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Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

explorer.oxide.computer

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Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#201

Post by lokar »

steveklabnik wrote: post #197
q3k wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the rejection (I know I'm not _that_ good, I understand there's tons of applications and I'm fine with that), but the wait and lack of clear feedback sucked. The response was particularly unclear - was I rejected outright? Did I slip through the cracks and then the role got filled by someone else? Should I reapply, or am I not a fit for company culture? Or just maybe not a fit for the role? If I reapply,…

I'm glad you found a job you like, truly. It's rough out there right now for everyone. I have people close to me that have been looking for work for years, and it's very demoralizing. I think that there's a certain deeper truth in what you've posted, which is that hiring is very hard, and different people feel different ways about different things. I also applied to Google once upon a time, and it was spectacularly c…

Finding the right person for a role is hard, yes.

Being civil and considerate to people who are in your process spending many hours is not hard. Give them updates. Not a fit? Tell them. Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you? Yell them. Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them? Tell them.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#202

Post by Cpoll »

steveklabnik wrote: post #197
q3k wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mind the rejection (I know I'm not _that_ good, I understand there's tons of applications and I'm fine with that), but the wait and lack of clear feedback sucked. The response was particularly unclear - was I rejected outright? Did I slip through the cracks and then the role got filled by someone else? Should I reapply, or am I not a fit for company culture? Or just maybe not a fit for the role? If I reapply,…

I'm glad you found a job you like, truly. It's rough out there right now for everyone. I have people close to me that have been looking for work for years, and it's very demoralizing. I think that there's a certain deeper truth in what you've posted, which is that hiring is very hard, and different people feel different ways about different things. I also applied to Google once upon a time, and it was spectacularly c…

This contradicts your earlier statement, "we had one opening, but five or even ten excellent final candidates," and ignores the criticism: "is it me or is is it you?"

Although I suppose you're saying that promising candidates are kept on file for later?

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#203

Post by nz »

q3k wrote: post #118
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…

The particular 'mess' I've encountered was I applied (wrote 11 pages of interview material) on 2024/09/29 and then received a canned 'yeah whoops sorry for taking this long, not interested' on 2025/03/24. That's almost 6 months of delay from submission to first contact. Terrible process. You need to give feedback early if you're not interested in someone, not leave them hanging for nearly half a year.

Disclaimer: I have never applied nor worked at oxide, but nevertheless have a bit of an odd thought.

Having looked at the process (RFD 3 and original post on dtrace.org), and contextualizing it with the oversubscribed-problem (which was mentioned somewhere else in this thread), I cannot help but think that there is a kind of solution that can help both the applicants and oxide and (yes) the industry as a whole.

The kinds of materials that the RFD asks for, seems like it would make for very interesting reading, regardless of whether it is read by a hiring-manager or a computer nerd. So why not, instead of (or in addition to) writing 11 pages, and sending them to the inbox of someone who (even without the additional responsibility of sorting thousands of applications in order hire-ability) is already extremely busy (this is, after all, a very demanding job), you publish them on your webpage?

In addition to taking some of the pressure off the oxide hiring-pipeline, you also get more exposure to people, who may work at organizations that would benefit from such a pipeline, but cannot afford to burn the political capital to replace the old pipeline. In a way, people who would appreciate your materials would, over some amount of time (and time should not be an issue, because it seems like it takes (at least sometimes) a long time for oxide to respond anyway), find them and possibly reach out.

I am basically a nobody, but if people started publishing things in the format of an oxide application, I would _totally_ read them. I am not saying I would necessarily _like_ them, but I would certainly read them[1]. Also, if disclosure is an issue, people can be published pseudonymously.

