Software Misadventures
Aug 3, 2023
Kelsey Hightower - On retiring as Distinguished Engineer from Google at 42 (Part 2)
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Kelsey Hightower was a Distinguished Engineer at Google, where he worked on Google Cloud Platform. In this second part of the conversation, we focus on Kelsey’s retirement - the financial planning that enabled him to retire at 42, how he got started advising startups and his perspectives on compensation, turning down a substantial offer from Microsoft and meeting Satya Nadella in person. And, of course, plans for the future.
More episodes from Software Misadventures
2 days ago
Open sourcing LinkedIn's Derived Data Platform | Felix GV (Linkedin)
What's it like to open source an internal project at LinkedIn's scale? When should a company open source a project and what are the benefits and challenges that come along with it? If you want to open source an internal project, how should you go about advocating for it? Félix joins the show to chat about his experiences leading the open source efforts for Venice, as well as his thoughts on balancing leadership with execution, delegating responsibility and fostering a culture of ownership, and growth within a team.
Félix is a Principal Staff Engineer at LinkedIn where he works on the data infrastructure team that builds Venice. Venice is a distributed derived data store which LinkedIn open sourced in the fall of 2022.
Show Notes:
* Check out Venice: https://github.com/linkedin/venice
* Félix's linkedin: https://github.com/linkedin/venice
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Segments:
[0:00:00] Career Choices and Job Satisfaction
[0:06:07] Exploring the World of Data Infrastructure and Distributed Systems
[0:17:08] The Journey of Open-Sourcing Venice
[0:28:55] Understanding the Business Perspective of Open Source Systems
[0:37:04] Challenges and Strategies in Open Source Project Maintenance
[0:44:23] Balancing Leadership and Execution in Engineering Roles
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Nov 7, 2023
When enough was enough - practical and emotional drivers for leaving big tech to bootstrap Metacast | Arnab Deka & Ilya Bezdelev (AWS, Google)
Should engineers and product managers “stay in their lanes”? What big company habits should you keep vs unlearn when transitioning to working at a start-up? Could an ayahuasca retreat give you more clarity on your career goals? Ilya and Arnab join the show to share their journey quitting big tech to bootstrap a podcasting startup.
Arnab and Ilya are the co-founders of Metacast. Before starting the company, Arnab was a Principal Engineer at AWS while Ilya was a Sr. Product Manager at Google and Principal PM at Amazon before that. While at Amazon, Arnab and Ilya worked together on various projects including AWS Chatbot, which they started from scratch and launched into a successful AWS service.
Show Notes:
* Sign-up for the podcast app that they’re launching soon: metacast.app
* Newsletter about their startup journey: https://www.metacastpodcast.com/
Stay in Touch:
✉️ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://softwaremisadventures.com
👋 Let us know who we should talk to next! hello@softwaremisadventures.com
Segments:
[0:00:00] Starting Metacast
[0:05:39] Should engineers and product managers “stay in their lanes”?
[0:11:56] How to decide when to explore options vs committing to a decision
[0:14:46] Do you have to be a specialist to be successful?
[0:18:20] Quitting Amazon & Google
[0:33:52] Spiritual retreat
[0:47:09] Trying therapy
[0:51:33] Orthogonal weaknesses
[0:57:31] Big co habits to keep vs unlearn
[1:04:32] Metacast Milestones
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Oct 23, 2023
Pete Warden - On launching "AI in a Box" and building a hardware edge AI company - #24
What's "AI in a Box"? Pete Warden joins the show to share a new project he recently launched that encapulates Language Transcription/Translation and Question Answering capabilities into a wallet-sized board running locally without internet, as well as stories and learnings from building his new company, Useful Sensors, after 7 years of leading the tensorflow mobile project at Google.
Pete is the CEO of Useful Sensors. After founding his own company Jetpac and selling it to Google in 2014, he became a staff research engineer at Google, where he led the TensorFlow Mobile team. Pete is also the author of two well-received books: "Public Data Sources" and "Big Data Glossary" and builder of OpenHeatMap.
Show Notes:
* AI in a Box crowdfunding: https://www.crowdsupply.com/useful-sensors/ai-in-a-box
* Pete's blog: https://petewarden.com/
* Useful Sensors: https://usefulsensors.com/
Stay in touch:
✉️ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://softwaremisadventures.com
👋 Send feedback or say hi: hello@softwaremisadventures.com
Segments:
[0:00:00] Failing and trying again, experiential learning
[0:03:13] AI-in-a-box demo
[0:07:28] Animatronics?
[0:10:12] Privacy and trust
[0:12:04] Talk to your appliances
[0:15:22] How to fit the LLM into such a small chip?
[0:16:50] Quantization
[0:20:07] Disposable ML frameworks
[0:24:33] Updating model on shipped hardware
[0:28:34] LLMs with specialized domain knowledge
[0:30:08] Founding Useful Sensors
[0:37:07] scaling training vs inference
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