Estimates help but are hard. “the majority of software work is not like this. We work on poorly-understood systems and cannot predict exactly what must be done in advance. Most programming in large systems is research: identifying prior art, mapping… Read More »How I estimate work as a staff software engineer
New Rome is in trouble. “Empires do not end because they want to. They end because the numbers leave no alternative.” https://nitishastra.substack.com/p/how-debt-bankrupted-the-british-empire
States are something different. “States tend to have a relatively rigidly defined territory, whereas non-state societies do not. States tend to have more complex social stratification with both a greater degree of labor specialization and a greater degree of social… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part II: Government Without States
The basics, also for managers. “Dashboards provide numbers, but numbers alone do not explain the system. Averages, CPU, and throughput plots are misleading if you do not know the math behind them. At One2N, our SRE practice has seen this… Read More »SRE math every engineer should know: a practical guide
I like having a beer with one particular friend every month. We talk about life and I am free to talk aloud and think as I go. Every time I figure something new about myself or my situation and am… Read More »Talking With Friends
How people get food dictates structure of a society in a major way. “one of the best ways to start thinking about any historical society is to begin with the subsistence foundation it is built on, because how people get… Read More »Collections: How to Raise a Tribal Army in Pre-Roman Europe, Part I: Aristocrats, Retainers and Clients
Slow mo is cool not only on screen.
Accountability in tech industry is almost nonexistent. “Three years and $70 billion later, the metaverse is dead, and everybody acts as if it didn’t happen. Whoops! In a sane society, investors, analysts and the media would never trust a single… Read More »This Is Worse Than The Dot Com Bubble
This is the closest thing you can see in modern times to ancient battle formation and warfare. Also, who wins is not the one who kills the most but the one that breaks morale of the other side. That is… Read More »Riot Policing and Ancient War
Most stuff that seems wrong is the way it is for a reason. “Large software companies have real problems. Some are structural. Some are cultural. Many are self-inflicted. But many of the behaviors people complain about are not pathologies –… Read More »Common misunderstandings about large software companies