Charity Majors Profile picture
Jul 24, 2020 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
just discovered the honeycomb pollinators #chART group. omg, how did i not know about this? this one is "we sent a bunch of emails from 4am-5am, the resulting load on the system" 😍📈 Image
and "oh hey, one of our queries was doing a full table scan instead of using an index because we were filtering based on UPPER(id) and indexing on id" Image
this one isn't so much art but it cracked me up. "load tests vs production: An Enterprise Customer Story" Image
Memory Usage: A Love Story Image
"Ask Your Doctor If An Index Might Be Right For You" Image
there's a whole series here entitled "Spot The Configuration Change"... i'm cracking up Image
"Spot the Configuration Change", postgres edition Image

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More from @mipsytipsy

Sep 2
I woke up this am, scanned Twitter from bed, and spent an hour debating whether I could stomach the energy to respond to the latest breathless fatwa from Paul Graham.

I fell asleep again before deciding; just as well, because @clairevo said it all more nicely than I would have.
(Is that all I have to say? No, dammit, I guess it is not.)

This is so everything about PG in a nutshell, and why I find him so heartbreakingly frustrating.

The guy is brilliant, and a genius communicator. He's seen more and done more than I ever will, times a thousand.
And he is so, so, so consistently blinkered in certain predictable ways. As a former fundamentalist, my reference point for this sort of conduct is mostly religious.

And YC has always struck me less like an investment vehicle, much more like a cult dedicated to founder worship.
Read 30 tweets
Aug 30
I would soften this a bit. Managers are *not* the only ones who can transform the culture of an org, but their buy-in and support are fundamental.

Good managers are channelers. They use their power to filter, amplify and leverage voices around the org to shape company culture.
Important context: that post was quote tweeting this one.

Because I have also seen designers come in saying lovely things about transformation and user centricity, and end up wasting unthinkable quantities of organizational energy and time.

If you're a manager, and you have a boot camp grad designer who comes in the door wanting to transform your org, and you let them, you are committing professional malpractice.

The way you earn the right to transform is by executing consistently, and transforming incrementally.
Read 5 tweets
Aug 28
Another way of looking at this is: if the real product of any software engineering team is shared understanding,

if the speed of sense-making is a core limiting factor on the speed of delivery,

then strong, futureproof engineering teams are 🌸continuous learning machines🌸
(by "futureproof" I mean "true 5y from now whether AI is writing 0% or 100% our lines of code)

And you know what's a great continuous e2e test of your team's prowess at learning and sensemaking?

1, regularly injecting fresh junior talent
2, composing teams of a range of levels
"Is it safe to ask questions" is a low fucking bar. Better: is it normal to ask questions, is it an expected contribution from every person at every level? Does everyone get a chance to explain and talk through their work?

Are great questioners celebrated? Rewarded?
Read 8 tweets
Aug 21
The advance of LLMs and other AI tools is a rare opportunity to radically upend the way we talk and think about software development, and change our industry for the better.

The way we have traditionally talked about software centers on writing code, solving technical problems.
LLMs challenge this -- in a way that can feel scary and disorienting. If the robots are coming for our life's work, what crumbs will be left for you and me?

But I would argue that this has always been a misrepresentation of the work, one which confuses the trees for the forest.
Something I have been noodling on is, how to describe software development in a way that is both a) true today, and b) relatively futureproof, meaning still true 5 years from now if the optimists have won and most code is no longer written by humans.

I have two propositions.
Read 24 tweets
Aug 19
A couple days back I went on a whole rant about lazy billionaires punching down and blaming wfh/"work life balance" for Google's long slide of loss dominance.

I actually want to take this up from the other side, and defend some of the much hated, much-maligned RTO initiatives.
I'm purposely not quote tweeting anyone or any company. This is not about any one example, it's a synthesis of conversations I have had with techies and seen on Twitter.

There seems to be a sweeping consensus amongst engineers that RTO is unjust, unwarranted and cruel. Period.
And like, I would never argue that RTO is being implemented well across the board. It's hard not to feel cynical when:

* you are being told to RTO despite your team not being there
* you are subject to arbitrary badge checks
* reasonable accommodations are not being made
Read 17 tweets
Aug 17
I don't usually weigh in on remote work vs colocated office work, but I caught that quote from Eric Schmidt this week and I'm still mad about it. 👇

Of all the things to blame Google's missed swings and eroding dominance on, you pick *this* thing? Working from home? REALLY.
Image
What about oh, I don't know:

* a calcified, risk averse culture
* an addiction to fat, monopolistic margins on advertising revenues -- the fossil fuels of internet monetization
* a system that rewarded dilettante engineering over value creation or maintenance (HI READER)
Once, just once, I'd love to hear a billionaire admit that monopolies aren't healthy for anyone, even the monopoly holder.

Remember how bloated and sluggish MA Bell got before it got broken up in the mid 80s? Monopoly profits are death to innovation.
Read 14 tweets

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