Welcome to the Event Horizon

It has again been quite a while since I had a chance to sit and write. The last month or so has been crazy, but things are finally starting to settle down again.

I've now been back at Sun for just over a year. When I returned, I think everybody in a position to be concerned was well aware that I would have rather been coming back to write software rather than being an HBA engineer. Regardless, I came back into the Storage organization in an attempt to help build the new HBA engineering team. Since that time, this group has moved from Storage to Systems. I will soon be completing my tour of the three "S"es. Effective October 1st, I will be transferring from this group to work in the Solaris organization, once again as a software engineer.

For several months, I looked forward to the time when this change might occur. I've missed writing software, although I have had a couple of small opportunities to do so in this group. I've written software for as long as I can remember, so it was hard to be in a position where software was something that was written by others. Despite all this, I find myself still on the fence a bit about this change. In fact, I probably put both my current managers and my new managers through a bit of uncertainty while I tried to reconcile in my head exactly what it was I wanted to do.

The great thing about this group is that I've enjoyed working with all of these folks. It's hard to leave a group like that, even if you know that the people you are going to be working with is also good. I certainly learned a lot over the past year, being exposed to many facets of the engineering universe that pure software engineers rarely get a chance to see. In retrospect, I think that experience has only served to make me a better engineer. When your job is simply to write software, it's easy to neglect all the other groups of people who may not be directly affected by your work. Having a broader perspective is without a doubt a huge advantage.

Despite the fact that I am still a bit unsure about what I'm leaving behind, I am certainly excited about the opportunity to get back to what I love. Based on my experience over the past year, I have no doubt that the HBA engineering team as well as the entire product team will continue to thrive.

Fear 1

Fear can easily elicit one of two basic responses in people. It can either cause you to shut down, or it can motivate you to step up to a challenge and meet it head on.

I've had many thoughts rumbling around my head lately, but when I sat down to write this, fear was the last one on my mind. As I started to turn this situation around, my first thought was going to be to write about certain circumstances that are causing a slightly different reaction in my mind; anger. However, it eventually occurred to me that fear was actually the basic motivator at work here.

I came to Sun the first week of 2004. Sun was to be the first big company I had ever worked for. Fear? You bet. Was I up for the challenge? It was a bit intimidating to think that this might be my biggest professional challenge. In retrospect, I believe it in fact was.

At this same time in early 2004, there was another person that came to start work at Sun. This guy was fresh out of college. It seemed obvious to me that he was somewhat intimidated coming to work here. Shoot, having never been in an engineering position before, I'm sure I would have been petrified. His first role here wasn't technically an engineering role, but after several months, it did evolve into one. In fact, at that time I was working on the Leadville stack primarily fixing FibreChannel bugs. This guy ended up working in the same group. I was tasked with being his mentor. Although Leadville was still fairly new to me, I was familiar with FibreChannel.

Being a mentor to a new engineer who was not familiar with kernel drivers, Solaris, or FibreChannel was a formidable task, but an enjoyable one. In fact, we quickly became good friends. We've both since moved on to different roles. I've left Sun and returned in a totally different capacity and he is now working in another part of the kernel. We remained good friends throughout all of this. I haven't had to do anything remotely akin to mentoring this guy for quite some time. In fact, I was extremely impressed with how quickly he was able to pick up debugging skills in the kernel as well as understanding a protocol as complicated as FibreChannel. In the past three and a half years, he has become in my opinion an extremely capable engineer.

All good things come to an end

As can happen at any company, talented employees can easily expand well beyond compensation that seemed adequate one day, but is wholly inadequate the next. Unfortunately, companies seem to have a great deal of inertia when it comes to things like compensation. When this friend of mine told me he was considering leaving Sun, I was admittedly angry. Why couldn't Sun just make things right? Did they realize what they were on the verge of losing? Well, it's not like this is the first time this sort of thing has ever happened. This is also certainly not a problem unique to Sun. It seems it's always a dance between employers and employees. Companies will invariably pay as little as they can in an effort to keep costs down, but it's always a gamble that they will lose valuable employees. I could be angry about this, but I think it'd be misplaced.

