Years ago I was recruiting a replacement for myself in a leadership position, and I interviewed a Canadian man. I remember being impressed with the candidate’s thoughtfulness and people skills. After a while I asked him, “what is something you’ve learned from leadership?”
I wrote yesterday about Vitess, a scale-out sharding solution for MySQL. Another similar product is Citus, which is a scale-out sharding solution for PostgreSQL. Similar to Vitess, Citus is successfully being used to solve problems of scale and performance that have previously required a lot of custom-built middleware.
Vitess is a sharding and scaling solution for MySQL that can make thousands of databases appear to be a single monolithic database. Vitess is interesting, and promising, in a number of ways. It’s addressing an extremely hard set of problems that’s been tried many times before with mixed results, but evidence points to Vitess succeeding where others have thus far failed.
A dear friend of mine introduced me to the Cult of Done Manifesto a few years back, perhaps in 2014 or so. I was so taken by its clarity that I ordered a poster of it and had it mounted on foam board. I’ve had it on my wall ever since, next to the desk where I work.
This article is written as food for thought for men. I’ve witnessed much debate in the last few years about whether “you guys” is gender-neutral. It’s no surprise that many men think it is, the dictionary agrees, and more women say it’s not. All this is natural given our culture, and I’d be surprised if it weren’t this way. But my observation is that it’s needlessly hurtful. We can do better, we should, and many of us do.
In previous articles I wrote about apologies and forgiveness. Making amends is a natural follow-on topic. Working to amend harm is different from apologizing or asking for forgiveness. You can make amends for hurting someone without doing either.
Continuing yesterday’s thoughts on apologies, my understanding of forgiveness has changed over time too. Someone once asked me what it meant to forgive someone, and suddenly a clear answer leapt into my mind. I don’t know that it really represents the fullness of understanding, but hopefully it’s food for thought.
I used to think I didn’t need to apologize if I hurt someone through an accident, not meaning to cause them any harm. But then I realized an apology should be for what I did, not what I intended to do. This follows directly from the nature and meaning of an apology.
I used to work at places where vacation was limited and tracked carefully, and it caused problems. Then I started a company and decided to offer unlimited vacation and other paid time off. Sounds good in theory, right? But that caused other problems. At this point I’m half-persuaded that enforced vacation might be superior.
Why is it hard to apply DevOps principles and practices to databases, and how can we get better at it? This talk explores real-life stories that answer these two questions, through the perspectives of teams that have changed the entrenched culture, processes, and tooling—and those who’ve tried.
Continuing the recent theme of lightweight markup languages, I thought I’d write about a few Markdown editors I’ve used or tried. So many editing programs now support Markdown that it’s not simply a matter of choosing the best editor, but the one that’s best for the task, and/or the one you prefer. I’ll cover a few popular choices in each of several categories. For a more extensive list, refer to my previous Markdown article.
I wrote yesterday about Markdown, a lightweight document markup language that I use heavily. Today I want to analyze what some of the best lightweight markup languages have in common, and when it makes sense to use a more heavyweight language instead.
Markdown has steadily become the dominant way I compose most text documents, which is saying a lot. Its convenience, simplicity, expressiveness, and increasing ubiquity make it a compelling choice for all but a small fraction of the written material I produce. What is Markdown, and what makes it so great? And could/should you use it yourself?
Last year I listened to a podcast called Seeing White. It helped me see myself and my society in a new way. I’d say it’s one of the top five most significant changes in my world view and self concept.
I was driving home from a board meeting the other day catching up on podcasts. I have a short commute, so I always get way behind on podcasts and only catch up when I have to travel afar. I was listening to one hosted by someone I know, and I suddenly realized that when we’re together I’m different. (This isn’t going where it might sound like it is.)
I haven’t “written code” at work in any significant way for years, and this doesn’t look likely to change. It’s a good thing: I believe in full-lifecycle product ownership. If I can’t design it, test it, deploy it, troubleshoot it, and carry the pager for it, I shouldn’t be coding it. But like anyone else in this position, I feel the loss of deep technical work keenly. What to do?
Today a man told me about a wedding he attended. All the kids got up and danced badly, and had tremendous fun doing it. But he stayed seated, because he was a trained dancer who’d been highly rewarded for his advanced skill, and he was unwilling to dance badly. And he was miserable.
A conversation today reminded me of my childhood confusion about what love is. I was nearly 25 before I was exposed to the concept that love is not only a feeling, but an action. Just off the top of my head, I can think of many ways we use the word love in American English: as a feeling, an action, something you’re in, something you have, an expression of approval—and probably more. So my confusion was understandable, I guess, but I still remember how surprised I was.
I’ve become uneasy with a stereotype about one of the roles I play in life, as a company founder. It’s the stereotype of the “hustling,” driven founder or CEO who’s always on the go, worshipping productivity for its own sake, and “successful” because of their extraordinary focus and resolve. A lot of these folks, particularly in technology and especially in Silicon Valley, promote these stories about their superhuman achievements, and may even seriously strive to live the stories.
