aw, christine dug up this old hn comment on the scuba whitepaper. <3 yep, scuba was exactly this transformative for us at parse, and that experience led straight to us starting honeycomb.
fun historical note: scuba was actually hacked together in order to claw their way out of mysql hell. that's where it got so many of its unique qualities -- arbitrarily wide events, high cardinality dimensions, etc. all the shit you gotta have for debugging db queries.
it was only after that they were like ... hey, this kinda works for other stuff too huh... 🤜🤛
it's so fascinating to me how out of left field that origin story is. explains why it shares so little DNA with the rest of the monitoring ecosystem, doesn't it?
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Well, I for one am not past this bullshit by now. ☺️ EMs who do some hands on engineering are better EMs.
Forbidding EMs from touching code at all is almost as silly and counterproductive as telling EMs that writing and shipping code is a core function of their role.
I say "almost" because if I had to choose one or the other, I would choose the clarity of "EMs responsible for team outcomes, SWEs responsible for technical outcomes" over the muddle of holding EMs responsible for everything and splitting their focus between people and code.
But I don't have to choose! EMs who keep a hand in the code are better EMs. They have more empathy and understanding for their team. They are better equipped to evaluate their engineers, they have more credibility and context. Everyone wins.
I have a new piece up. It's a bit of a rant, even for me, so buckle in.
A lot of "thought leaders" have been making their mortgages lately off of bits on how AI is going to replace software engineers, particularly entry-level engineers.
This is a dumb idea. It bespeaks a wealth of misunderstanding about what it means to be an engineer and write code, and what is valuable and hard about software systems.
But even really dumb, damaging ideas can weasel into people's heads if you repeat them blindly enough times.
Generative AI has made it easier than ever to generate lots of code. @kentquirk says it's "like a junior engineer who types really fast". 🤣
But writing code has always been the easiest part of software engineering -- *always*. And it's getting easier by the day.
It felt, to me, like those participating were stepping very cautiously around a few of the third rails Jaana just tripped over. (💜)
"Work-life balance"
"Working hard vs working smart"
"Meritocracy"
The intersection of company tech cultures and expectations and performance.
These are hard, complicated topics, and there are some very good reasons for speaking carefully. People can pick up a sentence and run in the wrong direction with it, and do a lot of damage.
I have abandoned god only knows how many drafts on this topic, for that reason.
The question is, how can you interview and screen for engineers who care about the business and want to help build it, engineers who respect sales, marketing and other functions as their peers and equals?
It's a great question!! I have ideas, but would love to hear from others.
I said "question", but there are actually two: 1) how to hire engineers who are motivated by solving business problems and 2) aren't engineering supremacists.