Ditching the rules to build a team that lasts | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)

Ditching the rules to build a team that lasts | Bryan Cantrill, Steve Tuck (Oxide)

Author: Ronak Nathani, Guang Yang July 23, 2024 Duration: 2:06:29

From building a new kind of server to building a new kind of company, co-founders Bryan and Steve join the show to chat about their "meet cute" and the origin story of Oxide, their unconventional recruiting process, transparent and uniform salaries, and their solution to the "N+1 shithead problem".

Segments:
(00:03:03) Bryan and Steve's "meet cute"
(00:05:56) "the sun does not shine on me"
(00:12:19) the dagger that went into sun
(00:21:23) culture of exonerating yourself vs solving customer problems
(00:23:25) the shared "error in judgment" of joining joyent
(00:27:54) the origin story of joyent
(00:29:44) reporting to the (physical) chair
(00:31:26) the comically bad ceo candidate
(00:36:23) the enterprise software shift
(00:40:21) the importance of curiosity in sales
(00:48:30) filtering for curiosity in hiring
(00:52:26) oxide's unconventional hiring process
(01:04:01) bryan's worst hire
(01:05:21) the limitations of traditional hiring
(01:08:32) the value of written reflections
(01:10:28) "what were the happiest moments in your career?"
(01:21:16) misconceptions about sales and go-to-market
(01:22:03) trust and alignment in sales
(01:30:24) building connections across organizations
(01:34:23) how to do performance reviews when everyone's paid the same?
(01:40:00) the power of transparency in compensation
(01:50:14) validation through impact
(01:53:14) origins of on the metal
(01:55:45) transparency and open communication
(02:01:32) the importance of storytelling
(02:04:56) building a company differently

Show Notes:
- Bryan's blog post on the transparent and uniform compensation model at Oxide: https://oxide.computer/blog/compensat...
- On the Metal's interview with Jeff Rothschild: https://share.transistor.fm/s/6fa1eaa4

Stay in touch:
- Make Ronak's day by signing up for our newsletter to get our favorites parts of the convo straight to your inbox every week :D https://softwaremisadventures.com/

Music:
Vlad Gluschenko — Forest
License: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/...


Behind every line of code, there's a person with a story, and that's where Software Misadventures finds its pulse. Hosts Ronak Nathani and Guang Yang pull up a chair with engineers, founders, and investors, but the conversation rarely stays in the technical manual. Instead, it wanders into the human territory of career detours, hard-won insights, and those unpredictable stumbles that often teach the most. This podcast is built on the idea that the journey is just as important as the destination, especially in the fast-moving tech world. You'll hear guests recount the projects that went sideways, the decisions they'd rethink, and the moments of clarity that emerged from the chaos. It’s a refreshingly honest look at the industry, emphasizing that expertise isn't just about what you build, but what you learn when things don't go as planned. Tune in for conversations that are less about perfect solutions and more about the real, sometimes messy, process of creating with technology. Each episode offers a blend of professional wisdom and personal narrative, making it a compelling listen for anyone curious about the lives woven into our digital landscape.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 55

Software Misadventures
Podcast Episodes
Impact Driven Development | Matt Klein (Envoy, bitdrift) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:19:18
From creating Envoy to co-founding bitdrift to reimagine mobile observability, Matt joins the show to chat about being told to simply "write some proxy in Python" in the early days of building Envoy, early influences fro…
Build the scary stuff | Bryan Cantrill (Oxide) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:19:41
From being a distinguished engineer at Sun Microsystems to co-founding Oxide Computer Company to build a new kind of server, Bryan joins the show to chat about being told that he's on a suicide mission when starting Oxid…
Lessons from the early days building Kafka and Confluent | Jay Kreps [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:16:08
From writing the first lines of Kafka over a Christmas break as a LinkedIn engineer to running a public company as the CEO of Confluent, Jay joins the show to chat about how he and his co-founders convinced investors to…
Become a LLM-ready Engineer | Maxime Beauchemin (Airflow, Preset) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 41:05
If you've worked on data problems, you probably have heard of Airflow and Superset, two powerful tools that have cemented their place in the data ecosystem. Building successful open-source software is no easy feat, and e…
Life as a Distinguished Engineer | Joakim Recht (Uber) [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:15:43
Out of thousands of engineers at Uber, there's only a handful of Distinguished Engineers and Joakim was one of them. In this conversation we chat about Why software engineering is a lot like a sausage factory. Considerat…
Learning in public | Kelsey Hightower [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 57:26
We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infra…
Engineer's guide to startup advising | Kelsey Hightower [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 49:50
We're super excited to have Kelsey back on the show! Our last conversation was around his incredible career journey - from working at McDonald's after school to starting his own computer store, to hacking on python infra…