Viewing profile — bigmutant

Pretty common attitude from folks who have never worked in one of the BigTech companies where Java rules (Amazon being a prime example). Since they never encounter Java in the "SF-…

DynamoDB is used *everywhere* in AMZN Retail, this is absolutely not surprising. Plus the vast majority of internal Services are using EC2 in the form of Apollo/ECS. So OP probably…

To clarify, most of CDO (Consumer Devices Other) does run on AWS in the sense that NAWS is the target state, MAWS is legacy and actively (slowly) being migrated off of. CDO (includ…

Sure, I did the same, BS/MS with a focus on Compilers/Programming Languages. It's been personally gratifying to understand programming "end-to-end" and to solve some tricky problem…

Def agree. Most people will never touch an Abstract Syntax Tree or even Expression Trees. Almost everyone working in back-end will use Cloud Services, will make mistakes based on a…

The fundamental problems are communication lag and lack of information about why issues occur (encapsulated by the Byzantine Generals problem). I like to imagine trying to build a …

Good resources for understanding Distributed Systems: - MIT course with Robert Morris (of Morris Worm fame): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQP8WApzIQQ&list=PLrw6a1wE39... - Marti…

As others have said, this is a solved problem in a lot of companies. Basic answers are: 1. Queuing 2. Asynchronous APIs (don't wait for the 'real' response, just submit the transac…

Absolutely not true in my experience. MySQL has its share of issues (all DBs do) but it is rock-solid when using the correct engine (InnoDB for most cases, RocksDB for high-through…

That all depends on the setup. The "standard" setup (not specific to MySQL) is: - Single Write Leader per partition - Backup Write Leader that is setup with synchronous replication…

Agree, Data Quality in-the-wild is a huge concern. I've led efforts to establish Lineage/Quality in large orgs and doing this after-the-fact is a massive undertaking. Having this "…

Never really understood the folks pushing for RPC-over-HTTP. RPC is for systems that are close together (ie intra-DC). These simple rules work well: 1. JSON-over-HTTP for over the …

Northrop Grumman had a lot of folks from Crenshaw/Hawthorne/Carson when I was there, due to a partnership program with the local Cal State (Long Beach). All of the security staff w…

The Tech-Priests of Mars are calling

Sort of. The main issue is that AMZ/AWS doesn't differentiate (by title) between someone recently promoted to L6 (generally ~8-10 YOE) and someone deep in to L6 (~12-15 YOE). Other…

Before you accept any offer from FANG/MANG/hot startup, *make sure* you understand the on-call expectations. Example: at Amazon, *even data scientists* do on-call. Practically all …

FAANGs/large companies in general have a ton of accidental complexity. A lot of the work devolves into "make this work in our complicated environment". Its just more pronounced at …

Amazon's vest structure is 5/15/40/40. Every vest after the first two years is bi-yearly ie every six months (including additional grants). Amazon makes up the difference with cash…