It’s hard to believe it’s been six and a half years. In late 2008 my startup had just collapsed, my wife and I were expecting our first child, we’d just bought a house… Oh yeah, and the world economy was shattering into fist-sized pieces of molten pain. Good thing I’d already burned through my savings […]
I came to IM late. As a GenX-er, it wasn’t one of the communication tools I’d grown up with, and for whatever reason, it hadn’t caught on at the various companies I’d been at before my startup. So when a girlfriend suggested I get online so that we could chat during the day, I didn’t […]
The swamp is vast, dark, and deep, and passage will cost you dearly. Small bands of travelers with even the most rudimentary instincts for survival will do anything to avoid entry. They recognize it for what it is, redefine their destinations under the shadow of this impenetrable barrier, and either simplify their goals, or turn away toward other ends. Armies […]
One of the things about being in operations is that it introduces you to a whole host of concerns, features, and disciplines that you’d otherwise take completely for granted. In the same way that you rarely think about the work that goes into maintaining the sidewalk outside your house, or the massive international infrastructure devoted […]
“What’s your management style?” It seemed like an innocent enough question. After all, I’ve been managing teams of engineers on and off for fifteen years, and have spent the last two and a half years organizing my thoughts on the subject. Easy. “Well, you know, I’m, uh… Hmm.” Yes, that sound you just heard was all […]
One of your key team members just quit. A top performer, she’d slotted into the team as though she’d always been there, and quickly become your go-to person for several key initiatives. Now you’re wracking your brain, trying to figure out what just happened. Things were going so well, why is she leaving? Was it […]
I’ve been working in DevOps for just about exactly one year now. Different companies call their teams different things, but at TripAdvisor we divide Operations into the following buckets: TechOps: Live site hardware. This includes managing the data centers, racking and kickstarting servers, setting up firewalls, routers, load-balancers, networking, DNS, bandwidth, certs, and so on. SiteOps: […]
For the last six and a half years, I’ve worked in a “speed wins” culture of quick iterations, speed of execution, done is better than perfect. A culture that believes that the faster you go, the more you can iterate, the closer you can curve-fit to the user’s needs. Of course, it doesn’t always work […]
Culture can be top down, or bottom up. The big commandments come from on high (“Speed wins!” “Done is better than perfect!” “Don’t be evil!” “Worse is better!”), and everyone scurries to figure out what they mean and how to make them happen. Eventually, a company will settle into a rhythm (hopefully sounding more like […]
Not much time for a full report this month, so just a quickie before turning in. Bottom line is that while the sheer tonnage of snow dumped on Boston has been a pain in the ass, shoveling snow is really good aerobic exercise. And, I must say, a Roku streaming stick + Amazon Prime has made […]
Dan Dreams of Coding 