[1]: If for no other reason, than to see the multitude funny ways in which other people are wrong ;)

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#204

Post by panick21 »

numpad0 wrote: post #129
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…

Forgot how I learned this but IIUC, blades failed because they expended per-rack weight and power budgets for datacenters with single enclosures. It turned out that you could compress 48U worth of computers into 8U or so, as long as you do not fill back the empty space with anything, because the cooling/cabling crawlspace collapses and circuit breakers will go off if you had done so. It wasn't because they still need…

Seems to me that making it hyper-converged, with all storage make it make sense. Ultra dense compute alone isn't ideal. Oxide rack has the features of blade but is hyperconverged with everything. Plus the better integrated software.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#205

Post by steveklabnik »

lokar wrote: post #201
steveklabnik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you found a job you like, truly. It's rough out there right now for everyone. I have people close to me that have been looking for work for years, and it's very demoralizing. I think that there's a certain deeper truth in what you've posted, which is that hiring is very hard, and different people feel different ways about different things. I also applied to Google once upon a time, and it was spectacularly c…

Finding the right person for a role is hard, yes. Being civil and considerate to people who are in your process spending many hours is not hard. Give them updates. Not a fit? Tell them. Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you? Yell them. Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them? Tell them.

I wrote a very lengthy comment here and deleted it a few times. I agree that these things are good in the abstract, but reality is more complicated.

> Give them updates.

But you have to consider that different processes mean different ability to even give updates. Yes, saying "give me updates" is a good thing, but a side effect of the process that Oxide uses means that there is high latency for taking an initial look at an application. In that time, there's simply nothing to update you on. More traditional hiring practices have more stages, with faster feedback for candidates, and that's one pro of the way that they do things.

> Not a fit? Tell them.

People are told "no", but again, due to the above, it can take a while before this evaluation even happens.

> Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you?

This does not happen at Oxide, roles are very carefully considered, and as a smaller startup, tend to be more general. There isn't the sort of re-org shuffling that happens at large organizations.

> Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them?

This is why Oxide makes it clear that this takes a long time, up front. It is a tremendous amount of work for Oxide to run their process.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#206

Post by steveklabnik »

Cpoll wrote: post #202
steveklabnik wrote: post #197

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm glad you found a job you like, truly. It's rough out there right now for everyone. I have people close to me that have been looking for work for years, and it's very demoralizing. I think that there's a certain deeper truth in what you've posted, which is that hiring is very hard, and different people feel different ways about different things. I also applied to Google once upon a time, and it was spectacularly c…

This contradicts your earlier statement, " we had one opening, but five or even ten excellent final candidates, " and ignores the criticism: " is it me or is is it you? " Although I suppose you're saying that promising candidates are kept on file for later?

I will be honest, I do not understand what you're saying. It's possible I just need more coffee.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#207

Post by panick21 »

adastra22 wrote: post #146
ironhaven wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Not sure Tenstorrent agrees.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#208

Post by lokar »

steveklabnik wrote: post #205
lokar wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Finding the right person for a role is hard, yes. Being civil and considerate to people who are in your process spending many hours is not hard. Give them updates. Not a fit? Tell them. Plans have changed and the role is gone/changes so they won’t even fully consider you? Yell them. Buried under other work and don’t have the time to evaluate them? Tell them.

I wrote a very lengthy comment here and deleted it a few times. I agree that these things are good in the abstract, but reality is more complicated. > Give them updates. But you have to consider that different processes mean different ability to even give updates. Yes, saying "give me updates" is a good thing, but a side effect of the process that Oxide uses means that there is high latency for taking an initial look…

If you know up front it may take 6 months (or whatever) to get to a decision (99% of the time), tell people that.

Re: Oxide computer 3D rack guided tour

#209

Post by steveklabnik »

lokar wrote: post #208
steveklabnik wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wrote a very lengthy comment here and deleted it a few times. I agree that these things are good in the abstract, but reality is more complicated. > Give them updates. But you have to consider that different processes mean different ability to even give updates. Yes, saying "give me updates" is a good thing, but a side effect of the process that Oxide uses means that there is high latency for taking an initial look…

If you know up front it may take 6 months (or whatever) to get to a decision (99% of the time), tell people that.

As I said above, I agree that six months seems very excessive.
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