Oxide and Friends
Notes from the Oxide and Friends podcast.
Engineering Incentives… and Misincentives [Oct 2022]
Engineers who work to prevent issues are generally not recognized compared to engineers who fix issues once they are major problems. Why fix the foundation, when you can be a hero when the building is falling over?
Size of org (bigger is better) and is a very common incentive for management. Leads to hiring people for no reason!
Cheapest thing you can give out is praise, and it matters so much.
If someome tells you praise about someone else, tell the other person that.
Kind words mean a lot to colleagues, open source contributors, etc.
In academia, which is not motivated by words, the currency is "respect from your peers" rather than title, cash compensation, etc.
Problem: If I praise someone else, do I cheapen myself? Is it safe to praise other people?
Great story about incentives & motivation: the British wanted to get rid of cobras in India, and offered a bounty to get rid of cobras. People started breeding cobras to claim the bounty. Is this story true?
Losing the Signal with Sean Silcoff [Oct 2022]
On RIM, BlackBerry, and BBM. Feature film based on book coming soon.
No notes
Listened to these, didn't have any notes I wanted to take.
- On Silicon Valley Bank with Eric Vishria [Mar 2023]
- Rack-scale Networking [Feb 2023]
