Kudos to the raft authors for making distributed consensus accessible. Structuring the presentation in terms of RPCs and making the algorithm well-suited for implementing replicated state machines may not sound like a big deal, but those decisions really helped to make it approachable.
In a span of a decade consensus transformed from an esoteric algorithm that you can maaaaybe try implementing if you are a google engineer, to being widely deployed across many storage systems and readily accessible libraries and Raft played a big part in it.
Do people really have this kind of inferiority complex? What exactly do you think Google engineers are? People with 5 eyes and for hands with 10 fingers each? They read the papers (Paxos or whatever) struggle to understand it, implement beta versions, and iterate just like everyone else.
Anyone can implement Raft. There are plenty of implementations of them not by Google engineers, including a custom one in the product I work on. And developers in the Software Internals Discord are constantly in there asking questions on the road to implementing Raft or Viewstamped Replication.
I believe the parent is referring to pre-raft consensus algorithms like Paxos. I recall the explanation of Paxos being a lengthy PDF while the explanation of Raft is a single webpage, mostly visual.
Could be, it was a little ambiguously worded. That said, single-decree Paxos is much simpler than Raft but I agree The Part-Time Parliament's analogy is a pain to read. But it's better if you just ignore the beginning chunk of the paper and read like the appendix; A1 The Basic Protocol being simpler to understand.
There’s also the side-by-side Paxos/Raft comparison in Howard & Mortier’s “Consensus on consensus”[1] paper, which is not enough to understand either by itself, but a great help if have a longer explanation you’re going through.
> That and companies are just hilariously bad at finding workers they want to hire for nebulous reasons. I have no doubt even if my company hired 95% of the workers it had marked down as "no hire" they'd be able to squeeze a salary's of value worth out of each of them (well, if management is competent, which it tends to not be).
Isn't it ironic that a comment making fun of companies for not hiring workers who can barely contribute above their salary's value, in the very same sentence blames management for incompetence. Well, guess what, managers are hired workers too, so if you apply the same principle to them, this is what you get.
What you suggest makes sense from the "homo economicus" point of view, but the result will be a barely functional hellhole riddled with incompetence (at least this is what it will feel like from within.) Can we blame people for being "selfish" and not wanting to work in this kind of environment?
> Well, guess what, managers are hired workers too,
I didn't comment on hiring "managers", did I?
> Can we blame people for being "selfish" and not wanting to work in this kind of environment?
I did cop to this behavior, right? I do agree. It makes my life easier rejecting candidates. I'm just saying this complaining over lack of quality talent seems like the corporate equivalent of feigned helplessness rather than an actual problem.
> This is ironic if you consider all the complaining that Musk does in the public sphere about "freedom of speech"
Another ironic thing is the number of people who lectured anyone disagreeing with twitter's content moderation decisions that twitter is a commercial enterprise that can do whatever it pleases (usually this means yielding to activist pressure) and who are now acting indignant when Musk acts like he owns the place (which he does).
Is that fair? The criticism about these deleted posts seems to be pointing out the contradiction between the claim of widening the speech available and the way that it is being limited here, not that Twitter has no right to do it.
I don't know! Probably not. It is all a political struggle and Musk for sure pursues his own goals in it. But if all this results in a twitter that is more interesting, open and less prudish than before, I think it is worth it. You can't make an omelette without breaking some eggs.
Yeah, have you ever noticed that most people only complain about free speech when the voices they agree with our silenced, and never complain when voices they don't agree with our silenced?
First, you need to take a big break, a couple of months at least. The less computing-related activities the better. The summer hasn't ended yet, do some outdoorsy stuff with other people. Depending on your situation of course, it may not be possible. Then just radically cut back on work and try to spend more time with your loved ones.
Second, you need to get your love for technology back. It is still there, but it manifests as hate. My theory of burnout is that it arises when the amount of effort you put in is disproportionally large compared to perceived payoffs. The brain just does a ROI calculation and refuses to put more effort in. To combat that, you need some easy successes. Try doing some small fun project and bring it to completion (for some definition of completion that makes you excited). This should bring back your confidence and excitement.
Third, you need to think strategically about your career. The truth is, for run-off-the-mill web development returns on experience taper off after a few years, so you are at disadvantage compared to younger folks that haven't lost their enthusiasm yet and are prepared to work long hours for less pay. So to make yourself desirable in the eyes of employers, you have to offer them something those people don't have. One option is to go into management (no need to scoff at it, it is hard, offers plenty of opportunity for growth and is exactly the area where older folks can shine). Another is to specialize and become an "expert in X" - maybe in some subject area or in distributed systems or machine learning. Think about what most suits you.
I'll agree with all this, particularly the first paragraph.
