) Value of Formal Education and the Experience That Everyone Should Have
    (00:16:02) Balancing Following One's Passion vs. Having Stability
    (00:21:14) What Shaped Bryan's Sense of Integrity
    (00:25:39) The Moments When Values Are Instilled
    (00:30:25) The Dark Side of Tech
    (00:35:12) "Economic Opportunities Attract Economic Opportunists"
    (00:40:35) The Origins of Oxide Computers
    (00:50:20) Building the A-Team
    (00:52:18) "Compaq Was the Most Successful Startup"
    (00:55:51) The Venture Capitalist's Dilemma
    (01:03:04) Being Told "You're on a Suicide Mission"
    (01:07:12) The Lifestyle of the "Lifestyle Business"
    (01:09:30) The Harsh Reality of Raising Venture Capital
    (01:13:12) The Challenges of Building Hardware
    (01:16:36) Why You Should Think About Not Only Gross Margin but Net Margin
    (01:19:14) Hardware and Software Co-Design
    (01:22:06) The Frustrations of Infrastructure Deployment
    (01:26:46) Finding the Right VCs
    (01:28:16) "Oh My God, I'm Actually Living HBO Silicon Valley"
    (01:33:12) Oxide's Principles and Lessons from Sun Microsystems
    (01:39:51) Sun's Unspoken Values
    (01:45:03) Sun's Legacy of Empowering Employees
    (01:48:53) Sun's Missed Opportunities
    (01:53:04) The Reason Why Sun Survived the Dot-Com Crash
    (01:56:21) "God Bless the Early Adopters"
    (01:57:39) A Tweet from Shopify's CEO
    (02:01:24) The Hard Thing About Hard Things
    (02:12:55) The Hardest Moment in Oxide's History
     
    Show Notes:
    - Oxide’s principles: https://oxide.computer/principles
    - Requests for Discussion (RFDs): https://rfd.shared.oxide.computer/
    - Toby’s tweet: https://x.com/tobi/status/1793798092212367669
    - Bryan on twitter: https://x.com/bcantrill
    Stay in touch:
    👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com
    Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

    • 2 hrs 19 min
    Lessons from the early days building Kafka and Confluent | Jay Kreps

    Lessons from the early days building Kafka and Confluent | Jay Kreps

    From writing the first lines of Kafka over a Christmas break as a LinkedIn engineer to running a public company as the CEO of Confluent, Jay joins the show to chat about how he and his co-founders convinced investors to take a chance on their vision, what many engineers get wrong about communication, and why engineers can make great CEOs - even when coding is not in the job description. And much more.
    Segments:
    (00:01:16) The Shaved Head Bet
    (00:04:07) Fundraising
    (00:12:16) The Role of Technical Background in VCs
    (00:15:48) The power of believing in the possibility of important changes
    (00:18:29) The Journey to starting Confluent
    (00:27:11) Kafka's Controversial Beginnings
    (00:34:30) Effective Communication in Engineering
    (00:44:20) The Early Days of Kafka
    (00:48:31) The Power of Storytelling
    (00:57:19) Early days of Confluent
    (01:03:06) Do Engineers Make Good CEOs?
    (01:07:59) A Typical Day in the Life of a CEO
    (01:12:24) The Evolution of Data Streaming
    Show Notes:
    - “The log” blog post that solidified Jay and his co-founders' conviction to found Confluent: https://engineering.linkedin.com/distributed-systems/log-what-every-software-engineer-should-know-about-real-time-datas-unifying
    - Jay on twitter: https://x.com/jaykreps
    Stay in touch:
    👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com
    Music: Vlad Gluschenko — Forest License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

    • 1 hr 16 min
    Building 2 Iconic OSSs Back-to-Back | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset)

    Building 2 Iconic OSSs Back-to-Back | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset)