Fear 2

This time, I suppose the fear is not mine, but my friend's. He's leaving Sun to realize a hefty gain at a company that is going to provide a great deal of challenge to a junior engineer. That would definitely cause me some degree of fear, but I have no doubt he will rise to the challenge and continue to excel and grow as an engineer. In some respects, I envy him this opportunity. Things always have a way of coming around, anyway, so I have no doubt we will work together again at some point in the future. In fact, if there is ever an opportunity for him to return to Sun, it would be foolish for Sun to pass it up.

Until then, we all rock on in an effort to meet fear head on and prevail.

I admit I am a Cake fan and member of their mailing list. Their website has an "Advice" section where readers try their hardest to get their brand of bizarre questions posted on the page and then (presumably) some Cake member tries their hardest to provide as witty and clever a response as they possibly can.

The latest newsletter from Cake indicated that we should check a link to find out how to win a few things, including a signed copy of their first album, Motorcade of Generosity on vinyl. I already own a copy on vinyl, but certainly not a signed copy.

It turns out that the way to win these items had to do with tthis week's advice column question which came from "Tim":

Question:

Dear CAKE,

I think a similar question may have been posed before, but how do you continue to enjoy life in this age? Knowing people across the world want to kill you, and that every time you turn the key to your car you're using a non-renewable resource that's not only destroying the environment but slowly destroying civilization? I'm 18, what do I have to look forward to in the grand scheme of things? Do any of you have families? What do you think about having kids? This may sound kind of desperate, sorry. I don't mean it to. I'm not really agonizing about it, but it's in the back of my mind a lot.

Thanks,

Tim

and the answer provided was:

Answer:

Tim

Excellent question Tim, and one that CAKE ADVICE would like to turn over to our valued website visitors. Please send your advice for Tim to cakeadvice@yahoo.com. Whoever writes the best advice for Tim will receive: The new limited edition CAKE "Rarities" CD, a t-shirt from the CAKE STORE, and a signed vinyl LP of our first album, "Motorcade of Generosity." All entries are appreciated.

Now, I suspect my chances of winning are rather slim. I doubt I'm witty enough. I am going to post my response here, though, because I do feel strongly enough about it, even if strength of will doesn't get me a signed LP.

Hi Tim and Hi Cake,

These questions burn in the backs of the minds of many of us from time to time. It's not a sign of desperation. It's a sign of the promise of humanity that we worry about such things. I find it especially encouraging that there are 18 year olds pondering these issues. That in itself gives me hope.

I suspect if you were living 10 years ago, or 100 years ago, or even 1000 years ago that these questions would still plague you. Is there anything special about our situation today that lends credence to the worries that humanity is on the brink of collapse? Probably not. So, with that in mind, let's work backwards on your questions.

First of all, I have a wife and four kids. After reading an article about global warming just a few days ago, I was rather down at the fact that I'd brought four children into a world that could potentially be incapable of sustatining life even within their lifetime. I mentioned this to my wife, and her argument is the same one I've used numerous times in the past and will bring to bear here as well. It is the obligation of folks like you and I to have kids. Humanity has a knack for surviving despite the short-sighted and sometimes seemingly evil decisions and actions of those in a position of power. This penchant that people have can only be strengthened by a new generation that share these values.

What do you have to look forward to in the grand scheme of things? What do any of us have to look forward to? We look forward to the things that give life meaning.: Family, friends, and the ability to do the things we do to make the world a better place for those that follow. This leads into my answer for your first question. Whether or not you are capable of enjoying life is highly relative. Some people are predisposed to see the negative aspects of life. Others see the positive. Where you lie on this curve strongly affects whether or not you can enjoy life. The short answer is that enjoyment is what you make it, and only you can answer that question. Do you need to ignore the issues that caused you to write to Cake for their sage advice? Of course not. Denying reality is not the answer.

Make the choices in this life that you feel are right. Understand that your sphere of influence on this world is limited. To some extent, enjoying life involves coming to terms with the fact that you cannot fix everything. Take some solace in the fact that you are not alone. We are all doing these same things. Perhaps together we can make a big enough difference to ensure that our kids and their kids can continue to enjoy this life.

