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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
stupid like a fox • Director of Eng, Web Infrastructure
@google
, O'Reilly Author • github.com/sdras, codepen.io/sdras, she/her sarah_edo@hachyderm.io
sarah_edo@hachyderm.iosarah.devJoined September 2012
2,822 Following
263.7K Followers

Sarah Drasner’s Tweets

Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
We’re welcoming a new member of the family today! Open to name suggestions 🎁
Puppy face close up
Puppy face being held
Little out of focus body shot of puppy
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Other stats to surface on the twitter UI: - num of people who saw your tweet and eye-rolled - ratio of many pets you want to have vs current amount - how gassy you feel, scale of 1-10 - how much you like Elon 1-10 (anything below 5, and you’re suspended as a bot)
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
A dev who can build something alone quickly may not have the skillset to evaluate these tradeoffs. Deciding that if you are smart and can’t figure it out, it must be broken is irresponsible. This is why a curious mindset is one of the greatest strengths an engineer can possess.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
If you have a lot of hubris with no curiosity, you might not understand: - how to build upon lessons learned from the old system - the opportunity cost of trying something new - the complexity of a massive rewrite, or why the system became complex for the current features
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
How are they testing any of that new infrastructure, and given that this is probably a multi-year project, what’s the plan for shipping new features in the interim? Who is going to set up security and trust reviews for the changes they are making (critical in social media)?
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Even if all of those were easy, which they aren’t, and even if they had a perfect new system all set up, what about the cost and risk of a massive migration? Migration costs are huge, and ensuring stability in that process even more so.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Let’s say a massive rewrite was even feasible for them, which I have high doubts of. This doesn’t take into account the opportunity cost of the time spent doing this. Do they have SLOs in place? How will they maintain those while rebuilding?
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Good devs are curious: they explore context before they get to work. None of that happened, under the assumption that “I’m so smart, I can figure everything out on my own, quickly.” You see this a lot with junior devs or folks who haven't had to maintain large systems over time
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
When the staff were fired/walked out the door, they took with them all of this context. The existing code can tell you what it does and how, but it can’t tell you why.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Legacy and heavily used systems have decision accumulation over the years: some decisions were made because of the technology available at the time, some due to a feature need, some due to dependency management, some were made to make the system more secure or to test it.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Most of us who work on heavily used systems at scale saw this one coming, and that they would propose a rewrite as they just have, and we also don’t think this is the answer. This is why hubris is a very counterproductive quality in engineering. Why do we all agree on this?
George Hotz: that's what Elon told em my job was and I will try my hardest to do it. I have 12 weeks. Also trying to get rid of that nondismissable login popup after you scroll a little bit ugh these things ruin the internet
George Hotz: Resigned from Twitter today. Appreciate the opportunity, but I didn't think there was any real impact I could make there. Besides, ti was sad to see my GitHub withering. Back to coding!
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Sarah Drasner Retweeted
exceptional moyin 🫡💙
@moyheen
Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I used to be the Android Tech Lead of Search on this bird app I passed the 6 months probation period, shipped multiple features, onboarded engineers, fixed very serious tech debt, and was project lead for some 🔎 features on all clients
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Sarah Drasner Retweeted
Mekka2
@mekkaokereke
I have a question: How long can the richest (aherm, 2nd richest!) man on earth afford to lose >$5MM a day ($150MM a month)? Remember, margin call cover sales, can drive stock price down further. I told y'all, you can be 4ch*n, or you can make money. You can't do both.
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Sarah Drasner Retweeted
Halli
@iamharaldur
Fascism happens one step at a time. Each step is seemingly small, but when you look back it’s hard to believe how far it’s gone. What seemed outrageous, starts to feel normal.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
If I’m only working on directly what’s in front of me, I’m reactive. Not making a difference. I’m also not taking opportunities that I might have that others don’t, to make wider and more lasting change. My resolution to myself is to try to think as broadly as I can next year.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
And then there’s the analysis of the whole system, even things outside of my control, and work to influence and support enough people in that system that have similar goals and perspectives that we can make broader shifts together over time
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
This is going to require a lot of introspection on a regular cadence. Things like: - something didn’t work properly -> fix it but also think about what the base cause may be -> what technical and people problems were set up in such a way that problems like this are symptoms
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
Sometimes poor negotiating is due to assumptions: - assuming that we know the counterparts needs and perspective - assuming prioritizing our argument will be effective - assuming they know what we want and why IMO, sometimes negotiation is about engaging curiosity
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Sarah Drasner Retweeted
Goke Pelemo
@GokePelemo
If you’re a manager in any function or ever aspire to be a manager, this is a worthwhile read. Hopefully a lot of the ideas she shared will be familiar, but her experience gives them a lot more depth. Too many great bits to share here, but get a copy.
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Sarah Drasner
@sarah_edo
🚨
Breaking news
🎉 It’s happeninggg!!! Engineering Management for the Rest of Us is now on sale! I’m so excited to finally release this after so much went into it. 50% of all of my profits will go to She Code Africa! @SheCodeAfrica amazon.com/Engineering-Ma
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Sarah Drasner Retweeted
Kelsey Hightower
@kelseyhightower
Today I've been reminded that The Protocol is shutting down. I'll be forever grateful to
@tomkrazit
for writing this profile of me. If you want to read it, this is your final chance. Tom covers not just my tech career, but my personal journey, and the people behind it.
From McDonald’s to Google: How Kelsey Hightower became one of the most respected people in cloud computing A self-taught technologist with a storyteller's voice, Kelsey Hightower defied the enterprise tech sector's notorious diversity problems to become one of the industry's leading figures. Now he wants everyone's voice to be heard.
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Kelsey Hightower
@kelseyhightower
I never fully understood how far I've come until I read someone else tell my story. "From McDonald's to Google: How Kelsey Hightower became one of the most respected people in cloud computing" by @tomkrazit protocol.com/kelsey-hightow
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