I've burned out a couple of times and the fix has been to stop for a while and do other things. After a few months I catch myself coming up with ideas for projects, writing code, etc - that's when it's time to go back to paid work. Obviously that's more disruptive to perm employees than to me as a contractor, but I hear rumours that such things as sabbaticals and sick leave exist.
Becoming an "expert in X" seems to be easier than it might initially appear, it's sometimes the path of least resistance to fall into a specific niche that may or may not exist a few years later - but while it does you are in demand. (I don't unreservedly recommend it!)
> Second, you need to get your love for technology back. It is still there, but it manifests as hate. My theory of burnout is that it arises when the amount of effort you put in is disproportionally large compared to perceived payoffs. The brain just does a ROI calculation and refuses to put more effort in. To combat that, you need some easy successes.
Just wanted to thank you for this summary. I think you're right, though it certainly doesn't feel like that. I am in a very similar situation as OP, but webdev is only a small part of what I (can) do. I literally hate all of technology right now. At least, it feels like that. Also seems to be age-related. I am 40 and I lost "my spark" about 3-4 years ago. Luckily, still able to work, but the fun is gone and I personally don't believe that I will ever get it back at this point.
Edit: May be relevant to OP: I found a small team with an employer who himself went through burnout and now approaches things a bit differently. Not sure if it helps, but I thought it might be nice to know that those exist.
> One option is to go into management (no need to scoff at it, it is hard, offers plenty of opportunity for growth and is exactly the area where older folks can shine
Many many people say this but I think mid/low level managers are also usually young and I don't see the huge value of being old if the tech keeps changing. If anything it might be a bit easier to stay in shape technology wise if you're a developer, not a manager.
This might be less of a problem if you go to high level management (director, CTO etc) but that career path is not trivial at all.
This brings back memories... Some time ago I was an intern in a team working on a UGC map editor. We were using this soft-delete pattern and for some task I needed to deploy a database migration that fiddled with the "deleted" status field. It was quite late and after the migration finished I almost went home but for some reason decided to check community forums. There users were having a time of their life taking screenshots of deleted objects that suddenly became visible (many of them quite amusing, including swear words written in 500km letters). Dunno how this escaped testing, but horror of what I have done brought clarity of mind and I quickly found an error and devised another migration that fixed the data. That worked and I was able to finally go home.
So yeah, be careful with the soft-delete pattern :)
One problem is that companies like to talk about these stock grants as if they are as good as regular salary (and employees seem to play along, using terms like "total comp" and ascribing some definite dollar value to it). But they really aren't. So it is a bit of a deceptive marketing.
Always try to use your "total comp" to anchor your salary at a new job. It works when the new employer isn't public and doesn't offer liquid RSUs etc.
Going from X "total comp" to X salary is an improvement in itself. Not even to mention how that total comp is often bumped by once-yearly vests/bonuses - spreading it as salary means you get it asap and can walk more easily.
I did it earlier this year..and the public company I left tanked next quarterly earnings report. Luckily I converted that to guaranteed salary (which is now gonna hopefully anchor me for the next gig lol)
There is not much use for dollars in Russia right now other than hoarding them (you can buy goods, but many imports are sanctioned). And after initial panic subsided, trust in the banking system looks quite high so people are less keen on hoarding cash.
Also, if you are an oligarch who plans to load your private plane with suitcases of dollars and fly to the Cayman islands, you are probably sanctioned, so that is out of question too.
No problem flying to Dubai to Istanbul and using their banking system. Actually most of Russian and Belarussian elite are happily using it. You can meet all kinds of adult kids of Lukashenko, Yanukovich there or an odd Russian silovik.
You are a bit late to the party. Many Russian assets have already been seized, among them the Gazprom subsidiary in Germany.
We are in a weird spot where Russia is very much interested in economic relationships continuing more or less as is (exemplified by the conciliatory rhetoric from the Russian government, essentially they are saying "no hard feelings, return any time" to the departing companies) so will mostly respect property rights. OTOH the West sees financial and economic relationships as their main weapon in this war so most funky moves related to property rights will be initiated by the Western governments (e.g. many "sanctions" essentially are extrajudiciary property seizures).
> Many Russian assets have already been seized, among them the Gazprom subsidiary in Germany
Most Russian assets have been frozen, not seized. The German subsidiary made news for being an exception in that Germany took control of the subsidiary. But it’s still Gazprom’s property.
>> Are all of those mega yachts getting boarded not considered seized?
> That is my understanding. The property still belongs to the owners
IIRC, there are efforts being made to outright seize stuff like the yachts, sell them, and give the proceeds to Ukraine. I'm not completely up on the details, though. I think some criteria might be if the property is de-facto owned by the Russian state, or was acquired due to corrupt association with it.
In a span of a decade consensus transformed from an esoteric algorithm that you can maaaaybe try implementing if you are a google engineer, to being widely deployed across many storage systems and readily accessible libraries and Raft played a big part in it.