Cheers,

David Hollister

It's been quite a while since I've had a free minute in a day to write about anything much less a free minute to come up with something interesting enough to write about. In fact, I think it's pushing three months now since my last entry. Work has been absorbing practically my entire life since then, but you aren't here to read about that (I hear the sigh of relief). In fact, it's probably been pretty much the same for a lot of us here. I suppose that's as good a segue as any into the topic on my mind this evening.

There are always so many choices to make. Every day. Every email you get. Every phone call you take (or don't take for that matter). Every conversation with your boss, your co-workers, your family and friends. None of this is revelatory, I'm sure. The reason I mention it, though, is that you really get to know somebody more based on the choices they make than by any other means.

Some people really don't spend a lot of time fretting over how the choices they make are perceived by others. On the other end of that spectrum is... well... me, quite frankly.

For as long as I can remember, I've always been overly conscious of how choices I make or things I say or do (or don't do) may affect those around me or how they may be perceived. As I got older, I kept telling myself that perhaps I should worry less about those things and worry more about making choices that were right for me without as much regard for whether or not those choices would be looked upon favorably by others.

Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I haven't been able to veer much from that state of being overly self-conscious despite all those years of trying to convince myself that it's OK to make "selfish" decisions on occasion. I say "unfortunately" because I've spent a good number of years getting to the point in my career where I am today, where perhaps I could have achieved this in far less time had I been a more aggressive advocate for myself.

On the other hand, though, I say "fortunately" for perhaps the very same reason -- that I am not only overly self-conscious, but am also overly *conscious*. I seem to have no choice but to over-analyze and dissect everything that everybody else says and does. What I see on a regular basis makes me wonder what would happen if *I* had said or done what this other person just said or did.

I suppose I'll never get beyond the over-analyzing, overly self-conscious persona that I've grown up with. At the end of the day, at least I decide that I can live with myself. That's about all I can hope for.

In the past few weeks, I've mentioned a particular observation to various people. That observation has to do with how work always expands to consume all available time. It was meant as a somewhat humorous anecdote, perhaps a response to a generic greeting along the lines of "Keeping busy?".

Perhaps I should qualify that statement a bit, because despite my arguable attempt at humor, I believe there is some truth to it.

"For the motivated professional, work expands to fill all available time"

I suppose that is better. It's good enough for now, anyway.

The point is that staff engineers are generally given a great deal of responsibility. Along with that responsibility comes an obligation to fulfill numerous expectations, well beyond what is expected of more junior engineers.

I try to keep up with my manager's blog entries largely because I feel that he and I have very similar ideas about what it means to work at or above the staff level. His perspective tends to bend toward the management side as mine will toward the technical side, but as our thoughts are well aligned, our perspectives tend to align in multiplicative ways.

My biggest complaint of late is the fact that I tend to spend as much time dealing with technical issues as I do with non-technical ones. I won't qualify that any further for various reasons, but it's the root of my expanding universe concept. One of a staff engineer's responsibilities is to guide and aid junior engineers. I don't take that lightly, even if it does consume a fair amount of time. In fact, I enjoy it. It's hard to qualify how something can simultaneously be the cause of a complaint and yet be something I enjoy doing. That qualification is the expanding universe.

Given enough responsibility and being of the mindset that generally guides engineers to a staff level or higher, the universe can quickly and regularly expand beyond your comfort level. The case in point is the fact that I have my laptop on today, Saturday, as I monitor email and compose this blog entry. There is a soccer game to go to later and I'm playing the lone parent today while my wife is out. On that note, it's time to turn off the tap on that universe.

Enjoy your weekend,

David

Hey now,

A couple of weeks before I moved to Colorado to start working for Sun, I went to see acoustic Hot Tuna perform in Scottsdale, AZ. I was living in the Phoenix area at the time, and had a couple of buddies that were at the show, taping it none-the-less. I used to tape concerts, too, but that was a long time ago. At least I got a copy of this show, though. It was a good one, too, by the way.