    If you’ve worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and even fewer engineers have done this back to back. In part 2 of the conversation, we talk about Max’s journey in open source.
    Segments:
       (00:03:27) “Project-Community Fit” in Open Source
       (00:08:31) Fostering Relationships in Open Source
       (00:10:58) Dealing with Trolls
       (00:13:40) Attributes of Good Open Source Contributors
       (00:20:01) How to Get Started with Contributing
       (00:27:58) Origin Stories of Airflow and Superset
       (00:33:27) Biggest Surprise since Founding a VC-backed Company?
       (00:38:47) Picking What to Work On
       (00:41:46) Advice to Engineers for Building the Next Airflow/Superset?
       (00:42:35) The 2 New Open Source Projects that Max is Starting
       (00:52:10) Challenges of Being a Founder
       (00:57:38) Open Sourcing Ideas
    Show Notes:
    Part 1 of our conversation: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/maxime-beauchemin-llm-ready
    Max on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximebeauchemin/
    SQL All Stars: https://github.com/preset-io/allstars
    Governator: https://github.com/mistercrunch/governator
    Stay in touch:
    👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

    • 58 min
    Become a LLM-ready Engineer | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset)

    Become a LLM-ready Engineer | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset)

    If you’ve worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and even fewer engineers have done this back to back. In Part 1 of this conversation, we chat about how to adapt to the LLM-age as engineers.
     
    Segments:
    (00:01:59) The Rise and Fall of the Data Engineer
    (00:11:13) The Importance of Executive Skill in the Era of AI
    (00:13:53) Developing the first reflex to use AI
    (00:17:47) What are LLMs good at?
    (00:25:33) Text to SQL
    (00:28:19) Promptimize
    (00:32:16) Using tools LangChain
    (00:35:02) Writing better prompts
     
    Show Notes:
    - Max on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maximebeauchemin/
    - Rise of the Data Engineer: https://medium.com/free-code-camp/the-rise-of-the-data-engineer-91be18f1e603
    - Downfall of the Data Engineer: https://maximebeauchemin.medium.com/the-downfall-of-the-data-engineer-5bfb701e5d6b
    - Promptimize: https://github.com/preset-io/promptimize
     
    Stay in touch:
    👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

    • 41 min
    Life as a Distinguished Engineer | Joakim Recht (Uber)

    Life as a Distinguished Engineer | Joakim Recht (Uber)

    Out of thousands of engineers at Uber, there’s only a handful of Distinguished Engineers and Joakim was one of them. In this conversation we chat about
    Why software engineering is a lot like a sausage factory.
    Considerations for leaving big tech for a startup.
    “How to beat the promo commitee”.
    How can one effectively shape engineering culture?
    “Mentoring two people on the same team is a waste”.
    Much More.
    Subscribe now
    Segments: [0:01:52] The “reverse sausage” architecture
    [0:07:36] How to get people on board with the new deployment system?
    [0:13:55] What does it mean to be a distinguished engineer?
    [0:17:47] Under-appreciated soft skills?
    [0:21:28] How to improve technical writing
    [0:24:16] Do all senior engineers need to write and review code every day?
    [0:30:19] How to search out where to contribute when your time is so constrained?
    [0:43:10] How to maximize your impact as a mentor
    [0:48:52] “How to beat the promo committee”
    [0:52:56] Effective means to influence engineering culture?
    [0:57:09] Capping the company at 150 employees
    [1:03:33] Why join a startup instead of moving to another big tech company?
    [1:11:14] What Joakim is working on now at Beyond Work
     
    Show Notes: Joakim on leaving Uber to start Beyond Work: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/why-i-left-uber-start-beyond-work-joakim-recht-o63of?trk=public_post_feed-article-content
    Read Joakim’s other excellent posts here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/recht/recent-activity/all/
     
    Stay in touch: 👋 Make Ronak’s day by leaving us a review and let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com

    • 1 hr 15 min

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Stories that you'll undoubtedly find interesting

This podcast, which I find intriguing, focuses on learning the stories behind each success rather than just talking about what you can do in the future like other podcasts do.

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