norootcause

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

Reading this @nat newsletter, and it reminded me that one of the things that bummed me out the most when I was at Netflix was when they introduced levels: https://www.simplermachines.com/bookmarked-links/?ref=simpler-machines-newsletter

norootcause, 10 months ago to random

Were open office plans always explicitly about cost savings or did the people that embraced it actually believe it would lead to better outcomes than people having their own offices?

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

New blog post: https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2024/03/26/the-problem-with-invariants-is-that-they-change-over-time/

norootcause, 4 months ago to random

I'm reading Lamport's new book "A Science of Concurrent Programs" and am amused that sometimes he refers to algorithms as being "invented" (e.g., Paxos) and at other times refers to them as being "discovered" (e.g. an N-process mutual exclusion algorithm).

https://lamport.azurewebsites.net/tla/science.pdf

norootcause, 1 month ago to random

Ummm... I think (9) contradicts (1) in this list. https://sre.google/resources/practices-and-processes/twenty-years-of-sre-lessons-learned/

norootcause, 3 months ago to random

Two of the biggest sources of incidents I’ve seen are:

1. Legacy code
2. Migrating away from legacy code

The conclusion is clear: you should only write non-legacy code

norootcause, 10 months ago to random

Why do we call it the command-line and not the request-line?

norootcause, 1 month ago to random

I enjoy seeing the Slack workaround of people changing their handle to indicate when they are OOO. Even though Slack has first-class support for indicating status, people still find the handle rename a useful way to transmit this info.

norootcause, 1 day ago to random

I don’t get the anti-VAX mentality. VMS wasn’t that bad!

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

Proposed org metric: reflection ratio:
(time spent on reflection) / (time spent on planning)

norootcause, 1 year ago to random

Can you walk amok?

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

Do any databases out there offer first-class support for soft deletes?

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

My absolutely hottest take: only the first word in a title or heading should be capitalized.

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

New blog post: https://surfingcomplexity.blog/2024/03/16/when-theres-no-gemba-to-go-to/

norootcause, 5 months ago to random

We are forever riding the edge of going out of control.

norootcause, 1 month ago to random

Wait, Redis is pronounced “reed-is”? I’ve been saying “red-is” the whole time!

norootcause, 3 months ago to random

In hindsight, foresight is pretty tough to pull off: https://jabberwocking.com/investors-have-no-idea-what-theyre-doing/

norootcause, 10 months ago to random

If you don’t understand how the system works, your interventions are unlikely to lead to your desired results.

norootcause, 1 month ago to random

Sometimes I think we could use some further ado.

norootcause, 4 months ago to random

Root cause: Not knowing a vital piece of information, and not knowing that you didn’t know it, and not knowing that you didn’t know that you didn’t know it, and …

norootcause, 11 months ago to random

> If I told you that US venture capitalists promoted a Ponzi scheme that used a cartoon computer game to steal hundreds of millions of dollars from poor workers in the Philippines and send it to North Korea to fund a ballistic missile program, you probably wouldn’t believe me. Unless I said “… using crypto,” in which case you would probably say “oh yeah that sounds about right.”

I wish I could write like Matt Levine.

norootcause, 4 months ago to random

"No procedures, however well written, can substitute for technical knowledge." – nuclear plant supervisor quoted by Larry Hirschhorn in "Hierarchy versus bureaucracy: the case of a nuclear reactor".

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

Hey-you-should-take-a-look-at-this-as-a-service

norootcause, 4 months ago to random

I have a sneaking suspicion that no human has actually ever used the “popcorn” feature on a microwave.

norootcause, 2 months ago to random

Good luck dealing with systems that encounter sensor errors!