Between songs, somebody from the crowd yelled, "Jack! You da man!". The rowdy concert-goer was giving his own shout out to Jack Cassady, the bass player. Mind you, this show was happening at a place called "Venue of Scottsdale", which was formerly known as "The Cajun House" for those who might be familiar with the concert/club scene in the east valley. Suffice it to say that this place may have held a few hundred people if it was packed, but on this particular night there were probably no more than 150 people in attendance. I was standing roughly 20 or 30 feet back from the stage. Without missing a beat, Jorma (the guitarist - amazing in his own right) responds "He is the man".

Up until early this week, I spent the vast majority of the previous two weeks trying to root cause a bug in a storage driver I'd never looked at before for a technology I have never worked on before (SAS). This is a somewhat maddening position to be in as all eyes turn to you for answers and you're just beginning to understand the question.

As if I haven't digressed enough yet, let me do so again. As folks like me (if there really is any such thing) are wont to do, we often ponder the meaning of our existence. Let's face it. As engineers, we exist in the hopes that someday, somehow, we're going to develop something that's so revolutionary, so earth-shatteringly brilliant, so cool that engineers we generally look up to in envy will think to themselves, if even for a moment "Wow, that's pretty cool. Why didn't I think of that?" Really, what else is there to live for?

Well, after 38 years on this planet (as of today, thank you very much), I've long since come to the realization that this sort of paradigm-shifting, envy-evoking, brilliant gem of engineering is not very likely to emerge from the likes of me.

That's ok.

Really.

Perhaps it's just a sad rationalization of the meager existence of a faceless engineer at a big company, but after two weeks of struggling with this bug and countless emails and phone calls to other engineers in an attempt to get a grip on the problem, I finally nailed down the root cause. My boss had been after me every day, if not numerous times a day asking for status. I walked over to his office and he asked me "Do you have good news for me?" (We need good news on a regular basis). I told him that indeed, I did have good news, that I had finally discovered the root cause of the driver bug. His immediate response was to point at me and say, "You da man!"

You know what? I am the man. Maybe it was just for a few seconds, but that's also ok.

Really.

And hey, there's always tomorrow to come up with that paradigm shift.

Cheers,

David

Greetings,

Although I established this blog page quite a while ago, I left Sun before I ever posted anything. Fortunately, the winds of change have blown me back and it seems apropos that, like my manager, I jot down some random thoughts now and again. If you are reading this, well, thank you first :) Second, though, it implies knowledge that Sun encourages this activity. That is the gist of my rambling for the day.

Many months ago, I ran across an article that talked about why ketchup hasn't fundamentally changed for such a long time. Now, I honestly don't ponder things of this nature regularly, but there was something in that article that percolated to the top of my thoughts yesterday as I was contemplating my first blog entry. The article can be found here: The Ketchup Conundrum. It is a lengthy article, but it was section four that struck me (and gave me enough keywords to find the article). That section goes into detail about what makes Heinz ketchup as popular as it is. Their ketchup contains a well engineered combination of ingredients that cause your taste buds to fire on all cylinders as it were.

Now, to bungee back to engineering, let us combine the concept of Heinz ketchup and some of Dan's thoughts about engineering and management, specifically the Rules For Engineering. What Dan gets, as well as the vast majority of folks at Sun, is that there is a set of talents and skills that make for great engineering. In fact, to take it one step further, it is also a combination of engineers, managers, and all the other facets of any engineering company that must be in the right balance in order to attain the proper force multiplier. When this is accomplished, the results can far exceed what other, more mediocre teams or companies can accomplish.

This, my friends, is what Sun gets. Don't get me wrong. It would be far too easy for me, being an employee of Sun, to simply gush on and on about what a fantastic company Sun is. That's not my point, though. There are many companies out there creating outstanding products with teams of extremely talented people. I haven't worked for that many companies over the years, but I've seen enough to know that there are definitely companies that do not grok this concept.

As talented engineers, managers, marketing people, or whatever your individual passions and skill sets are, you are likely challenged to outperform the expectations of your peers, your management, and especially yourself when you see others around you attempting to do the same thing. Sun is changing, just like everybody else. Sun has issues, just like any other company. Sun isn't perfect, but the fact that they do understand these concepts, from Jonathon Schwartz all the way down to those of us in the trenches, is the exact reason why I am pleased to be back.

Cheers,

David