I was recently reading Greg Kogan’s blog Simple Systems have less downtime. It really caught my attention. As a professional services consultant over the years, I’ve worked with almost 200 firms. And many of those required the unraveling of complex systems. And systems that were no longer well understood after the first wave of builders have…
I was just reading the Register, which is sort of the UK’s version of Slashdot, and they had a jaw-dropping title. NASA moved 247 petabytes into AWS and then later learned about EGRESS costs OMG! Facepalm. Wow. To say this is a disaster is an understatement. Could it have been prevented? Not likely by 100% strategic…
I was recently talking with a colleague of mine about where AWS is today. Obviously, these companies are migrating to EC2 & the cloud rapidly. The growth rates are staggering. The question was… “What’s good and bad with Amazon today?” It’s an interesting question. I think there are some dirty little secrets here, but also…
If you run MySQL as your backend datastore is there one thing you can do to improve performance across the application? Those SQL queries are surely key. And the quickest way to find the culprits is to regularly analyze your log. I’ve put together a howto & script for doing this on Amazon RDS. Automate mysql…
Recently I was searching Google for “startup consultant” to see what I might find. I came across this article by John Greathouse titled Beware the Consultant. No self-respecting, hard-working consultant would sit back and take hits without defense, so in true poetry slam style, I thought I’d write a quick retort. Beware the Client… Truth Is…
Over the years, a lot of people have approached me asking how to become a tech consultant. What do I need to do to get started? How can I take my first step? I also hear from managers and CEOs that have asked how I got my start, and how I keep the business running….
As a tech consultant, one of the most interesting parts of the job is being able to observe human relations at work. I’ve learned through the years that because tech people and non-tech people speak different ‘languages’, bridging the communication gap is a critical part of my role as a consultant. How Should You Treat…
In a Twitter chat, I posted some comments about hiring. Some folks were complaining that they had applied to various jobs, and not heard back. I commented… “Apply for a job and don’t hear back, it’s nothing personal” In this article, I will discuss about it so that you as a job seeker understand it…
I saw this thread recently posted on Hacker News. “We’re not paying invoices due to the pandemic” – How to handle these. What shocked me is what Patrick McKenzie (@patio11) suggested: “The right response is probably ‘I have received your letter. The invoice is good. I demand payment by the date on the invoice, under the…
An article I read on Tech Crunch recently got me thinking about startup culture. In Are You Building A Company, Or Just Your Credentials Geoff Lewis, expressed his distaste for a friend’s plan to get on Y Combinator’s ‘no idea’ startup incubation program. In this experimental approach, groups or individuals with a desire to be part of a…