Business Insider posted this spectacular interactive google map of our amazing Startup Ecosystem here in New York City. Wow!
Check out the full list of NYC Startups in the original article.
View NYC Startups in a larger map
Month: November 2011
First things first. This is not meant to be a beef against developers. But let’s not ignore the elephant in the living room that is the divide between brilliant code writers and the risk averse operations team.
By the way we also have a MySQL DBA Interview Questions article which is quite popular.
Also take a look at our AWS & EC2 Interview questions piece.
Lastly we have a great Oracle DBA Hiring Guide.
It is almost by default that developers are disruptive with their creative coding while the guys in operations, those who deploy the code, constantly cross their fingers in the hope that application changes won’t tilt the machine. And when you’re woken up at 4am to deal with an outage or your sluggish site is costing millions in losses, the blame game and finger-pointing starts.
Also: Does Amazon have a dirty little secret?
If you manage a startup you may be faced with this problem all the time. You know your business, you know what you’re trying to build but how do you find people who can help you build and execute your ideas with minimal risk?
Join 38,000 others and follow Sean Hull on twitter @hullsean.
Ideally, you want people who can bridge the mentality divide between the programmers eager to see feature changes, the business units pushing for them, and the operations team resistant to changes for the sake of stability.
DevOps – Why can’t we all live together?
The DevOps movement is an attempt to bring all these folks together. For instance by providing insight to developers about the implications of their work on performance and availability, they can better balance the onslaught of feature demands from users with the business’ need for up-time.
Also: The art of resistence or when you have to be the bad guy
Operations teams can work to expose operational data to the development teams. Metrics collection and analytics aren’t just for the business units anymore. Employing tools like Cacti, OpenNMS or Ganglia allow you to communicate with developers and other business units alike about up-time, and the impact of deployments on site availability, and ultimately the bottom-line.
Above all, business goals and customer needs should underscore everything the engineering team is doing. Bringing all three to the table makes for a more cohesive approach that will carry everyone forward.
How to spot a DevOps person – Finding the sweet spot
The DevOps person is someone with the right combination of skill, knowledge and experience that places him or her in the sweet spot where quality assurance, programming skills and operations overlap.
There are also a few distinguishing characteristics that will help identify such an ideal candidate.
We also wrote a more general piece – What is Devops and why is it important.
Look for good writers and communicators
Imagine the beads of sweat forming when a developer tells you: “We’ve made the changes. Nothing is broken yet.”
This is like stepping on glass because it implies something will actually break. The point is savvy developers should be aware that the majority of people do not think along the same lines as they do.
Assuming your candidate has all the required technical skills, a programmer with writing skills tends to be better at articulating ideas and methods coherently. He or she would also be less resistant to documentation and be able to step back somewhat from the itty-bitty details. Communication, afterall is at the core of the DevOps culture where different sides attempt to understand each other.
Related: What’s the 4 letter word dividing dev & ops?
Pick good listeners
Even rarer than good writers are good listeners. Being able to hear what someone else is saying, and reiterate it in their own terms is a key important quality. In our example, the good listener would probably have translated ‘nothing is broken yet’ into “the app is running smoothly. We didn’t encounter any interruptions but we’ll keep watch on things.”
Lean towards pragmatists and avoid the fanatics
We all want people who are passionate about something but when that passion morphs into fanaticism it can be unpleasant. Fanaticism suggests a lower propensity to compromise. Such characters are very difficult to negotiate with. Analogously in tech, we see people latch on to a certain standard with unquestioning loyalty that’s bafflingly irrational. Someone who has had their hand in many different technologies is more likely to be technology agnostic, or rather, pragmatic. They’ll also have a broader perspective, and are able to anticipate how those technologies will play together. Furthermore a good sense of where things will run smoothly and where there will be friction is vital.
