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You can't git clone a team

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Re: You can't git clone a team

#21

Post by theamk »

tra3 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I can't tell whether this is a promotional piece for something.. That said, I do agree with the premise of the article that it's hard to learn "the stack", especially with the advent of generative AI. "Back in the day", when google spat out a link to something resembling your problem, you still had to deconstruct the answer given to apply it to your particular case. That required some…

It is a promotional piece - for Xen-based stack (the most popular hypervisor decades ago). That author laments that few people are interested in bare-metal hypervisors, like Xen.

But hypervisors did not disappear, they just got replaced. When we run virtual machines, they are usually backed by KVM (low-level) and qemu (higher layer). Sometimes there is libvirt on top of it too, but running qemu directly is not that hard.

And there is plenty of exciting research about this stack, for example KVM can be driven by things like firecracker and crosvm, and there are some rust projects targeting it too. There is also BSD's bhyve which

My impression is that it's not that people find hypervisors in general are boring, but just Xen specifically (or maybe all classic Type-1 ones? hard to tell with Xen being the only open-source representative).

Re: You can't git clone a team

#23

Post by frainfreeze »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

I found it is best to keep quiet, not even have a (directly attached to your name) blog with such varried content, and instead just send appropriate version of your CV when needed. When it comes to interviews I found it helps that I'm in my office/lab space, able to pick up the cam and show the person on call contents of my shelves and present few details about them on the office whiteboard. But even then they of course doubt you.

Tldr raise your price and they'll belive easier.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#24

Post by ziddoap »

frainfreeze wrote: post #23
thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

I found it is best to keep quiet, not even have a (directly attached to your name) blog with such varried content, and instead just send appropriate version of your CV when needed. When it comes to interviews I found it helps that I'm in my office/lab space, able to pick up the cam and show the person on call contents of my shelves and present few details about them on the office whiteboard. But even then they of cou…

The question was "what is the best way to market yourself?" and your recommendation is to keep quiet and do less marketing.

If that has worked for you, that's amazing! But it seems really counter-intuitive to me.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#25

Post by dgfitz »

theamk wrote: post #21
tra3 wrote: post #3

Maybe I'm being too cynical, but I can't tell whether this is a promotional piece for something.. That said, I do agree with the premise of the article that it's hard to learn "the stack", especially with the advent of generative AI. "Back in the day", when google spat out a link to something resembling your problem, you still had to deconstruct the answer given to apply it to your particular case. That required some…

It is a promotional piece - for Xen-based stack (the most popular hypervisor decades ago). That author laments that few people are interested in bare-metal hypervisors, like Xen. But hypervisors did not disappear, they just got replaced. When we run virtual machines, they are usually backed by KVM (low-level) and qemu (higher layer). Sometimes there is libvirt on top of it too, but running qemu directly is not that h…

It made me smirk a little, I've been doing almost exactly this line of work at $dayjob for the past few weeks/months, trying to prove out a concept as a solution to solve a problem. Actually really enjoyed the work, it has been a neat problem to solve.

Sadly, the program I was supporting just had all of its funding yanked, I expect to get laid off tomorrow.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#26

Post by jandrewrogers »

polishdude20 wrote: post #2

I think the issue started way before AI when it comes to not having enough fresh blood for this industry. Companies have decided they don't want to train juniors. They want seniors who already have the skills.

I think it is important to acknowledge that it takes much longer to train juniors in systems software today than a couple decades ago because the nature of the problems have changed. It now takes several years to get someone to an acceptable level for a lot of systems software work. In many cases that’s longer than the entire development cycle — a junior would never really be productive on the project. And yes, this is creating a vicious feedback loop where we are no longer producing many new people with these skills despite a lot of demand.

The minimum level of sophistication required to be effective in systems software has increased dramatically since the 1990s, when I first started doing systems software. The kinds of systems software we were putting in production in back then would be considered a trivial toy today. This shift has placed an enormous amount of upward pressure on the minimum level of experience and skill that would allow someone to become productive within a useful amount of time.

It is no longer feasible in many cases to have companies effectively subsidize the development of highly skilled systems software people. The training time has become so long that companies will never recoup the investment. It is easy to see how the incentives have created the current situation and it is not clear how to address the shortage. Even before the current situation, it was widely noted that most systems software developers were self-taught over many years rather than trained up in a structured environment.

Re: You can't git clone a team

#27

Post by adammarples »

thenewwazoo wrote: post #19

As an aside, TFA says: We’re talking about skills that span kernel-level programming, hardware quirks, low-level debugging, distributed systems, security, orchestration logic, even the capability to work with the UI/UX team... and the ability to explain all that without scaring interns. You can’t just hire for that. You have to grow it. Nurture it. Beg for it. Or in some cases, resurrect it. If you are that person, w…

Say the things you just said, but in the interview

Re: You can't git clone a team

#28

Post by jandrewrogers »

somanyphotons wrote: post #4
polishdude20 wrote: post #2

I think the issue started way before AI when it comes to not having enough fresh blood for this industry. Companies have decided they don't want to train juniors. They want seniors who already have the skills.

This just means the market is saturated. When there aren't enough people they'll accept less experience

This doesn’t follow. Below some level of skill and experience they can contribute negative value to the project. Companies need a minimum level of experience just to make the role pay for itself.

Does the high skill standard for surgeons mean the market for surgeons is saturated?

Re: You can't git clone a team

#29

Post by koala_man »

The article starts off saying that if you want people with real full stack experience, from kernel to UX, you need to grow it.

It goes on to say that it's hard to find and develop expertise for low level software like hypervisors.

What's the connection between the topics? It feels like two different rants.

If it's difficult to find kernel developers then wouldn't it help to not require them to also know web UX?

Re: You can't git clone a team

#30

Post by ajsnigrutin »

koala_man wrote: post #29

The article starts off saying that if you want people with real full stack experience, from kernel to UX, you need to grow it. It goes on to say that it's hard to find and develop expertise for low level software like hypervisors. What's the connection between the topics? It feels like two different rants. If it's difficult to find kernel developers then wouldn't it help to not require them to also know web UX?

> If it's difficult to find kernel developers then wouldn't it help to not require them to also know web UX?

That means hiring two people, and in $current_year, companies expect one person to know everything. Sysadmin, backend programmer, frontend programmer, designer and a DBA used to be different people not that long ago, now they expect one person to do all that... + it seems they want kernel development experience now.

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