Always do one thing extra, and show a little humility, Jasánek

Today is about what to avoid, from building a nuclear power plant or a data center to hiring the wrong people and optimizing too early.

Let's look at a few articles that have stayed with me. I'll start with something worth revisiting when you begin to lose your humility. Believe me, it happens to all of us now and then.

1. One day you will die.
2. Life is hard.
3. You are not that important.
4. Your life is not about you.
5. The final outcome is out of your hands.

While we're on the subject of humility, it's worth going over:

What never to do

The article Lessons from 6 software rewrite stories looks back at six concrete cases and considers alternatives to rewriting an application's internals from scratch. What's the central idea that held up in practice?

Once you’ve learned enough that there’s a certain distance between the current version of your product and the best version of that product you can imagine, then the right approach is not to replace your software with a new version, but to build something new next to it — without throwing away what you have.

Running a startup? Even if you aren't, watch out for the Four Startup Engineering Killers. They all sound clear and entirely plausible, and it's especially good to learn from them when the money at stake wasn't yours.

Startup engineering is different from any other type of software engineering. It demands short- and medium-term productivity, relative to the “right way” of building systems. It values people who are able to iterate quickly and are comfortable with hacky code. It rewards pragmatism in technology choices versus picking the most hyped — or most stable — technology.

• Premature Scaling
• Hiring the wrong engineer
• Using Untested Technology
• Problems with Product and Management

I'd pause on that last point for a quote, because it makes a convenient bridge to my article Don't turn developers into lemmings.

Finally, management needs to recognize that its engineers are a critical component of any major product decision. Too often, a company’s engineers are seen as a service organization that can be steamrolled when important business decisions arise (ensuring a healthy product-engineering relationship is one more reason it’s critical to have hired the right engineers).

One last thing to avoid, for the next time some clever fellow tells you the cloud is expensive and you'd be better off building your own data center.

So @lyft is paying $8m/mo to @AWS — almost $100m/yr! Each ride costs $.14 in AWS rent. I keep hearing they could build their own DC & save. My early days at @Google cloud, heard the same from customers: “at scale, owning is cheaper”. It wasn’t — they all came around.

A few odds and ends to finish

Two articles by Petr Koubský. I meant to read WTF, but judging by Koubský’s review, “F for future, not for what you were thinking. Tim O'Reilly is optimistic about the future,” it may not be worth it. Knowing the difference between types of nuclear bombs can always come in handy. At the very least, you can impress your friends over a beer or shine when bikinis come up: The bomb that fell on the whole world. The first hydrogen weapon test at Bikini Atoll.

Good data is worth more than gold: 9 principles that will speed up your progress in sports and in life. To add to that point about humility, I quote:

• Working at something when all the odds are against you is ultimately worth far more than doing something you can manage with your eyes closed.
• Doing one extra thing makes a disproportionately large difference.
• Conditions will never be perfect. Forget about waiting for them.

Enjoy what's left of the weekend. If you'd like to receive my newsletters regularly, just click Follow at dagblog.cz. You'll find the archive here.