Software Misadventures Ronak Nathani, Guang Yang

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

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

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

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

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

We’re super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald’s after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infrastructure with the core developers, to meeting Satya Nadella for an interview.
In part two of this conversation, we dive deep into Kelsey’s experiences learning in public and writing “Kubernetes: Up and Running”:
The biggest barrier to getting started with learning in public and a step-by-step guide to overcome it
Cautionary tale of the “JavaScript sucks” guy
Developing the skill of crafting good analogies
The business and economics of writing a book
Much more
 
Segments: [0:01:12] Writing and learning in public.
[0:10:58] Writing "Kubernetes: Up and Running."
[0:16:05] The business and economics of writing a book.
[0:21:27] Why your first book should not exceed 100 pages.
[0:23:36] What prevented Kelsey from giving up on the book.
[0:26:15] Being intentional about building an audience and the cautionary tale of the "JavaScript sucks" guy.
[0:36:44] Authenticity does not guarantee success.
[0:39:09] Developing the skill of crafting effective analogies.
[0:47:47] Advice for engineers to leverage their technical skills outside of the nine-to-five.
 
Show Notes: Kelsey on twitter: https://twitter.com/kelseyhightower
Our previous conversation with Kelsey about retiring as Distinguished Engineer from Google at 42: https://softwaremisadventures.com/p/kelsey-hightower-on-retiring-as-distinguished-057
 
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