Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
Software engineering, distributed systems, databases, and the teams that build them
I sometimes read commentary about large software companies and notice a recurring pattern. People correctly identify real characteristics of large organizations, criticize them, but show little appreciation for why those characteristics exist in the first place.
I work as an Engineering Manager at Google, and my teams practice a simple habit – we book all meetings to start at five minutes past the hour (or half hour).
My teams recently delivered support for the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) into Google Cloud Observability. This marks a significant step toward open, vendor-neutral observability. By adopting OTLP, customers gain interoperability across tools, simpler data pipelines, and a future-proof path as the…
I was recently interviewed by Noah Brier for his BRXND Tokens & Tactics AI newsletter. Noah and I used to work together a few years ago at Percolate so it was good to connect again. You can check out the…
We built the old software systems by hand. Line by line. Module by module. That era is ending. Something profound is happening. For the first time in the history of software, we are not the only entities capable of understanding…
Getting ready to speak at a technical conference can be as nerve-wracking as it is exciting, especially if it’s your first time. Having had the opportunity to present at notable events like AWS re:Invent, Monitorama, DevOps Days, and GopherCon, I’ve…
Star Trek has inspired huge numbers of people to become scientists, engineers, and programmers. I’m one of them. It often inspired me to work hard, build quality systems, and never give up when looking for the root cause of a…
I’ve mentored, coached, managed, and reviewed many software developers throughout the years. There are many different areas one can discuss, but my most importance advice for engineers early in their career has never changed.
Sometime ago I was asked where to begin to learn data engineering. It was a broad question, and it took some to understand what exactly I was being asked.
I’m not old enough to remember Jimmy Carter in office, but I did see him speak once in 2013. With a B.Sc., and some training in nuclear power, his background was always somewhat interesting to me — particularly how someone with a…
After almost 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area, I am moving to Pittsburgh, PA, to accept a management role with Google. I am very much looking forward to working at a world-class software company. It was a great…
I’ve been programming for many years, and have spent most of the last few years managing development teams. I’ve written plenty of closed source software, and for a time made my living writing open source software too. One thing stands…
Last night Percolate hosted the San Francisco ReactJS Meetup. I acted as host, and we had great speakers and presentations.
Slack: Where work happens Something is happening at companies that use Slack. Slack, the company, may claim it’s work, but it’s less and less productive work, and it’s having a destructive affect upon my own field of software development. I…
The new Analytics system, built by my team at Percolate, allows our end-users to program their own custom calculations, offering them the ability to precisely customize the product for their needs. At the center of that feature is a Pratt…
Today sees the launch of Analytics 2.0 on the Percolate platform. After 12 months of hard work by my team, I am very proud of the new platform. 1 year ago the San Francisco team was tasked with rebuilding the Analytics…
It’s 2017, and that means I’ve been in various engineering management and technical lead roles for about 6 years. That’s long enough to learn something about management, but short enough to remember clearly all the mistakes I made early on.
I was recently asked by some colleagues about my favourite books on programming. And not just books on coding, but on improving their understanding of successful teams.
Last night Percolate hosted the San Francisco Elasticsearch Meetup. I acted as host, and it was a great night, with excellent speakers and presentations.
I gave a presentation on Ekanite — the syslog server with built-in search — tonight at the San Francisco Go Meetup. It was an enjoyable evening, and I had a chance to discuss why I built Ekanite, how it works, and…
I’m a conviction engineer. To me it’s the only way to be an effective engineer, software developer, and technical leader. You’ve simply got to truly believe in the value of what you do, and you’ve got to believe in doing…
I made a presentation on rqlite tonight at the San Francisco Go Meetup. It was an enjoyable evening, and I had a chance to discuss why I built rqlite, how it works, and where it might go in the future.
“Bad money drives out good.” When is the last time you spoke with your fellow developer? I mean actually spoke? Or was it just over Slack? I like really Slack, Flowdock, Hipchat and the like. I couldn’t do my job…
While running services is hard, it’s also fun. It confronts you with a whole set of engineering challenges because you’re building — and running — large scale systems. So after 18 great months working on the InfluxDB source, I’m returning to Services and have…
I recently presented at the InfluxDB San Francisco Meetup, on InfluxDB and the Raft consensus protocol. My talk was about the fundamental problems of distributed systems, and how InfluxDB uses Raft to solve these issues.