Brendan's Reflections

  • JavaScript in the Data Center?

    First I saw that PayPal was using Node.js for production services.  Then Airbnb.  What the hell is going on? Well, a pattern is emerging: A new product or service team starts operating in lean-startup-style. This means rapid-prototyping so you can have quick build/measure/learn cycles.  There are a many choices for a rapid-prototyping stack, including: Ruby-on-Rails,…

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  • Goodbye Bazaarvoice, Hello Indeed

    After 3 amazing years at Bazaarvoice, it’s time for me to move on.  My last day was Oct 31st.  See how R&D dressed up to say goodbye! … Bazaarvoice has been very good to me.  For the past 3 years I’ve had a series of dream roles: lead engineer in the Bazaarvoice Labs, manager of…

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  • Seek contact with reality, early and often

    There was an interesting question on Quora the other day: What are the early symptoms that a startup is going to fail? There were a variety of answers, some funny, some insightful, some both: William Pietri provided a superb answer that is worth reading in full.  Here’s his top 10 reasons/symptoms a startup is going to…

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  • Be Vulnerable

    Shame on me.  I haven’t watched Jack Dorsey present before (live or on video), and I had made certain assumptions about him because of his business success (co-founder of Twitter, founder and CEO of Square) and because he was (in)famous for working full-time at both of them for a bit. Well I was surprised and…

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  • Can I explore your API in a browser address bar?

    I like this best practices guide to designing APIs by Vinay Sahni. In it he offers some excellent advice, but one particular design principle is worth heeding and has lots of implications, namely the API should be “explorable via a browser address bar.”  This means several things (some of which he mentions, some of which…

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  • Hire people you would be willing to work for

    The Y Combinator Startup School 2013 videos are online! I started with Paul Graham’s interview with Zuckerberg.  There’s not a ton of new info in that video IMHO, but there are a couple of gems, such as: “One of the reasons I think great stuff gets built is because it’s kind of irrational at the…

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  • Do the right thing, Wait to get fired

    I stumbled upon this bit of wisdom in Team Geek: A Software Developers Guide to Working Well with Others, and it resonated.  It comes from Google engineer Chade-Meng Tan: Do the right thing, wait to get fired. New Google employees (we call “Nooglers”) often ask me what makes me effective at what I do.  I…

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  • Fairness Matters

    If you haven’t seen Frans De Waal’s TED talk on Moral behavior in animals you should.  One of the best parts is the Capuchin monkey fairness experiment video, where we see that capuchin monkeys – like people – aren’t rational (in the classical economic sense), but instead express outrage at outcomes that are mutually beneficial, but unfair…

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  • Inside Facebook with Jocelyn Goldfein, FB Engineering Director

    A friend pointed me to this frank and insightful talk by Jocelyn Goldfein, Engineering Director at Facebook.  In this hour-long interview at Stanford she shares her perspective on engineering culture, and a few stories about how things are done at Facebook.  Here are some of the things I found noteworthy… Aim for impact, and your…

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  • The Signal and the Noise

    I recently finished Nate Silver’s The Signal and the Noise, and frankly I’m disappointed.  There were surprisingly few insights to be found in the 450-odd pages; I only highlighted two passages – an all-time low – and remarkable as I like to read with a highlighter in hand. On the positive side the writing is…

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