Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

explorer.oxide.computer

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 224 posts

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#141

Post by esseph »

NewsaHackO wrote: post #115
dijit wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hundreds of good applicants can’t be whittled down to a dozen without being very picky about things in the resume which may just be a poor representation. You will bias heavily along some kind of axis, preferred previous employers or location, age, etc. You add a lot of bias into the system by trying to further scrutinise otherwise meaningfully qualified people on paper.

Yes, people don’t realize that’s why a lot of desirable jobs/grad schools become filled with people from top universities and previous employment. Pedigree is probably the lowest hanging fruit when it comes to shaving off a good chuck of applicants to a level that at least you know would be adequate.

Reading this makes me want to throw up.

Do not mix up opportunity and capability.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#142

Post by esseph »

wmf wrote: post #103
andrewl-hn wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish I could edit my post. Somehow everyone wrote to me about baldes. These are not the same, though. Blade servers were mounded into units of 4u, 8u, etc, they occupied a portion of the overall cabinet and still had to do "plumbing" for power and networking behind the chassis to the rest of the cabinet or to the rest of the datacenter. A full-cabinet blade rig would have multiple 8u blade units and some off the sh…

Speaking of the army, it's not clear that the extremely narrow feature set of Oxide justifies the engineering effort required. The storage market used to be dominated by Oxide-style vertical integration and bespoke engineering and almost every vendor has transitioned to modularity over the last 20 years. Pure Storage seems to be doing OK with custom hardware though, so maybe the rest of the industry just has a lack o…

> it's not clear that the extremely narrow feature set of Oxide justifies the engineering effort required.

Their customers think so.

(Think governments, security-serious applications, critical workloads, science, energy, financial, etc.)

Some if it may even get sent to labs first for disassembly and inspection. Other times it may never ever be plugged in to an internet connection.

For these customers, the feature set, supply chain ownership, integration and support is everything.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#143

Post by esseph »

XorNot wrote: post #86
baby_souffle wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Somehow hardware giants like Dell, HP, SuperMicro, etc didn't make a product like this, Dell and HP both have "blades" that plugged into a blade-chassis. The chassis had all the lights out mgmt as well as power/networking integrated so the blade was basically a metal box with compute/memory/storage and it just slid in to the dock. I am sure that supermico had something like this as well

Blades basically died out is the thing - AFAIK no one really wanted them and honestly the same is a risk for what Oxide is doing too. Blades have the basic issue of "how often do you want an unpopulated chassis?" - answer, never. So really they're solving for replacing a failed piece of hardware. But how often do you need to do that, what's it worth to you? If it makes sense then the statistical window where it does…

> Blades basically died out is the thing - AFAIK no one really wanted them and honestly the same is a risk for what Oxide is doing too.

To me, from someone that has worked for orgs that either would have been or are customers of Oxide - You need to be thinking more about the complete package. You are thinking about a tiny piece.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#144

Post by polack »

thraway3837 wrote: post #138
polack wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brian, you need to step off your high horse. Few people can go around saying that they are the best, and you’re not one of them. It was also embarrassing to listen to the podcast episode where you humiliated that Eastern European guy you had invited. All very off putting and it really tarnish the brand.

Holy crap. This just keeps getting worse. Link to podcast? See if you can find a mirror if possible, these guys may actually try to scrub this off the internet once their company realizes they have a lose cannon in their senior team.

It was not THAT bad, but it really feed my impression that there is an institutional god complex at Oxide.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#145

Post by teaearlgraycold »

bcantrill wrote: post #57
thraway3837 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just a gentle reminder that a company may portray itself as cool to customers, but is not cool to their own current or future employees. Their interview process was shady. There was a post here about 1-2 years ago that was a link to their interview process and how open and transparent they were. The post itself was from an employee and a fellow commenter who was gaslighting folks was also an employee. Several folks c…

I'm not sure what "mess" you're referring to -- that we have a writing-intensive hiring process? That we get a lot of applicants? That we therefore end up rejecting a bunch of people? That we read application materials thoroughly? That we don't provide specific feedback on individual applicants (even though we explicitly state that/why we don't)? To state clearly what I feel we have said many times: Yes, it's hard to…

I don't know Brian or anyone at Oxide, but for the record nearly every place I have ever passed an interview (and later enjoyed employment at) has had people complain about the process online. Partly I think that's down to nearly everyone having an imperfect interview process. It's hard to do right and you won't fail as a company because you passed on a good candidate. You optimize for rejecting the people that will cause disaster, because those are the people that could cause you to fail. Some of the saltiness I see online must be sour grapes.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#146

Post by adastra22 »

ironhaven wrote: post #135
adastra22 wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Oxide approach, I think, would be to pick an open interconnect standard and work with one or more NVIDIA competitors to make hardware for it. E.g. AMD and a few of the specialized AI hardware companies. Essentially provide an open TPU standard.

They already picked out a interconnect standard it is called 100 Gigabit Ethernet. They can interoperate with multiple different vendors using the sfp28 ports on the switch. I bet they are even working on new programmable hardware for a next gen 200 Gigabit Ethernet fabric with oxide controlling the entire stack from hardware to software

Ethernet would add way too much latency to this application.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#149

Post by Kevcmk »

thraway3837 wrote: post #134
bcantrill wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure what "mess" you're referring to -- that we have a writing-intensive hiring process? That we get a lot of applicants? That we therefore end up rejecting a bunch of people? That we read application materials thoroughly? That we don't provide specific feedback on individual applicants (even though we explicitly state that/why we don't)? To state clearly what I feel we have said many times: Yes, it's hard to…

wow. If I am correct, this is the cofounder and CTO of Oxide. This is a very defensive and agressive response. This explains everything I need to know about your workplace and leadership structure. Hardest pass. No thank you. In case it gets deleted, I've quoted what bcantrill said below. "I'm not sure what "mess" you're referring to -- that we have a writing-intensive hiring process? That we get a lot of applicants?…

I am not seeing the issue here

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#150

Post by jjav »

jjice wrote: post #6

I want Oxide to do so well. The product is a breath of fresh air in the era of cloud providers. As an engineer, I'd kill to get to work with their hardware. Not to mention that working at Oxide sounds like a modern Sun Microsystems with the ideology that team has. Highly recommend their podcast "Oxide and Friends", and their original "On The Metal" show. I've attempted to apply to their company multiple times over th…

Oxide is the only company I can think of that carries the torch of what silicon valley used to be in the 90s. Actual, awesome, cool technology! I wish massive success to Oxide.
Post reply on HN