Related: When you have to take the fall
Pay attention to extra-curricular activities
Look at technology interests, areas of study, or even outside interests. Does the person have varying interests and can converse about different topics? Do they tell stories, and make analogies from other disciplines to make a point? Do they communicate in jargon-free language you can understand?
Sniff out those hungry for success
As with any role, finding someone who is passionate and driven is important. Are they on-time for appointments? Did they email you the information you requested? Are they prepared and communicative? Are they eager to get started?
Hiring usually focuses on skills and very well-crafted resumés but why do you still find some duds now and then? By emphasizing personality, work ethics, and the ability to work with others, you can sift through the deluge of candidates and separate the wheat from the chaff for qualities that will surely serve your business better in the long run.
Related: When clients don’t pay
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Stumbling onto 800-CEO-Read, and their top books feature, I found Brogan and Smith’s work. Brogan’s blog intrigued me enough so I walked down to the Strand here in NYC to pick up a copy.
What I found was an excellent introduction to the nebulous world of social media marketing, where you find all sorts of advice and suggestions on how to engage your target audience. If you’re feeling like an ignoramus on matters of social media, Trust Agents is a great place to start and will give you ideas of how to ‘humanize’ your digital connections.
The authors illustrate the Trust Agent idea with Comcast Cares for example and how they engaged customers, and what worked so well for them. Or Gary Vaynerchuk and his game changing Wine Library TV about wine. He also emphasizes that building relationships online is a lot like building relationships in the real world a la Keith Ferrazzi of Never Eat Alone fame. Engage in meaningful ways with people, don’t market to them. Share valuable tidbits, and the community will reward you tenfold.
A ‘trust agent’ lives by six principles:
- Make your own game – be willing to take risks and break from the crowd
- Be ‘One of Us’ – be part of the community by doing your bit and contributing to it
- The Archimedes Effect – leverage your own strengths wisely
- Agent Zero – position yourself at the center by connecting people and groups
- Human Artist – learn how to work with people; help others and be conscientious of etiquette
- Build an Army – you need allies to help spread your ideas
The book is excellent. Put it on your holiday list.
Categories
Seattle Web Tech Meetup Nov 21
I’ll be one of two speakers at the next Seattle Web Technology Bi-Weekly Meet up on Nov 21 at the Citrus Lounge.
They’ve sexed it up a little by calling it a face-off between Windows Azure and Amazon EC2 (no prizes for guessing which side I represent) but really it’s going to be a primer on the Platform-as-a service and Infrastructure-as-a-service models. I expect some lively discussions during Q&A.
I’ll be covering questions such as what cloud computing is, what EC2 provides, what is datacenter automation and the differences between a standard datacenter liks Rackspace and Amazon EC2. Meanwhile you folks who’ve large investments in say EXCHANGE servers will be able to pose questions to Marcus Wendt of Composite C1.
It’s Amex sponsored and you’ll get a ticket good for a beer or a Citrus signature drink with which you can get cozy and warm up by the fireplace while Marcus and I are beamed through a flat screen with our respective presentations. If you’re in Seattle drop in. I hope to see you or at least, hear you there.
Effective MySQL: Optimizing SQL Statements
by Ronald Bradford
No Nonsense, Readable, Practical, and Compact
I like that this book is small; 150 pages means you can carry it easily. It’s also very no nonsense. It does not dig too deeply into theory unless it directly relates to your day-to-day needs. And those needs probably cluster heavily around optimizing SQL queries, as those pesky developers are always breaking things 😉
Jokes aside, this new book out on Oracle Press is a very readable volume. Bradford has drawn directly from real-world experience to give you the right bite size morsels you need in your day-to-day MySQL activities.
Often when we think about speeding up and scaling, we focus on the application layer itself. We look at the webserver tier, and database tier, and optimize the most resource intensive pages.
There’s much more we can do to speed things up, if we only turn over the right stones. Whether you’re using WordPress or not, many of these principals can be applied. However we’ll use WordPress as our test case.